Recently Watched Films 2012

[P. Wretch]

I sincerely love Dondy's writing but I thought Cosmopolis was just a really terrible novel written by an excellent crafter of prose. Somehow formless despite the short form and incredibly narrowing conceit. All the characters were unbelievable, the dialogue stretched belief even for Delillo, most of the events seemed conspicuously arbitrary.

...Dave's camera is no match for Don's typewriter when it comes to fleshing out a thin conceit, and I'm really surprised anyone stumped up the cash to make this.

I wouldn't have thought DeLillo was the sort of writer one turned to for believable characters. At any rate, I'm hoping Cronenberg can turn that thinness to account, preferably by keeping it minimal.

[Dan Warburton]

I bought it dirt cheap in a hideous 4DVD trash boxset (daren't even try to remember what the other three were), and the print was execrable. Then I found it again separately and the copy was just as bad. So I guess the best bet is to DL it somewhere (and as I'm a Neanderthal when it comes to things like Netflix and Karawhatsitsname, you'd better ask some of the other hipper punters here). But it's certainly an intriguing film, not just for Peckinpah's whisky-soaked cameo.

I downloaded a good copy but I still haven't seen it yet.

Got a link? Realised yesterday that I can't play my copy any more because it's a Zone 1 and my Eurocentric Blu Ray won't cooperate.
Meanwhile, enjoyed watching this one again:



Roger Donaldson, No Way Out, 1987

Odd screenshot, makes it look as if Costner's rubbing his balls, whereas it's the bloke following him who ends up doing that later in the film The sting-in-the-tail ending is what you're likely to remember first time round (some like it, others don't - I do), but I've seen it 4x now and enjoy seeing how Donaldson winds up the tension. Very 80s, sure, but fine chemistry between Costner and Sean Young, and solid performances from Gene Hackman and Will Patton. I wonder whether Bryan Singer had this film in mind when he came up with Usual Suspects.. several points in common, notably the incriminating photo (fax in Suspects) that comes into focus too late.

[Gaendaal]

Finally got a copy of Vampyr for less that my monthly mortgage payments!

[Dan Warburton]

Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive, 2011

Certainly more Mann (Michael, not Anthony, alas) than Melville, as Jesse mentioned earlier, i.e. another headcrushing victory of style over substance. Peckinpah was routinely criticised, and wrongly in my opinion, for glorifying violence, but it's a charge that might be levelled at Refn with more justification. He certainly likes blowing heads off and slicing folk up. The more you think about the plot (such as it is - Refn apparently deliberately chose to dispense with the parts of the novel that explained the driver's background) the dafter it gets, but you could say that of Le Samourai and The Driver too. The director, smugly fielding a Q&A session on the DVD bonus (remind me not to watch any interviews with directors any more), describes it more as a Grimm Brothers fairytale, which makes sense but doesn't excuse the hip emptiness of the whole affair. And, it must be said, the most fucking awful soundtrack in living memory.

[leroysghost]

i loved the soundtrack...

don't know about glorification, but Refn is clearly in the inherency camp. for Refn, you can't "live" without violence, thats why it's tragic when the driver reverts to the safety of mechanical operations as he dies.
for my money a movie that's so bad to look at as that can't be said to glorify anything though.

[Dan Warburton]

i loved the soundtrack...

You can't be serious! I can just about handle Riz Ortolani (though how "Oh My Love" was used here made no sense at all to me), but the Kavinsky, Desire and College songs are frankly hideous. Never felt that "French touch", hélas pour moi..

[Gaendaal]

(remind me not to watch any interviews with directors any more)

I said exactly this to my wife a few weeks ago...

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive, 2011

Certainly more Mann (Michael, not Anthony, alas) than Melville, as Jesse mentioned earlier, i.e. another headcrushing victory of style over substance. Peckinpah was routinely criticised, and wrongly in my opinion, for glorifying violence, but it's a charge that might be levelled at Refn with more justification. He certainly likes blowing heads off and slicing folk up. The more you think about the plot (such as it is - Refn apparently deliberately chose to dispense with the parts of the novel that explained the driver's background) the dafter it gets, but you could say that of Le Samourai and The Driver too. The director, smugly fielding a Q&A session on the DVD bonus (remind me not to watch any interviews with directors any more), describes it more as a Grimm Brothers fairytale, which makes sense but doesn't excuse the hip emptiness of the whole affair. And, it must be said, the most fucking awful soundtrack in living memory.

Dumb movie, almost a draft of something else. When it became violent, I stopped to care. But I didn't care very much before. Someone I know called Ryan Gosling "Melville Poupin", a pun both on Melville, Melvil Poupaud, a rather insignificant French actor (you know him if you like Raul Ruiz), and "poupin", which means, hum, "chubby" I think. I found it rather amusing. As for the soundtrack, the label of Desire is Italians do it Better, isn't it ? I'm the less chauvinistic guy in the world so, anyway, is the terminology so important? I have a certain indulgence (tolerance?) for such music, though. Overhyped as it is, it is of course insufferable. I'll be always amazed that everyone liked such a shabby film (chubby, shabby, what a funny language, and then the pebbles: such a bad movie). The scene by the riverside, with the pebble, it was so miserable, and congenial in a way. But everyone was listening to the music at the time, or watching the rather miserable (again!), I don't know how you say it in English, honestly, slow-motion whatever. What a scam!

[free math]

The soundtrack was great.

[Dan Warburton]

I like Melvil Poupaud in Rohmer's Conte d'Eté..



