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Last Session's Film and catch up for Steve before I do Cabaret


Now before I say anything about this film, I want to illustrate how I usually judge. First and almost always foremost is technique with me, so if a movie is heavy on technique but poor on plot, I can usually pass over it and like the film regardless. Then what always comes after is the substance of the film, if the film has great substance but low technique, I can still like it quite a bit. Anyway, I think this should be stated of all the things I like, even in my own personal reviews thread.

However, getting on to Wisconsin Death Trip... I did not like this movie. I really felt it was poorly conceived, yet there was so much potential within it that it could have gone some place rather interesting but never did. Now the question is, "Why? What are the issues within the film?" Well let's examine shall we? The synopsis is of a small town in Wisconsin in which an epidemic and a depression occur simultaneously... shortly there after, the place becomes a madhouse of mental patients, murders, suicides, etc. Okay, this looks like an interesting tale to tell. But what the director doesn't seem to catch onto is that it is not the acts of mental psychosis, mayhem and murder, that make a story interesting. It is the investment itself within these stories that make the story engaging. Think of Hitchcock's "Suspense Theory", instead of writing it out I'll give and example coming from the man himself:


You must give the audience information, so they can invest themselves, and engage in the movie. But if you give them snippets of results, a collection of results in this case, there is little engagement and little point of going from one scenario of madness to the other. What was it that led a woman to smash windows chronically, what were her conditions, what was her state of mind? Before we can find out we're off to another scenario that involves a woman drowning her kids in a lake, same rules apply here, but before we can make heads or tails, we're left without rhyme or reason. It just seems like a cheap "shock-ploy" at the end of the day. Intermixed with these engagements, we flash-forward to a more stable future. But these flash-forwards seem out of place, and almost another kind of cheap-ploy, one of "Come visit lovely Black River Falls!" Honestly, it almost, not quite, but almost became a scout video for Black River Falls.

Anyway, though I did not like it, I do appreciate watching this, and I'm interested in hearing your take on this review.

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Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?

-Stan Brakhage

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Liked the review of Wisconsin Death Trip Dog Star Man. It's been a long time since I've seen it and I think you're right in a lot of what you say about it, even though I do like the film and you don't.

The movie didn't blow me away when I first saw it. But it has really stayed with me in the decade or so since. I found it had a pervasive, lasting atmosphere. It looks great. I think it is nicely understated, letting the craziness escape between the lines of the wry prose of the newspaper reports. It's directed in a clean, decisive style, that, together with featuring a subject I find fascinating (pioneers struggling in almost impossible conditions), must have hit my curiosity nerve dead on. It must have, because I still think of this as among the docs that affected me most, and I am continually comparing all kinds of other movies to it (or more accurately, to what I remember of it).

There are certainly cheap shock tactics in the movies- and I took that as a kind of freakshow sensationalism appropriate to the time. It doesn't do much to tell individual stories- but cumulatively I think it tells the story of the idiot heroism of those pioneers.

Maybe I liked the small snippets of information for the same reason I can't switch off Pop-Up Video or shows like that when I stumble into them. Short attention span?

Perhaps what appeals to me most about it is that I haven't really seen anything like it since, and I usually appreciate an adventurous, different film.

Kind of surprised you picked it, would have thought Cowards Bend The Knee would be more your thing, but great to see a review of it.

Mark, I believe the sequence of the soldiers deciding wether to charge a hill with enemies on the other side only to find out one of their own was fatally wounded really got me. That was the most intense scene of the entire film, and completely heart breaking.

Glad you enjoyed it! I'll have a review up towards this weekend for the film you suggested.

__________________
If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?

Jerry Maguire




'Is he American?'

'Extremely.'

That quote is from Cars 2, but I feel it sums up this movie and its main stereotypes (the 80s go-getter and the loudmouth jock) better than any of the many, many, famous quotes Jerry Maguire itself generated.

With all of those famous moments, with all the clips, all the people quoting the movie, I had pretty much absorbed the movie through osmosis. I felt like I had watched Jerry Maguire many times. I never actually had though.

It was about time I filled in the few blanks between the moments that are pop culture staples.

It was a slightly weird and less than satisfying experience. The famous parts have already had their impact drained, and watching the movie only illustrated why the bits between show me the money/had me at hello/only regret is that I had bonitis, etc, never got famous. It was kind of like eating a chocolate chip granola bar directly after already eating a bunch of Double Deckers. Normally, the chocolate ships would be a delicious highlight to distract from the fact that the rest of what you're eating is bloody granola, but now you're already bored with chocolate so that even the god bits aren't that tasty. That analogy doesn't quite work, and now I am hungry for Double Deckers.

