Last year, I saw two otherwise excellent documentaries that overstayed their welcome by a good half hour or more:
Lake of Fire
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
I’m just realizing that both films were made over a couple of decades. I guess taking a million years to make a movie entitles you to put in as much footage as you can.
The theme from Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander haunted me for years. It’s a simple, morbid little march played on strings and piano. Somehow I thought it came from a Brahms quintet, so I bought every one I could find. Never found it. If it hadn’t been for my subscription to the BBC Music magazine, I might never have learned the source. It was a complete surprise when I played their version of Schumann’s Qintet in E flat and the second movement started. Twenty-five years after I first saw the film!
I looked at your profile and learned you’re 15. I was about that age when I first became interested in film as an art. I started by reading everything I could about movies. Pauline Kael’s film reviews, histories of Westerns and world cinemas, directors biographies, screenplays of my favorite films. I subscribed to a great little Canadian film magazine called Take One, which no longer exists, unfortunately. But this site actually comes close to capturing the excitement about films that Take One instilled in me. Read the articles attending these films’ profile pages. See what it is in other people’s writings about film that you respond to.
And all the time, watch the movies that you read about.
I agree with David Lincoln Brooks’s observation about Maurice Jarre’s theme to Eyes without a Face. Reminds me of the score to Resnais’s Le Nuit et Le Broulliard, very light, litling melody counterpointing the awful images.
First film I thought of though was The Third Man and Anton Karas’s zither music.
I just watched The Red Shoes again, and that film has a lot of overacting, perpetrated especially by Leonide Massine, the brilliant dancer and choreographer. But it adds to the strange unreality of the backstage story.
I’ve seen the Marriage of Maria Braun the most. I’d put it up against Jason Trochesset’s claim that it’s boring, visually boring and not in the least moving. Hannah Schygulla is far from visually boring!
Also Crumb is an excellent, thoroughly riveting movie with some mouth-dropping sequences. Revelations about R.Crumb’s brothers Charles and Maxon are particularly astonishing.
Capturing the Friedmans was amazingly complex.
Grizzly Man got under my skin.
Great documentaries do that, just like great feature films. Get deep under the skin. (Titticut Follies, now that I think of it…)
Spielberg, Lucas and Zemeckis colluded (or seemed to) on making “major” movies use all the endings anyone ever came up with in story meetings, one after another. I think of Roger Rabbit and the Back to the Futures in particular, but in the 1980s and 1990s, all big movies, it seemed to me, had at least two endings, and often four, in the same cut! That’s one reason movies started to get ridiculously long. The majors refused to end their movies once and for all.
A numeric value on a quality like “greatness” or “perfection” reflects the wishful thought that those qualities can be quantified. We know they really can’t. One person’s four is another’s seven.
Those sorts of symbolic ratings, really, are not meant to be the territory of a person’s complex of thoughts and feelings about a film, but a map—and a crude one at that. But if I tell you I give a movie a 1, you know I thought it was a piece of shit. If I give it a 5, you know I felt so-so about it. If I give it a 10, you know I’m saying this is a film I think you shouldn’t miss. I’m not saying 10/10 means perfection. I’m really saying “most highly recommended.” But my numbers don’t say anything at all about why I feel this way.
Anything between 5 and 10, I take to mean, it’s a good movie but, given all the movies in the world you haven’t seen, this person is telling me, you don’t absolutely have to see this movie. If I really WANT to see those movies, though, I make my decision not usually based on whether or not it gets a 10/10 but on a whole range of criteria and inputs external to the rating it receives. Ultimarely for me, the rating is trivial. I don’t imply perfection when I give a film the highest rating, and I certainly don’t expect it from others ratings.
Matt: Except that there are probably many people who think only 1% (or 2% or 5 percent) of all the films they’ve seen deserve 10/10. And some who think half the movies they’ve seen are so perfect. The 10 in this rating system is independent of the number of films you’ve seen. It depends on an ideal scale in which each point represents a supposed 10-percent leap of “goodness” or “greatness” above the preceding point.
