Recently Watched Films 2010

[billygomberg]

Peter Watkins - Gladiators

weird movie. interesting. quite obscure, in terms of how it moves. bouncing between this Peter Watkins box and the Luc Moullet box makes for some pretty weird home viewing experiences this week.

the copy I have of this is VERY VHS DUBBED and pretty grainy. while this heightens a certain aspect of "oooo I'm watching some rare shit" it can be distancing...wasn't able to get into Gladiators as much as a lot of other Watkins films...

[franz bieberkopf]

try watching Jeanne Dielman under similar circumstances! i think it was some kind of DVD dub of a PAL vhs that i saw when i watched it 5 years back.

[billygomberg]

try watching Jeanne Dielman under similar circumstances! i think it was some kind of DVD dub of a PAL vhs that i saw when i watched it 5 years back.

I left grad school with a large pile of old VHS dubs of all flavours of classic art films. REALLY hard to watch Tarkovsky that way. not at home but it is a great list of rare film, and the 16mm -> VHS transfer makes it a really special viewing. almost abstract in the most tragic cases.

[kandu]

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My favourite scene, along with the epic traffic jam tracking shot and the farmyard Mozart piano recital, and.. dammit, the whole film rocks.
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My favorite part of the film was the speech addressed to the ocean. Langage d'Octobre.
A breath-taking scene.

[Jesse]

[ Dir: Shirin Neshat] Women Without Men

[Captain Hate]

District 9 (Blomkamp, 2009) - What an impressive debut. Leroy's ghost was right, definitely one of the best movies of the year.

Just watched this for the first time this morning and I absolutely have to agree with the positive vibes...One of the best of it's genre I've seen in a very long time..I mean it totally kills Avatar. Hands down

The fact that Sharlto Copley improvised almost all of his dialogue is icing on the cake..Impressive.

I continue to be completely surprised by how positively this film was received, pretty much across the board. I thought it fell pretty badly between two stools and was, ultimately, very dull.

I was thinking I was the only person to find this an extreme disappointment. First of all, what is its genre? Science fiction? If that was the case it had some nicely constructed effects that received no explanation at all. An enormous space ship runs out of gas and hovers over South Africa but still has enough of an energy source to keep it suspended and nobody has a fucking clue as to what's going on to keep it up there or get it going again after it's been there for years; maybe such an uncurious dumbass world is where we are and where we will be but I wasn't satisfied by some twat moviemaker preaching that to me, if that's what he was doing. Other than that it just dissolved into a bunch of blow-shit-up scenes which I didn't find at all interesting. So as Sci-Fi I would call it unqualified failure.

Although maybe it was a social commentary movie? Let's stick a million aliens from who the fuck knows where into an already dirt-poor setting; what could go wrong? One thing I found interesting was that people could understand the weird alien patois with seemingly no translation devices; was that a commentary on how many diverse dialects are understood in South Africa? That was just about the only thing I found mildly interesting.

The protagonist was supposed to be a lovable goof, I guess, but I didn't find him sympathetic; he reminded me of a more irritating Jim Carrell. Everybody else were pretty much lowlifes, except for the one alien who was the only seemingly intelligent entity (although him having a lovable offspring made me wince and look for Spielberg hiding out somewhere).

Sorry to go so ultra-negative but I had been looking forward to seeing this for quite a while and this is a reflection of how disappointed I was with it.

[Jesse]

[
...he reminded me of a more irritating Jim Carrell.

?

[Captain Hate]

I just logged on here to correct that dammit; I meant Steve Carell.

[leroysghost]

...he reminded me of a more irritating Jim Carrell.

?

i'm afraid.

The protagonist was supposed to be a lovable goof

he may be a goof, but he is hardly lovable (his racism extends to multiple murder after all...). that's one of the things i thought the film did so well. i disliked his character but that didn't make his treatment in the lab any less disturbing, or his estrangement from his wife any less sad (i even got a little choked up at the ending).

as i've said before, the situations in the film might be paltry in and of themselves, but i found the execution to be awesome and invigorating.

[Gaendaal]

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam, 2009)

Amusing enough as a distillation of all of Gilliam's previous films (and, as such, it suffers from the same faults of all of Gilliam's previous films) but isn't much of anything, really. The inclusion of Johnny Depp as an incarnation of the main character (a trope/necessity which is less jarring than it's been made out to be) really just shows that Heath Ledger was doing a Johnny Depp impression all along whilst Lily Cole and Andrew Garfield sound too much like refugees from a particularly irritating episode of Grange Hill (which is weird because they were born in Devon and LA, respectively).

[smithy]

Ken Loach, My Name Is Joe, 1998

"Get outtae the car, I'll give yae a fuckin heart massage!"

That's a good one and easily my favorite Loach film. I didn't like The Wind that Shakes the Barley at all. I thought it was pretty uninvolving. I don't think historical drama is Loach's strength and I prefer the films dealing with modern blue collar salt of the earth characters. The Navigators was also a good one; dealing with the effect on railway workers of the privatisation of British Rail. Kes, of course is essential and I'm lucky enough to own a region 4 copy. Kes (R2) is still available from Amazon UK for under four pounds.

