It’s sad to be repetitive but it has to be another vote for Godard. Despite a few off moments, the sheer ambition of his work, level of thought crammed into each picture and the originality that he showed in Breathless onwards formed, in my opinion, one of the most distinctive bodies of work worthy of dinner conversation. Given that I inevitably try and turn every conversation around to the man himself anyway, it would probably be fitting to have him there. I imagine such behaviour would seriously annoy Truffaut if he were invited instead.
In defence of Inland Empire, I would say that it is for David Lynch what 8 1/2 was for Fellini, the epitome of a director’s style and theme within a single masterpiece, a sort of Mulholland Drive: Extreme with all the Hollywood satire and surrealist delight he conjures so effortlessly. It was probably the most singular experience I have ever witnessed in a cinema and felt like an all out assault on the senses that lasted three hours and burned the image of Laura Dern onto my brain for life. It doesn’t live up to the same intensity on DVD, so I understand those who dislike it if this is the format they watched it on, but in a cinema it completely absorbs and transfixes you. In terms of arresting cinema, Lynch has never done it better.
And that’s before we include Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet. So no, ‘overrated’ is completely off the mark in my opinion.
Battleship Potemkin – A tour de force of silent cinema and the premier example that still has the power to justify the silent method as an art (lost now perhaps) distinct from that of sound cinema
8 1/2 & Breathless – Intelligent films that through amazing visuals manage to make the beauty of cinema a theme within itself, no longer simply a means to an end.
Vertigo – An essay on tension, I remember as a young teenager being shocked to see it had a PG rating after watching the final sequence.
Capturing the Friedmans – A documentary about documentary (although not principally), it breaks down the conventional assumptions behind the authority of documentary filmmaking.
Other notables include Un Chien Andalou, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and anything by Rossellini for showing that abandoning or developing traditional narrative is a powerful innovation.
Aliens
Blue Velvet
Caravaggio
Hannah and her Sisters
Manon des Sources
Platoon
Those are the best I can find and I can’t say I’m that thrilled with some of them. Blue Velvet and Hannah and Her Sisters are the only ones worth regular viewing. I think being born in the 80s instantly puts you at a disadvantage.
I just watched this film for the second time against my better judgement as the first time I found it incredibly tedious with a plot that meandered far too much, with the only respite being the fantastic coda that stood miles apart from the first two hours. However, on second viewing I completely fell in love with it and believe it to be one of the best American films of the new millennium, a genuine masterpiece superior to other revered Westerns like McCabe and Mrs Miller and Unforgiven. The cinematography is breathtaking (noted on first viewing but not to the same extent) and when the plot is viewed as the disintegration of the band of bandits due to Jesse’s paranoia (justified or not?) rather than simply the Jesse-Robert relationship I think it feels much more complete and would have even merited the longer running time that was rumoured. At the heart though, I don’t know how well it would have worked without Casey Affleck’s superb performance on which the whole film relies. How Javier Bardem was singled out by so many awards bodies above him for what was a very one dimensional role I will never understand.
I’m going to throw my money behind Crash and say that I liked it too. I found it a lot more entertaining than Gladiator, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, the Departed so don’t quite understand the vitriol against it.
No Country For Old Men seemed like a chance to award the Coens as they briefly put their perceived career slide on hold and made something critics liked, before the Academy had to award them 10 years down the line for a really disappointing film (a la Scorsese from the previous year). Personally I’ve never really got the Coens and although Fargo, Blood Simple and Barton Fink are perfectly enjoyable pictures, I don’t get their indie kings status. The Assassination of Jesse James and There Will Be Blood are two of the greatest films of the decade and were criminally overlooked, as was Casey Affleck’s performance in the former.
Rain Man I thought was an awful mentally-disabled-by-numbers film as well and thought giving Hoffman an award would have sufficed.
Helen Hunt over Judi Dench? This mistake wasn’t rectified by awarding the latter for 8 minutes of screen time in one of her least remarkable performances in the dreadful Shakespeare in Love.
Finally, although I don’t begrudge her an Oscar, I thought the runaway success of Helen Mirren for The Queen was a bit over the top given that Penelope Cruz (Volver), Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Kate Winslet (Little Children) all gave fantastic performances and any one of them could have snatched it from her. But hell, they all have one now so I’m sure they’re over it. Sadder still was that Laura Dern wasn’t even nominated for her spellbinding turn in Inland Empire.
Forgot to add Braveheart onto my list as the least deserving Oscar winner ever for its completely ridiculous revisionist history of the William Wallace story. As a Scot myself I found his claim to have found some sort of real truth (presumably as opposed to an English viewpoint) in the opening preamble insulting given his lack of commitment to fact (the Battle of Stirling Bridge is recreated without any mention of a bridge, the sacking of York way further south than Wallace ever reached and some trumped up romance with a French princess just after his wife’s throat was slit!). I’m not normally a stickler for historical fact in drama but when the director goes out of there way to impress upon you that what you see is true and those who disagree are liars, higher expectations are not unrealistic. Also, from a social point of view I saw it launch a new wave of racist nationalism against the English in my home country that was wholly disgusting. I can only hope Mel Gibson trips over his Oscar one day and causes himself an injury.
That said, 1995 seems to have been a very weak field. I can’t see him having won in any other year.
I love this film, and one of the greatest things I thought was that very few of the characters seemed untouchable morally. It seemed to be a multicultural society with the good and the bad that exists on all sides of such a society, and I applauded Spike Lee for casting himself as Mookie who, whilst appearing one of the most reasonable characters throughout, is shown to be imperfect at the end when he launches the bin through Sal’s window. To me, this was a completely unjustified act as Radio Raheem had not been killed by Sal or his sons, but by the police, and the attack on Sal’s place bore the assumption that Sal and his family were part of the same system as the police simply based on the colour of their skin, showing racism as a two-way process. The subsequent reaction of the mob seemed to show an ambiguous reaction to the events which I thought was a brutally honest view of racism from a director sometimes not known for balancing his views. The two quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr at the end also seemed to question whether Mookie’s actions were justified or not but I find little ambiguity in the fact that he targeted the wrong people.
Then I read that Lee had been asked about this topic himself and says that questioning the validity of the riot means you are “implicitly valuing white property over the life of a black man”. Am I alone in thinking this is completely off the mark? I would really like to hear some other opinions on this because I have wondered ever since how I could like a film so much and see all these layers to it when it seems to be completely foreign to the directors specific intention.
