Camo's Movie Log

@Camo, maybe you've mentioned this before and I've missed it, but why do you never capitalize your I's.

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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

It's just a habit. I type pretty fast and for whatever reason I (i'm self-conscious now thanks ) forget to capitalize them

Don't you mean WHY do you never capitalize your I's huh huh

You know, whenever I use this work computer, it changes some random words. As if they have auto-correct on some evil mode or something.

The Ox-Bow Incident
(William A. Wellman, 1943)

Very good film, i don't have much to say since it's only 75 minutes long and is pretty much straight to the point. This felt more like a drama set in the west than an actual western to me which i liked. There was very little action it was mostly about the story which concerned things like mob mentality, personal justice/revenge vs law and order, etc. You could say this was a bit heavy handed and melodramatic but it didn't bother me and some of the things i'd describe that way i really liked like the voting scene; that was very powerful even though it was pretty obvious and had melodramatic music. Was so happy with the resolution, for whatever reason i was expecting them to be saved stopping the film from going all the way with their main point which would have felt cheap. Very easy and enjoyable watch due to the short length and the fact that it was so straightforward with good performances all round. The film looked good too, instead of the beautiful natural deserts Ford usually filmed in Wellman restricted the film to a couple of locations using simple yet effective sets, good stuff.

I still got to see that one. Looks good.

It's only 75 minutes long, very easy and enjoyable watch. Looking forward to Yellow Sky now.

I've got both The Ox-Bow Incident and Yellow Sky on my 40's watchlist and I'm looking forward to both. I'm a much bigger fan of westerns than I was a couple years ago.

Same here. 5 years ago Westerns with a few exceptions were only slightly above Musicals for me, particularly old ones; i really struggled with stuff like The Searchers. This site has definitely helped me in that regard as i have quite a few favourites now.

I started Yellow Sky once and didn't get back to it. Was just too busy at the time.

Just watched a clip from it, looks amazing, didn't know Gregory Peck was in it. Watching it in the next few days.

Best In Show
(Christopher Guest, 2000)

I'm a big fan of This Is Spinal Tap while i didn't think this is good it was funny and i had a good time watching it. This actually didn't start off well for me. I really don't understand why they started out with the therapy joke, the only way that would ever work was if someone had just turned to a random channel with this on at the right time. Everyone who has actually decided to watch this knows this is about a dog show so they know right away that they are in therapy for the dog. It would've been fine if it was a quick gag but it went on and on; adding layer after layer to this punchline that everyone knows is coming. Don't take me the wrong way this isn't an actual problem; it's one joke i didn't find funny and felt was mishandled and oddly placed in a film full of funny jokes, the only reason i bring it up is that i find it such an odd choice to open the film with and i'm curious if the writers hadn't thought this would happen themselves. Or maybe everyone else found it hilarious and it's just me haha. It got me in the next scene with Eugene Levy's character actually having two left feet; i laughed way more than i should have at that. Levy i associate with American Pie and other bad films, i think he's a pretty good comedic actor but some of his roles have made me groan, he was hilarious in this though. The way the film was i didn't really care who won but i figured pretty early on it would be him with his two left feet and them being clearly the least well off out of all the characters. A good thing about this was that so much of the humour was derived from the characters being bored, unhappy, pathetic, etc, and yet i never felt that awkward way which makes it hard to watch like i do with certain episodes of The Office for example. This is basically an ensemble film with a large cast of characters with separate stories so of course some are better than others which makes it a little uneven; i really didn't like the ventiloquist for example but other than him i got laughs from them all and a few were consistently hilarious. Fun film.

I had considered The Ox-Bow Incident for the Western Hof. It's a strong moralistic tale. Good film!

Agreed. You seen Yellow Sky? I watched this yesterday and i think it looks great, watching it soon:

No, I haven't. But, yeah it looks like it might be good.

