Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

Not a huge De Palma fan, but I do like a few of his films. Carrie, Casualties of War, Carlito’s Way, Blow Out (probably his best film so far for me), Dressed to Kill and even Mission impossible.

I did not like Scarface much. It’s….ok, but it’s too obsessed with itself that whatever message it had (crime doesn’t pay, got it) seems shallow places within the context of the, at times, cartoonish violence.

I need to see Sisters and Phantom of the Paradise soon.

I like it too. Sort of. It's a De Palma movie, and that's good enough.



I considered it for my bottom 5, but then realized I like it too much to do that to it. I think it's one of his most fun movies, even if it's one of his least interesting.

Isn't that enough to make you a fan?

Nope lol.

I forgot about The Untouchables. A decent, yet flawed film, also not helped with his somewhat cartoonish violence (even more so here) and a miscast Costner. Morricone excels here with his score, as always.

If I enjoyed writing about movies anymore, I imagine a lot could be said about Burning.


But because I don't, that shit was dope

I loved Burning. The first half did such a great job at conveying isolation and jealousy without a single line of exposition that it provided a strong transition to the ambiguously menacing second half.

yes. exactly.

I don't know what it says about my brain because it initially went to thinking you meant The Burning and not the movie I just watched in 2022 and put it on my ballot for the best of the decade when this forum did the best of the 2010s.

Out of the Lee Chang-dong films I've seen, I think it's my favorite. It helped I saw shortly after a year that had two Hamaguchi adaptations of Murakami novels and so his writing was on my mind (weirdly, I've never seen nor read Norwegian Wood).



Poetry is also very good if you haven't seen it (it's actually the Lee Chang Dong I was most familiar with for basically the past decade) and Secret Sunshine is on criterion. Oasis, I think I had to track down a dvd for. It feels weird feeling the need to give shout-outs to his other films because I have no idea the comparative popularity of his films are.
Like, I knew Poetry for the past decade, but all of his other films just completely flew under my radar. Apparently other people on the forum, during the 2010s countdown bemoaned Burning over Poetry mentioning Burning was his most popular due to "stunt casting" of Steven Yeun in it (IDK, I just think he's pretty damn good in it), and well, Secret Sunshine has a criterion release (that I also never registered).

I enjoyed his mainstream hits, but haven't seen his least known films. I'll have to give them a try.


My secret shame is a long time ago, on another movie forum, I wrote a post on how difficult it was to watch and enjoy Roman Polanski's work, knowing the terrible crimes he's committed.


The problem is, I must have been tired that day, because instead of Roman Polanski, I wrote the name Brian de Palma instead.


So it looked like I was both commending the work of Brian de Palma, and accusing him of horrible crimes.


😖

LOL!

I don't know what you'd count as mainstream, but if not seen yet, Body Double, Phantom of Paradise and Blow Out are musts. Sisters, Femme Fatale,Casualties of War, The Fury and Dressed to Kill are not too far behind. And, even though I'm not a big fan of Hi Mom, the film within the film (Be Black Baby) might be one of the more tense and startling things he's ever done.

Maestro is near great. A biopic that doesn't get bogged down in documenting every high and low of a career, or being a comprehensive tour of one person's life, and instead does the not stupid thing. It chooses a particular element of his life (in this case his marriage and the juggling of his career and family life, his musical genius and his love of people), and lets us understand this both emotionally and cinematically. All the critics complaining they forgot about this part of his life, or needed to include this particular character, should quit their jobs inmediately and start bagging groceries (where someone can then make a docupic of their lives, and leave out all the movie critic stuff, zone right in on those more important Whole Foods years)


Also Mulligan steals the movie, which is saying alot, considering how much gusto Cooper brings to his depiction of Bernstein.


And as a tiny aside, Dan Levy's Good Grief is a competent stinker, which was better than I was expecting.

I've seen Casualties of War, Carrie, the Untouchables, Scarface, Mission Impossible, Phantom of the Paradise, and Bonfire of the Vanities.


I'll definitely give the others you've mentioned a try.

Than add Carlito's Way to the list.

I didn't see this.


Untouchables is a lot of fun. I like it a lot, even if Costner is as always kind of awful. But, it's one of those movies that I like that just feels....irrelevant. It feels designed simply to pass the time. And I'm fine with nobody directors doing that kind of thing. Not DePalma though. I want him to force us to pay attention to something. To push back against what he's showing us. To make us call him ridiculous or heavy handed or pretentious or absurd. And Untouchables is just as agreeable as Shredded Wheat.



Really fun Shredded Wheat (which, for the record, is always fun, if you just add some brown sugar and the tiniest bit of boiled water)

Yeah, it’s a fun film, and I do enjoy it quite a bit. I’ll listen to the end theme often while at the gym or in my car. Connery is great. Costner has the charisma but not the gravitas to pull Ness off that early in his career.
Really, it’s like Gangs of New York. Both are fun films, with memorable music, decent acting, but also are flawed not only in its use of dialogue, but are somewhat disappointing because both directors should really have done better.

Amazing

I finally watched the Italian noir/giallo/slight echoes of Antonioni, The Possessed (1965) on Mubi. It was pretty solid.

Yes, I liked that one. I was surprised to see it has a 30 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, until I saw its the audience score they are saddling the film with.


Nothing better than saddling an already underseen film with the consensus of some RT riff raff.

Agree with pretty much all of this, especially the bit about Scarface. Blow Out easily my favorite De Palma.

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