Last movie you saw and rate it
@joks The sense of loss for Ford is also his loneliness. He regrets killing the person that he was largely co-dependent on for his (weak) sense of identity.
So you felt something for the guy?
There is a mash-up of styles here that doesn’t coalesce, imo.
Does CCC use voice over? VO precludes contemplation, doesn’t it?
The use of bokeh was bizarrely didactic in some instances and at the same time incoherent.
Am I supposed to have warm fuzzy about the house he was shot in? People paid to stand in the house, but what was that about? is bokeh the cinematic device to express that?
The last 80 min(?) reduces the cohesiveness enough to not produce an aesthetic emotion.
This isn’t CCC it is MMM.
I may have overrated this at 6/10 – but that rating was based on being sick-in-bed.
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Incendies (Dir. Dennis Villeneuve, 2010)
The flashbacks were done with a lot of fussiness that I didn’t care for and the Radiohead songs were irritatingly out of place. But the reveal of the film was pretty powerful and saved the movie from being a total waste. Truthfully, I would like to see a sequel wherein (SPOILER!) the three siblings get to know each other after the silence has been broken.
The Trip (Dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
I will vibe this one.
VIBE: A lark.
@Nathan
I watched about a third of The Trip and, while there were funny moments, I can’t remember the last time I saw two leads that I disliked as much as these two—especially Coogan. Plus, the seemed to not only dislike each other, but have a genuine contempt and scorn for each other. What I’m wondering is if the film takes this in an interesting direction or something changes to make the film worth finishing.
The movie does have something of an awkward ending when both of them return to their respective London homes. Not sure how I felt about it, though.
The reason I refer to the film as a lark is that the whole thing feels, well, improvised…larkish. And knowing that most of the movie actually was improvised, I am convinced now more than ever that pure improvisation is not a good idea for the cinema. There were some very funny moments and I like the concept, but I’d hate to see the full miniseries that The Trip was planned to be.
Well, if I didn’t dislike the two leads so much, I’d like the improvised approach. Sometimes the contempt two characters feel for each other can be amusing, but, in this case, it sort of diminished the comedic moments in the film. From what you wrote, it sounds like this basically stays the same throughout the film.
The Ides of March (2011) 5/5
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Director: Sean Durkin)
5/5
Wow. Olsen is a revelation, Durkin is a revelation, the film’s last 20 minutes are some of the best cinema I’ve seen all year. Definately a top 10 (maybe even top 5 or top 3) of the year movie for me. This also feels like the kind of movie that I’m just gonna love more and more each time I think about it which might even make it my número UNO film of 2011 if I think about it more and more each day until right after after Christmas when I do my year-end list. Wow, just wow.
The film to see….
I’m surprised everybody else is rating that film so high. For me there was a big missing piece in the film in that Tony’s method of breaking women down didn’t convince me that it’d work so well. It seemed too easy for him to get that level of devotion, and I don’t think the character Tony had enough charisma to pull off a cult anyway.
If you kept the post-escape parts exactly the same, recast Tony, and rewrote the pre-escape parts in a way that emotionally or psychologically justified the transformation, then it could be a ‘best of the year’ level film.
It also needed to be a little less indie boutique.
Kino Eye 8/10
More beautiful Soviet propaganda from Vertov.
Thor 3/5
Dir : Kenneth Branagh
Taxi Driver 5/5
Dir : Martin Scorsese
I really like this movie. I can’t predict the end of the story, it’s just out of my mind. Awesome!!
Thor 3/5
Dir : Kenneth Branagh
Taxi Driver 5/5
Dir : Martin Scorsese
I really like this movie. I can’t predict the end of the story, it’s just out of my mind. Awesome!!
Ride Lonesome 1959
DIR Budd Boetticher
SCR Burt Kennedy
DP Charles Lawton Jr.
CAST Randolph Scott, Pernell Roberts, Karen Steele, James Best, James Coburn, Lee Van Cleef
73 Min
When we divide 160 by 73, we get the number of excellent Boetticher Westerns we can watch instead of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
10/10
The vibe: you want to be the one riding lonesome through that scenery.Michael (dir. Markus Schleinzer) 2011
4 stars.
Brilliant film. Impossible to talk about this film and not mention Haneke. It’s a credit to the director that he makes us feel both sympathy and disgust for our protagonist; that we’re both with him and against him. No, sympathy might not be the right word. But we’re with him, he is not a cartoon, he is not a caricature, he is a real person.
