haah uh ok…..
i do have to say though, was a huge fan of Pi. highly reminiscent of Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo.
check this out… my math teacher showed us pi in 10th grade! i was the only person that paid attention
One time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s and American History X back to back. It didn’t make me crazy I just think it’s a hilarious double feature.
I once watched Survive Style 5+ and Funky Forest: The First Contact back to back. That made me feel a little crazy. I felt like walking around and imitating Sab Shimono’s “Mr. Sparkle” voice-over from back when The Simpsons were funny.
I watched Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting back to back once.
That was fun.
I am GETTING to be a fan of Aronofsky’s. I’ve met him once, and seen several interviews, and in that his great hero is John Cassavetes, my appreciation for him is true. It’s just that his movies sometime leave me cold.
I am NOT a fan of PI. I respect the effort, and I really want to applaud it, but for me the film is an endless filmed headache (pun intended). REQUIEM is a bit better, and THE FOUNTAIN is quite pretty. For me THE WRESTLER is his best work yet. A mature piece of filmmaking.
Did anyone notice that Requiem for a Dream steals a shot whole from Dark City? The shot of the boardwalk-pier which represents the dream of freedom for Jared Leto’s character is the same shot as the view of Pebble Beach in Dark City.
yea Justin, I always thought that was somewhat suspicious. Is it a coincidence or Aronofsky referencing the prior work though?
I Agree with CHRISTOPHER. The Wrestler is his best work to date. I felt it was the work of someone who finally decide to leave all of his film school ideas and techniques that were cool in the 90’s behind and actually focus. Really focus on an idea or in this case a subject. Pi was fun and interesting if only because I never thought I would enjoy(simply put) a movie about math. But Requiem for A dream was so frustrating. It was like he put the script up on a board with a big wheel of Cool Film School Camera Techniques and spun the wheel for each scene. POW Split Screen. POW Shaky-Cam. BAM P.O.V Cam. The Fountain has its merits but it was like the final peice in his “Film School Triology” You know the “man if I finally make it I am going to totally make this trippy sci-fi mind fuck of a movie. It will be awesome!! Pass that bong back over here.” i look forward to seeing what else he can do.
I think Pi is pointless. Some hip high-contrast w&b, some random esthetic chaos, some noisy (and again, fashionable) electronic music and some random maths mashed up with some dumb cabalistic stuff. Aronofsky should cut it into parts and sell them as videoclips.
If the shot is a reference, it’s kind of groundless. Personally I think Aronofsky just liked the shot and stole it.
It’s obvious Pi is his earliest flick and not his best work. I like Requiem but it is an extremely overhyped movie and there are some flaws in it too. But for me, both The Fountain and The Wrestler are two of the best films of the past decade. He’s really come into his own the past two years and I think he’s one of the best filmmakers working today, at least within the Hollywood system…
wrestler had a lot going for it..you know..mickey rourke..a track by bruce springsteen..but to me it looked like darren finally sold out.his earlier wrk (esp. requeim for a ….) was much better
I like Darren Aronosfky´s films because at some point I can see, with certain fascination, how he is doing them; from concept to edition. It pays even more to se how he evolves from film to film, until I loose the sensation of “how” he manages to get something to just sit and enjoy the film (same with Casavettes and Del Toro). In that regard, yeah, The Westler is his best film to date, but I loved the fact that, when Mickey Rourke does his last ram I got the exact same chilling on my spine from the one I got watching the Fountain.
The most quirky back to back was actually in a movie theater: first Being John Malkovich, and then Three Kings. Lots of reflexive fun that time.
The wost probably was Erraserhead, followed by Gozu. Had to hear some Bon Jovi to get back to the realm of the living.
I love Darren Aronofsky. I think he’s a master at putting the viewer right into the subject so that the viewer shares space with it. In pi it was his head, in Requiem for a Dream it was addiction, in The Fountain it was loss, and in The Wrestler it was his body slowly succumbing to gravity. I think he’s dead-on with how he chooses to structure his works, and that he’s a virtuoso performer.
And, actually, I saw Requiem for the first time after watching Fight Club and Lost Highway. This is actually the story that I attribute as one of the primary factors that got me into film. I had found Fight Club and Lost Highway on a website that listed various directors’ filmographies while researching the Coen Brothers, whom my mother and I decided we wanted to own all their movies (I was about 15 or 16 at the time). The same website had descriptions of David Lynch and David Fincher and it sounded awesome, so I rented those two movies, and while I was at the rental shop the clerk said, “If you’re getting those, you should get Requiem for a Dream.” I watched all three movies back-to-back. It blew my mind.
The best part was? It was icy that day and I had fallen while getting out of my truck. So I had this giant oozing bruise on my knee. Try watching Requiem for a Dream with something like THAT. I felt like throwing up, even though it was just a bruise.
—PolarisDiB
Yeah, the part I liked most about The Wrestler was that it had themes just as heavy as The Fountain on a much smaller scale. In The Fountain he explores humanity through the lens of epic metaphor, in The Wrestler he examines it in a very real and earthly kind of way. Both are fantastic but theyre so different and that’s just another sign of how talented he truly is.
Drew.
I just watched for the first time both Pi and Requiem for a Dream back to back. Everyone feel free to discuss the movies. I need to just watch a sitcom or something. Oh you know what I thought of what I can make this post into. What double features make you feel crazy afterwards (I know there have been posts on best double feature but thats not what I’m asking)? Now I’m just rambling and I apologize for starting a pointless thread. I’m turning on Friends now, good night.