Buffalo '66

From everything i've read about him and what he has said Vincent Gallo sounds like an awful person so i was half expecting to dislike this but i really loved it to my surprise. There's so many problems with it too; the events of the film aren't believable - Layla has multiple chances to escape early on all she knows him as is an aggressive ******* who kidnapped her and has just left prison, if the film had it as her being too scared to say drive away when he was peeing then fairenough but she is clearly not by her demeanor and attitude towards him, it's bad enough that she falls for him after he calms down a bitafter his pee but i felt the film was telling me she was attracted to him right away which isn't believable. Her falling for him at all is the most tough to swallow, he's aggresive and potentially dangerous and just acts completely terrible to her throughout; he softens up in the motel scene towards the end but before that he hasn't shown her any other side to him which makes her calling him "the most handsome", "too good for her", etc, throughout the film doesn't make much sense as well as her not leaving when she can after the scene with his parents. So yeah on paper this shouldn't have worked at all but for whatever reason i felt a connection/chemistry that i can't quite explain which made this work. Another thing that initially annoyed me but ended up a positive and possibly the explanation for their relationship working for me was the self-aggrandizing; Billy was a character in a movie of course so if it was pretty much anyone else other than Gallo who had written and was playing the character i wouldn't have thought anything of it but from the various comments i've read from Gallo including some related to this film he sounds arrogant and unpleasant so say the "it's just so huge" urinal scene felt like him stroking his own ego in some weird way to me. The first Lalya comments felt the same at first as well but then as we got more into i realized that Billy is a messed up loser and Layla is the only one that takes notice of him and says anything positive about him, it made it feel like they were in their own little world; every other character felt weirdly detached from Billy which worked to justify his existence being so terrible to him, Layla payed attention to and had a genuine interest in him, she noticed things that Billy had no reason to believe were there and maybe they weren't but i don't think it actually matters. I certainly think all of those problems i mentioned still stand but i think this goes some way to explain why the relationship worked for me despite them. Even the urinal part has a self-deprecating explanation that i wasn't expecting with his serious self-consciousness; doesn't want to be touched/watched. So yeah not sure if it will hold up but to my surprise i kinda loved this. Still don't like Gallo and while i really like his script (co-written so i'm not sure how much was his) and performance the film was certainly not his alone, Ricci was just as good as him and his comments about her were awful and Lance Acord's visuals played a massive part; again Gallo's comments about him were awful, don't believe for a second the visuals were Gallo's when you consider some of Acord's other credits: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette and Where The Wild Things Are.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Just my second Jarmusch after Dead Man and i've completely adored both, got to see more from him. I read this is a homage to Le Samourai (one of my favourite films) and this is definitely evident but it also had plenty of Jarmusch's own touches with the humour and just general oddness. The film had certain cliches that at first bothered me; Ghost Dog being so gentle, well read, meditative, an animal lover (practically at one with them actually), etc with little personal life to speak of definitely is familiar territory for badass movie hitmen and the mafia were extremely typical; exactly how you expect them to be portrayed. It became clear early on that Jarmusch completely recognized these things and he made it evident that the film wasn't taking itself seriously which is why it worked so well, two similar scenes in particular show this well; Louie's meeting scene with the others were we find out about the hit on Ghost Dog, he is trying to convey this ridiculous story of a hitman called Ghost Dog who gets in contact with him by pigeon; Sonny repeating everything he was being told as it got more and more unbelievable made it clear in a funny way that the film is aware this is extremely silly and the other being the scene where Ghost Dog confronts Louie, again in a similar fashion Louie clearly ridicules the idea of Ghost Dog following samurai codes. These sorts of scenes allowed me to take this as it was a fun, silly homage to certain tropes rather than a serious crime film and thanks to this it worked wonders. As i said the mafia were typical, they were caricatures, no actual defining traits to separate them from the hundreds of other similar characters there are out there, but what they were was extremely funny. Just about every scene with any of them was hilarious, those two aforementioned scenes maybe being my favourite, this humour did well to counteract the more moody, serious Ghost Dog scenes for me. Ghost Dog himself was fantastic too, i loved the blending of two cultures, his conversation with the little girl and more than anything how cool he was. Jef Costello might be the most cool character in film for me and i like how Jarmusch took his own unique approach to that sort of character. Loved the soundtrack too, great film.

As well as Buffalo '66 and Ghost Dog these are the films i watched that i haven't posted about here. There's quite a few so i'll just post a rating other than the ones i posted about on Letterboxd. If anyone is curious about my thoughts on something ask.

Brief Encounter

George Washington

I really should have despised this. It was pretty nonsensical and all over the place after the main event happens and the kids were pretentious a-holes . It had a weird dreamlike feeling though that dragged me into its world. Got a feeling i'd not like this as much on a rewatch but i really digged it.

Suspiria -

Outstanding visuals, set design and especially score. So much so that i want to give this a higher rating but the acting, dialogue and... well pretty much everything else didn't work for me. This is something i'd like to return to at a later date as i feel i could possibly grow to appreciate it, for now though it's a mixed reaction as i found alot of it jarring.

Margaret -

Absolutely adored the first half an hour of this. So devastating, i was close to tears during the vomiting/breakdown scene. Sadly the rest didn't live up to that, i found it mostly dull, pointless and especially too long with a few good parts sprinkled about.