I always find it difficult to accept Tom Cruise playing a human. This role is better suited for him than most, but he's too shiny and pristine to ever seem like he has ever experienced anything interesting.

Renee Zellweger actually looked surprisingly hot for much of the film. I usually can't find her that attractive- or convincing- because I keep seeing her gurning in Cold Mountain and laughing to myself. But here I liked her lips.

Now that I've written the shallowest thing I've ever written about a movie, I will have to compliment her for not being annoying here. Can't normally say that about her, and can't say it about Cuba Gooding Jr. here.

The much kinder way to look at this movie is to say that there is a reason that so much of it has become famous. There is some pretty good comic writing, and some competent emotional manipulation. I didn't laugh, I wasn't moved, but I didn't find it that unpleasant, it just passed me by, a pretty, decent movie that never involved me at all (like a lot of Cameron Crowe and James L Brooks films, now that I think about it). I don't know if it would have had a particularly different effect on me if I didn't already know all the good bits, but I tend to think it wouldn't. Maybe it's because I'm not American.

Thanks for the recommendation Holly G.

ha. good review. i'm on the lukewarm Jerry Maguire train, ma'self.

Great Review Stevo I feel bad you gave me such a good movie,Next time Ill try to find something better.

This old-fashioned, turn-of-the-century movie reminded me in many ways of Anne of Green Gables (the 1970's Megan Follows PBS version, at least; I haven't seen any others). I usually like period piece, sappy love story type bullcrap, though this one was a slightly different experience than your typical period piece drama. As soon as I finished watching it, I looked it up and found out it's based on a novel which was written by a young girl in the early 1900's, and apparently, it was something she wrote "for fun" just for her friends. That explains a lot, I thought.

I'll admit that I had a hard time taking this movie seriously; however, that isn't exactly an insult, because to my mind's eye it was intentionally done tongue-in-cheek.

It's like this: The year is 1890-something, and you're a young woman. For what you don't have in grace and beauty, you more than make up for with a high-spirited, rambunctious personality. You come from a poor family; nearing 30, you are mostly seen as a burden to your parents, who are just itching to ship you off to be governess to another man's family, where you'll at least be of some service. But you're a dreamer. You can't stand the thought of being tied down to monotony, especially the typical feminine duties of a woman from the 1890's. You want to make it big someday, maybe have a career in one of the arts, such as painting or writing or music.

This is how the story opens up; we see a young girl playing her piano with a faraway look on her face; her hair is unruly to match her temper. In the background her mother calls for her to help bring the laundry in (or some other such womanly chore) and she willfully ignores her.

This opening scenes sets up the rest of the movie, basically. You watch this young woman (Sybylla Melvyn) trot around, willfully dismissing every turn of advice she is given, with a hard determination to "stand out". Judy Davis's performance as Sybylla was easily the most brilliant thing about this movie. I felt that all the other performances were intentionally muted to bring out her character even more, and the contrast was really great. I love how contrary she was, even to herself. She wanted so badly to stand out and do something non-traditional, but over the course of the movie you begin to realize how badly she really wants to fit in. In one particular scene, she sits in a tight ball on her bed, crying, and when her cousin asks her what is the matter, she says she hates that she's not pretty enough for anyone. To me, this was the most important scene in the entire film, because you finally get some insight on what this girl is going through. She wants to stand out because she can't fit in. That, to me, is a brilliant move, and I'd lie if I didn't admit that I do the same thing in many ways.

I guess you could say that the main reason I liked this movie, if I was forced to pinpoint it, was that I can relate to the character immensely; relate and respect, that is.

Also, it's really entertaining to watch her waltz around and be absolutely ridiculous for an hour and 39 minutes. OH, also! There's this one scene that distracts you from all the dialogue due to this funky thing the horse keeps doing with its mouth, and well... oh heavens, I'll just post a screen shot-



i was like, "tee-hee-hee-hee!" all throughout this part.