Wow, I never realised how subjective performances could be. There are some here that I wouldn’t even have rated as very good, never mind the best of all time. Don’t understood the popularity of Peter O’ Toole in Lawrence, Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, etc who all have better performances under their belt. I suppose Bardem at least was doing the most he could with the part but it was pretty slight and doesn’t deserve the recognition it got.
On a more positive note, awards should go to:
Laura Dern – Inland Empire
Brigitte Bardot – Le Mepris
Judi Dench – Notes on a Scandal
Marlon Brando – Last Tango in Paris
David Thewlis – Naked
Ingrid Bergman – Autumn Sonata
Emma Thompson – Love Actually
I realise the last one is probably controversial but as with many of the others listed here, it was simply a marvellous example of lifting the character from a screenplay and adding so much texture that it was so much more than just a script. Excellent efforts all round and not one of them relies on domestic abuse, hysterical breakdowns, or other cliches to evoke the deepest layers of emotion.
Inland Empire
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Y Tú Mamá Tambien
Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)
United 93
Lost In Translation
I’m Not There
There Will Be Blood
They’re probably not my personal favourites, but they’re what I would like the decade to be remembered with. A good decade for cinema all in all perhaps.
Bardot embodies sexuality and has to be the premier sex symbol of cinema. Her general malaise in Le Mepris is all the more tender because she looks so extraordinary.
Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Jean Seberg and Juliette Binoche also light up the screen, but in recent years I would say that the way Almodovar has used Penelope Cruz in Volver and Broken Embraces is the most obvious example of creating an iconic beauty. She must consider herself very lucky to have had him arrive as her chief sponsor when things looked to be going so badly before the Volver reinvention. Congrats to both of them on the result.
@Jaylo: I fall into the sleep camp as well, I used to have a monthly pass so would go and see crap just to get some sleep during work breaks.
As a child I walked out of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Waterworld, it must be a Kevin Costner thing. More recently I have considered walking out of Che: Part One (it was in Buenos Aires and my faltering Spanish was missing a few words but I couldn’t tell whether it was this or Soderbergh’s attempted extreme objectivity that bored me) and The Assassination of Jesse James (which thankfully had one of the most rewarding endings I can think of and on second viewing the whole film stunned me with its greatness).
Got to say that I love The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but don’t know how I would have lived up to it in the cinema. Definitely worth making the effort for though.
This thread is pretty depressing. Can I ask those who feel so mortally offended by Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, etc. if they actually like any US cinema, save perhaps Citizen Kane, The Graduate and some early Scorsese/Coppola? The incredible number of dogmatic criteria that some people apply to film seems to me a great way to dilute enjoyment by reducing the wonderful diversity of the medium to such a narrow focus that anything not conforming to Antonioni’s use of space and Godard’s political commitments is disregarded as shit.
2001: I can understand why people don’t like it because it relies so heavily on visual taste but I personally find it enthralling. On second viewing.
Breathless: Why cringe because a Godard fan likes this exactly? It must be be really embarrassing to enjoy one of the most highly regarded films of all time. So what if they haven’t put themselves through Notre Musique, maybe if someone encouraged them rather than sneering they’d get around to Alphaville, Pierrot Le Fou, etc.
P.S. I Love You: Totally agree wholeheartedly, saw it on a bus in South America and chuckled a couple of times but would never recommend someone go and see it.
The Shawshank Redemption: It’s perfectly enjoyable, but I’ll confess to a slight sinking feeling whenever someone who hears you’re REALLY into cinema thinks that you would throw yourself under a train for this film. Same for Forrest Gump which is a perfectly enjoyable yarn, but I wouldn’t devote repeated viewings to.
There are plenty others, films that you might leave on if they were on the telly because for just a moment you want to escape from existential angst and were disparagingly called ‘movies’ by someone earlier as though they ever pretended to be anything more. What people seem to be reacting against here is hype more than anything and falling over each other to see who can be the most radical.
LET’S TRASH CITIZEN KANE! Why? Because other people like it. This puts you way above the perceived low brow nature of Gump and Shawshank…
Amazing how people who claim to love cinema so much cannot just lie back and enjoy it, but have to push everything to the ends of an enjoyability spectrum. Love it. Hate it. No in-between.
Personally as a gay man I found Brokeback Mountain a bit sickly and simple (but ultimately enjoyable), however important a step it was for Gay Lib, but loved Crash because it’s everybody-talks-about-racism-ALL-the-time style actually rang true and is pretty indicative of the black-and-white nature that people often observe the race issue, at least in my part of the world. And I believe it had a better sense of drama with a less predictable ending. Funny how everyone’s in such a hurry to dismiss the Academy as homophobic bigots because they made this choice, but the frequent accusations of racism in Crash are deemed unrealistic and too overt. Scream homophobe but whisper racist?
Whatever your view on certain films, it seems that certain people take pleasure in trashing the tastes of others because they don’t like to inhabit the same Bergmanesque dourness that the rest of us quite enjoy, but prefer some closed romantic realism. If indeed they enjoy it so, then surely they have the last laugh.
1. Godard
2. Fellini
3. Almodovar
4. Kubrick
5. Bergman
6. Hitchcock
7. PT Anderson
8. Antonioni
9. Cuaron
10. DW Griffiths (For his cinematic ability, not a fan of the racism)
Sorry for having such a typical list, I am a victim of the poor availability of non-Western cinema in the UK.
Also, whilst not someone I feel particularly inclined towards, the lack of Roberto Rossellini’s name on any of these lists always seems like a glaring omission or a sign that neorealism has aged better in countries beyond Italy.
“I think I would choose French and Japanese ahead of American cinema.”
I would agree with you perfectly in terms of my personal response to the films of each country (at least as far as French cinema goes, Kurosawa is someone who has never fired passion in me and I’m sadly ignorant of Mizoguchi, Ozu, etc…), but the question wasn’t posed as an absolute i.e. Why isn’t the Hollywood product your favourite style of cinema. I was merely trying to establish whether people were reacting against the films themselves, the hype or Hollywood itself. To me, the cringe factor that seems to be under debate here would probably be reserved for something that someone thought stood out from the crowd but was in reality very formulaic and run-of-the-mill, and this is probably only because of knowing that the inevitable question that follows would be “What did you think of it?” and the awkward answer that goes with it. My reaction to Marc Foster’s adaptation of The Kite Runner was something along these lines, but I wouldn’t think ill of someone for having enjoyed it. It would be strange to pity someone for having been entertained.