[O'Grady]

Francesco Rosi - Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1979)

Having recently seen both Uomini contro (1970) and Salvatore Giuliano (1962), I'm starting to get a feel for Rosi's films. I think this might be my favourite so far, but they've all been very enjoyable. The film marks the southern Italian peasants disillusion in regards to Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia. Rosi's films have a certain subtlety about them, but perhaps I'm thinking that due to the lack of drama in this one. Some beautiful shots here and there. The acting is great, Gian Maria Volonté stars.

This film is based on the book of the same name which I have not read so I can't really say much about the film in that sense.

[Captain Hate]

I didn't like The Wind that Shakes the Barley at all. I thought it was pretty uninvolving.

Ugh, I wasted 2+ hours of my life on that recently; I think "uninvolving" describes it well because I didn't care about any of the characters or their plight at all.

[leroysghost]

Erich von Stroheim - Queen Kelley (1929)


Erich von Stroheim - Bind Husbands (1919)


Erich von Stroheim - The Wedding March (1928)


(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCLrqACeHr0)
James Cruze - The Great Gabbo (1929)

i'm ecstatic. it's taken me far too long to get around to all these Stroheim films.

bonus points for anyone who can help me fill in the lyrics to the "laughink" song:

"though it rains and blows
und it hails and shnows
und _________________ [something "all wrong"]
ah ha ha
ee he he
oh ho ho
i'm laughink
though i owe the rent
und my dough's all spent
and my best gal said sho long [at first i thought it was "shalom"!]
ah ha ha
ee he he
oh ho ho
i'm laughink
every little raindrop
makes the grass grow green
laughink makes the pain stop
for every laugh rides on a sunbeam
if you fret
und your __________ [belts all wet???]
don't forget this little song
ah ha ha
ee he he
oh ho ho
i'm laughink"

[eraritjaritjaka]

Expect The Unexpected - Tat-Chi Yau (1998)

good, unconventional HK crime flick. and i'll admit, i didn't expect that.











The Shout - Jerzy Skolimowski (1978)

an experimental musician is told of a sound that can KILL. great, off-the wall flick, really enjoyed it.

[Wombatz]

The Shout - Jerzy Skolimowski (1978)

an experimental musician is told of a sound that can KILL. great, off-the wall flick, really enjoyed it.

Seconded. (Though you make it sound like it grabbed you by the sleeve, which it doesn't, it's just deliciously wtf?)

[leroysghost]

looks like it would make a good double bill with Lipstick (i have yet to see either): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074802/

[leroysghost]

Forugh Farrokhzad - The House is Black (1963)

I said, if I had wings of a dove I would fly away and be at rest.
I would go far away and take refuge in the desert.
I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.
For I have seen misery and wickedness on Earth.

The Universe is pregnant with inertia
and has given birth to time.

Where would I escape from your face?
And where would I go from your pressence?
If I hang on to the wings of the morning breeze
and reside in the deep of the sea,
your hand will still weigh on me.
You have made me drunk with indecision.
How awesome are your deeds!
How awesome are your deeds!

I speak of the bitterness of my soul.
I speak of the bitterness of my soul.
When I was silent my life was rotting
from my silent screams all day long.

Remember that my life is wind.
I have become the pelican of the desert,
the owl of the ruins,
and like a sparrow I am sitting alone on the roof.

I am poured out like water
(as those who have long been dead).
On my eyelids is the shadow of death.
On my eyelids is the shadow of death.

Leave me, leave me, for my days are but a dream.
Leave me before I set out for the land of no return.
The land of infinite darkness.

--------------

O God, don’t entrust the life of your dove to the wild beast.

O God, remember that my life is wind
and you have given me a time of idleness,
and around me a song of happiness,
the sound of the windmill,
and the brightness of the light have vanished.

Lucky are those who are harvesting now,
and their hands are picking sheaves of wheat.

Let’s listen to the soul who sings in the remote desert.
The one who sighs and stretches his hands out saying,
"Alas, my wounds have numbed my spirit".

O, the time-forgotten one,
dressing yourself in red, and wearing golden ornaments,
anointing your eyes with kohl,
remember you have made yourself beautiful in vain,
for a song in the remote desert,
and your friends who have denigrated you.

--------------

Alas, for the day is fading, the evening shadows are stretching.
Our being, like a cage full of birds,
is filled with moans of captivity.
And none among us knows how long he will last.

The harvest season passed, the summer season will come to an end,
and we did not find deliverance.
Like doves we cry for justice…
and there is none.
We wait for light
and darkness reigns.

[DarkAttraktor]

That's looks really amazing, leroysghost. Try "Palms" by Artur Aristakisian if you are into that type of poetic examining of earthly sufferings in documentary form. It's about god-forsaken residents of an abandoned town in Moldova during the famine of the war years. Although you may find it a bit too "exploitative" of the misery those people went through [in a poetic and philosophical, Christian sense], it will engrave itself deep into your memory.

Back on topic: in a gesture to demonstrate openness of mind - I have, once again, submitted myself to torture by Cremaster series. Got a bucket, anyone ?

[p.t]

The Lovely Bones Peter Jackson.

Not sure what to think about that movie.......