Anyway.

golden out of 10, better known as

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letterboxd

Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Directed by Peter Jackson


Juliet Hulme and Pauline Rieper (later revealed in the trial to be Pauline Parker, as her parents never married) quickly become best friends when Juliet's family moves to Christchurch in 1952. They are both very creative and imaginative, they seem to use there imagination when they are dealing with harsh situations in there lives. They start to become lost in there fantasy and start to see Pauline’s mother as the enemy. The two girl’s parents try to separate them but the girls will do anything to stay together. Juliet and Pauline start thinking up a solution for this.



I am very new at writing reviews for films, but I think that’s all I can say without giving away to many spoilers. I really enjoyed this movie a lot which kind of surprised me as I am not the biggest fan of Kate Winslet, so I was very pleasantly surprised by her acting in this movie which I believe was her first actual film.



Melanie Lynskey (aka the stalker from Two and a Half Men) played a very scary and believably disturbed girl.



The fact that this is based on a true story adds a lot to the film while you are watching it wondering how anyone can be this disturbed. In my opinion there punishment was very weak, maybe that is just the law in New Zealand.


I really enjoyed this movie and would recommend this to anyone who has not seen it.




Thanks Godoggo

Glad you liked it. I've watched my movie, or rather movies as I went ahead and watched the whole trilogy. I will post my review tomorrow as I want to gather my thoughts.

So I was actually only assigned the first part of this trilogy but after watching the first one I needed to find out the rest of the story. The first part can definitely stand on it's own, but the trilogy should be taken on it's own to get the full impact.

It starts off in 1974 in Yorkshire. There is someone kidnapping and killing little girls and this is how we meet Edward Dunford a young eager journalist played by Andrew Garfield. After meeting and having an affair with one of the victim's mother he becomes personally involved in the story.

The first part is the best of the trilogy I think, with part three coming in a very close second. Garfield does an amazing job of transforming Dunford from the ideological young cocky reporter we meet in the beginning to the tortured obsessed man he becomes by the end. In one scene involving Dunford and the police his terror his so real and convincing that I had to close my eyes.

It's shot so that the whole movie looks and feels a little gray. It really lends itself to the dirty and dreary atmosphere. The second movie is shot in a completely different way. At first I found it a bit jarring, but there is a bit of a different focus to the story so in the long run it makes sense.

So now it's 1980 and a police officer, Peter Hunter, played by one of my favorite actors, Paddy Constatine, is sent to help with the investigation of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. This ties into the first movie because Hunter has been to Yorkshire before to investigate an event that happens at the end. Because of a family tragedy, Hunter had to leave before the investigation, but not before he becomes aware that all is not right within the Yorkshire police department. This is in fact the prevailing theme throughout all three movies.

The only misstep I feel, happens in this part. Significant time is devoted to an affair between Hunter, a married man, and a female police officer under his charge. It could be argued that this is an important part of the movie because it shows the moral ambiguity and corruption on a personal level of the person who wants to bring the deep seated corruption of the police department to light. Also someone has taken pictures and could use them to destroy his career. However, nothing really becomes of the pictures and I don't think so much time needed to be devoted if that was the point the filmmaker was trying to make. To me it was a distraction.

The final piece goes back more to the style of the first and begins in 1983 when another girl goes missing. It appears to be linked to the others of 1974, but knowing what the viewer knows that shouldn't be possible.

If the corruption of the police at times seems too brutal and too monstrous, finally here we see the glimmer of a soul from an unexpected source. It's the story of this man that gives the third movie it's real power. One scene in particular is extremely moving.

There is an intricate web of characters and plot and great attention is given to both by all three filmmakers. If it's any testament to how well I liked these movies, I plan on getting the novels the movies were based on very soon. There is one aspect of the movie that I hope the novels will go into greater detail on and that is the nicknames given to some of the character. The Wolf; The Owl, The Badger, The Pig, and The Rat. The significance of some of the names are obvious, but some I'm not so sure on.

Thanks akatemple. I thought this was brilliant and it's something I will watch many times again.

The Innocents 1961

So Im gonna start off with saying I really enjoyed this film alot.The Innocents is defiantly not your second rate horror film and its a very interesting psychological horror, I watched just before I went to bed and to be Honest I kind of had a hard time falling asleep. The Film is about a governess that goes to the country to look after two orphaned children Flora and Miles.Over time Miss Giddens starts to suspect something paranormal has possessed the children and her main goal is save the children. The one thing I loved about this film is that your not really sure what is happing and its hard to tell what is real and what is fantasy,Is Miss Giddens Imaging things or are the children really possessed???