As for Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Amelie, etc., I don’t think, for all their strengths and weaknesses, they can be accused of tugging at an old thread. As a student critic looking for a radical edge I railed against Citizen Kane as a boring story with its themes more expertly and entertainingly told elsewhere, or The Godfather as a bemusingly simple idea onto which people had bestowed the complexity of Ulysses, but with time and repeated viewings I have found the density of information conveyed in both to be worthy of praise and admiration. There’s such a thing as appreciation, even if you can’t fully emotionally react to a film, and many of the comments posted here just show a blind snobbery and intolerance that does nothing to narrow the cultural canyon between ‘Commercial’ and ‘World’ cinema. (Others I note as perfectly reasoned opinions and I was particularly interested by the honesty of someone declaring and justifying their dislike of 2001).
I loved this film. I found it so much more appealing than the usual Coen brothers’ fare, possibly due to Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich being present. Cutting edge? No. Hilarious? Indeed.
I must admit this is one of the most interesting topics brought to my attention since I joined The Auteurs a couple of weeks ago. I had never thought of it but totally buy into the concept of actor as auteur in certain cases, although perhaps moreso under studio systems where formula and brand recognition was key. In the other thread I heard this theory mentioned I believe Fred Astaire was an example given that I would perfectly agree with. Thinking of others I can only seem to come up with humorously negative examples of actors who seem to drag down a film and make it appear formulaic because of their presence, e.g. Adam Sandler, Arnold Schwarzenegger (some exceptions of course), but could actor auteurs today not simply be a result of ‘negative’ typecasting (as opposed to early Hollywood where many actors thrived on such a tag)? Most of the greatest actors out there just now seem to go to any lengths to avoid such identification. Any thoughts?
I’ve read some interesting readings of Pulp Fiction and this one seems pretty standard, not too out there. Last month I was reading in a Sight and Sound editorial that someone had once written to the editor with an alphabetical reading of the film, saying that the chronological structure of film is organised alphabetically, from the initial discussion of Amsterdam to the final line in the piece chronologically: Zed’s dead. Sadly the editor didn’t take up the piece for publication and had now lost it so couldn’t elaborate further, and I haven’t got round to rewatching it to see if it works. Tarantino says he didn’t arrange it that way purposefully, which isn’t wholely surprising, but I still found it quite a wacky thought.
I agree with the points made about war and religion in your analysis Justin but I don’t know if the love and sex point is as justified. If all the relationships portrayed were hollow and superficial in contrast to the craving for drugs that you suggest is akin to love, I would agree with the point, but the relationships of Yolanda/Ringo and Butch/Fabienne seem to be very real, in contrast to the Mia/Marcellus/Vincent mess. There seems no unity in Tarantino’s portrayal of these relationships (although perhaps something could be drawn from the tenderness that many of the characters experience throughout in a city otherwise fraught with corrupt underworld dealings) so I’m not sure the point you are making here, but as I’ve said there may be something more with a re-examination.
As for Fight Club, the homoerotic relationship of Pitt/Norton throughout and its resolution that reveals it in fact to be a form of self-worship or self-love that Norton prides over his relationship with Martha shows a very individualist anti-love perspective that is much more explicit than any statements about love in Pulp Fiction. The lack of a great war for this generation of men is more explicit here, which along with the emasculation they feel at being raised by women alone (a point dealt with at more length in the book) leads them to beat each other senseless. The anti-capitalist thrust of the film invokes an absence of spirituality too, so although the mention of Fight Club here appeared to me at first glance to be slightly random (but welcome for me as I adore it), it would seem to take the themes you propose from Pulp Fiction and take them to a more extreme, nihilistic conclusion.
I also feel little guilt in my choices but the one that sinks conversation is Oliver Stone’s Alexander which I think is a greatly ambitious film that suffers only from taking good actors who just don’t know what to do in classical Greek costume except guess an accent and run with it. Otherwise though, I thought Colin Farrell’s Alexander was a much more three dimensional hero (plagued by doubt and overambition) than the majority of film heroes and made for an interesting film.
@Zachary: Fully agree with Mr Deeds, I can’t help but watch it when it’s on TV. John Turturro cracks me up every time.
@Chopin: I feel that way about Revolutions, can’t understand what’s not to like.
Dreamgirls and The Holiday would be another two that I can’t help but grin manically after despite expecting to hate them.
I always took the ending to represent the complete devastation and locally apocalyptic results of a nuclear explosion. Given that the monolith in the dawn of man segment comes about at a time when the apes first learn how to use bones as weapons, I took the monolith in 2001 to be indicative of this next stage in weapons development, perhaps some sort of universal doomsday device portrayed in a more serious vein than in Strangelove. In the Cold War-Space Race atmosphere of 1968, the worry of nuclear war was obviously of concern and the devastation of such a war is being expressed metaphorically here as the warping of space and time that occurs within a black hole. I can’t quite remember exactly how I tied this in with the very final scenes as it’s been a while, but the rapid aging he undergoes is, I feel, analogous to a painful cancerous degradation due to nuclear radiation.
Does anyone agree? I thought it the first time I saw it and am surprised not to have heard the theory mentioned here.
A second shout for Antonioni’s L’Avventura/La Notte/L’Eclisse, especially the last one which I found incredibly hypnotic for reasons I can’t quite explain.
The Three Colours Trilogy is also a magnificent body of work that I should watch more often. Juliette Binoche in Blue, sigh.
I’m also going to throw in The Matrix trilogy because I think its fan boy status and cooler-than-cool attitude has damaged its reputation as a philosophical work. The first one got a lot of recognition that it deserved, and whilst the second chapter was weaker and the third a bit light on the ideas the first two espoused relentlessly, I felt the whole thing fitted perfectly into the trilogy structure and was hugely ambitious, both technically and thematically.
On the other hand, I feel Gonzales Iñarritu’s trilogy of Amores Perros/21 Grams/Babel is hugely overrated. The first part, whilst good, is not outstanding and a simple idea well portrayed by interesting visual imagination and direction. The second I remember as a good pot-boiler but still a hyped up melodrama that takes itself too seriously, although it’s been a long time since I watched it. And Babel took one of the most interesting thematic approaches of the decade and let it fester under a long winded, tediously connected mess. Babel especially was a victim of being shoe-horned into a structure that it would have done better without, and I hope that now he’s repeated the formula enough, Iñarritu remakes Babel in a different way so that the highly original and complex themes it tried to convey so clumsily can get the treatment they deserve.
