Films II : The Filminator

[DANGERMAN]

I started watching that the other week but it felt like something to sit and watch properly

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't really agree on it being too long tbh.

 

edit, putting stuff about themes in a spoiler

Spoiler

It's sort of trying to induce an anaethesizing effect on the viewer with its mundane content (and I think also some degree of repetitiveness iirc). But it's also about how the family's participation in the holocaust turns inwards and poisons their daily rituals, which is something that happens progressively so it's not imo redundant with its scene delivery

I mentioned this when Nag replied sarcastically but I actually do think that The Act of Killing is something worth watching at some point and comparing to this, it's about the same thing (I'm fairly sure that it was reading material for Zone of Interest tbh).

 

Not immediately though, gotta space that shit out with a couple Adam Sandler films or something. Give the evil some time to breathe.

[Maryokutai]

I have no issues with the pacing, I just think it has said and shown everything it needed to 20 minutes before it's actually over. But that could also just be the effect of the subject matter grinding you down and me being ready to bring it to a close earlier than the movie itself wants to.

[one-armed dwarf]

I watched Naked (1993) which stars David Thewlis going on a sort of Odyssey* around London for a few days/nights. It's like what if Leopold Bloom was a dickhead. It's a film I really didn't like at all, despite its great acting performances. Thewlis plays this very loquacious but abusive as fuck asshole, especially to women, kind of a narcisstic emotional vampire with how he seduces people with his quick wit but then mistreats them to feed his own ego. I know there's additional layers here but it didn't really work for me cause it wasn't the film I really needed to watch right now.

 

*he holds the book up at one point saying "you know what this is about, yeah", so it's kinda on purpose. Meant I could even predict the ending, sort of. 

 

Then I watched The Lobster (2015), which is directed by the guy who did Poor Things recently and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It's set in this sort of dystopic future where being single is illegal, kind of like a Logan's Run situation. If you don't have a partner, they take you off to this hotel where you have 45 days to partner up or you get turned into an animal of your choosing. People pair up based on superficial similarities, like having a nice smile but also things like being short sighted, having a limp or suffering from nosebleeds. Everyone speaks with this kinda flatness of affect in their dialogue and has this sort of autistic kinda way of relating to each other and the world. 

 

I thought it was really funny in that deadpan way that this director's films are. It's sort of like what if David Lynch directed an episode of Father Ted, or something. Colin Farrell is great in this type of surreal-bordering-on-horror-comedy, hope he keeps doing these types of films. I prefer Sacred Deer though cause it veers more in the direction of absurd horror than comedy. 

 

This scene made me lol but it's NSFW

 

Spoiler

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Stayed up late watching Haneke's The Seventh Continent (1989)

 

Fuck sake, bad call. Now I'm sad. GGs sleep

[OCH]

[one-armed dwarf]

Not for lack of ideas, but cause everything has to be based on existing IP now

 

Watched After Hours (1985), a scorcese comedy set in NY about a burnt out guy (played by Griffin Dunne who was in American Werewolf in London) whos kinda coasting in his career, goes out meets a girl but it all goes wrong in the worst and most unpredictable ways possible. I got it on 4k UHD, and it looks great.

 

Kinda a weird outlier in Marty's filmography, doesn't really resemble anything else I've seen by him. I wanna check out more of his non-mafioso films

[DANGERMAN]

On 02/05/2024 at 16:38, OCH said:

Tbf he also just made more Star Wars, and then ruined Star Wars, so let's not go wild 

[OCH]

That's true. There was a quote by Lucas in Simon Pegg's autobiography about learning to walk away from things when they are done. Which he regrets not doing with Star Wars.

[one-armed dwarf]

A Man Escaped (1956) - I was watching an interview or something on youtube with Ethan Hawke talking up filmmakers he really liked, he kept mentioning Robert Bresson. I want to watch more Ethan Hawke stuff in general (ordered a film he did with Seymour Hoffman on amazon the other day), but this film (which he obviously ain't in, lol) I really liked. It's about a member of the French resistance planning his escape from prison during the Nazi occupation of France, and it's a true account apparently. It's very austere how it's presented, very focused on the method of doing it and all the planning and there's no soundtrack, just diegetic sounds like trains and whistles. But I was just super absorbed by it. 

