Last Movie You Watched? the 8th

That doesn't really bother me. I don't expect actors to do their own stunts. Most can barely dress themselves, after all.

Moving on, enjoyed Charlie Wilson's War. Apart from the cop-out ending, a hell of a lot better than Zero Dark Full of Shit and other recent commentaries on the USA's covert military adventures.

Python wrote:

It's regrettable that John Woo turned down EON's offer to direct. I think his presence would have greatly impacted TOMORROW NEVER DIES positively, which tried to be like a John Woo film and failed horribly.

If Woo was offered TOMORROW NEVER DIES it wouldn't have been on the strength of FACE/OFF (not that you're saying it was, but just sayin'), which didn't open until TND was well into shooting.

But, yeah, FACE/OFF is great fun. For me, FACE/OFF and the much-maligned MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II are more enjoyable than TND and THE WORLD S NOT ENOUGH.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Coincidentally, the original The Wicker Man was released on a British Lion double-bill with Don't Look Now, which Santa was bad mouthing a page or two back. Interesting that two of today's British classics were seen as nothing more than b-movie fodder back then.

Meh. The Wicker Man makes up for Don't Look Now. Love it.

I caught Once Upon A Time In The West last night....while it doesn't quite measure up to TG,TB & TU, and seems to drag at certain points, it's still much better than most westerns which followed it. Henry Fonda made a surprisingly good villain. My only one point of contention, young Bronson looked Asian and nothing like the older guy with the harmonica.

Santa wrote:

The Wicker Man ... Love it.

Surprised no one has made it into a musical yet. Though there might be a health and safety problem with re-staging the ending in a theatre...

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

Henry Fonda made a surprisingly good villain.

From US President to blue-eyed child killer. :shock: A brilliant piece of casting against type.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Santa wrote:

The Wicker Man ... Love it.

Surprised no one has made it into a musical yet.

Don't tell Andrew C unting Lloyd Webber. He already raped WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The extremely obvious stuntmen spoiled Face/Off for me, I'm afraid (if your stunt performers bear absolutely no resemblance to the stars they're standing in for, their faces really shouldn't be visible long enough for you to register that fact and be 'thrown out' of the film).

On the big screen that was especially noticeable, too, but I was having too much fun watching the stunts and thinking "Christ, CGI really has ruined everything, hasn't it?"

ROOM 237 (2013)

A fine satire of autistic film "academics" and how full of shit they are.

Jack Wade wrote:

ROOM 237 (2013)

A fine satire of autistic film "academics" and how full of shit they are.

If only it was intentional satire. Seems Kubrick is being groomed to take Hitchcock's crown.

Erica Ambler wrote:

From US President to blue-eyed child killer. :shock: A brilliant piece of casting against type.

There's this story about Fonda arriving for the shoot and having changed his look to appear more villainous and Leone demanded he changed back again, because he wanted the audience to be shocked when the camera panned over to him after the massacre. "Oh my God, it's Henry Fonda!"

I grew up watching the Spaghetti westerns but since then I have grown more fond of the pre-Spaghetti American classics.
And of course the Boetticher features, which gave their own twist on the classics.
It might just be my perspective, but the older Westerns seem much more pre-occupied with masculinity and what it means to be a man.
Many of the heroes in the Spaghetti westerns are larger than life, to the point where they somewhat ascend beyond those themes.
Though the western most guilty of this is probably Eastwood's own Josey Wales.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Jack Wade wrote:

ROOM 237 (2013)

A fine satire of autistic film "academics" and how full of shit they are.

If only it was intentional satire. Seems Kubrick is being groomed to take Hitchcock's crown.

There is nothing wrong with either and I always find it rather silly to compare artists as if they are race horses. Neither needs to be better than the other (whatever that might mean within the context of film-making).

I think Hitch can take the credit for - if not necessarily inventing - popularizing the visual vocabulary that was largely defined in the 1920s and 1930s.
He then kept on perfecting his style, leading to very spectacular segments of cinematic brilliance in even his later work (The Royal Albert Hall sequence in "The man who knew too much" was always a favorite of mine).

Kubrick and Hitch only very briefly co-existed in terms of their respective primes, roughly the 57-64 period.

Salomé wrote:

I always find it rather silly to compare artists as if they are race horses. Neither needs to be better than the other (whatever that might mean within the context of film-making).

On a rational level what you say is true, but, as art is entirely subjective, one's own experiences and prejudices colour any viewing. (Beauty is in the the eye of the beholder as we used to say.) So in my case, I appreciate Kubrick's technical virtuosity and intellect, but find his work lacking in warmth. Humanity if you will.

Hitchcock was also a master technician but he combined that with a dark humour and love of women that makes him the superior artist in my mind. However, I concede that Kubrick's more misanthropic outlook is more contemporary.