What about some tamer Almodovar, like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? Other than the dream orgasm, I can’t think of anything overtly sexual in it, it’s a fantastic film and when I learned Spanish I found it to be quite manageable. I went on a filmmaking course last year and two students said that they’d been persuaded to get into cinema by this film, so if you’re looking to introduce your class to something then it works as a nice bridge between mainstream and ‘world’ cinema.
My University Spanish teacher brought us Los Amantes del Circulo Polar (Lovers of the Arctic Circle or something, I don’t know the exact English title) by Julio Medem which, despite the title, steers clear of the graphic sex of his Sex and Lucía but I don’t remember it being completely inspiring so the only novelty is it being in Spanish.
I’ve also just realised that you have passed the dilemma/run out of time, but feel I had to contribute something in return for the laugh I got at Fernando’s expense.
I understand that the film came under severe criticism at the time of its release for the explicit racism of the text but, as a non-US citizen not well schooled on the country’s civil rights background before the 1960s, after watching the film recently for the first time I was still shocked by how overt the content was despite previously knowing its reputation. Intolerance is often referenced as an apology or at least a response to criticism of Birth’s content, but does anyone know if the beliefs Griffith espoused did have some popular support during the times? To try and compare it to a current day scenario, we received a lot of coverage over here (UK) about a media backlash against a Miss California entrant in the US for giving her views on gay marriage despite the fact the state recently voted against the practice, showing popular support for the idea. Could the Ku Klux Klan, whose membership rose significantly following the film’s release, have been viewed as heroic by a significant portion of US society in 1915?
Aside from the repugnant tone of the film, I was amazed at how breathtaking the film was in general. Having watched Intolerance recently and fallen in love with it, I decided to brave Birth and found it equally visceral viewing and its controversial content made it seem even more intriguing as an exhibit of the politics of representation in cinema, but only as an object of history that I imagine has little persuasive power over a modern audience. If it was made today, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the cinematic genius and just been overwhelmingly repulsed.
All I can think of is how useless Woody Allen films would be for someone who couldn’t understand neurosis, which I imagine said hermit wouldn’t although not being a sociologist I can’t be certain what they’d understand. I suppose this begs a discussion of which filmmaker works best for an audience that doesn’t have any concept of society, and my mind immediately jumps to Bergman although I’m not sure how justified that is. Perhaps Breathless with characters that act according to their own personal existentialist morality would appeal to someone who was purely ruled by their own thoughts and not under any societal influence. Hmmm, that’s a thinker.
Cassandra’s Dream, Match Point – Never again. Didn’t buy them at all. I found The Purple Rose of Cairo more realistic. I can’t stand Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Velvet Goldmine being the exception) and agree with the criticism that Allen doesn’t understand what makes London life different from New York and failed to tap into the heart of the great city. Vicky, I think, works because it’s seen through the eyes of tourists rather than assuming some knowledge about the tone to living in the city, celebrating the vitality of learning about a fantastic city rather than pretending to know how it is to live there.
Scoop is one of only two Allen films not to have even got a release in the UK. I don’t know what it says about the quality of that film, but I like to think we made our thoughts clear on Match Point.
I admit I await it with equal trepidation, but I’ve seen it produced by a group of musical theatre students in London and found it quite enjoyable if I remember rightly. I had no idea at the time how big the show had been elsewhere and even considered the students had written it themselves so I can’t say it’s stuck with me enough to judge its merits.
The real thing that worries me is the cast: What kind of balance will be struck between the great combination of Lewis, Dench, Cruz and Cotillard and the troublesome elements of Kidman, Hudson and Fergie? Maybe Nicole Kidman will pull it out of the bag with a good set of players to bounce off, but I’ll have to wait and see her. Fergie’s the real worry as Eddra Gale’s performance as the original Saraghina is one of the highlights of the film.
I think the different style (musical), completely different cast, wildly different director, etc. will be enough for me to see it as a film in its own right and not as an attempt to emulate or continue the legacy of the masterpiece that is 8 1/2. Fingers crossed anyway.
Okay, having actually decided to watch the trailer, I am somewhat impressed. I’ll give Rob Marshall his due, thinking about it I understand he normally has a very good production design at least and I was somewhat prejudiced against him because of Chicago. Seeing all the cast up there together does make it look like an epic production and now I’ve overcome trepidation and built up ridiculously high expectations that possibly only 8 1/2 itself could surmount. Damn it. I’m off to watch the original.
I’m sure after 5 months you’ve bought one of the two, or maybe both, or maybe Pierrot Le Fou, but here goes my two cents anyway.
Breathless is a classic milestone in cinema, perhaps a film that uses stunts as some earlier posters described it, but Godard was looking for ways to blow cinema open and he managed it with said ‘stunts’. What remains in retrospect, having seen 50 years of post-Breathless cinema is that the stunts are less effective but the film itself remains beautifully enchanting. It can’t be reduced to a jump cut.
Le Mepris is breathtaking in a different way. It lacks the energy of Breathless (on purpose) and sets a more Antonioni-esque tone I feel. Bardot’s performance is, for me, one of the most iconic in cinema history and an idealised beauty, so in response to Ryan Estabrooks, you do REEEEEALLLY want to see her naked. Everyone does. Don’t deny it.
Yes, it’s like choosing between your children but likewise, always go with the oldest. The youngest will always only be measured comparatively even if it’s completely different. Breathless shone a new light on cinema, Le Mepris had a deeper soul to it though and takes more patience. I imagine whichever you chose/choose, you will be running out for the next one soon after.
If you could have lunch with one filmmaker, alive or dead, who would it be? about 3 years ago
It’s sad to be repetitive but it has to be another vote for Godard. Despite a few off moments, the sheer ambition of his work, level of thought crammed into each picture and the originality that he showed in Breathless onwards formed, in my opinion, one of the most distinctive bodies of work worthy of dinner conversation. Given that I inevitably try and turn every conversation around to the man himself anyway, it would probably be fitting to have him there. I imagine such behaviour would seriously annoy Truffaut if he were invited instead.
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David Lynch Overrated? about 3 years ago
In defence of Inland Empire, I would say that it is for David Lynch what 8 1/2 was for Fellini, the epitome of a director’s style and theme within a single masterpiece, a sort of Mulholland Drive: Extreme with all the Hollywood satire and surrealist delight he conjures so effortlessly. It was probably the most singular experience I have ever witnessed in a cinema and felt like an all out assault on the senses that lasted three hours and burned the image of Laura Dern onto my brain for life. It doesn’t live up to the same intensity on DVD, so I understand those who dislike it if this is the format they watched it on, but in a cinema it completely absorbs and transfixes you. In terms of arresting cinema, Lynch has never done it better.
