TV/Movies Megathread

[frunk]

I liked it too, but found it far more difficult to get into than Primer, because even though Upstream Color about a vastly different subject matter and themes, Carruth went ahead and made Primer again.  Critics were quick to jump to its defense as "challenging" without understanding how it's challenging.  It's not intellectually challenging, it's aesthetically challenging you to try to connect with these characters, pitting your natural empathy against vignettish editing and the emotional distance Carruth maintains from his characters (despite being one of his characters) at all times.

But yeah, totes recommended nonetheless.

It's a similar style in that the perspective is over the shoulder, but I wouldn't call them the same film.  In one you have an unreliable narrator who is in control of their own faculties with a situation that is rapidly going out of control, and in the other [spoiler]you are witnessing the destruction and recreation of a woman's personality under the assault of external experiences and feelings that she doesn't understand[/spoiler].

It's a significantly more emotional movie than Primer, and I didn't have any trouble connecting with the main characters.  Any distance was driven by [spoiler]the characters' struggle to cope with a completely alien assault on their minds, without the filmmaker resorting to "visualizing" that struggle beyond what was generating the strange and unusual feelings[/spoiler].

[Ideologue]

Well, okay.  I can buy that.  I still feel like their scenes together were often cut short, or cut oddly, in a way that kept the audience's (well, my) distance.

I really, really, really want to see the new documentary Blackfish about the death by orca of one of SeaWorld's trainers, and the associated scumminess of capturing and caging killer whales.  But of course it's not coming to SC, and is not available as a VOD.  It is out on DVD on Aug 26... in Britain.

Of course, I came to know of it by way of the cocktease trailers that show in Columbia's quasi-shitty arthouse theater when I went to go see The Way, Way Back (playing at a Regal across town, mind, so that's a slot that could have been used for also-previewed, also-not-scheduled Blue Jasmine.* )

*Though that's a little less annoying since afaik that's getting a release of, like, 6 theaters, I think confined to the NYC/LA markets, and maybe Chicago.  Still bothersome.

[sbr]

Just finished wathcing 42.  I was very good, I was sceptical on how well they could tell the story in 2 hours but I think it was well done.

[Savonarola]

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Buck! How often have I told you to keep that cat from desecrating my graves?
-Bela Lugosi, Bowery at Midnight

The great Bela Lugosi leads an otherwise dull cast in this awful movie.  Bela Lugosi is a college psychiatry professor by day, who runs a Bowery soup kitchen by night which is really the front for a criminal empire.  Plus there's zombies.  The plot doesn't make much sense and the dialog is much in the vein as the quote above.

I think that the movie was originally supposed to be a crime thriller ("Thriller" being an overstatement) and the zombies were just added on to cash in on Bela Lugosi's reputation.  No matter how bad the movie is, and he was in some very bad ones, Lugosi always gives a great performance.  He can't save this one, but it's nowhere near as painful as it should have been.

[Ideologue]

2 Guns (2013).

"To illustrate how underwhelming 2 Guns' effort is: coming out, I honestly thought it was rated PG-13, because I forgot there were three seconds of breasts in it.  I'd feel comfortable bringing a kid to 2 Guns.  It's Baby's First Noir."

Full write-up, actually of reasonable length: @ Guns

I was really annoyed that they referred to an "A6 Apache gunship."  Jesus Christ.

C

[katmai]

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Buck! How often have I told you to keep that cat from desecrating my graves?
-Bela Lugosi, Bowery at Midnight

Wasn't a Bowery Boy movie eh?

[derspiess]

Watching Apocalypse Now for the millionth time.  Friday night always seems to be the best night to watch it.  Break that mirror, Martin Sheen.

[Ideologue]

Watching Apocalypse Now for the millionth time.  Friday night always seems to be the best night to watch it.  Break that mirror, Martin Sheen.

Original cut or Redux?

[derspiess]

Original.  Watching Das Boot now.

[Admiral Yi]

Watching Apocalypse Now for the millionth time.  Friday night always seems to be the best night to watch it.  Break that mirror, Martin Sheen.