As an aside, it's interesting that Kubrick was a Jew and Hitchcock a Catholic and both found themselves working in predominantly protestant cultures. The sensibilities of an outsider - standing apart - no doubt aided their creativity even if it led to somewhat reclusive personal lives.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Jack Wade wrote:

ROOM 237 (2013)

A fine satire of autistic film "academics" and how full of shit they are.

If only it was intentional satire. Seems Kubrick is being groomed to take Hitchcock's crown.

Entertaning review here by ol' Armond.

Quote :

Locked Inside the Kubrick Cult

Room 237 lets the nerds loose

Following the IFC Center’s very canny “The Films of Stanley Kubrick” series, comes the documentary Room 237 which sums up the Kubrick cult. Comprised of theories spoken by five different Kubrick nerds over an assemblage of movie clips and diagrams by director Rodney Ascher, Room 237 pretends to dissect Kubrick’s 1980 movie The Shining. Ascher’s film—a true mockumentary if ever there was one—is named after the Overlook Hotel suite where little Danny sees Kubrick’s most disturbing visions due to his gift for “shining.” Every nerd wants to shine.



But Room 237 is an even more disturbing vision of post-cinephilia asininity. The theories proposed by the five unseen fans and elaborated by Ascher (whose fondness for eccentricity suggests Escher) are not just wildly different from each other, they demonstrate a current style of cinematic illiteracy that has replaced critical thinking.

Actually an embarrassment to the intellectually ambitious Kubrick, Room 237 shows that the Kubrick cult consists of that breed who like to think they think. However, the hypotheses presented (and seemingly validated by use of actual—pirated?—Kubrick clips) resist rationality.

I’ve long realized that Kubrick’s stature among film buffs certified a paradigm shift from the Hitchcock era when the legendary master of suspense—and of montage—inspired a different, popular enthusiasm than Kubrick whose esoteric, post-WWII misanthropy fed recent generations of kiddie nihilists who, considering themselves especially smart, responded to his stiff (non-sensual, thus anti-Hitchcockian) compositions. (They’re now the Fincher/Nolan kids.) Recall Kubrick’s tracking shots from Paths of Glory and Lolita to Full Metal Jacket that were more deterministic than Max Ophuls who tracked to observe transitory life while Kubrick’s steadicam tracks bore down and confined life’s possibilities. No Kubrick film exemplified this determinism like The Shining, a horror movie about existential claustrophobia that seems angled to mean much more. But whatever it is exactly (and this fastidious Stephen King adaptation is surprisingly, unexpectedly sloppy) drives the Kubrick cult of Room 237 to weird ecstasies of obsessive overthinking.

Watching Room 237 you can’t avoid the problem of contemporary film criticism shallowness. Unlike Wim Wenders’ Room 666, a celebration of cinephilia where a range of filmmakers discussed their inspirations at the Cannes film festival, Room 237 is strictly concerned with the fantasies produced by uneducated responses to the Kubrick myth and the irrationality of The Shining.

Fans seem unable to recognize the film’s failings and so try to make virtues of its mistakes. “Kubrick often in many of his movies would end them with a puzzle so he’d force you to go out of his movies saying ‘What was that about?’” So claims one zealot who responds to cinema the way a child reacts to a video game, trusting that the manufacturer cares about his response.

Another nerd says “[Kubrick] is like a megabrain for the planet who is boiling down, with all of this extensive research, all of these patterns of our world and giving them back to us in this dream of a movie.”

Sorry to say but this inanity redounds to the global reach of Roger Ebert’s TV reviewing. Room 237 doesn’t raise one’s appreciation of The Shining (cue laff track), but, instead, confuses response. It features reenactments of Kubrick placing a Calumet baking powder canister, paranoid shots from All the President’s Men, shots of Tom Cruise cruising in Eyes Wide Shut and, for seriousness, there are even purloined images from Schindler’s List to justify the suggestion that Kubrick was actually expounding upon timeless examples of genocide. It is Ebert’s pretense of “criticism” that inspires these nerds to insist that The Shining must be important because it is more than just a horror movie. Their theories concentrate on gaffes and continuity errors which is exactly the sort of “criticism” that Ebert made available to couch potato/laptop cineastes.



Lost in a maze, one cheerleader cheers “Its contradictions pile up in your subconscience.” Another recidivist viewer avers “When you see things over and over again their meanings change for you…He’s playing with your acceptance of visual information and also your ignorance of visual information.” This is hero-worship, not analysis. Another Kubrick-lover insists “We are dealing with a guy who has a 200 IQ.”

