Recently Watched Films 2010

[Dan Warburton]

Maybe I shouldn't have started a new thread, but the old one was taking an inordinately long time to load onto my pre-Edison wind-powered computer. And it's a New Year anyway - and no better way to start it off imo than with a drop dead masterpiece:



Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fontane Effi Briest or Many People Who Are Aware of Their Own Capabilities and Needs Just Acquiesce to the Prevailing System in Their Thoughts and Deeds, Thereby Confirm and Reinforce It, 1974

I'd never seen this film before last night, and I think I could honestly watch it every day this year and still not get to the bottom of it. Extraordinary at every level - script, narration, framing, costume, lighting.. wow.

[MRS]

Heat

[Dan Warburton]

Yeah, one of the coldest films I've ever seen! Talking of cold baths, how about



Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques, 1955

[leroysghost]

G.W. Pabst - Die 3 Groschen-Oper (1931)

i have very fond memories of this, seeing as it was the first version of The Threepenny Opera that i saw, and this time around i might like it even more, even if the large amount of musical cuts keep from being definitive in my mind. some of the cuts are understandable, but Herr and Frau Peachum have zero songs..for no apparent reason (Anstatt daß-Song in particular is greatly missed). still, the movie has great atmosphere, with nice performances by Paul Kemp, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Rasp, Rudolf Forster and, of course, Lotte Lenya (no Solomonsong though). well worth watching, but your Threepenny fix may be left unfulfilled, in which case i'd go for the great vintage recordings from the 30's and the Ensemble Modern/HK Gruber/Nina Hagen version.





John Boorman - Excalibur (1981)

felt exceedingly embarrassed when i went back to look and realized i'd wrongly heaped all of Deliverance's failings onto Point Blank when it is in fact operating on a not dissimilar wavelength to Zardoz, one that meets it's apotheosis here in this entry in the Arthurian cycle. Nicol Williamson is amazing, and the sheer condensing of story down to two hours of just themes and motivations is pushed by the adr and Bava lighting into a diamond of fairytale modernization (so condensed that it's hard to comprehend the "mess" that reviews at the time refered to it as). it does all this while also managing to be funnier than Monty Python And The Holy Grail (with all the tongue in cheek motif-ing culminating in diegetic Orff)

[michael]

i dunno. i didnt actually know anything about it going in, but saw an interview w/ the lead actress on conan & had heard rave reviews from various people, so figured id check it out anyway

i thought the performances were wonderful, obv. esp. monique. im only familiar w/ her work inasmuch as anyone else is im sure, which is her comedic roles. but she was very powerful in precious.

however as a film & as a piece of filmmaking, i didnt think it was all that. this criticism may not make sense to some people, but i felt like the movie was 'emotionally manipulative'. (cf. dancer in the dark, requiem for a dream). i guess what i mean by emotionally manipulative is just that the film has a very obvious & directed objective to make you feel a particular emotion (in the case of precious - horror & sympathy for precious). its as if the actual plot of the story could be drafted around evoking those emotions (whether or not thats what actually happened). theres nothing particular compelling about the story b/c there is no other intended response. in that sense, the trials & tribulations seem somewhat predictable from a storytelling pov. i feel like this is directly attributable to this being based on a fiction book. if the movie were based on a true story, i would feel differently; maybe that seems illogical of me, i dunno. aside from that, i didnt think the directing or film style employed was particularly great either.

just a movie w/ a very extreme story that i felt like i knew where it was taking me, but had some strong performances nonetheless

[michael]

Yeah, one of the coldest films I've ever seen! Talking of cold baths, how about



Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques, 1955

one of my favorite movies, & much more so than psycho @ any rate

[Dan Warburton]

Word - the story goes that Clouzot and Hitchcock were both racing to secure the rights to the Boileau-Narcejac story, and Clouzot pipped him at the post. Hitch got Sueurs froides instead - and that became Vertigo. Meanwhile, continuing my trawl through the second Carlotta Sirk box -



Douglas Sirk, Interlude, 1957

Not a Grade A Sirk by any means, thanks in no small part to the acting (June Allyson is.. well, how could you fall head over heels in love with someone this plain, as she says herself on several occasions, and it's hard to see Rossano Brazzi as a great conductor - "even my dog is more musical" the director groaned) but even a second division Sirk is pretty good. Nice little write-up here: http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2 ... rlude.html

[michael]

great all around. solid storytelling. i loved the scenes w/ cecil b demille. esp. the scene where hog-eye puts the spotlight on norma while demille is talking to the dude on the phone. the way the story built to when the girl visits the house & the way joe handles the situation... also very well-executed imo. & the ending when she descends the staircase... quite possibly up there w/ one of the best movie endings ive seen. gloria swansons acting was so fucking creepy. i loved it.