 

Here's Kermode chatting about it

 

Spoiler

 

and Dogfight (1991), one of the few films that River Phoenix did before he died so young. It's about a group of young men the night before they are going to be sent off to Okinawa, which is right before they will then be deployed to Vietnam. They have a misogynistic betting game where they have a party and invite the ugliest girl they can find, Phoenix invites Lili Taylor's character (she was in The Conjuring, and Six Feet Under) but he kinda falls for her and becomes slightly less of a dickhead, but only slightly cause there's only so much emotional growth a guy is capable of in just one night. There's not much to spoil here cause there's not much of a story, I thought it was a nice film even if the opening premise sounds pretty disgusting (and is)

[one-armed dwarf]

A dip into early 20th century German expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920). It's considered to be one of these epochal films in the development of the horror film as a genre, so I had to see it. As a piece of history it's a cool thing to see. But beyond its stylistic flourishes I'm not sure I got a whole lot from it, least not near as much as the things it ended up influencing. I think I got more out of the commentary track that I turned on and listened to later, which gets into things like that.

 

Then M (1931), Fritz Lang's sociologic crime procedural where all of Berlin is trying to track down a murderer of children. This I really liked, it was a film I had recommended to me years ago by a lecturer I had so it was on the backlog for a really long time. Different layers of society, the police, bankers/business people, the criminal underworld, the society of beggars, they're all trying to deal with this individual but are not in agreement about how to do it. It's sort of like the city forms its own social organism, expunging an infection, but preferably not to a point where it does more harm than good.

 

Reading up on it afterwards, Fritz Lang would flee Germany when Goebbels took over art and culture, but Lang's wife, who was his co-writer on this, stayed and became a Nazi. Makes the subtext of a film like this a bit challenging, though this is still a Weimar era film it's right around that point in time when social cohesion was at its most strained, ready to give way

[one-armed dwarf]

On 02/05/2024 at 16:38, OCH said:

Saw this on twitter today as an interesting follow up

 

https://x.com/HitFactoryPod/status/1791280908508742027

 

Twitter embeds won't work but it's a vid with George Lucas nerding over silent films. The prequels are bad films, they aren't without inspiration. It's just the execution really (and too many Yes men, which will be the ruin of any creative). While the newer films are flawlessly executed yet artistically not really interesting (except The Last Jedi I suppose, based on what people took from that film anyway)

 

I watched The Straight Story (1999) and Poor Things (2023). Former is the only David Lynch I hadn't seen other than Dune, which I'm probably not going to watch anyway. It's about an old guy called Alvin Straight who drives his ride on lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin to re-unite with his ailing brother. It has the hallmarks of Lynch in how it offers this slice of americana but isn't as darkly cynical as the movies he wrote himself. White picket fences without the demonic undercurrents. It's a very nice film, looked great on 4k

 

Poor Things I found hilarious, I want Mark Ruffalo to do less Incredible Hulk things and more things like this. Very dreamy looking film, they go for a really strong sense of artifice with its set design and use of CG, which seems to mimic matte painting backgrounds. Lots of bright colours, and the twisting of the Frankenstein story into one of anti-patriarchal rebellion is highly effective.

 

I kept lolling at the descriptions of the fucked up shit that Willem Dafoe's Dad did to him, just kept getting worse and worse lol

[Nag]

Bought tickets to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on Friday which I'm really looking forward to... also realised it was April last year since our last trip to the cinema (John Wick 4)... how time flies.

 

Also, because we knew we were planning the above, watched Mad Max: Fury Road at the weekend which holds up incredibly well still.

[OCH]

I've gotten into bad habits again. I wanted to see Dune part 2, Boy Kills World and a few others. But I've fallen into the work-eat-sleep rut lately.

[one-armed dwarf]

Road Warrior, Fury Road and eventually Furiosa are all on my list of things to watch. Was reading tho that Furiosa is apparently performing really poorly (box office sales that is), so I guess it will be on streaming pretty soon

 

What a bummer tho. Like it's at a point where even franchise films and a prequel to an insanely well received movie like Fury Road are really struggling to draw audiences in. 2024's only winners will be Dune II and Deadpool at this rate

 

Of course I'm part of the problem there, but my excuse is I don't even live near a cinema anymore...

[Nag]

If it is doing badly it doesn't deserve it... it was excellent. 

[Snaggletooth]

Hoping to book tickets to see it in the week, Just need to cash in my club card vouchers.

[Maryokutai]

I found it a bit odd when people where looking for a link between Fall Guy's failure and the death of cinema, when that movie was just fundamentally uninteresting IMO, but Furiosa 'flopping' might make for a better point in that argument.

 

One thing that has put me off rushing to see it though is that it looks very same-y. Not sure if that is a widespread feeling but from the outside it seems like a Fury Road 1.5 instead of a 2.0. But still probably a good choice to see on the big screen as long as it's still being shown there.

[mfnick]

I’ve not been to cinema for years. Even before Covid. I’m hoping to get to see Furiosa tomorrow though. It’s one im

making an exception for. 

[Nag]

Enjoy...