One reason Nancy Meyers movies make me ill is that her characters have no money problems at all. None of them struggle for anything they materially need. They’re the essence of materially successful. How can you produce drama that means anything if there’s no sign that any of the characters knows what suffering is?
PolarisDIB quoth: “"This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.”
(Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own)
I don’t see Meyers’ as an updated Virginia Woolf. I’ll have to think about that.
It’s not just the women in her films, though, whom I’m referring to. It’s everybody. Wendy Wasserman plays are similar—and actually so are a lot of Woody Allen’s “serious” movies. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the extremely wealthy and successful being the subject of a film. But how many of these films that have absolutely no economic suffering in them are actually great films—i,e,, films with staying power, that speak to the generations? I’m sure there are some, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re rather difficult to think of. I haven’t seen many Max Ophuls films. Maybe he’s made a few? Most great narrative art that I can think of touches at least partly on the diversity of the human condition. It doesn’t mean staring at the banal. It means looking at the world as it really is, which is one where material suffering (or just quiet desperation) is pervasive.
Her treatment, I think, is what makes it difficult to take her themes and stories seriously. Of course these people are going to live happily ever after. They’ve apparently been living happily ever minute of their imagined lives!
They’re not just parlor women in the Meyer’s universe, though. They’re Successful People™, the men and the women. They’re not real people with any depth to them—that’s my problem with these films. But Meyers isn’t making her movies to be deep. She’s making movies to put fannies in the seats. That’s her prerogative. Who am I to second guess her? Millions of fans (including my daughter, of The Parent Trap) don’t care if her movies aren’t deep, anyway. They love them because for them (my daughter included) they’re uncomplicated fantasies. Maybe they are like the Astaire and Rogers movies of the ’00s. But at least Astaire and Rogers could dance!
About Schmidt, maybe? Alexander Payne is a pretty interesting reader of the American moment. So is David O. Russell, especially his Flirting with Disaster. Is that what you’re getting at?
I was just mentioning him in another thread asking for the best film to capture the lives of “average” Americans. Citizen Rose is another one of his brilliant little satires. He skewers everyone. Not unfairly.
Berjuan: Which is why dropping the words “the average” from the title of the thread, you get a less distractingly confusing question, one that anyone who knows movies and what American life is like can answer.
movie running times too long over 2 years ago
Last year, I saw two otherwise excellent documentaries that overstayed their welcome by a good half hour or more:
Lake of Fire
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
I’m just realizing that both films were made over a couple of decades. I guess taking a million years to make a movie entitles you to put in as much footage as you can.
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Last movie you saw and rate it over 2 years ago
The Seven Samurai. 10/10 (or 9,999998 for a tiny bit of Kurasawa corniness)
Carnival of Souls 9/’10 (what an amazing world this is when odd little movies like this can get made and still be shown decades later!)
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where should i start on my road to film? over 2 years ago
What interests you about classic films?
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Great Use of Classical Music in Films over 2 years ago
The theme from Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander haunted me for years. It’s a simple, morbid little march played on strings and piano. Somehow I thought it came from a Brahms quintet, so I bought every one I could find. Never found it. If it hadn’t been for my subscription to the BBC Music magazine, I might never have learned the source. It was a complete surprise when I played their version of Schumann’s Qintet in E flat and the second movement started. Twenty-five years after I first saw the film!
Go to Comment
where should i start on my road to film? over 2 years ago
I looked at your profile and learned you’re 15. I was about that age when I first became interested in film as an art. I started by reading everything I could about movies. Pauline Kael’s film reviews, histories of Westerns and world cinemas, directors biographies, screenplays of my favorite films. I subscribed to a great little Canadian film magazine called Take One, which no longer exists, unfortunately. But this site actually comes close to capturing the excitement about films that Take One instilled in me. Read the articles attending these films’ profile pages. See what it is in other people’s writings about film that you respond to.
