Raxivace's 2017 List of Movies or (Neo-General Chat)

[Eva Yojimbo]

EDIT: Gah, Mods/Admin needs to change the setting that doesn't allow multiple posts in a row from non-mods/admin. There's no reason for it on a small forum of non-trolls like this. I hate having to respond to multiple people in the same post.

@DA

I thought it was one of the best mainstream films that year. :/

It had zero humanity or soul. There was no meaning to it, no point, no nothing. It was awful.

I find that an odd criticism from someone that loved Fury Road so much. I mean, I don't think there's a huge amount of "humanity, soul, meaning, etc." to either film, but at the very least I think The Revenant is making an attempt at having those things. My only complaint with the Revenant is that it's a bit Tarkovsky-lite; the whole long takes drifting through nature and trying to evoke a primal spirituality and connecting it with memories is right out of Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, The Sacrifice, etc. Still, I think Inarritu has a good feel for it, and he's helped tremendously by the phenomenal cinematography of Lubezki. That he did this in the context of a mainstream "revenge" narrative is also pretty remarkable.

@maz

You should try this movie called Colossal Youth... now that's a movie I couldn't sit through, no matter how many times I tried. The only movie ever that I simply left unrated. One day, perhaps, I'll summon the strength...

Oh, man, I loved Colossal Youth! Probably as close as film has ever come to Still Life photography, and one of the most haunting films of this century. It's remarkable how much is suggested off-screen through sound; I haven't seen a director do so much with so little since Bresson. Here was my review: http://forum.evageeks.org/post/373805/F ... -2/#373805

Share 'em for the bottom 3 (so we can agree to disagree all over again. Heh.)

I could have sworn you rated Brooklyn above an 8 back on the IMDB forums - I remember because I made a post about it. Has it not aged well?

Ex Machina - I can probably understand what you found lacking; in retrospect, I'd revise my own score down to a 7.0-7.5 myself since I'm not really drawn to repeat viewings. The narrative is fairly standard, even if it's well-acted and well-directed (despite the 'empty' feeling it leaves one with).

45 Years - woah, what happened there?

You had me curious about Brooklyn as it's possible I did have it rated higher when I posted my IMDb review, but I just checked the archive of that thread and, nope, I always had it a 7.

Here we go:

Brooklyn (John Crowley) - 7/10

Brooklyn is an old-school romantic period drama-comedy about a young woman named Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) who immigrants to Amerca from Ireland in hopes of finding a better life. She does, primarily in the form of a young Italian named Tony (Emory Cohen), but when tragedy strikes she's torn between staying or returning home.

Remarkably, the film is played straight without a hint of the quirks and ironies that pervade most hipster-ish indie romance films these days. As such, it's the kind of film that can't help but remind you of the genre's classics like Casablanca and Roman Holiday. Brooklyn even shares the latter's visual lushness, courtesy of cinematographer Yves Belanger, previously best known for lensing Dallas Byer's Club. The film is consistently gorgeously lit, typically with soft, diffused light, but with enough shading to add mood.

Director John Crowley has a classical sense of economic pacing as well. In the first 20 minutes the film sprightly moves from Eilis's dead-end life in Ireland, to her unpleasant boat ride to America, to her first days in Brooklyn at her new job and new home. Finally, the film settles down as the romance is introduced and Crowley is free to linger over the burgeoning love between the couple.

Really, though, this is Saoirse Rona's film, and she carries it, seemingly effortlessly, from beginning to end. Her character is not overwritten, so much of her performance is in reacting to what happens around her, such as her giddy, gossiping roommates in the Brooklyn boarding house.

Perhaps the film's only flaw is that there's nothing new or original here, and the film feels a bit too predictable at times. Still, it's refreshing to see a modern romantic film with such a classical sensibility, well-crafted and played by everyone involved.

Ex Machina (Alex Garland) - 6.5/10

Ex Machina is an intelligent sci-fi film that could've traded in some of its smarts for a soul. Its strength is on the conceptual level, where it has programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) being invited to a remote facility by his brilliant boss, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), to perform a kind of “next-step" Turing test on an advanced, humanoid AI, Ava (Alicia Vikander).

Naturally and predictably the film provokes questions about what makes us human and whether or not machines can think or feel; but while it effortlessly provokes questions, it painfully struggles to make them dramatically engaging. Caleb as a character is vanilla bland. Nathan is more interesting, but in a sense the best parts of his story happened before the film starts; we see glimpses of this when Caleb goes through the security footage of Nathan's “failed" attempts at AIs. This leaves Vikander's robotic Ava as the most compelling character, and while her performance is outstanding she simply isn't given a lot to play off of.

Stylistically the film is shot and edited with a too-cool sheen. The mise-en-scene has an eerie, Kubrickean symmetry to it; and the lighting, while not antiseptic, does stray towards the lighter end of the spectrum. This isn't a film without style, but merely a film whose style emphasizes the film's over-intellectuality. Of course, Kubrick's own 2001 has been accused of this same “intellectuality over drama" as well, but the difference between Kubrick's masterpiece and Ex Machina is that 2001 was audaciously daring on a formal level, did possess some potent drama—especially during the HAL section—and achieved a transcendental sublimity in its mind-bending ending; three things Ex Machina fails to replicate.

