The Movie Trade-off Tab

OK, good job meaty. I'll let you live.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

Probably poor choice of words on my part.

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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

Right, Bone (Larry Cohen, '72) has not come through the letterbox yet so i'll tab it later; meanwhile UF, I have managed to catch both Me and You and Everyone We Know and Colossus: The Forbin Project. Here are my (brief) thoughts:

Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)



Miranda July's Camera D'Or winning jaunt into suburban loneliness follows amongst others, a recently divorced shoe salesman and his two young children, an experimental performance artist, a pair of sexually competitive high school girls and a young collector of numerous 21st century conveniences. Although formally reminiscent of stuff like Broken Flowers and The Squid and the Whale, it would be lazy to pigeon hole this merely as a quirky, ensemble drama.

The film is courageous enough to touch upon some important everyday issues - miscegenation, paedophilia, artistic bankruptcy, parenthood etc. However, the film's strength lies within the scope of its characters. We have a father so desperate for the love of his children as to set alight to his hand, a young child so funny and inquisitive that he cutely copies, pastes and sends sexually indiscreet messages across a chatroom and an artist, so numbed by the competetiveness of the publishing industry, that she asks the adjudacator to call her and say 'macaroni', just to confirm that she has bothered to view her piece.

The film is a thoroughly entertaining and unique look at contemporary life. At times one gets the impression that the film revels in its own sense of 'offbeat-ness' but this does not compromise the thoughtful and contemplative style at its core.

Colossus: The Forbin Project (Sargent, 1970)



This underappreciated, cult sci-fi gem from multi-Emmy winning director Joseph Sargent, focuses on Dr Charles Forbin (a fine if unspectacular turn from television actor Eric Braeden) and his supercomputer brainchild Colossus. Now, i'm sure you know where this is going - supercomputer starts to develop a mind of its own, plots to take over the planet etc. As you can guess we find ourselves in popular sci-fi territory but while the film testifies to a fairly classical narrative exposition, it has an underpinned fatalism that makes it all the more worthwhile.

Now this can be academically boned to the hills; set towards the close of the Cold War and promoting a fear over the dominance of technology (like a great deal of good science fiction). However, you certainly don't need to be equipped with the bumblings of film theory to enjoy Colossus. Although the plodding word processor sound effects tend to grate and the production design comes off dated at best; it's a clunkily endearing fare. And i've yet to mention Susan Clark who is quite lovely as Forbin's messenger-cum-mistress Dr Cleo Markham. Director Sargent however, uses these touches to permeate the pessimism at the film's heart. The President (Gordon Pinsent) brings nothing to the impending apocalypse equation, in fact it would not be too fanciful to brand him with that rather heavy satire mantle.

While I would probably choose Me and You and Everyone We Know over this in the famed 'if you could only have one' scenario, this was still a well spent 90 minutes. Reccommended. Oh and UF thank you for the reccommendations my man, i'll get back to you on Bone next week.

Heavy Metal
Gerald Potterton, 1981

Before I even say anything about this, I really didn't think I was going to like it at all before watching it. Turns out that I did like it more than I had expected, but still not too much. I think this is pretty much a prime example of style over substance. The animation is extremely well done, possibly one of the best I've ever seen, and it has an insanely awesome soundtrack. The story just doesn't do it for me, I guess it's just too weird than I was expecting. I'm sure whenever I re-watch it, which I definitely will sometime in the future, I'll know what to expect and it may not seem as weird. It got really confusing at times during the movie. I didn't know it was broken up into different segments while watching the movie, though. I just found that out after looking on the IMDb page.

While I may not have sounded completely postive while watching this, I still enjoyed it to an extent. I'm glad that I did watch it, and I probably would've never gotten to it had it not been for the movie trade-off game. Thanks, Iro, for choosing this as my movie to watch.

+

3-Iron 2004 Kim Ki-duk

There was a surreal quality to this movie. The two main characters, Tae-suk (played brilliantly by Jae Hee) and Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon) remain silent but still manage to convey deep emotion. One such scene involves Sun-hwa returning to one of the homes the two stayed in while on the run. She says not a word, but moves to the couch and lies down, trying to become one with memory of the time the two lovers occupied the house. The owner looks at her with puzzlement, but allows her to stay. By the end of the film, she is a much different character from the beaten and abused woman we see at the beginning. She has a gentle strength; she no longer tolerates her husband's violent acts. She keeps him at arms length until the very last scenes.

Tae-suk's character is somewhat complex, always moving from the plane of violence to one of spirituality. He is ghostlike, moving from one empty house to another, searching for a sense of belonging. When he first comes in contact with Sun-hwa, he is lying in her bed, fantasizing about her while looking at her photograph. Photographs play a major part in this movie. Tae-Suk photographs himself at each location he stays at, posing in front of portraits of the family hanging on the wall. The photo of Sun-hwa that moves Tae-suk is found again at the photographer's shop. We see a beautiful but detached woman staring back at us.

I would say this movie is a beautiful yet haunting romance in spite of the violence with the 3 iron at the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed it and had no problem with the subtitles. I now have his other masterpiece, "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter....and Spring" in my queue at Netflix. Its people like Pyro and the recommendations they make that have kept me coming to MovieForums for six years. I would give this film an A. Highly recommended.