And all the time, watch the movies that you read about.
Go to Comment
greatest film scores that actually work over 2 years ago
I agree with David Lincoln Brooks’s observation about Maurice Jarre’s theme to Eyes without a Face. Reminds me of the score to Resnais’s Le Nuit et Le Broulliard, very light, litling melody counterpointing the awful images.
First film I thought of though was The Third Man and Anton Karas’s zither music.
Go to Comment
List of Criterion Titles available on Netflix "Watch Instantly" over 2 years ago
Napoleon Blownapart, thanks for that link: http://instantwatcher.com/
There are a lot of films on that list that I didn’t know were available on Netflix.
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Overacted and Overdramatic over 2 years ago
I just watched The Red Shoes again, and that film has a lot of overacting, perpetrated especially by Leonide Massine, the brilliant dancer and choreographer. But it adds to the strange unreality of the backstage story.
Go to Comment
Great Books on Film over 2 years ago
Bunuel’s My Last Sigh
Kubrick’s script for A Clockwork Orange
Monaco’s How to Read a Film
Those are a few that come to mind immeidately
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3 most visually pleasing films you've ever seen over 2 years ago
Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice
Powell’s The Red Shoes
Malick’s Days of Heaven
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Favorite fassbinder film over 2 years ago
I’ve seen the Marriage of Maria Braun the most. I’d put it up against Jason Trochesset’s claim that it’s boring, visually boring and not in the least moving. Hannah Schygulla is far from visually boring!
Go to Comment
Favorite Documentaries over 2 years ago
I third Man on Wire.
Also Crumb is an excellent, thoroughly riveting movie with some mouth-dropping sequences. Revelations about R.Crumb’s brothers Charles and Maxon are particularly astonishing.
Capturing the Friedmans was amazingly complex.
Grizzly Man got under my skin.
Great documentaries do that, just like great feature films. Get deep under the skin. (Titticut Follies, now that I think of it…)
Go to Comment
3 most visually pleasing films you've ever seen over 2 years ago
At least two Godard films are visually gorgeous through and through:
Le mépris (1963)
Pierrot le fou (1965)
Both are graced by the lucious color cinematography of Raoul Coutard
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Favorite Documentaries over 2 years ago
The Weather Underground (2002), by the way, is a fascinating movie.
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movie running times too long over 2 years ago
Spielberg, Lucas and Zemeckis colluded (or seemed to) on making “major” movies use all the endings anyone ever came up with in story meetings, one after another. I think of Roger Rabbit and the Back to the Futures in particular, but in the 1980s and 1990s, all big movies, it seemed to me, had at least two endings, and often four, in the same cut! That’s one reason movies started to get ridiculously long. The majors refused to end their movies once and for all.
Go to Comment
Where are you from? over 2 years ago
New York, NY, though I can’t get my profile page to say that no matter how many times I’ve tried.
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Should a movie EVER be rated 10/10? over 2 years ago
A numeric value on a quality like “greatness” or “perfection” reflects the wishful thought that those qualities can be quantified. We know they really can’t. One person’s four is another’s seven.
Those sorts of symbolic ratings, really, are not meant to be the territory of a person’s complex of thoughts and feelings about a film, but a map—and a crude one at that. But if I tell you I give a movie a 1, you know I thought it was a piece of shit. If I give it a 5, you know I felt so-so about it. If I give it a 10, you know I’m saying this is a film I think you shouldn’t miss. I’m not saying 10/10 means perfection. I’m really saying “most highly recommended.” But my numbers don’t say anything at all about why I feel this way.
Anything between 5 and 10, I take to mean, it’s a good movie but, given all the movies in the world you haven’t seen, this person is telling me, you don’t absolutely have to see this movie. If I really WANT to see those movies, though, I make my decision not usually based on whether or not it gets a 10/10 but on a whole range of criteria and inputs external to the rating it receives. Ultimarely for me, the rating is trivial. I don’t imply perfection when I give a film the highest rating, and I certainly don’t expect it from others ratings.