Despite its dramatic weaknesses, the film is a strangely haunting look into a future that is perhaps not just possible, but inevitable. It also deserves credit for its patience in unveiling just how disturbingly human such AIs might end up being.

45 Years (Andrew Haigh) - 6/10

This is a subtly understated but ultimately dull drama that revolves around the 45th Anniversary of a couple, Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay), and Kate's gradual discovery of her husband's relationship with another woman who died tragically while hiking in the mountains.

The highlight, and really the only good reason to watch it, are the performances of Rampling and Courtenay, who are tasked with carrying the entire weight of the film. Rampling's is the more dynamic part, registering every revelation through her face and body language so the audience detects their psychological reverberations. Courtenay is the more stoic of the two, burdened mostly with trying to repeatedly convince Kate that the past is the past, yet subtly displaying that perhaps he has never completely moved on and gotten over it.

Thematically, it treads interesting ground in its suggestions that even after spending nearly half-a-century with someone, other people inevitably remain deep mysteries to us: we can never be absolutely certain their devotion, affection, loyalty, etc. belong totally and exclusively to us.

As great as the performances are, and as interesting as the themes seem, they're rendered as impotent as Tom is in the (anti)-climactic sex scene, mostly courtesy of Haigh's bland, monotone direction and refusal to raise the film's voice above an irritated grumble. It contains only one interesting cinematic moment when Kate journeys to the attic (the stairs upwards a subtle metaphor for the mountains that claimed the life of Geoff's ex-girlfriend) to view slides Geoff had saved of the old relationship. Haigh films Kate's increasingly distressed reactions through the blurred, glowing images projected onto a thin, white sheet, slowly building natural chaos on the soundtrack to register Kate's subjective point-of-view.

If the rest of the film had been as interesting as that scene, if it had been as well-executed as it was conceived and performed, it could've been a sterling gem; but as is it's merely a mud-caked and heavily flawed one that's too dull for too much of its runtime.

[Gendo]

EDIT: Gah, Mods/Admin needs to change the setting that doesn't allow multiple posts in a row from non-mods/admin. There's no reason for it on a small forum of non-trolls like this. I hate having to respond to multiple people in the same post.

I didn't even know that was a thing.

It was only 15 seconds, so I'm surprised it would be an annoyance, but I've updated it now so there shouldn't be a limit.

[Derived Absurdity]

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/12/ ... -language1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[maz89]

I think "It has no point!" is a bit of a silly thing to say when even on a surface level its a fairly straightforward "Man is consumed by his quest for revenge" story. That alone isn't especially unique, though I think the way it tells its story with a strong focus on aesthetics makes it stand out.

I loved the aesthetics myself. And because it was released under the guise of a "mainstream" film, I was fortunate enough to catch it in the cinema.

I know Jimbo has mentioned that's he's been considered watching through Lost before, and I kind of wish he would so there would be a decent excuse to hash through that show again, particularly now that we're several years removed from all of the advertising and interviews and so on that didn't quite work in the show's favor.

Jimbo ain't got no time for a 100 episode plus/six season show. Has he even seen Breaking Bad? Heh, I kid - yeah, I always find myself getting sucked into discussions about the show whenever friends around me begin their journey. I haven't seen it in quite a while, although I wouldn't mind tuning in again some time down the line.

BTW, have you seen Fargo (the TV show)? The first season is a'ight, the second is goddamn addictive.

Heh, I didn't figure out the William thing until two or three episodes before the whole season was over myself.

That plotline is kind of a good example of where some of the issues I have begin to pop up. I love the actual scene where its revealed and spelled out, and on paper they do all of the "right things" to build up to the reveal.

I'm not sure it actually tells us that much more about MiB than we already knew though. Like, even just from his scenes we knew that he was some kind of philanthropist, a "good person" until he's in the park to act out his worst impulses. And with the William reveal we now know that MiB...was a good person that comes to the park to act out his worst impulses, but he was romantically involved with one of the hosts in particular which most of us probably suspected from the episode 1 rape scene anyways.

Two or three episodes before the end of the season? Again, being totally honest, I knew there was some sort of revelation coming (just because that's the kind of thing Westworld would totally do in its finale), but I didn't see the MiB = William twist coming at all. Nor did I ever consider that Dolores had gained sentience thirty goddamn years ago. So, because they did all the "right things" to build up the reveal, it caught me off-guard, and completely floored me. The tragedy of William falling for a person who (he believed) did not exist anymore and becoming a hardened, murderous asshole (to exact some kind of revenge against this world for making a fool out of him) was beautifully dramatized, especially in light of Dolores' lingering memories of him and what they once had, with a new kind of spin being put on the "unrequited love driving one insane"/"star-crossed lovers" angle (spun here to show lovers separated cruelly by time). It was also a thread that emphasized just how close to humans these robots had always been, the only obstacle in their way being their creator.