Reverence for Stanley Kubrick overwhelms any understanding of The Shining. It is symptomatic of today’s celebrity veneration—the flip-side of the feeling of nothingness that makes nerds bow down to the likes of Nolan, Fincher, Soderbergh and Kubrick. So they fantasize about The Shining’s supposed profundity as when one professes, “We all know from postmodern film criticism that the meanings are there whether or not the filmmaker is aware of them.” This is the mess that criticism has come to. Fake erudition causes another to muse, “Why would Kubrick make the movie so complicated? Yeah, why did Joyce write Finnegans Wake?” This goofy comparison shows they don’t know the difference between literary and cinematic erudition. These Shining geeks don’t even know the hotel story of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, a truly profound expression of memory and desire.

They ignore the human significance of Jack (played by Nicholson) telling his son Danny “I would never hurt you.” In this warped cathexis, the cynical gotcha coincidences carry hidden importance that means more than any clear, apparent behavior and imagery.

The Kubrick cult dispenses with traditional humanist notions of art appreciation. They prize Kubrick for The Shining’s horror movie dread, perverting Diane Arbus’s twins, turning an elevator into a bloody diluvium (although as Pauline Kael observed “No one takes an elevator in this movie anyway”). Without any schooling in visual or literary interpretation, the Kubrick cult is left to bizarre fantasizing. One nervously giggles “I’m trapped in this hotel. There’s no escape, there’s like this endless loop.” Shining co-star Shelley Duvall said it better, describing the production as “like Groundhog Day.”

So we’re subjected to ideas about Kubrick’s face subliminally photoshopped in clouds, an actor’s erection, a Rodeo poster turned minotaur and a Dopey dwarf decal. Ascher subjects his witnesses to humiliation that’s no better than his unidentified steal from Murnau’s magnificent Faust, where a silly narrator adds Kubrick “found the Holocaust of such evil magnitude that he just couldn’t bring himself to treat it directly.”

When Ascher isn’t holding Kubrick obsessives up to ridicule, his presentation yet implies the same credibility the Internet gives fanboy bloggers. Like Internet criticism, Room 237 resembles the kind of conspiracy theory mania that kooks used to put on single-spaced mimeographed sheets and pass out on street corners.

The ultimate nerd testimony says “In your own life, your point of view is being altered by your study.” But this isn’t study which means to examine, this is mere mania. Room 237 is another confirmation of the end of cinephilia.

http://cityarts.info/2013/03/27/locked-inside-the-kubrick-cult/

Kubrick is the anti-Hitchcock. :) I like it. Says what I was trying to say only much more succinctly.

Haven't reviewed a movie in a good while, mostly because I haven't been to the cinema (aside from Oz, but i really have nothing to say about that). With school issues pissing me off, I took to booze and watched some Verhoeven.

ROBOCOP

A modern classic. Something Verhoeven has yet to match, even if STARSHIP TROOPERS was close. Casual violence offset by moments of poignancy, a sharp script satirizing the 80's as a whole, and Basil Poledouris's epic score. The biggest reason why ROBOCOP stands out is the actors. Everyone fits their role (and in Weller's case, his suit) like a glove.

Suddenly, I feel like watching ROBOCOP 2. I haven't seen it in ages.

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM

I don't understand why TEMPLE OF DOOM gets so much hate. Not dark enough? Someone gets their heart ripped out, for Christ's sake! The Indiana Jones films are love letters to film serials and TEMPLE OF DOOM fits that mantra perfectly. Immensely enjoyable despite (and probably because) it isn't nor is trying to be RAIDERS.

Started watching TOTAL RECALL, but ended up stopping just before the Kuato reveal. Still entertaining, but the obvious Mars sets throw me out of the film a bit.

Atlantic City (1980, dir. Louis Malle)

A very appealing inspection of characters who are either stuck in an unpleasant life situation, are utter losers, or haven' t achieved what they once had aspired, still aren't over it (and are a bit lustful and desiring). A well-directed and clever examination of human desires in the specific surroundings of Atlantic City (and Vegas as an important backdrop for the back stories). Couldn't record it, have to buy the DVD and watch it more carefully.