Go to Comment
Should a movie EVER be rated 10/10? over 2 years ago
Matt: Except that there are probably many people who think only 1% (or 2% or 5 percent) of all the films they’ve seen deserve 10/10. And some who think half the movies they’ve seen are so perfect. The 10 in this rating system is independent of the number of films you’ve seen. It depends on an ideal scale in which each point represents a supposed 10-percent leap of “goodness” or “greatness” above the preceding point.
Go to Comment
Economics in Film over 2 years ago
One reason Nancy Meyers movies make me ill is that her characters have no money problems at all. None of them struggle for anything they materially need. They’re the essence of materially successful. How can you produce drama that means anything if there’s no sign that any of the characters knows what suffering is?
Go to Comment
Economics in Film over 2 years ago
Nancy Myers’ biography? Has she suffered? Is she trying to block it out?
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Economics in Film over 2 years ago
I knew that was more likely. Her movies don’t get anywhere near ordinary life.
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Economics in Film over 2 years ago
I see she was fired once. That must have hurt. ;-)
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Economics in Film over 2 years ago
PolarisDIB quoth: “"This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.”
(Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own)
I don’t see Meyers’ as an updated Virginia Woolf. I’ll have to think about that.
It’s not just the women in her films, though, whom I’m referring to. It’s everybody. Wendy Wasserman plays are similar—and actually so are a lot of Woody Allen’s “serious” movies. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the extremely wealthy and successful being the subject of a film. But how many of these films that have absolutely no economic suffering in them are actually great films—i,e,, films with staying power, that speak to the generations? I’m sure there are some, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re rather difficult to think of. I haven’t seen many Max Ophuls films. Maybe he’s made a few? Most great narrative art that I can think of touches at least partly on the diversity of the human condition. It doesn’t mean staring at the banal. It means looking at the world as it really is, which is one where material suffering (or just quiet desperation) is pervasive.
Go to Comment
Economics in Film over 2 years ago
Her treatment, I think, is what makes it difficult to take her themes and stories seriously. Of course these people are going to live happily ever after. They’ve apparently been living happily ever minute of their imagined lives!
Go to Comment
Economics in Film over 2 years ago
They’re not just parlor women in the Meyer’s universe, though. They’re Successful People™, the men and the women. They’re not real people with any depth to them—that’s my problem with these films. But Meyers isn’t making her movies to be deep. She’s making movies to put fannies in the seats. That’s her prerogative. Who am I to second guess her? Millions of fans (including my daughter, of The Parent Trap) don’t care if her movies aren’t deep, anyway. They love them because for them (my daughter included) they’re uncomplicated fantasies. Maybe they are like the Astaire and Rogers movies of the ’00s. But at least Astaire and Rogers could dance!
Go to Comment
What Films Do You Feel Best Show the Average American Life? over 2 years ago
About Schmidt, maybe? Alexander Payne is a pretty interesting reader of the American moment. So is David O. Russell, especially his Flirting with Disaster. Is that what you’re getting at?
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I don't think any film maker depresses me as much as Alexander Payne over 2 years ago
I was just mentioning him in another thread asking for the best film to capture the lives of “average” Americans. Citizen Rose is another one of his brilliant little satires. He skewers everyone. Not unfairly.
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What Films Do You Feel Best Show the Average American Life? over 2 years ago
nada
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What Films Do You Feel Best Show the Average American Life? over 2 years ago
I think if you’d gotten rid of the words “the average” in your title, you wouldn’t have had so much puzzlement over your question.
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What Films Do You Feel Best Show the Average American Life? over 2 years ago
Berjuan: Which is why dropping the words “the average” from the title of the thread, you get a less distractingly confusing question, one that anyone who knows movies and what American life is like can answer.
Go to Comment