Speaking of which, less impressive for me was the arc of Dr Ford, who went from being apathetic and uncaring about his creatures to totally jumping on-board the Arnold bandwagon. Yeah, the breadcrumbs were being laid throughout the season to make this transition happen, but it wasn't as powerful because the show didn't make us a part of his journey. By dicking us around and always concealing Ford's true intentions, some of the potency of the climax was lost, despite Hopkins doing a great job (...acting ambiguous, lol).

The similarity to Lost might be because Abrams was involved with both shows btw.

Yeah, I'd forgotten until you mentioned it. The episode structuring is straight out of Lost.

[maz89]

My only complaint with the Revenant is that it's a bit Tarkovsky-lite; the whole long takes drifting through nature and trying to evoke a primal spirituality and connecting it with memories is right out of Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, The Sacrifice, etc. Still, I think Inarritu has a good feel for it, and he's helped tremendously by the phenomenal cinematography of Lubezki. That he did this in the context of a mainstream "revenge" narrative is also pretty remarkable.

I honestly don't even consider the "Tarkovsky-lite" as an affront. Like you said, to his credit, Inarritu makes it work, no doubt aided by the brilliant Lubezki.

Oh, man, I loved Colossal Youth! Probably as close as film has ever come to Still Life photography, and one of the most haunting films of this century. It's remarkable how much is suggested off-screen through sound; I haven't seen a director do so much with so little since Bresson.

I read your review - I liked that you acknowledged its impenetrability. One reviewer likened it to (paraphrasing) "rats running around in one's skull", and that's exactly what the first 20 minutes felt like. I love Bresson's minimalism but I'd say anything he's made is still infinitely more accessible than Colossal Youth; his artistic choices are still aesthetically... pleasant. To be sure, I'm not criticizing Youth for being so difficult. Until I haven't seen/experienced all of it (and trust me, that will require serious motivational drive on my part), it gets the benefit of the doubt.

You had me curious about Brooklyn as it's possible I did have it rated higher when I posted my IMDb review, but I just checked the archive of that thread and, nope, I always had it a 7.

Well, that's definitely the review that I read and whole-heartedly agreed with. Perhaps I confused it with the rating you ascribed it to the other film that Brooklyn was paired with in that post - perhaps Inside Out? Regardless, you capture well what I love about the movie; an old school romance told gracefully without unnecessary plot devices or characters, economically without a single wasted shot, and all of it soaking in an aching nostalgia for not just an older time period when things were (seemingly) simpler but also for an almost forgotten kind of film. There's something so pure and honest about the way the characters in the movie react to the obstacles that come their way that it's hard not to get sucked in and begin to give a shit about character decisions, such as the worrying about the path Eilis will take at the crossroads.

Naturally and predictably the film provokes questions about what makes us human and whether or not machines can think or feel; but while it effortlessly provokes questions, it painfully struggles to make them dramatically engaging. Caleb as a character is vanilla bland. Nathan is more interesting, but in a sense the best parts of his story happened before the film starts; we see glimpses of this when Caleb goes through the security footage of Nathan's “failed" attempts at AIs. This leaves Vikander's robotic Ava as the most compelling character, and while her performance is outstanding she simply isn't given a lot to play off of.

Yeah, when I referred to that 'empty' feeling, I was indeed referring to the film's "intellectuality". That being said, I do think that Caleb was always meant to be bland, a John Doe, to be steered and manipulated by Ava. And I don't quite think it is as dramatically weak as you make out; the uncertainty around Ava's intentions is aided well by the eerie, unsettling cinematography, and there's a pervasive feeling that our John Doe doesn't quite understand what he's gotten himself into. While you acknowledge this too, I think that the movie lacks a "soul" by design is important to remember - Ava is almost soulless in the way she plays Caleb just as Nathan has always been soulless with his creations. Sympathy and love has no place in this isolated, cut-off world, when the most intelligent being 'wins' the game. The movie's bleak warning of such a future was certainly well-realized, with the only minor flaw being that it also seems to work against the 'emotional' potency of the movie.

45 Years (Andrew Haigh) - 6/10

Wow, I happened to actually love that understated, slow-burn quality in 45 Years. It's not cinematically rich or daring, but I think its themes are beautifully dramatized in a realistic portrayal of two people who've grown old together and, yet, who may still seem like strangers to each other. All of those little moments that Kate observes that heighten her panic and sadness are realistically rendered - Geoff had the affair before he even knew Kate, and yet it feels like a betrayal to her in the present only because she is learning of it now, and she can't seem to stop herself from exposing herself to all of the minute, painful details in an obsession to 'understand' her husband (and perhaps come across any evidence that suggested that the affair didn't matter to him at all - but, of course, it did). Perhaps, the movie strikes such a strong cord with me because I've seen something similar happen with my own parents; my mom has claimed she sometimes does not recognize the man she spent most of her adult life with. It's terrifying because it makes you feel so utterly alone when your whole life has revolved around your significant other. And for the duration of the movie, I was terrified for Kate, even if it was all brushed under the rug neatly in the ending. Just like it happens in real life, we sweep it all aside and celebrate being "together", even if it's marred by emotional and mental distance.