Not sure why the reviews out of Cannes were so mixed. I think this film should’ve been a contender for the Palm d’Or.
So far I’ve seen three films at AFI Fest 2011 and this one has been the best.
double trouble
Donavan’s Reef (Dir. John Ford, 1963)
For Ford enthusiasts only. Even for a Ford enthusiast, this one was strange to watch. It was like a weird amalgamation of his most personal concerns…with a heavy dose of the tropics and barroom brawl. Certain scenes, like the Christmas service, were amazing; others, like the aforementioned (gratuitous) brawl were zone-out worthy.
All in all, a very pleasant game of interference.
Généalogies d’un crime (1997) Raoul Ruiz presents a whimsical comic send up of any number of Hollywood crime flicks from Hitchcock on down, shuffling the deck of stock situations and dealing a hand that parodies the psychiatric profession along with the infinity of detective fiction, reinvigorating the shopworn genre by seasoning it with oriental spice and pseudo physiological insight that, while making the head spin unraveling the scarlet threads, entertains chiefly with the wonderfully eccentric performances of Michel Piccoli as head of the barmy Franco-Belgium Psychiatric Society and Andrzej Seweryn as the clinical observer of their folly and curator of his museum Mnemosyne in which he preserves the record of the genealogies of crime and expounds on his theory that we all live a story, the story here reenacted, is the Chinese folk tale of the young man that after killing a woman takes shelter in the home of her ghost who finds her revenge, given in voice over at begriming and end of the film along with a view of a Go board shown from time to time displaying the movement of “stones” here plastic chips). Great fun and entertainment.
Painting of a tableau depicting the enactment of the Society’s technique for isolating the crucial moment, that moment before the fatal strike is made.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – 3 stars
Not sure about this one. I feel like I need to see it again. It didn’t hit me the way Three Monkeys did.
Into the Abyss – 4 stars
This might be my favorite doc from Herzog. What a powerful film and so beautifully rendered. Whether you are for or against the death penalty, this is a movie to see.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (second viewing) – 9/10
How do I describe this film? Godard’s approach to the material is interesting for how he creates a story and characters, then allows stray monologues and images to disrupt the arc of the narrative – a thought process captured on the screen and the soundtrack. It’s a form that pushes beyond the surface of the image and adds more nuance to Godard’s themes.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (second viewing) – 9/10
How do I describe this film? Godard’s approach to the material is interesting for how he creates a story and characters, then allows stray monologues and images to disrupt the arc of the narrative – a thought process captured on the screen and the soundtrack. It’s a form that pushes beyond the surface of the image and adds more nuance to Godard’s themes.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (second viewing) – 9/10
How do I describe this film? Godard’s approach to the material is interesting for how he creates a story and characters, then allows stray monologues and images to disrupt the arc of the narrative – a thought process captured on the screen and the soundtrack. It’s a form that pushes beyond the surface of the image and adds more nuance to Godard’s themes.
Sorry for the triple post.
Diabolique 9/10
Reminds me of Crime & Punishment in its approach to the psychology of murder. I’m surprised to see something like this come out of the 50’s.
Bal 6/10
Haywire – 4 stars
This is a second viewing for me and it’s just as good as the first time I saw it. Soderbergh, when he’s on a roll, is magical.
I hope it is good
he has not made a good film since Bubble
The Good Shepherd (2006) 5/5
Coriolanus – 2 stars.
Speak English!
Lucky (Director: Gil Cates Jr.)
3.5/5
it’s not perfect, the comedy can get very broad at times and it’s never quite dark enough to be a dark comedy despite the subject matter but it still is pretty good :) .
13 (Director: Gela Babluani)
1/5
Wow. This was worse than expected. Rourke, Gazzara, Shannon and Winstone are all wasted in this movie, the score music literally never stops (which is very annoying) and unlike the similarly themed film “Live!” from a couple years ago, you never care about any of the characters in 13. Easily a candidate for one of the worst films of the year.
If you want a good movie about Russian Roulette see Bill Guttentag’s “Live!”
Whoops
In retrospect I’m going to push Diabolique from a 9 down to an 8.
The more I think about the ending the more I hate it. It was working so well as this sort of Hitchcock/Edgar Allen Poe murder plot. Then the twist at the end just doesn’t make sense. It makes far too many presumptions and is way to unnecessarily complicated for anyone in a million years to have even considered that scheme.
Joks
^^sure, but the way you explained it earlier was different, and i still don’t think it can be detached from the ideas the film is exploring.
guess our interpretations aren’t all that different after all ;-)