Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

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The "challenges" are different because nobody cares if I finish it or not, and most importantly for me I don't have to rank anything. (I'm philosophically opposed to ranking art. I mean, I'll sometimes do it if pressed but I'd just rather not. I managed to slap together a list for the '00s countdown, but that was mostly possible because I don't feel very strongly about that decade.)

The Halls of Fame are another matter. I like the concept and would like to try one among friends maybe, but like Crumb said, the idea of a stranger sitting through something I happen to like makes me uncomfortable, even if I've taken pains to recommend something harmless. The range of opinions here is too wide, so I'd prefer to just post about films that I think are noteworthy. Then, if my opinion matters to a specific person, they can take that into consideration and voluntarily watch something I've recommended. Final Exam, for example.

And just to clarify, I'd watch anything I was asked to watch. It's having to nominate something for others that is the sticking point.
Yeah, I don't have a problem suggesting films within narrow criteria, but I have too many annoying experiences recommending films in real life that I try to avoid it if there isn't a specific enough theme. (Mostly people getting annoyed or offended if they don't like the movie I suggested. I cannot be held responsible if their taste is in their ass.)



Yeah, I don't have a problem suggesting films within narrow criteria, but I have too many annoying experiences recommending films in real life that I try to avoid it if there isn't a specific enough theme. (Mostly people getting annoyed or offended if they don't like the movie I suggested. I cannot be held responsible if their taste is in their ass.)
Well, that's the other thing. I've actually thought about starting some kind of movie club among friends in the past, but even among my friends there's the few that can't be bothered with stuff they don't already like. A certain openness is required for this kind of thing that can be hard to find, unfortunately. I don't need everyone to like what I like, but I don't have patience for the "I hate Westerns, therefore I have no interest in whatever Western you're trying to convince me is good" attitude.
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Yeah, I don't have a problem suggesting films within narrow criteria, but I have too many annoying experiences recommending films in real life that I try to avoid it if there isn't a specific enough theme. (Mostly people getting annoyed or offended if they don't like the movie I suggested. I cannot be held responsible if their taste is in their ass.)
Just for the record, there's also some themed Halls every now and then. For instance, I'm currently hosting a Twilight Zone HoF which should finish up in a couple of weeks. Halls with a specific theme are generally shorter than main Halls and can be a good place to start.
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As an aside, the Halls are free of the woke and anti-feminist discussions which pop up in General Movie Discussion every now and then, so that's another plus.



Portrait of Jason is one of my favorite movies ever.


Innocence Unprotected is one of the strangest things I've seen. I don't even know what it is.
Yay! This is how I'm feeling about both of them so far.





Three and a half hours of pixelated images, trasmitted from a low resolution cell phone. A love story that scoops out any tangible evidence of the love or the story. A foreign film which rarely translates any dialogue, and leaves us at the mercy of an unseen narrator who gives us a brief outline of what they are talking about. Let the Summer Come Again is the very definition of art cinema of grotesque proportions. The kind of thing which could make even some of the most adventurous of film goers scratch their eyeballs out. And yet, while I would sympathize with the ensuing eyeless it leaves in its wake, I can't help but feel this might be one of the most exciting debut films I've seen in a few years. If one can just hold their judgement at bay, and become lost in what is happening on screen, this is movie magic.


While I think I could scrawl the basic arc of the films story on the back of a cocktail napkin, this is really a film about three and a half hours of moments. Because of the strange, unfocused look of the movie, and its strange desire to frequently focus on random inanimate objects than actual people, or peoples feet or their fingers when it dares to consider looking at people at all, the content of the images never feels like anything more extraordinary than what we might see waiting for a bus, or walking through a park, or sitting at a table eating our breakfast. But, because we are always staring through its pixelated haze, none of these common place moments ever seem properly stuck to reality. They float and move like dreams about tree tops and table legs and hollowed out watermelons. The movie lives in some strange intersection between real and imagined, fiction and documenatry, a movie about nothing and everything.



But as stifling and dreary as most of this might seem (and it is stifling, it is a lot to take in in one sitting), Let the Summer Never Come Again also never even settles into taking itself seriously. It can suddenly and without warning turn farcical. Or make fun of its own self seriousness by randomly inserting an intertitle screaming 'Tree!', after we've been looking at a tree for a number of prolonged minutes. And as rigidly modern it seems in its construction, it also feels as if the director is constantly open to allowing his camera to roam anywhere that grabs his attention. There is a period in the film where his attention seems to drift towards Georgian street dogs, and everything else fades into the background as we watch these animals sleeping and rooting around on the road.


I would have liked to have given this a 5/5 for it feeling like a film that is introducing a new kind of language to cinema. For somehow keeping my attention for the vast majority of its 200 minute run time. But, no doubt, there are stretches that were more trying than others. And I feel I can't entirely overlook that when assigning some stupid rating. Still, I think this is a potentially monumental work, that I will never be able to recommend to anyone, because I can't imagine a single person who would voluntarily sit through it. And then not kill me by its end.