[Eva Yojimbo]

EDIT: Gah, Mods/Admin needs to change the setting that doesn't allow multiple posts in a row from non-mods/admin. There's no reason for it on a small forum of non-trolls like this. I hate having to respond to multiple people in the same post.

I didn't even know that was a thing.

It was only 15 seconds, so I'm surprised it would be an annoyance, but I've updated it now so there shouldn't be a limit.

That's admin service for you!

[Eva Yojimbo]

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/05/12/ ... -language1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's a big wall of all-caps text. Care to copy/paste the most relevant part?

[Eva Yojimbo]

Jimbo ain't got no time for a 100 episode plus/six season show.

Ain't it the truth. For whatever reason I've been far more into literature and music for the past ~6 months and I'm not tired of it yet... but I always come back around to film and TV. I always find it difficult, though, to invest that much time in TV shows. It's just an awfully big time-risk for what rarely (in my experience) turns out to be an adequate reward. Few exceptions of course: Breaking Bad being one of them.

My only complaint with the Revenant is that it's a bit Tarkovsky-lite; the whole long takes drifting through nature and trying to evoke a primal spirituality and connecting it with memories is right out of Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, The Sacrifice, etc. Still, I think Inarritu has a good feel for it, and he's helped tremendously by the phenomenal cinematography of Lubezki. That he did this in the context of a mainstream "revenge" narrative is also pretty remarkable.

I honestly don't even consider the "Tarkovsky-lite" as an affront. Like you said, to his credit, Inarritu makes it work, no doubt aided by the brilliant Lubezki.

I don't consider it an affront either. In fact, I've never been a huge Tarkovsky fan. I admire his visual and structural sensibilities but I always find myself extremely distanced from his films, and not always in a way that completely absorbs/hypnotizes me like with, say, Bela Tarr or a film like Last Year at Marienbad. Tarkovsky at his worst can be a ponderous bore--I think of the lengthy opening scene from The Sacrifice as the perfect example--and I actually like the fact that The Revenant anchors itself to a plot that provides a sense of momentum and thrust while still finding time for stillness, meditation, reflection, etc. It's a nice balance, and I probably even prefer it to most Tarkovsky--Andrei Rublev and Stalker being the only definite exceptions.

Oh, man, I loved Colossal Youth! Probably as close as film has ever come to Still Life photography, and one of the most haunting films of this century. It's remarkable how much is suggested off-screen through sound; I haven't seen a director do so much with so little since Bresson.

I read your review - I liked that you acknowledged its impenetrability. One reviewer likened it to (paraphrasing) "rats running around in one's skull", and that's exactly what the first 20 minutes felt like. I love Bresson's minimalism but I'd say anything he's made is still infinitely more accessible than Colossal Youth; his artistic choices are still aesthetically... pleasant. To be sure, I'm not criticizing Youth for being so difficult. Until I haven't seen/experienced all of it (and trust me, that will require serious motivational drive on my part), it gets the benefit of the doubt.

I'm actually curious what I'd think about it now, as I've since seen more Costa (Ossos) which I found just as dull as many people find CY. The time between seeing them was far enough apart that I couldn't pinpoint what I loved about CY that I found so missing in Ossos... though Ossos was, ironically, probably the more accessible film. I do agree Bresson is more accessible in general, but what he does with off-screen sound/suggestion and minimal gestures reminded me strongly of CY. I think the Bresson influence is probably more apparent in Ossos, though.

You had me curious about Brooklyn as it's possible I did have it rated higher when I posted my IMDb review, but I just checked the archive of that thread and, nope, I always had it a 7.

Well, that's definitely the review that I read and whole-heartedly agreed with. Perhaps I confused it with the rating you ascribed it to the other film that Brooklyn was paired with in that post - perhaps Inside Out? Regardless, you capture well what I love about the movie; an old school romance told gracefully without unnecessary plot devices or characters, economically without a single wasted shot, and all of it soaking in an aching nostalgia for not just an older time period when things were (seemingly) simpler but also for an almost forgotten kind of film. There's something so pure and honest about the way the characters in the movie react to the obstacles that come their way that it's hard not to get sucked in and begin to give a shit about what path Eilis will take at the crossroads.

It was paired with The Martian (6.5) and Satyajit Ray's The Home and the World (7.5). Perhaps you confused it with the latter. 7/10 is "good" on my scale. I think Brooklyn is a really solid 7 bordering on 7.5 ("very good"). I think it was just the lack of any real originality that prevented me from going up a notch.