The Innocents is a beautiful crafted ghost/physiological horror.The film was great and the cinematography and the acting was well done. The film itself just had a real haunting atmosphere and theres not alot of blood and guts but it still just scared the crap out of me. It is one of those films the will scare the heck out of you and make you think at the same time,It really was a pleasure to watch.Thanks Mark!!



"But above anything else, I love the children"

^The Turn Of The Screw is a great book as well



First thought after 5 minutes: Is this a Carl Sagan version of Better Off Dead? Also, Tangerine Dream score? Those are two great jumping off points. Oh, no I guess it's about


Is this your face after you get a wrong number? He needs more sugar

Miracle Mile, which may be safely assumed a cult hit, is so much more enjoyable when you don't know the plot, cannot stress that enough, so stop reading....Ok. What I find more interesting is that there isn't a single time where I think "hey that's not bad acting" but right when Mr. Protagonist puts the phone down after the other man on the line getting gunned down by US, I am immediately ensnared until credits.The construction and imbalance (and the spinning burger clock) of this somewhat real-time film is brilliantly staged, enough so that the cheesy acting somehow adds to the tension, as each "occurrence" in the film only adds to the "what next" factor. None of the occurrences, such as him jumping out of the van that was going to Antarctica to escape or the police suddenly pulling away when you think it was all just a hoax, seem forced or out-there, which is great for a cult film; usually the forced crap is all over the place but it's generally accepted. NOT IN THIS BRAIN. The natural averageness of the heroes is a nice change as well. I mean, look at them, no one wants them on their bedroom wall:


The one on the right is the helicopter pilot for reals

The La Brea Tar Pits were a wonderful location for all this, and the last shot of them sinking next to the wooly mammoth is a wonderful juxtaposition, nice, humbling moral there, but DUDE the Tangerine Dream soundtrack. Not quite Goblin level of quality but still, the droning aspects with the thankfully atypical key changes were well suited to this, and certainly added to the suspense by not being that involved actually.

So, after what may be the cheesiest first act in a serious film, which I thankfully didn't take seriously, it turned into quite the ride…the sit-down-don't-move-while-blood-pressure-rises ride. Nice find, Stevo.

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Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

I tried watching the Red Riding trilogy and couldn't get into it.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

wonderful! it's so nice to hear someone enjoy a movie i've recommended. yeah, it's a pretty emotional journey. the last bit especially really got to me... when Mary comes back.

good times, nebs.

Im glad you kind of liked it mark, I had a hard time finding a film for you Im gonna check out a Nuns Story sometime this week and Ill let you know what I think

Don't apologize, Woman. I liked it quite a bit, but I'm a mean MoFo!

I hope you "really like" The Nun's Story. I'm sure it will move you and surprise you at the same time.

Just so you know, My Father's Glory is my wife Brenda's favorite film.

My Left Foot

Directed by: Jim Sheridan
Written by: Shane Connaughton and Jim Sheridan
The Novel was written by: Christy Brown

This is the true story of Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) who is born with crippling Cerebral Palsy, he can only control his left leg and foot. Christy is born somewhere in the middle of his 13 brothers and sisters, they are a very poor Irish family, even with Christy’s disability the family never seems to give up hope even though there are some very rough patches that they go through. They cannot afford a wheel chair for Christy so they rig up a wheelbarrow to push him around in. The family seems to think that Christy is mentally handicapped, this is way before there was all that much known about Cerebral Palsy. I really liked the scene where he gets a piece of chalk in between his toes and writes MOTHER, his dad carries him on his shoulders into the local bar and sais: “This is Christy Brown my son the genius”.



As Christy grows up more adult problems start to affect him, the main one is seeing everyone falling in love. The restaurant scene where he confesses his love for the Dr. is one of the most uncomfortable scenes that I have watched in a very long time. Watching Daniel Day-Lewis play Christy makes you hurt, he is so convincing that it is hard to believe that he is acting and not actually suffering with Cerebral Palsy.

These are my favorite lines from the movie.

Dr. Eileen Cole: “Christy, if you like we can work here.”

Christy: “F**k off”

Dr. Eileen Cole: “With speech therapy I could teach you how to say f**k off more clearly.”

In such a serious movie it is always good to have the comic relief just at the right times. Like the quoted lines above which made me laugh, there were other funny spots in the movie, just enough to keep it from being to overwhelmingly serious. The ending is fantastic and tear jerking but that’s all I think I can say about that. If you have not seen this film then please go out and get it however possible.



Thanks nebbit, this was such a great movie.