Oculus -

I liked this quite a bit. This wasn't exactly original of course, when you get down to it it's a haunted item and an 'are these people crazy or is this actually happening' film. Them setting out to face off against the item while debating what is and isn't happening felt fairly unique though, at times it was a little dumb and/or corny but i pretty much enjoyed it throughout. Again while nothing new exactly the flashbacks were well handled i felt, the parallel timelines and obviously 'mirrored' scenes with them reliving past events kept things interesting. Mostly i liked all of the performances particularly Karen Gillan and i especially got into Kelsie and Tim trying to convince each other of their side; it did its job as it had me wondering what was and wasn't real at times. There were a few really horrifying things for me too, nails getting ripped off and glass eating are two of the very worst things for me so it's pretty funny that both were in this. Loved the ending, it was pretty much what i was expecting but it worked so well since Tim had been dragged into all of this; both the ideas that everything was real or it wasn't are equally horrifying, couldn't ask for anything more. So yeah i completely enjoyed this but i don't think it is a new horror favourite as i don't think there's anything there that would make me want to see it again.

Tickled -

This was nuts. Competitive Tickling is incredibly odd in itself so this was destined to be weird but that's like the least crazy thing about this. A friend told me to watch this and he made sure to tell me that i should go in completely blind, i agree with him that made it so much better so i won't talk about anything that happened. One thing i will say is that it's funny that the guy who makes the tickling fetish porn videos is fine, like any fetish you yourself don't have you of course find it really weird and as is pointed out tickling is alot less known than say a foot fetish but there's no problem as far as i'm concerned as long as it's between adults and everything is consensual then carry on. Then you of course have the main focus in the doc which i won't go into. Like most docs i doubt i'll watch this again but i have to give it a high rating as it was just so crazy and gross and wrong yet completely enthralling, i expected to be surprised but this was something else.

John Wick -

This was pretty great, some of it was really cheesy but who cares it was very entertaining and it's not as if it was taking itself completely seriously. That's what i liked best about it; it didn't try to be subtle or nuanced it was full of over the top music, corny dialogue, crazy action scenes and a very thin plot, exactly what this sort of film should be like and it was fun. While I really like Keanu as a person I don't think he is a good actor at all really so this sort of role is perfect for him where he just has to be a moody badass and the film is so over the top that the acting doesn't matter. One thing i liked was that John wasn't completely invincible even though he was clearly superhuman, he got beat up plenty and he was going to be killed if it wasn't for Dafoe, twice actually. Not sure if this will hold up as Action Films rarely do for me but i thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Loved Ones -

+

Didn't know what to expect, thought it was pretty great. It was so disturbing and demented, more than anything the muffled screams creeped me out. Really good horror.

Spring -

A Moment of Innocence -

+

God i don't even know what to say about this, one of the best films i've seen. It was really simple yet super effective, difficult to describe it's basically a fake documentary about the making of a film that is a fictionalized account of a real event where the director stabbed a policeman during the Iranian Revolution. Basically the director directs the actor playing the young him and the policeman directs the actor playing the young him and it all connects, great stuff. The policeman is one of my favourite characters in any film.

Orphan -

This was pretty entertaining and the kid who played Esther was good but my god was it dumb The twist was so ridiculous i couldn't take anything seriously after that.

Belle De Jour -

I Saw The Devil -

@Camo

So glad you liked John Wick, it's a fun flick to enjoy.

I'm even more glad you liked Oculus. Talk about a surprising film. Didn't expect anything from it and what I got was a well done horror film.

Tickled is indeed weird, I gave it a lower rating than you, but agree on how absurd it all is.

I'd switch ratings on The Loved Ones and I Saw The Devil. Both are demented flicks, but one was a bit more ambitious in the torture.

Finally, THANK YOU, for your words on Suspiria. My thoughts exactly, a beautiful film to look at and listen to, but where is everything else? A big disappointment for me.

I see you checked out Bunuel... Nice!

Belle De Jour is not my favourite of his, but it definitely has its moments.

Awesome that we seem to agree on most. You are definitely right about I Saw The Devil and The Loved Ones, i would say that the former is the better film but i preferred the latter. I wasn't emotionally involved in I Saw The Devil, i didn't have any problem with the violence in an offended or grossed out way but at one point it strayed into torture porn i feel as entertaining as it was and while the main character was really cool he wasn't really developed at all. He didn't really have any character to speak of, Choi Min Sik was amazing though, great actor think that and Oldboy is all i;ve seen him in.

I don't really know what it was that worked for me so well in The Loved Ones, whatever it was i kinda loved it. God those hushed screams everytime he was hurt and the hole with the braindead other victims were horrifying. Great stuff.

Yah, i liked it quite a bit. The second half didn't completely work for me and i'm not sure why but i'm definitely looking forward to more from him.