Naturally and predictably the film provokes questions about what makes us human and whether or not machines can think or feel; but while it effortlessly provokes questions, it painfully struggles to make them dramatically engaging. Caleb as a character is vanilla bland. Nathan is more interesting, but in a sense the best parts of his story happened before the film starts; we see glimpses of this when Caleb goes through the security footage of Nathan's “failed" attempts at AIs. This leaves Vikander's robotic Ava as the most compelling character, and while her performance is outstanding she simply isn't given a lot to play off of.

Yeah, when I referred to that 'empty' feeling, I was indeed referring to the film's "intellectuality". That being said, I do think that Caleb was always meant to be bland, a John Doe, to be steered and manipulated by Ava. And I don't quite think it is as dramatically weak as you make out; the uncertainty around Ava's intentions is aided well by the eerie, unsettling cinematography, and there's a pervasive feeling that our John Doe doesn't quite understand what he's gotten himself into. While you acknowledge this too, I think that the movie lacks a "soul" by design is important to remember - Ava is almost soulless in the way she plays Caleb just as Nathan has always been soulless with his creations. Sympathy and love has no place in this isolated, cut-off world, when the most intelligent being 'wins' the game. The movie's bleak warning of such a future was certainly well-realized, with the only minor flaw being that it also seems to work against the 'emotional' potency of the movie.

I don't really disagree with what you say here, but I think my biggest point is that in a film so absent of emotions there has to be something--typically either aesthetics, a really provocative/deep handling of themes, narrative daring, or something "transcendental sublime" (ala 2001)--to take its place, and I think THAT'S what Ex Machina lacked: a really good/great something else to take the place of the absent emotions/soul.

45 Years (Andrew Haigh) - 6/10

Wow, I happened to actually love that understated, slow-burn quality in 45 Years. It's not cinematically rich or daring, but I think its themes are beautifully dramatized in a realistic portrayal of two people who've grown old together and, yet, who may still seem like strangers to each other. All of those little moments that Kate observes that heighten her panic and sadness are realistically rendered - Geoff had the affair before he even knew Kate, and yet it feels like a betrayal to her in the present only because she is learning of it now, and she can't seem to stop herself from exposing herself to all of the minute, painful details in an obsession to 'understand' her husband (and perhaps come across any evidence that suggested that the affair didn't matter to him at all - but, of course, it did). Perhaps, the movie strikes such a strong cord with me because I've seen something similar happen with my own parents; my mom has claimed she sometimes does not recognize the man she spent most of her adult life with. It's terrifying because it makes you feel so utterly alone when your whole life has revolved around your significant other. And for the duration of the movie, I was terrified for Kate, even if it was all brushed under the rug neatly in the ending. Just like it happens in real life, we sweep it all aside and celebrate being "together", even if it's marred by emotional and mental distance.

I don't disagree with anything you said here and, indeed, I think this underlying emotional turmoil (along with the acting) are the real strengths of the film. Like with Ex Machina, though, I just wish there was a bit more there. A bit more drama, a bit more dynamics, a bit more "moments" like the scene in the attic. I feel like there's a great film trying to claw its way to the surface throughout but it just never really gets there. Also, while I understand that Kate's obsession isn't rational, it's really hard for me to connect to someone who makes such a mountain of what was really a molehill; the fact that our significant others may have had another "just as significant" other before us shouldn't come as such an earth-shattering moment of disillusionment. Even though I don't think what Kate goes through is unrealistic in a "that doesn't happen in real life" sense, I still feel tempted more to ridicule her for her reactions as opposed to sympathizing with her. Still, the lack of sympathy is only a small part of my "meh" reaction to the film; there are plenty of irrational, unsympathetic characters in much better films (Kubrick was especially adept at such films). I just didn't find this one particularly compelling.

[Derived Absurdity]

Oh yeah. Here's a handy dandy deHulkifier for you.

http://simonganz.com/2013/04/the-dehulkifier/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Have you never heard of Film Critic Hulk before?

[Eva Yojimbo]

Oh yeah. Here's a handy dandy deHulkifier for you.

http://simonganz.com/2013/04/the-dehulkifier/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Didn't work for me. I dragged the DeHulkifier to my bookmarks toolbar but text was still in all-caps.

Edit: OK, nevermind, I overlooked the "click it" part. It works now.

Have you never heard of Film Critic Hulk before?

Nope. I read a bit of that article and the one he linked to about Birdman. Frankly... I'm not impressed. He's extremely garrulous and while he's clearly intelligent I don't think see the level of insight matching up the the level of text. I like that he's approaching some of the thorniest philosophical issues when it comes to film (and art, in general), but his approach to addressing them has a ring of Dunning-Kruger to me. Perhaps he's not aware of all the critics and academics that have addressed these issues before him, but he doesn't act as if he is. Ironically, what he says about Birdman seems to be my initial impression of him: a worldview that is deeply sophomoric. Plus, I guarantee you that it's impossible for Inarritu's films to be more pretentious than the gimmick of writing film criticism in ALL CAPS to simulate a comic book character.

