The most haunting thing about Crumb's portrait is in fact his brother Charles, who's voice will be creeping out at me in the dark for ages.

In trying to fictionalize, and therefore unnecessarily construct too big a chunk of their own lives, Daryl and Zoe seem to spend more time tacking up the edges of their intended vision than actually living it. However, the film is often miraculous in its subtler scenes, that unfortunately happen too little and too late.

El Topo is two movies. The first one is 5 stars. The second one is 2. I loved it but it broke my heart by going completely off the rails and becoming really pedestrian. Or at least that's how I saw it.

I don't think I could move for the last 30 minutes of this.

While it fits in with the old Scorsese tradition of representing masculinity about as fragile as a dry leaf, the film was (for a Scorsese) somewhat predictable and sloppy. However, some moments truly deserve to be seen on a big screen, due to its bombastic visual style.

No pun intended, but I'm really torn with this movie. I really, REALLY wanted to like it at first, and then as the story progresses we see not only the breaking down of Hedwig's character, but also the breaking down and weakening of all of Mitchell's ideas. Fascinating to watch as a film making experiment, but the back quarter is absolutely dreadful.

A marvel of visual and sound design, but it's constant insistence of packing every scene full of its own originality really got in the way of my ability to comprehend it.

Real, chilling, expertly crafted and led by its luminary performances, but I honestly can't think of one good reason to like this movie.

I think the masterful thing about Lumet movies is his casting. Every single movie, the pieces seem like they were built from the ground up around the actors. Hoffman is just so evil and so self-righteous, and Hawke is just so goddamn pathetic. And Michael Shannon doing that role right after coming down Shotgun Stories.... Genius. He really is the "actor's director.

What happens to your soul when you refuse any kindness? What happens to your mind when everything you hope to do turns out to be a waste?

seconding tom

Absolutely incredible. Trying to organize this movie is like trying to organize crime. It can't be done.

RERATING THIS TO FIVE STARS. james cameron, you were so much better here... god, this movie is perfect.

I walked out.

THIS is an action movie.

A movie that will be largely ignored and chastised because of its horribly executed CG effects, the cut and paste effect of Heath's mid-shooting absence and the subsequent efforts to allow the plot to "immortalize" him, underneath lies a tortured, fantastic and surprisingly insightful statement on mortality, immortality and the nature of choice, and sometimes exactly how invisible the line is between right and wrong really is. In my opinion, a staggering work that could have excelled above everything else this year had some better decisions and less tragic fates been enacted.

A quiet, simple look at aging, parenting and the ways it disconnects you from your family. A film that will be called "stereotypical" for the reasons I'll call it "universal."

We're missing Kyua and Karisuma, the one's I'm most interested in. sadfacesadface

WE CAN MUTATE THE WHOLE WORLD INTO METAL. WE CAN MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD RUST UNTIL IT CRUMBLES INTO THE COSMOS. OUR LOVE CAN DESTROY THIS WHOLE FUCKING WORLD.

Kind of like swallowing a bowling ball, a film with no room for oxygen because it's so heavily packed with ideas, insights and the relative weight of its own epic scale

Bogie's internal paranoia and the futility of acquiring quick wealth

Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon at the tops of their respective games

Absolutely enthralling. The gas pedal is on the floor from start to finish.

Absolutely enthralling. The gas pedal is on the floor from start to finish.

I'm not sure how to look at this film, it was incredibly engaging on a visual level, but the main character is one of the most disgusting antagonists I've ever seen.

From my understanding, you learned how to make movies by way of an independent B-movie movement in the 80s when not a whole lot of people were doing it. Deterrents were the fact that it was risky, expensive, and hard to convince anyone it would be able to pay them back. Out of that, you’ve become one of the most successful directors of this decade because you were able to get practice, as well as a cult fanbase, from these movies, and coming into the mainstream game, you already had a lot under your belt. You’ve seen the digital cinema market grow from a stupid idea into a massive money-making machine, and you’ve taken the hint as well by being one of the first big filmmakers to switch to the RED. Now, to “make” independent cinema, it’s neither expensive nor time-consuming, and you have the off-chance of your movie blowing up into earth-shattering phenomena. Do you consider the dark side of this independent movement, the movement from “auteurs” like yourself, Sam Raimi, people that broke into the business because it was the only thing they wanted to do, into a new age of people that only consider the profit margin and go on chasing that “gimmick movie” dream? To consider, the “real” independent market, from my point of view, seems to be dying, because anyone who wants to see those smaller, less important movies doesn’t really need to have them distributed. Anyone that only has a passive interest will probably just find them on the internet somewhere. Smaller movies, like House of the Devil for example, get interest from lots of people, but that interest doesn’t translate into ticket sales because one guy was able to rip a copy onto the internet somewhere. In one sense, the independent market is booming, as movies are able to be produced, digitally distributed, and make money cheaper than ever before because of digital advancements, but from my perspective, it seems like that the “youtube generation” is going to be cut off from sneaking into that studio system, like you were able to do after your splatter period, simply because of the complete ease with which anyone can become a “filmmaker.” I mean, one of the most watched videos on youtube the other day was a guy walking around a Vegas hotel with a Flip Mino HD, while filmmakers I’ve found that actually know how to put together a short get a few hundred views, 1,000 if they’re lucky. Paranormal Activity made $100,000,000 on internet hype, while the market at Cannes was almost completely ignored by studios. This constant change is a little unsettling, and I don't feel like it would be easy to become a "practiced" filmmaker like yourself if I was required to switch formats, to have to figure out some new level of expression or general acceptance, to find a new medium every couple of years. In short, what is your experience with these changes and how have you been able to cope, adapt to, experiment with, or celebrate them?

heh heh films/666