And that’s before we include Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet. So no, ‘overrated’ is completely off the mark in my opinion.
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10 Films You Learned the Most From about 3 years ago
Battleship Potemkin – A tour de force of silent cinema and the premier example that still has the power to justify the silent method as an art (lost now perhaps) distinct from that of sound cinema
8 1/2 & Breathless – Intelligent films that through amazing visuals manage to make the beauty of cinema a theme within itself, no longer simply a means to an end.
Vertigo – An essay on tension, I remember as a young teenager being shocked to see it had a PG rating after watching the final sequence.
Capturing the Friedmans – A documentary about documentary (although not principally), it breaks down the conventional assumptions behind the authority of documentary filmmaking.
Other notables include Un Chien Andalou, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and anything by Rossellini for showing that abandoning or developing traditional narrative is a powerful innovation.
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TOP 10 FILMS FROM YOUR "BIRTH YEAR" about 3 years ago
1986
Aliens
Blue Velvet
Caravaggio
Hannah and her Sisters
Manon des Sources
Platoon
Those are the best I can find and I can’t say I’m that thrilled with some of them. Blue Velvet and Hannah and Her Sisters are the only ones worth regular viewing. I think being born in the 80s instantly puts you at a disadvantage.
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Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford about 3 years ago
I just watched this film for the second time against my better judgement as the first time I found it incredibly tedious with a plot that meandered far too much, with the only respite being the fantastic coda that stood miles apart from the first two hours. However, on second viewing I completely fell in love with it and believe it to be one of the best American films of the new millennium, a genuine masterpiece superior to other revered Westerns like McCabe and Mrs Miller and Unforgiven. The cinematography is breathtaking (noted on first viewing but not to the same extent) and when the plot is viewed as the disintegration of the band of bandits due to Jesse’s paranoia (justified or not?) rather than simply the Jesse-Robert relationship I think it feels much more complete and would have even merited the longer running time that was rumoured. At the heart though, I don’t know how well it would have worked without Casey Affleck’s superb performance on which the whole film relies. How Javier Bardem was singled out by so many awards bodies above him for what was a very one dimensional role I will never understand.
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most overrated oscar performances or robberies about 3 years ago
I’m going to throw my money behind Crash and say that I liked it too. I found it a lot more entertaining than Gladiator, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, the Departed so don’t quite understand the vitriol against it.
No Country For Old Men seemed like a chance to award the Coens as they briefly put their perceived career slide on hold and made something critics liked, before the Academy had to award them 10 years down the line for a really disappointing film (a la Scorsese from the previous year). Personally I’ve never really got the Coens and although Fargo, Blood Simple and Barton Fink are perfectly enjoyable pictures, I don’t get their indie kings status. The Assassination of Jesse James and There Will Be Blood are two of the greatest films of the decade and were criminally overlooked, as was Casey Affleck’s performance in the former.
Rain Man I thought was an awful mentally-disabled-by-numbers film as well and thought giving Hoffman an award would have sufficed.
Helen Hunt over Judi Dench? This mistake wasn’t rectified by awarding the latter for 8 minutes of screen time in one of her least remarkable performances in the dreadful Shakespeare in Love.
Finally, although I don’t begrudge her an Oscar, I thought the runaway success of Helen Mirren for The Queen was a bit over the top given that Penelope Cruz (Volver), Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal) and Kate Winslet (Little Children) all gave fantastic performances and any one of them could have snatched it from her. But hell, they all have one now so I’m sure they’re over it. Sadder still was that Laura Dern wasn’t even nominated for her spellbinding turn in Inland Empire.
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most overrated oscar performances or robberies about 3 years ago
Forgot to add Braveheart onto my list as the least deserving Oscar winner ever for its completely ridiculous revisionist history of the William Wallace story. As a Scot myself I found his claim to have found some sort of real truth (presumably as opposed to an English viewpoint) in the opening preamble insulting given his lack of commitment to fact (the Battle of Stirling Bridge is recreated without any mention of a bridge, the sacking of York way further south than Wallace ever reached and some trumped up romance with a French princess just after his wife’s throat was slit!). I’m not normally a stickler for historical fact in drama but when the director goes out of there way to impress upon you that what you see is true and those who disagree are liars, higher expectations are not unrealistic. Also, from a social point of view I saw it launch a new wave of racist nationalism against the English in my home country that was wholly disgusting. I can only hope Mel Gibson trips over his Oscar one day and causes himself an injury.
That said, 1995 seems to have been a very weak field. I can’t see him having won in any other year.
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Is Mookie justified in the end? about 3 years ago
I love this film, and one of the greatest things I thought was that very few of the characters seemed untouchable morally. It seemed to be a multicultural society with the good and the bad that exists on all sides of such a society, and I applauded Spike Lee for casting himself as Mookie who, whilst appearing one of the most reasonable characters throughout, is shown to be imperfect at the end when he launches the bin through Sal’s window. To me, this was a completely unjustified act as Radio Raheem had not been killed by Sal or his sons, but by the police, and the attack on Sal’s place bore the assumption that Sal and his family were part of the same system as the police simply based on the colour of their skin, showing racism as a two-way process. The subsequent reaction of the mob seemed to show an ambiguous reaction to the events which I thought was a brutally honest view of racism from a director sometimes not known for balancing his views. The two quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr at the end also seemed to question whether Mookie’s actions were justified or not but I find little ambiguity in the fact that he targeted the wrong people.
Then I read that Lee had been asked about this topic himself and says that questioning the validity of the riot means you are “implicitly valuing white property over the life of a black man”. Am I alone in thinking this is completely off the mark? I would really like to hear some other opinions on this because I have wondered ever since how I could like a film so much and see all these layers to it when it seems to be completely foreign to the directors specific intention.
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Top performances of all time. about 3 years ago
Wow, I never realised how subjective performances could be. There are some here that I wouldn’t even have rated as very good, never mind the best of all time. Don’t understood the popularity of Peter O’ Toole in Lawrence, Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic, etc who all have better performances under their belt. I suppose Bardem at least was doing the most he could with the part but it was pretty slight and doesn’t deserve the recognition it got.