[Dan Warburton]

Great stuff. "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces." If you want a good, camp, bitchy dentist's-waiting-room read on the subject, Sam Staggs' Close Up On Sunset Blvd is a lot of fun. I found a new copy on Amazon for $3.

[leroysghost]

Chan-wook Park - Never Ending Peace And Love (2003)

a fabulous exercise in style. full of Park's usual surprises, clichés and dark humor

[Dan Warburton]

Nagisa Ôshima, Nihon no yoru to kiri ("Night and Fog in Japan"), 1960

Stylistically austere (there are only 45 shots in the 107 minute film, sez IMDb), this is a wordy but impressive cross between Rashomon and Last Year at Marienbad - the Resnais connection is explicit in the title - in which a wedding ceremony becomes a theatre of political recrimination for former student revolutionaries (doing what the left does best: splitting itself into warring ideological factions) to the accompaniment of nice, chirpy Shostakovich and Riichiro Manabe. Very impressive, but not for the faint-hearted.

[Dan Warburton]

Chris Marker, Le Tombeau d'Alexandre ("The Last Bolshevik"), 1993

[michael]

close encounters of the 3rd kind

pretty good though the whole thing could havw been reduced to the final scene without losing much in terms of story. still, the alien/ufo/paranormal geek in me appreciated the buildup.

it felt kind of like a mood piece more than anything. also, special fx were quite impressive, esp the mother ship.

truffaut casting was interesting I thought. not that I know anything about the working relation b/w truffaut and spielberg

[michael]

bridge on the river kwai.

great movie overall. a tad long but I don't really know what I would cut out.

great buildup to the finale, which I thought was edited pretty damn well

also, I saw in the credits they filmed on location... I can't even imagine how arduous that must have been, given some of the shots and scenes.

so far, every david lean movie I've seen has been real solid

[Dan Warburton]

John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948

[surfer]

Ballast (Hammer, 2008) - This movie epitomizes the cinematic zeitgeist of 2008: economic depression, hopelessness, people living on the margins of society. You could take Ballast, put it alongside Frozen River (another directoral debut from 2008), Wendy and Lucy, and Man Push Cart, and they'd all look like they'd been done by the same director. The cold blue grey filter, the poverty, the Dogme style, the unresolved ending, the Naturalism with a capital N. I dont have a lot to say specifically about Ballast except that its very good, on par with the others, and if you "liked" the others you'll like this. The acting, cinematography, dialogue, ending. 2008 was a very good year for American independent cinema.

[surfer]

The Hangover (Phillips, 2009) - Ed Helms wakes up face down on the marble floor of a Las Vegas penthouse, with a chicken in front of him, and missing a tooth. And there is a baby, and Zach G doesnt know who it belongs to. If you find this funny, you'll love this movie. Otherwise, its "kind of" occassionally funny. But what saves this from being completely unwatchable, is the absence of a complete douchebag in the cast: a Vince Vaughn or Dane Cook. The 4 guys here (really only 3, as the fourth is missing for most of the movie) are pretty likeable, although Zach G (from Bored to Death) has begun to play the same exact character in everything he's been in.

[Gerardo A]

Cria Cuervos (Saura, 1976) - Dark, intimist and uncompromising, a fine political allegory that succeeds mainly by being told through the eyes of the middle-one of three young orphaned sisters. Just as great as Victor Erice's legendary "The Spirit of the Beehive", it kind of feels like its urban-themed companion piece (using an early obsession with music instead of movies). And Ana Torrent may just be the finest child-actress in the history of movies in Spanish. (She's also amazing--20-plus years later--in "Tesis", Amenabar's great first feature, to me his absolute best so far).

I also think Grisha's avatar pic is from this movie, from the scene with the aunt driving to the countryside and Ana Torrent's character in the back of the car. [I posted this question in the "now playing" thread (certainly not the best place for it) and it got lost after a couple of hours.]

Ballast, Frozen River, Wendy and Lucy, and Man Push Cart

I'd like to see all four.

[lolabelle]

I completely agree about Ana Torrent. Has anyone seen any of her films as an adult?

[Gerardo A]

I completely agree about Ana Torrent. Has anyone seen any of her films as an adult?

I'd say Alejandro Amenabar's "Thesis" and Julio Medem's "Cows" (forgot that one in my previous post) are pretty indispensable. I haven't seen anything else with her as an adult, although I'd like to.