Yet another cinematic examination of the case of Leopold and Loeb. In Kalin's film though, there is no shying away from the homosexuality of the two characters, where other films only alluded to it. Initially, this seemed like it was going to be one of the weaker entries in the New Queer movement, a film that seemed to be adding little more than the most needy of surface style in examining the psychology of these two men. But as the film slowly sheds its frivolous outer layers, and begins to hone in on the complex character of Leopold, timid and seemingly compassionate one moment, defiant in his queerness and calculating the next, the film and its violence all begin to resonate much deeper. Mostly compelled forward by a completely magnetic performance from Craig Chester, the structure of Swoon (maybe intentionally, maybe by accident) moves from being a seemingly superficial examination of a horrible act of murder, to a deeply probing character study of men who would have been considered irredeemable deviants even before they pointlessly bludgeoned a child to death. A sad and shocking thing.



it is a lot to take in in one sitting)
Did you manage to do it? I can guarantee I probably wouldn't make it, even though I feel like the length is no doubt part of the point. I feel like my cinematic stamina is above-average but I have a limit.



Did you manage to do it? I can guarantee I probably wouldn't make it, even though I feel like the length is no doubt part of the point. I feel like my cinematic stamina is above-average but I have a limit.

No, I put it on late one night and got through the first two and a half hours before bailing. I had the stamina to keep watching, but I hit a patch that I was less into, and it started to lose my attention. Or maybe I just became immune to its approach after those first few hours and just needed to reboot. Whatever the reason, I didn't want to continue if I was starting to check out. Unless one is completely allowing themselves to become immersed in something like this, I imagine this film would have a tendency to blend into the background. As mentioned in the article I linked, having faith in it is an essential ingredient in it working. Its a very easy thing to become skeptical in once you grow impatient.







If you like your weird and funny crime films to spend all their time observing the life of a low-life loser doing a terrible job of escaping his **** life, have I ever got a movie for you.



Is this better than Love Crime? That's the only Corneau I've seen, and I remember it being pretty boring.



Is this better than Love Crime? That's the only Corneau I've seen, and I remember it being pretty boring.

I don't know anything about Corneau. This isn't remotely boring though. If anything, just watching the lead in this is worth the price of admission. I was deeply entertained, and weirded out. Essential stuff.



I like Mubi's description of the film- "In a mercurial performance of cyclonic exasperation, Patrick Dewaere barrels through the wintry suburbs of Paris as a self-made patsy in a murderous muddle. A desolately funny, Dostoyevskian thriller from Alain Corneau, Série noire plots a fatalistic course into the depths of crime and punishment."




I can see there has been some talk over the years since this has been released, just how honest a depiction of this controversial asylum really is. Some of the inmates supposedly acted up intentionally for the camera, possibly thinking this is what was expected of them. Possibly to get more camera time. Possibly because acting up in the extraordinary ways some of them do, is still very much connected to the mental anguish they came to this place to survive through.


Regardless of its veracity as a document though, if we are going to judge this strictly on what is on screen, this is a searingly uncomfortable watch. I can hardly think of another film that is so lacking in violence, sexual deviancy or even bad language that is so gruelling (I think Titicut Follies is likely the obvious answer, even though I believe that at least contains nudity). What we end up being left with is an hour and a half of watching men and women in heightened states of emotional crisis and meltdowns. And the philosophy of their doctor who believes allowing them to express themselves freely in a safe environment, without medication, without punishment, and that employing empathy to their condition is the only way out for them. It's very much a utopian view of mental illness, and one that in my guts I find myself agreeing with (as both a person with my own mental health issues, surrounded by lots of friends and family who struggle similarly). But there is one thing to accept such an optimistic outlook, and another to watch the Sisyphian task of breaking through to these people, one word at a time, as they continually are falling to pieces.


I saw this many years ago on a very washed out VHS tape, and while it certainly added to the degraded experience of watching this, it was nice to see a copy where I could actually hear what people were saying, and all their words weren't washed away in some muddy audio mix. Not that you are going to understand what most of these people are saying anyway. But it helps give a more accurate portrait of just how detached they all seem to be becoming from communicating in any way with a society that has rejected them.


Mesmerizing. Terrifying. Deeply depressing and unsettling. I loved it.






Victim of The Night
I like Mubi's description of the film- "In a mercurial performance of cyclonic exasperation, Patrick Dewaere barrels through the wintry suburbs of Paris as a self-made patsy in a murderous muddle. A desolately funny, Dostoyevskian thriller from Alain Corneau, Série noire plots a fatalistic course into the depths of crime and punishment."
That's, like... poetry.



That's, like... poetry.

It deserves to be described poetically.



It's great. Almost like a Melville film, when it doesn't think anyone is looking, and we catch it dancing like a dork. In fact, it's not really even a crime film as it is about a door to door salesman. But it has the stakes and drama and violence of a crime film. With the sadness and tragic comedy of a....door to door salesman.



It's already a shoo-in to be in my ten top films I watch for this year.


And this guy needs to start getting some recognition on this side of the pond. He's phenomenal.