On a more positive note, awards should go to:
Laura Dern – Inland Empire
Brigitte Bardot – Le Mepris
Judi Dench – Notes on a Scandal
Marlon Brando – Last Tango in Paris
David Thewlis – Naked
Ingrid Bergman – Autumn Sonata
Emma Thompson – Love Actually
I realise the last one is probably controversial but as with many of the others listed here, it was simply a marvellous example of lifting the character from a screenplay and adding so much texture that it was so much more than just a script. Excellent efforts all round and not one of them relies on domestic abuse, hysterical breakdowns, or other cliches to evoke the deepest layers of emotion.
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TOP TEN 2000 - 2008 about 3 years ago
Inland Empire
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Y Tú Mamá Tambien
Talk to Her (Hable con Ella)
United 93
Lost In Translation
I’m Not There
There Will Be Blood
They’re probably not my personal favourites, but they’re what I would like the decade to be remembered with. A good decade for cinema all in all perhaps.
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WHO IS / WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM ACTRESS EVER? about 3 years ago
Bardot embodies sexuality and has to be the premier sex symbol of cinema. Her general malaise in Le Mepris is all the more tender because she looks so extraordinary.
Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Jean Seberg and Juliette Binoche also light up the screen, but in recent years I would say that the way Almodovar has used Penelope Cruz in Volver and Broken Embraces is the most obvious example of creating an iconic beauty. She must consider herself very lucky to have had him arrive as her chief sponsor when things looked to be going so badly before the Volver reinvention. Congrats to both of them on the result.
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What films have you walked out on and why ? about 3 years ago
@Jaylo: I fall into the sleep camp as well, I used to have a monthly pass so would go and see crap just to get some sleep during work breaks.
As a child I walked out of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Waterworld, it must be a Kevin Costner thing. More recently I have considered walking out of Che: Part One (it was in Buenos Aires and my faltering Spanish was missing a few words but I couldn’t tell whether it was this or Soderbergh’s attempted extreme objectivity that bored me) and The Assassination of Jesse James (which thankfully had one of the most rewarding endings I can think of and on second viewing the whole film stunned me with its greatness).
Got to say that I love The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, but don’t know how I would have lived up to it in the cinema. Definitely worth making the effort for though.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
This thread is pretty depressing. Can I ask those who feel so mortally offended by Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, etc. if they actually like any US cinema, save perhaps Citizen Kane, The Graduate and some early Scorsese/Coppola? The incredible number of dogmatic criteria that some people apply to film seems to me a great way to dilute enjoyment by reducing the wonderful diversity of the medium to such a narrow focus that anything not conforming to Antonioni’s use of space and Godard’s political commitments is disregarded as shit.
2001: I can understand why people don’t like it because it relies so heavily on visual taste but I personally find it enthralling. On second viewing.
Breathless: Why cringe because a Godard fan likes this exactly? It must be be really embarrassing to enjoy one of the most highly regarded films of all time. So what if they haven’t put themselves through Notre Musique, maybe if someone encouraged them rather than sneering they’d get around to Alphaville, Pierrot Le Fou, etc.
P.S. I Love You: Totally agree wholeheartedly, saw it on a bus in South America and chuckled a couple of times but would never recommend someone go and see it.
The Shawshank Redemption: It’s perfectly enjoyable, but I’ll confess to a slight sinking feeling whenever someone who hears you’re REALLY into cinema thinks that you would throw yourself under a train for this film. Same for Forrest Gump which is a perfectly enjoyable yarn, but I wouldn’t devote repeated viewings to.
There are plenty others, films that you might leave on if they were on the telly because for just a moment you want to escape from existential angst and were disparagingly called ‘movies’ by someone earlier as though they ever pretended to be anything more. What people seem to be reacting against here is hype more than anything and falling over each other to see who can be the most radical.
LET’S TRASH CITIZEN KANE! Why? Because other people like it. This puts you way above the perceived low brow nature of Gump and Shawshank…
Amazing how people who claim to love cinema so much cannot just lie back and enjoy it, but have to push everything to the ends of an enjoyability spectrum. Love it. Hate it. No in-between.
Personally as a gay man I found Brokeback Mountain a bit sickly and simple (but ultimately enjoyable), however important a step it was for Gay Lib, but loved Crash because it’s everybody-talks-about-racism-ALL-the-time style actually rang true and is pretty indicative of the black-and-white nature that people often observe the race issue, at least in my part of the world. And I believe it had a better sense of drama with a less predictable ending. Funny how everyone’s in such a hurry to dismiss the Academy as homophobic bigots because they made this choice, but the frequent accusations of racism in Crash are deemed unrealistic and too overt. Scream homophobe but whisper racist?
Whatever your view on certain films, it seems that certain people take pleasure in trashing the tastes of others because they don’t like to inhabit the same Bergmanesque dourness that the rest of us quite enjoy, but prefer some closed romantic realism. If indeed they enjoy it so, then surely they have the last laugh.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
P.S. I Love Fight Club
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Top 10 Directors. about 3 years ago
1. Godard
2. Fellini
3. Almodovar
4. Kubrick
5. Bergman
6. Hitchcock
7. PT Anderson
8. Antonioni
9. Cuaron
10. DW Griffiths (For his cinematic ability, not a fan of the racism)
Sorry for having such a typical list, I am a victim of the poor availability of non-Western cinema in the UK.
Also, whilst not someone I feel particularly inclined towards, the lack of Roberto Rossellini’s name on any of these lists always seems like a glaring omission or a sign that neorealism has aged better in countries beyond Italy.
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you cringe when someone tells you they love this film... about 3 years ago
“I think I would choose French and Japanese ahead of American cinema.”
I would agree with you perfectly in terms of my personal response to the films of each country (at least as far as French cinema goes, Kurosawa is someone who has never fired passion in me and I’m sadly ignorant of Mizoguchi, Ozu, etc…), but the question wasn’t posed as an absolute i.e. Why isn’t the Hollywood product your favourite style of cinema. I was merely trying to establish whether people were reacting against the films themselves, the hype or Hollywood itself. To me, the cringe factor that seems to be under debate here would probably be reserved for something that someone thought stood out from the crowd but was in reality very formulaic and run-of-the-mill, and this is probably only because of knowing that the inevitable question that follows would be “What did you think of it?” and the awkward answer that goes with it. My reaction to Marc Foster’s adaptation of The Kite Runner was something along these lines, but I wouldn’t think ill of someone for having enjoyed it. It would be strange to pity someone for having been entertained.