Just as an example: "YOU PROBABLY NOTICED THAT BIRDMAN HAS A VERY SPECIFIC CINEMATIC APPROACH IN WHICH WE NEVER REALLY LEAVE RIGGAN'S BRAIN, NOR REALLY DEVIATE FROM HIS EXPERIENCE (EXCEPT IN CHOICE MOMENTS). THIS MEANS THE FILM IS ESSENTIALLY TRAPPED IN A FORM OF "SELF-EXPRESSION." COOL? COOL."

That's 43 words used to write what could've been done in 8: "Birdman uses a subjective narrative from Riggan's perspective."

OK, I tried to make it through that Revenant/MM:FR article. I really tried, but I just find his style the more intolerable the more I read it. It's not even that I necessarily disagree with him, but so much of what he's saying is indeed so "sophomoric" that it reads like getting lectured by a first-year film student. I mean, his whole section on form and function is ages old has been regurgitated in different ways in just about every medium by every critic/academic/theoretician that has ever bothered to think about and address the subject of how form affects (or effects) content. Yet he rambles on for 1551 without saying anything of more insight than "some filmmakers' use of form is more functional in some films than in others." Errr, no shit, Sherlock?

It's pretty clear that what he dislikes about The Revenant and what he loves about MM:FR is that the former is extremely singular in its form and tone while the latter is extremely multi-faceted. Yeah, they're extremely opposite approaches for how to make what are essentially two completely opposite films with different goals/intentions. The Revenant is drawing on the tradition of Northern/Eastern-European and Asian art-cinema in which "singular" approaches to form and tone are dominant; MM:FR is drawing on Western (but particularly American) tradition of mainstream action cinema in which "multiple" approaches to form and tone are dominant. IMO, they're both excellent examples of how to do what they do. The major difference between them is that The Revanant feels like a shallower version of the best of its predecessors, while MM:FR feels like a more substantial version of its average predecessors. I think this equals out to them being about equally good when adjusted for differing standards.

Really, one thing he really seems to dislike about The Revenant is the sense of detachment he feels from the narrative. He seems really confused by what is, IMO, one of the real strengths of the wide-angle, wide-shot, long-take aesthetic: the paradoxical feeling of being immersed in a setting, but being detached from the events within that setting. I think this style, at its best (I don't consider The Revenant "at its best"), strikes a wonderful balance between the intellectual and the emotional, engagement and detachment, analytical and immersive. It's precisely what I adore about the films of Theo Angelopolous, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Kenji Mizoguchi, Bela Tarr, and the better efforts from Kiarostami and Tarkovsky. Besides immersion/detachment, I think what this style does is that it emphasizes aesthetics and tone over plot and narrative. I once made the comparison to literature, saying that most Western filmmaking, especially mainstream American cinema, are basically novels; while the films I love from the above directors are more like lyric poetry. One thing I actually find interesting about The Revenant is its very unusual fusion of the plot-dominated "novel" approach of most American cinema and weds it to those "lyric poetry" approach of European/Asian art-house cinema. Now, Inarritu is hardly the first to do this--Kubrick remains the gold standard of this fusion--but it's an exceedingly rare thing to see nowadays. It seems to me that Hulk was mightily confused by this fusion and his instinct was that it "didn't work" because that form is not typically put to that function; yet this is one of the things I found so compelling about the film, that unity and clash of very different sensibilities.

By comparison, MM:FR is much more traditional in that its form/function marriage is more typical. What it is, though, is an exceptionally executed example of it. It reminds me, actually, of Sam Raimi's early work (I think Hulk mentioned Raimi) and what he was able to do in the camp horror/comedy genre by virtue of being (to borrow Gary Giddons's phrase when describing early bebop music) "giddy with his own (cinematic) virtuosity." There's a very similar sense of giddy, cinematic virtuosity at work in MM:FR that feels like the jarring postmodern style collages of Tarantino amped up to 11.

However, it's possible to admire both of these extremes. I've always admitted a bias of being drawn more towards the European/Asian art-house aesthetic than that of Western cinema: yet Hitchcock and Kurosawa are two of my top-3 filmmakers. So it's not as if I can't appreciate the latter when done at an exceptionally high level. To me, MM:FR is excellent, but it's not Hitchcock/Kubrick excellent; while The Revenant is excellent, but it's not Angelopoulos/Hou excellent.