Miami Vice (2006, dir. Michael Mann)

Whatever my complaints may have been in the past, scratch them all. This is as honest and realistic and humane a portrayal of the work of undercover narcotics detectives as you can have. Before watching it again (finally!) I thought the whole love story was kind of fake and did unnecessarily slow down the film, but Mann perfectly - and subtly! - explores it as a potential pitfall for an undercover agent, but also as a piece of humanity (and desire) in an ever violent world. What Mann achieves with frugal and natural dialogue, actor gestures, utterly convincing acting, involving, telling, admirable cinematography, and spot-on use of music is simply marvelous. The characters are well orchestrated (as usual), they feel very true to life, the action is breathtaking in its realism, the themes are subtly treated, and once more Mann does not compromise at all and forgoes a storyline tailored to the mass taste, excluding lousy humour and non-stop gimmicky action. I recently read a news magazine coverage of the war on drugs, and by what former undercover narcotics say there about their work one can see that the use of abusive language is common among them, so the film isn't pandering to kids when it uses it, it's just realistic. The same goes for some of the (spare) explicit violence (shot off limbs, for instance). The drug dealers and guys like the Arian Brothers are among the worst scum on earth, the film just acknowledges realities and does not pamper the audience.
The ending is once again emotionally pleasing, the fact that Crockett takes risks to get Isabella out of harm's way (regarding law enforcement measures) lends yet more poignancy to the film, it's an illegal act, but it pays tribute to the fact that Isabella is far from being as inhumane as the people she had worked with; for giving her a chance to become virtuous, he has to live on without her, and the whole part in the end is handled so subtly, yet so compelling, it's gratifying. Cinematography, atmosphere, and music are pretty terrific once again.
I'm watching the Mann films (hopefully on Sataurdays) in English for the first time (have only seen HEAT and ALI in English so far).

Largo's Shark wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Jack Wade wrote:

ROOM 237 (2013)

A fine satire of autistic film "academics" and how full of shit they are.

If only it was intentional satire. Seems Kubrick is being groomed to take Hitchcock's crown.

Entertaning review here by ol' Armond.

[snip]

http://cityarts.info/2013/03/27/locked-inside-the-kubrick-cult/

I'm with Armond, though I think it's a bit unfair to lump Nolan fanboys in with Kubrick's. Kubrick made Eyes Wide Shut, whereas I'm not so sure Chris Nolan even has a dick.

Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House

good way to pass an evening or recover from horrific shifts. Cary Grant in full comic mode, usual looks of bemusement, consternation etc. (Waffle, waffle, waffle).
Useless film trivia, Reginald Denny who features had his last role in Batman '66. What a way to end.

Jack Wade wrote:

I think it's a bit unfair to lump Nolan fanboys in with Kubrick's. Kubrick made Eyes Wide Shut, whereas I'm not so sure Chris Nolan even has a dick.

The orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut is so mechanical and joyless I remain unconvinced that Kubrick ever had sex. Perhaps he read a few sex manuals instead.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Jack Wade wrote:

I think it's a bit unfair to lump Nolan fanboys in with Kubrick's. Kubrick made Eyes Wide Shut, whereas I'm not so sure Chris Nolan even has a dick.

The orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut is so mechanical and joyless I remain unconvinced that Kubrick ever had sex. Perhaps he read a few sex manuals instead.

It's rather unfair to reduce Kubrick to what most deem his weakest feature.

But is that not universal practice?

Erica Ambler wrote:

The orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut is so mechanical and joyless I remain unconvinced that Kubrick ever had sex. Perhaps he read a few sex manuals instead.

To be fair, most orgy scenes in cinema are fairly banal. A gaggle of extras eating grapes, kissing and laughing. The only one that remotely shocked me was the previously deleted scene in Ken Russell's THE DEVILS.

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey

Or pardon me but do you mind if I extend this story so far it breaks.

I suppose disappointment is tempered by the fact the film does nothing particularly wrong, the acting is decent - certainly Martin Freeman makes the most interesting and engaging Hobbit of the franchise and it was fun to meet Les Patterson in the underground - but overall the film just feels too disjointed, unconvincing and superficial. The CGI is distractingly prominent, there seems not a character or background that isn't heavily tainted by a digital makeover, so much looks cartoonish or overtly animated here, nothing caries any weight or impact, swords slice ineffectually, rock giants crash about without any slam despite an energetic audio dub, Orcs and Goblins consist only of limp rubber..... It is all very lacking somehow and with the story operating at such a simplistic and sedatory level there is nothing to sustain the vital suspension of disbelief.

6/10 (Mainly for Freeman's contribution, ironically the only human element)

The fat Kiwi lost his touch in the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Not that he failed in making money, he just failed in making something that wasn't soulless, cartoonish shyte.

Watching FACE/OFF made me think of THE HOBBIT (and Jackson's KING KONG) oddly enough.

Both Woo and Jackson have this tendency of thinking "why have [one amazing thing] when SIX will be better!" But somehow when Woo does that it's AWESOME and when Jackson does it, it's tedious.

Probably because Woo really did have a speedboat ramp THROUGH another boat, blowing it up, whereas in THE HOBBIT we get a battle between stone giants that a) isn't in the book, b) makes no sense in Tolkien's universe of creatures and c) adds and accomplishes nothing in the story besides padding out the running time.