As for Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Amelie, etc., I don’t think, for all their strengths and weaknesses, they can be accused of tugging at an old thread. As a student critic looking for a radical edge I railed against Citizen Kane as a boring story with its themes more expertly and entertainingly told elsewhere, or The Godfather as a bemusingly simple idea onto which people had bestowed the complexity of Ulysses, but with time and repeated viewings I have found the density of information conveyed in both to be worthy of praise and admiration. There’s such a thing as appreciation, even if you can’t fully emotionally react to a film, and many of the comments posted here just show a blind snobbery and intolerance that does nothing to narrow the cultural canyon between ‘Commercial’ and ‘World’ cinema. (Others I note as perfectly reasoned opinions and I was particularly interested by the honesty of someone declaring and justifying their dislike of 2001).
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Burn After Reading about 3 years ago
I loved this film. I found it so much more appealing than the usual Coen brothers’ fare, possibly due to Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich being present. Cutting edge? No. Hilarious? Indeed.
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The Actor as Auteur about 3 years ago
I must admit this is one of the most interesting topics brought to my attention since I joined The Auteurs a couple of weeks ago. I had never thought of it but totally buy into the concept of actor as auteur in certain cases, although perhaps moreso under studio systems where formula and brand recognition was key. In the other thread I heard this theory mentioned I believe Fred Astaire was an example given that I would perfectly agree with. Thinking of others I can only seem to come up with humorously negative examples of actors who seem to drag down a film and make it appear formulaic because of their presence, e.g. Adam Sandler, Arnold Schwarzenegger (some exceptions of course), but could actor auteurs today not simply be a result of ‘negative’ typecasting (as opposed to early Hollywood where many actors thrived on such a tag)? Most of the greatest actors out there just now seem to go to any lengths to avoid such identification. Any thoughts?
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Top performances of all time. about 3 years ago
Withnail: Please lets leave out the recent Walken cameos, no? Although I guess he’s not entirely to blame for Gigli.
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LET'S TALK ABOUT PULP FICTION about 3 years ago
I’ve read some interesting readings of Pulp Fiction and this one seems pretty standard, not too out there. Last month I was reading in a Sight and Sound editorial that someone had once written to the editor with an alphabetical reading of the film, saying that the chronological structure of film is organised alphabetically, from the initial discussion of Amsterdam to the final line in the piece chronologically: Zed’s dead. Sadly the editor didn’t take up the piece for publication and had now lost it so couldn’t elaborate further, and I haven’t got round to rewatching it to see if it works. Tarantino says he didn’t arrange it that way purposefully, which isn’t wholely surprising, but I still found it quite a wacky thought.
I agree with the points made about war and religion in your analysis Justin but I don’t know if the love and sex point is as justified. If all the relationships portrayed were hollow and superficial in contrast to the craving for drugs that you suggest is akin to love, I would agree with the point, but the relationships of Yolanda/Ringo and Butch/Fabienne seem to be very real, in contrast to the Mia/Marcellus/Vincent mess. There seems no unity in Tarantino’s portrayal of these relationships (although perhaps something could be drawn from the tenderness that many of the characters experience throughout in a city otherwise fraught with corrupt underworld dealings) so I’m not sure the point you are making here, but as I’ve said there may be something more with a re-examination.
As for Fight Club, the homoerotic relationship of Pitt/Norton throughout and its resolution that reveals it in fact to be a form of self-worship or self-love that Norton prides over his relationship with Martha shows a very individualist anti-love perspective that is much more explicit than any statements about love in Pulp Fiction. The lack of a great war for this generation of men is more explicit here, which along with the emasculation they feel at being raised by women alone (a point dealt with at more length in the book) leads them to beat each other senseless. The anti-capitalist thrust of the film invokes an absence of spirituality too, so although the mention of Fight Club here appeared to me at first glance to be slightly random (but welcome for me as I adore it), it would seem to take the themes you propose from Pulp Fiction and take them to a more extreme, nihilistic conclusion.
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What are your "Guilty Pleasure" films? about 3 years ago
I also feel little guilt in my choices but the one that sinks conversation is Oliver Stone’s Alexander which I think is a greatly ambitious film that suffers only from taking good actors who just don’t know what to do in classical Greek costume except guess an accent and run with it. Otherwise though, I thought Colin Farrell’s Alexander was a much more three dimensional hero (plagued by doubt and overambition) than the majority of film heroes and made for an interesting film.
@Zachary: Fully agree with Mr Deeds, I can’t help but watch it when it’s on TV. John Turturro cracks me up every time.
@Chopin: I feel that way about Revolutions, can’t understand what’s not to like.
Dreamgirls and The Holiday would be another two that I can’t help but grin manically after despite expecting to hate them.
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What the...? What really means the ending about 3 years ago
I always took the ending to represent the complete devastation and locally apocalyptic results of a nuclear explosion. Given that the monolith in the dawn of man segment comes about at a time when the apes first learn how to use bones as weapons, I took the monolith in 2001 to be indicative of this next stage in weapons development, perhaps some sort of universal doomsday device portrayed in a more serious vein than in Strangelove. In the Cold War-Space Race atmosphere of 1968, the worry of nuclear war was obviously of concern and the devastation of such a war is being expressed metaphorically here as the warping of space and time that occurs within a black hole. I can’t quite remember exactly how I tied this in with the very final scenes as it’s been a while, but the rapid aging he undergoes is, I feel, analogous to a painful cancerous degradation due to nuclear radiation.
Does anyone agree? I thought it the first time I saw it and am surprised not to have heard the theory mentioned here.
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Best Trilogy (NOT Star Wars) about 3 years ago
A second shout for Antonioni’s L’Avventura/La Notte/L’Eclisse, especially the last one which I found incredibly hypnotic for reasons I can’t quite explain.
The Three Colours Trilogy is also a magnificent body of work that I should watch more often. Juliette Binoche in Blue, sigh.
I’m also going to throw in The Matrix trilogy because I think its fan boy status and cooler-than-cool attitude has damaged its reputation as a philosophical work. The first one got a lot of recognition that it deserved, and whilst the second chapter was weaker and the third a bit light on the ideas the first two espoused relentlessly, I felt the whole thing fitted perfectly into the trilogy structure and was hugely ambitious, both technically and thematically.
On the other hand, I feel Gonzales Iñarritu’s trilogy of Amores Perros/21 Grams/Babel is hugely overrated. The first part, whilst good, is not outstanding and a simple idea well portrayed by interesting visual imagination and direction. The second I remember as a good pot-boiler but still a hyped up melodrama that takes itself too seriously, although it’s been a long time since I watched it. And Babel took one of the most interesting thematic approaches of the decade and let it fester under a long winded, tediously connected mess. Babel especially was a victim of being shoe-horned into a structure that it would have done better without, and I hope that now he’s repeated the formula enough, Iñarritu remakes Babel in a different way so that the highly original and complex themes it tried to convey so clumsily can get the treatment they deserve.