I just read some more--I'm typing this between trying to read that article. I feel like I have to take "breaks" from reading him. Not what you want to feel with a critic--down to the "ego" section. Yeah, Inarritu comes across as a pretentious tool. So what? So does Von Trier. So does Godard. So did Hitchcock in his own way (it got covered up by his British charm and dark/dry humor). Some creative geniuses are humble and some aren't. It really has no impact on the quality of their work. The Hulk's issue with Inarritu's statement about steady-cam being closest to life is rather silly. Plenty of artists have wanted their art to be closer to life in certain ways, and farther away in others. The unique combination of simulacra and artifice is one of the key tensions in all art. In film, this tension between the "lifelike" nature of photography and the "artificiality" of editing goes back to beginnings of the art-form but came to a head when Eisenstein developed his montage theory while Murnau developed the art of the moving camera and long-take. Eisenstein discovered that editing could impart "meaning" above-and-beyond any given image, and this was perfect for the kind of Soviety propaganda that he wanted to make. He also discovered (as a bi-product) that more editing also generated more excitement and energy, and this was exploited fully in the famous Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. Murnau, however, came from a painter's background and, to him, the mise-en-scene and image was the best means for expression, and by manipulating both you could achieve the same effects without the artificiality of excessive editing. This theory reached a pinnacle for him on Sunrise. Since then, the two opposing approaches have been variously adopted and melded depending on the tastes of the filmmaker. Hitchcock famously experimented with both extremes (Rope is notorious for its long-takes, but Dial M for Murder is equally an experiment in montage); while Welles loved mixing the extremes in the same film (Citizen Kane has many justly famous long-takes AND montage sections). Roger Ebert once insightfully said of Sokurov's Russian Ark, done all in a single take, that: "If cinema is sometimes dreamlike, then every edit is an awakening." Or, at least, I think it should be. I think the montage approach has become so dominant in Western cinema that people have become blind to its "awakening" effect, to just how much it effectively thrusts the viewer confusedly into the thick of events while detaching them from the context. Yes, it serves to heighten drama and tension, typically momentarily, but typically at the expense of immersion into a world. MM:FR is less guilty of this than most, but I still remember its world less vividly than that of The Revenant.

OK, I'm going to address one more thing and then I'll stop for fear of being a hypocrite in criticizing Hulk for being "wordy." He says this in relation to Spielberg:

WHAT SETS BRIDGE OF SPIES APART IS ITS INCREDIBLE USE OF MOTIVATED CAMERA MOVEMENT.

AND WHAT IS MOTIVATED CAMERA MOVEMENT?

IT'S WHEN THE CAMERA'S MOVEMENT IS GUIDED BY A SUBJECT'S MOVEMENT, WHETHER A PERSON OR OBJECT, AND HELPS FACILITATE THE LOGICAL FLOW OF HOW THE AUDIENCE EXPERIENCES THE CINEMA BEFORE THEM. IT SOUNDS SIMPLE AND OBVIOUS, BUT IT'S ACTUALLY ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPTS IN CINEMATOGRAPHY. FOR IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE VISUAL VERSION OF THE CLASSIC "THEREFORE" FUNCTION OF STORYTELLING VS. THE PROBLEMATIC USE OF "AND THEN" STORYTELLING. HECK, THERE'S A REASON THE NUMBER ONE RULE OF ACTION CINEMA IS "FOLLOW THE ACTION."

Firstly, yes, Spielberg is a master of motivated camera movement and just about every other cinematic device that's ever been invented. Spielberg's problem has never been his cinematic talent. In that department, he's always been at the very top of virtuosos. Spielberg's "problem" is that throughout so much of his career he's been a great filmmaker rather than a great artist. His problem has never been about using the right cinematic tools well, it's always been about the concept of what and why he's doing it to begin with. Spielberg has always been in love with and captivated by cinema as the dream medium, and much like Truffaut he's never really grown up from that sense of childlike wonderment. I wrote about this a bit in regards to Truffuat in my review for his underrated masterpiece Two English Girls here: http://www.the-fanboy-perspective.com/e ... girls-1971

Secondly, yes, motivated camera movement is a cornerstone of Western narrative cinema. The "Western" is the key adjective there. Again, one of the things I admire about European/Asian art-cinema is that the camera is not necessarily tied to characters. Rather, the "unmotivated movement" can reveal the film's narrative designs that can be in stark contrast to the characters. In Hou Hsiao-hsien's Goodbye South Goodbye, the characters are small-time gangsters who spend most of their time hatching plots about how to make money. In almost every instant when the characters do this, Hou's camera moves away from them to focus on nature, or children, or something else besides them. Why? Because we're meant to grasp that, in the grand scheme of things, these characters and their motivations are really petty and shallow, that there's a whole world and life they're missing be being so absorbed in their self-imposed isolation. That's just one example of what unmotivated camera movement can achieve, and when done well I typically find it more creative/artistic than that of the motivated variety, which is typically more simplistic in its design and intentions.

Hulk's reason for praising motivated camera movement is the classic "true art is to hide art," ie, to make the viewer forget their watching something artificial. I remember Tarantino once said (I think on Jay Leno) that he could never get so absorbed in a film that he forgot about the technical choices being made, ie, forget that he was watching a film. I'm much the same, perhaps because I've spent too many years studying/analyzing films to become that absorbed. This may be why I'm bored by the same elements Hulk finds so worthwhile, because I consciously understand what the film is doing so that the technique really fails to hold any interest beyond that attempt at narrative absorption. In comparison with the other filmmakers I've listed, their techniques and intentions are often much more mysterious. Because they aren't guided by Western narrative filmmaking sign-posting, I feel more involved as a viewer trying to understand what's going on. Such techniques capitalize on my enjoyment of being an "active" viewer as opposed to a "passive" one absorbed in the narrative. He bashes The Revenant's unmotivated camera movement when, to me, this is one of the real strengths of the film.