Alan Clarke, Rita Sue and Bob Too, 1986

Shame I can't find a better screenshot of the appallingly run-down Buttershaw and the equally hideous nouveau riche Baildon estates in Bradford (pronounced "Bratferd" by the locals, and there are some delicious Yorkshire accents here) where this raunchy comedy about two teenage girls coming of age (sorry for the pun) was filmed. Andrea Dunbar, who wrote the plays it was based on, was genuinely afraid for her safety when people came up to her after the release of the film, convinced she'd used them as models for the characters. About as far from The Full Monty as you could get. Love the scene when the fat, frumpy girls visit Haworth Parsonage and sneer at Charlotte Brontë's dress ("couldn't imagine 'aving a jump in that, could yer?"). Remember Black Lace, "Gangbang"? (You're unlikely to, unless you lived the full horror of mid 80s England..) Here it is in all its beery, sweaty Working Mens Club glory, straight out of the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5grN83P-jC4

[Dan Warburton]

The soundtrack was great.

I found it about as arousing as your avatar

[yonhosago]

on Sunday



Ken Russell Mahler [1974]

one of the worst films I have seen in my life. One of the things I thought watching it was that this film will be more of a crap as time goes by. Almost unwatchable.

yesterday



Tomas Alfredson Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [2011]

loved it. great cast and art direction. it was a pleasure to see a spy movie without cellphones and laptops and apple logos

[Dan Warburton]

Funny, if I had to choose now I'd take the Ken Russell (as you might have guessed from the post above - but I will give Tinker Tailor another viewing before long). Meanwhile, for all its silliness, rather enjoyed this last night, which, would you believe, I'd never seen before --



Peter Weir, The Truman Show, 1998

As one (of very few) negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes puts it, "a profound movie for people who don't like to think". The more you take it seriously, the less it stands up to scrutiny - forget all that "vision of the reality TV future" and enjoy it for the brilliant artifice it is. Unless, that is, you like pretending you understand all that Baudrillard hyperreality stuff.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Funny, if I had to choose now I'd take the Ken Russell (as you might have guessed from the post above - but I will give Tinker Tailor another viewing before long). Meanwhile, for all its silliness, rather enjoyed this last night, which, would you believe, I'd never seen before --

Peter Weir, The Truman Show, 1998

As one (of very few) negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes puts it, "a profound movie for people who don't like to think". The more you take it seriously, the less it stands up to scrutiny - forget all that "vision of the reality TV future" and enjoy it for the brilliant artifice it is. Unless, that is, you like pretending you understand all that Baudrillard hyperreality stuff.

It's funny you should mention The Truman Show (which, I think, is not a bad movie, nor a pretentious one - I mean, you know pretty well beforehand what you'll get - as if you should set your standards in poetry according to Dead Poets Society for instance) in the same breath as Ken Russell. As for Ken Russell, his films have aged of course, which is a quite obvious point to make. Another obvious point however, I find that his films retain a certain charm, something that you don't get anywhere else. Lisztomania should be horrible, with its Rick Wakeman's soundtrack, etc but it is not, which is already a feat. It is also less trite than Todd Haynes' I'm Not There.

[Dan Warburton]

It's nice to see Ken Russell can still get people worked up, 40 years down the road. When I was a kid he was the enfant terrible par excellence.. I remember my dad storming in after having been to see, maybe it was Mahler, but certainly one of those composer films, threatening to kill Ken if ever he ran into him. These days I find Russell's stuff rather quaint and charming, like a Werner Panton armchair or a pair of platform shoes. As for the Todd Haynes film you mention, I enjoyed that very much.

[Dan Warburton]

Chantal Akerman, Toute une nuit, 1982

Simultaneously emotionally charged - romantic, even - and tightly structured (you could have a structuralist field day with this, and one of the posters in the IMDb comments does), this is one of those films I could easily watch five times in a row, as I used to do with Greenaway's stuff back in my student daze. Akerman at her most Bresson-like, lingering on the shots after the characters have left the frame (and the incesssant traffic noise! the doors!). Beautiful.

[dialectics of shit]

I can't recall a more divisive/polarizing movie in recent memory than Drive; not as many people saw Enter the Void. The people who like it seem to for the very reasons the critics hate it. All of this no doubt intended by Refn.

[Dan Warburton]

Interesting you mention Noë - Refn apparently asked him how he did the head stomping scene in Irreversible. Brothers in arms, indeed.. though I could watch Drive a few times without difficulty, no way I could sit through Enter The Void again, no way.

[Dan Warburton]

Jacques Demy, Lola, 1961

I just came across this, which is a fun selection http://www.totalfilm.com/features/20-co ... ion-scenes - haven't seen all these movies, and sorry that the battle scenes from Shichinin no Samurai didn't make the list (but how could Kurosawa compete with Zombieland?), but the moment in Lola when Franky and Cécile jump from the fairground roundabout would definitely make my list. Total delight from beginning to end.
Favourite slowmotion moments, anyone?

[yonhosago]

It's nice to see Ken Russell can still get people worked up, 40 years down the road. When I was a kid he was the enfant terrible par excellence.. I remember my dad storming in after having been to see, maybe it was Mahler, but certainly one of those composer films, threatening to kill Ken if ever he ran into him. These days I find Russell's stuff rather quaint and charming, like a Werner Panton armchair or a pair of platform shoes. As for the Todd Haynes film you mention, I enjoyed that very much.

heh! I see, didn't know mr. Russell fame of enfant terrible. But in my case, no "worked up" at all: it's just a really bad film, that's all. It has a bad script, coarse, full of common places, the characters are flat. The guy is wicked to Mahler's music, cutting it to serve the hysterical drama: Russell didn't give a damn about the music, really. All he wants is hysteria. And the seventies look is not a thing that make the film bad per se: in Bergman's The serpent's egg, the seventies look and photography color makes the post WWI all fucked up Berlin atmosphere even more sinister and wretched.