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Highschool Friendly Spanish Films? about 3 years ago
I love the puppet thing. Haha.
What about some tamer Almodovar, like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? Other than the dream orgasm, I can’t think of anything overtly sexual in it, it’s a fantastic film and when I learned Spanish I found it to be quite manageable. I went on a filmmaking course last year and two students said that they’d been persuaded to get into cinema by this film, so if you’re looking to introduce your class to something then it works as a nice bridge between mainstream and ‘world’ cinema.
My University Spanish teacher brought us Los Amantes del Circulo Polar (Lovers of the Arctic Circle or something, I don’t know the exact English title) by Julio Medem which, despite the title, steers clear of the graphic sex of his Sex and Lucía but I don’t remember it being completely inspiring so the only novelty is it being in Spanish.
I’ve also just realised that you have passed the dilemma/run out of time, but feel I had to contribute something in return for the laugh I got at Fernando’s expense.
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TO WHAT EXTENT WERE GRIFFITH'S VIEWS THE NORM IN BIRTH OF A NATION? about 3 years ago
I understand that the film came under severe criticism at the time of its release for the explicit racism of the text but, as a non-US citizen not well schooled on the country’s civil rights background before the 1960s, after watching the film recently for the first time I was still shocked by how overt the content was despite previously knowing its reputation. Intolerance is often referenced as an apology or at least a response to criticism of Birth’s content, but does anyone know if the beliefs Griffith espoused did have some popular support during the times? To try and compare it to a current day scenario, we received a lot of coverage over here (UK) about a media backlash against a Miss California entrant in the US for giving her views on gay marriage despite the fact the state recently voted against the practice, showing popular support for the idea. Could the Ku Klux Klan, whose membership rose significantly following the film’s release, have been viewed as heroic by a significant portion of US society in 1915?
Aside from the repugnant tone of the film, I was amazed at how breathtaking the film was in general. Having watched Intolerance recently and fallen in love with it, I decided to brave Birth and found it equally visceral viewing and its controversial content made it seem even more intriguing as an exhibit of the politics of representation in cinema, but only as an object of history that I imagine has little persuasive power over a modern audience. If it was made today, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the cinematic genius and just been overwhelmingly repulsed.
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Movies you would like if you were a hermit about 3 years ago
All I can think of is how useless Woody Allen films would be for someone who couldn’t understand neurosis, which I imagine said hermit wouldn’t although not being a sociologist I can’t be certain what they’d understand. I suppose this begs a discussion of which filmmaker works best for an audience that doesn’t have any concept of society, and my mind immediately jumps to Bergman although I’m not sure how justified that is. Perhaps Breathless with characters that act according to their own personal existentialist morality would appeal to someone who was purely ruled by their own thoughts and not under any societal influence. Hmmm, that’s a thinker.
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Woody Allen at his best about 3 years ago
Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Purple Rose of Cairo – All time greats
Annie Hall, Zelig, Vicky Cristina Barcelona – Very entertaining, but not as good as the above
Mighty Aphrodite, Manhattan Murder Mystery – Disappointing
Cassandra’s Dream, Match Point – Never again. Didn’t buy them at all. I found The Purple Rose of Cairo more realistic. I can’t stand Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Velvet Goldmine being the exception) and agree with the criticism that Allen doesn’t understand what makes London life different from New York and failed to tap into the heart of the great city. Vicky, I think, works because it’s seen through the eyes of tourists rather than assuming some knowledge about the tone to living in the city, celebrating the vitality of learning about a fantastic city rather than pretending to know how it is to live there.
Scoop is one of only two Allen films not to have even got a release in the UK. I don’t know what it says about the quality of that film, but I like to think we made our thoughts clear on Match Point.
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ROB MARSHALL'S NINE about 3 years ago
I admit I await it with equal trepidation, but I’ve seen it produced by a group of musical theatre students in London and found it quite enjoyable if I remember rightly. I had no idea at the time how big the show had been elsewhere and even considered the students had written it themselves so I can’t say it’s stuck with me enough to judge its merits.
The real thing that worries me is the cast: What kind of balance will be struck between the great combination of Lewis, Dench, Cruz and Cotillard and the troublesome elements of Kidman, Hudson and Fergie? Maybe Nicole Kidman will pull it out of the bag with a good set of players to bounce off, but I’ll have to wait and see her. Fergie’s the real worry as Eddra Gale’s performance as the original Saraghina is one of the highlights of the film.
I think the different style (musical), completely different cast, wildly different director, etc. will be enough for me to see it as a film in its own right and not as an attempt to emulate or continue the legacy of the masterpiece that is 8 1/2. Fingers crossed anyway.
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ROB MARSHALL'S NINE about 3 years ago
Okay, having actually decided to watch the trailer, I am somewhat impressed. I’ll give Rob Marshall his due, thinking about it I understand he normally has a very good production design at least and I was somewhat prejudiced against him because of Chicago. Seeing all the cast up there together does make it look like an epic production and now I’ve overcome trepidation and built up ridiculously high expectations that possibly only 8 1/2 itself could surmount. Damn it. I’m off to watch the original.
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breathless or contempt about 3 years ago
I’m sure after 5 months you’ve bought one of the two, or maybe both, or maybe Pierrot Le Fou, but here goes my two cents anyway.
Breathless is a classic milestone in cinema, perhaps a film that uses stunts as some earlier posters described it, but Godard was looking for ways to blow cinema open and he managed it with said ‘stunts’. What remains in retrospect, having seen 50 years of post-Breathless cinema is that the stunts are less effective but the film itself remains beautifully enchanting. It can’t be reduced to a jump cut.
Le Mepris is breathtaking in a different way. It lacks the energy of Breathless (on purpose) and sets a more Antonioni-esque tone I feel. Bardot’s performance is, for me, one of the most iconic in cinema history and an idealised beauty, so in response to Ryan Estabrooks, you do REEEEEALLLY want to see her naked. Everyone does. Don’t deny it.
Yes, it’s like choosing between your children but likewise, always go with the oldest. The youngest will always only be measured comparatively even if it’s completely different. Breathless shone a new light on cinema, Le Mepris had a deeper soul to it though and takes more patience. I imagine whichever you chose/choose, you will be running out for the next one soon after.
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