I propose that the Satisfaction scene on the boat is the single best pairing of song and scene in all of moviedom.

[Ideologue]

Watching Apocalypse Now for the millionth time.  Friday night always seems to be the best night to watch it.  Break that mirror, Martin Sheen.

I propose that the Satisfaction scene on the boat is the single best pairing of song and scene in all of moviedom.

I ask you to consider the three notable uses of "Goodbye Horses" in Clerks 2 and Maniac as jokes, and, of course, Silence of the Lambs in earnestness.

[Ideologue]

There seems to be a good modern day western I have missed or it was not as good as it seems and I don't remember it. I'll have to watch it.

Unforgiven (1992), Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/

Where have you been hiding these last twenty years? Unforgiven is a classic.

+1 Solid A

Yo, Infantry, did you know they were remaking Unforgiven?

Before you get mad, the "they" may not refer to whom you think it refers.

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwXPNJangJ0

The notion is so fucking cool that I wholeheartedly endorse it even though I haven't seen Unforgiven yet (I think I'll watch Unforgiven right now actually).

[CountDeMoney]

even though I haven't seen Unforgiven yet

The hell, man.

[Ideologue]

even though I haven't seen Unforgiven yet

The hell, man.

I'd been sitting on it since I bought it.  I had a good reason: I've seen comparatively few westerns--no joke, maybe about a dozen, and maybe a dozen more if you include crime/noir/whatever movies set in the 20th century Southwest, e.g. Last Man Standing or No Country For Old Men, and twenty-five in total if you count Westworld.

I was never interested in them as a kid, and it's only pretty recently I realized that this was overlooking a pretty vast and influential part of American cinema, not to mention some really swell movies (of the dozen or so I've seen, I own about eight, so you can see how I've come around).  But I didn't feel I'd get the full effect of Unforgiven unless I had some basic grounding in the genre and the Clint Eastwood persona in particular getting deconstructed.

However, I did happen to find A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More the other day at a decent price, so I picked 'em up, and watched 'em (having seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly a few months ago, and which I loved).  So when I happened across a mention of the Unforgiven remake, it reminded me that it's been sitting on my shelf for four months unwatched, and I figured, what the hell, the Dollars Trilogy should be sufficient.

I just finished watching it, and I liked it a lot.  A western about masculinity, the real psychic cost of violence, and how everybody in the West were really great big crybabies, except monsters.  I particularly liked how Will Munny just falls into controlled chaos at the end.  Sometimes the movie is a little obvious and just has people straight-up state its themes out loud.  ("It don't seem real... how he ain't gonna never breathe again, ever... how he's dead. And the other one too. All on account of pulling a trigger. "  OKAY I GET IT.)  But that's fine, it's still making its point effectively.

In any event, it's a good thing air war obviated all this messy face-to-face stuff.

A

[Syt]

Out of Leone's westerns I like Once Upon A Time In The West the best. While the Dollar trilogy may be more entertaining, OUATITW is beautifully shot and feels epic, showing how the Wild West makes room for civilization. Bronson, Robards and Fonda are at the top of their game here.

Though my favorite movie remains Rio Bravo, Howard Hawks' anti-thesis to High Noon. Instead of running around town, begging for help, John Wayne rejects any help. He gets it, anyways, from a misfit crew of unlikely heroes: an alcoholic has-been (James Dean - duh), a boy who's still wet behind the ears (Ricky Nelson), an old, cynical cripple (Walter Brennan), the short and plucky Mexican saloon owner (Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez) and a sexy card hustler (Angie Dickinson). It's great fun with memorable characters. (Well, the singing by Rocky Nelson and Dean Martin in the middle of the movie is a bit awkward, but I'll let it slide.)

Hakws/Wayne also did Rio Lobo and El Dorado together, westerns that are similar in tone, but don't quite reach the same quality (though RObert Mitchum as drunkard sheriff in El Dorado is good fun).

Also, the Hawks/Wayne movie Hatari is highly recommended.