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Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons.....for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

Glad you liked it Birdy Wasn't sure what to recommend to you so quite relieved it resonated with ya! Bought H&M yesterday so will watch it soon. I've not seen Spring... but heard good things, have seen Bad Guy which is very similar but a bit darker, so you may like it but it's not as good on any scale. And from what i've heard of The Isle it's a twisted Asian horror so hopefully picking that one up soon

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

Glad you liked it. I looked back through some of your favorite movies and it seemed to "fit". I finally have time to watch my movie tomorrow. It's now been over two weeks since I have watched any movie, so I am pretty excited.

I know I am waaaaaaaay late, but I finally got a chance to watch The King of Comedy today, and I really dug it. Great cast, wonderful script and fun to watch.

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Cool, glad you liked it. STILL might be awhile for me cause it's the end of the school year and I'm swamped.

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"Travis Bickle: Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man."

THE BRIDGE ON
THE RIVER KWAI
David Lean, 1957

You ever get that feeling when you put off a well-known classic for ages and then when you finally get around to seeing it, you wonder why you waited so long to see it? I got that feeling when I finally got around to watching Bridge. I expected something suitably epic from the director of Lawrence of Arabia and he did not disappoint.

It looked absolutely stunning and ambitious in virtually every regard - cinematography, editing, pacing, what-have-you. I especially liked the lack of music, noticeably during the climax of the film. It seemed like music would've ruined the film, considering how down-to-earth it all was. I also liked the performances - William Holden was a stand-out for me, and Alec Guinness was Alec Guinness. I also thought that Sessue Hayakawa gave a surprisingly strong and conflicted performance as the Japanese camp leader.

All in all, excellent.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Just finished mine, will put something up on it when i get back from work

Ok time to come clean...here is a PM I sent to Fenwick a week or so ago...

Hello Fenwick,

I've given both of your choices a go and sadly neither proved to be my cup of tea, i.e. I failed to finish them. I didn't 'not get' the films, they just weren't what I was in the mood for this week, and I frequently found my attention wandering; sorry.

I also have a pile of recently purchased dvds I want to watch first (including a Melville box set, and some Italo-crime flicks) which is making it hard to concentrate on films I wouldn't normally be interested in. Again sorry if that sounds a little ignorant, it's just the truth.

That said it's no secret on MoFo I'm a pretty stupid low brow guy with a rather questionable taste in films. At least you can rest easy in the knowledge that you tried to educate me

After reading Fenwick's excellent tab (further up this page) I'm feeling more than a little guilty about not giving his choices a fair crack of the whip. Sorry Fenwick. I hereby promise to watch and tab either Orphee or Closely Observed Trains within the next two weeks; you have my word on it it.

I tried to send you a PM back but it wouldn't let me for some reason. By the time it told me that i'd lost what i'd written and I couldn't find the energy to write it again. I often suffer from severe lazybastarditis.

Duck, You Sucker



This was better than I was expecting. There are quite a few really funny scenes, and I enjoyed the chemistry between Juan and John. I'm not a big fan of the relentless close-ups and some scenes went on a tad too long, but this was a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

It also features one of the best scores I've ever heard and one hell of a cool train wreck. B-

Thanks, 7thson!

Cool, glad you at least enjoyed it somewhat, it is a bit of a crazy flick, but crazy in a good way.

Elephant
Gus Van Sant, 2003

I was a little apprehensive about watching this during the first 15 or 20 minutes when it appeared to consist of long, slow takes with ordinary characters having ordinary conversations and wandering around. In that sense, I was reminded of Slacker, although I'd say the conversations in Slacker were a bit more interesting. However, it picked up when I first noticed that the timeline of the film was jumping around a lot, thus making the film more engaging and interesting to follow. The character development was handled well, not quite lumping everyone into one-dimensional stereotypes (although there are examples of this, but since this is pretty much what reality is like and there are one-dimensional people, this seemed tolerable to me).

Even though it felt like it dragged on and on in plenty of areas, I still found it reasonably engaging, especially during the film's third act (if you could divide Elephant up into acts, of course). After the incredibly abrupt ending, I just wasn't so sure what to think about it.

Tales From the Crypt: Bordello of Blood


Very entertaining, i love stuff like this it made me want to check out other Tales From the Crypt episodes, thanks Lennon

Finally saw The Dead Zone, which Destiny had me watch in exchange for a viewing of The Impostors.

Not a bad flick, but I think this is one of those movies that's crying out for a remake. Unfortunately I knew basically the entire plot of the book going in, so there were only a few small surprises for me. The story is definitely among those "boy, I wish I'd thought of this" ideas. I think it's a great concept that is followed to its logical conclusion, and the way it comes together at the end is quite clever. One of the roles where Christopher Walken's, er, oddities, help add to the character.

Like most adaptations of Stephen King's work, it feels a little hammy at times, and there's a lot of overacting, but the core idea is so fantastic that it hardly matters at times.

Still, gotta love some of the histrionics in this one (about 6:00 into the clip below):



"The ICE...is gonna BREAK!"

That scene is gold, Chris. Walken kills me in that flick. I like the film quite a bit, actually. Care to rate the film?