Ok, I'm done. I think I've read and argued against as much of that article as I care to. I also did this in 2000 words as opposed to his 11000.

[maz89]

Fair enough on Brooklyn and Ex Machina, but just a quick thing I want to iron out regarding 45 Years:

the fact that our significant others may have had another "just as significant" other before us shouldn't come as such an earth-shattering moment of disillusionment.

Of course not but Kate's disillusionment is not with the fact that her husband had once been in love before he got married to her; it's with the fact that she didn't know about it until 45 years into their marriage. This is what changes everything. Because, like anyone else who's been in a relationship that long, she had built up a certain understanding of who her husband was - his dreams, aspirations, past relationships, desires, wants, fears, all of the experiences he ever had that made him him - along with her place in his life. Imagine going through your entire life believing you knew everything there was to know about your partner only to learn, late in your life, that you had not even scratched the surface of his/her depth. That that your marriage only occurred because of your partner's first love's tragic demise, and you only learned of such a key element of your partner's life after forming years' worth of memories with him that now seem like a lie. Now if she had known about it during the early years of her relationship, she could have fit that into her 'story' about her and Geoff, in her understanding of his identity, at least a lot more easily than she does now. But the couple is about to celebrate their 45th anniversary, and she is frightened by the possibility that she does not even know the man who she's celebrating it with. It's not just "petty jealousy" or a violation of a promise of exclusive devotion or the insecurities about her never knowing if she had truly been enough to meet his emotional needs; it's about the larger, scary notion that you never fully know someone, regardless of how long you've known them for. That you can sink your life into a relationship which, at the end of it all, means very little to both parties.

Frankly... I'm not impressed. He's extremely garrulous and while he's clearly intelligent I don't think see the level of insight matching up the the level of text.

Haha, yeah. I've read a few of his pieces before and he usually makes sense. Here though, he seems to exhibit the worst tendencies of film criticism when he preaches against Inarritu's aesthetic style (one I suspect he hasn't encountered before, given no mention of Tarkovsky) by completely refusing to appreciate that there can be more to camera movement than the blanket notion that it must be "GUIDED BY THE SUBJECT'S MOVEMENT".

[Eva Yojimbo]

Fair enough on Brooklyn and Ex Machina, but just a quick thing I want to iron out regarding 45 Years:

the fact that our significant others may have had another "just as significant" other before us shouldn't come as such an earth-shattering moment of disillusionment.

Of course not but Kate's disillusionment is not with the fact that her husband had once been in love before he got married to her; it's with the fact that she didn't know about it until 45 years into their marriage. This is what changes everything. Because, like anyone else who's been in a relationship that long, she had built up a certain understanding of who her husband was - his dreams, aspirations, past relationships, desires, wants, fears, all of the experiences he ever had that made him him - along with her place in his life. Imagine going through your entire life believing you knew everything there was to know about your partner only to learn, late in your life, that you had not even scratched the surface of his/her depth. That that your marriage only occurred because of your partner's first love's tragic demise, and you only learned of such a key element of your partner's life after forming years' worth of memories with him that now seem like a lie. Now if she had known about it during the early years of her relationship, she could have fit that into her 'story' about her and Geoff, in her understanding of his identity, at least a lot more easily than she does now. But the couple is about to celebrate their 45th anniversary, and she is frightened by the possibility that she does not even know the man who she's celebrating it with. It's not just "petty jealousy" or a violation of a promise of exclusive devotion or the insecurities about her never knowing if she had truly been enough to meet his emotional needs; it's about the larger, scary notion that you never fully know someone, regardless of how long you've known them for. That you can sink your life into a relationship which, at the end of it all, means very little to both parties.

What you say in your last two sentences is basically one aspect I praised in my review about never really being able to know someone fully. I think this is a fundamental fact of the human condition, though I understand many people live under the delusion they do fully know those whom they're in relationships with. Likewise, I can sympathize about it coming as a surprise given the 45 years of marriage, but not to the extent that it shakes Kate and their relationship to the core. In a sense, it displays one of the fundamental problems I have about traditional concepts of love and relationships in that while couched in terms of selfless love they often hide what are in fact extremely selfish desires like that of fully possessing another person. I remember us discussing this a long time ago on IMDb and both you and deRider thinking my ideas were rather... odd, but I think they crop in films like this where I see people having rather selfish (again, not unrealistically so) reactions in relationships. What I mean is that Kate really makes this about her when, really, what happens in someone else's life--even someone whom you've spent almost all your life with--should belong to them. It shouldn't reflect on you. No matter what might've happened that ended up with the two of them meeting, falling in love, getting married, etc., it shouldn't change or impact the life they've built in those 45 years. It would be one thing if Geoff had been living a secret life during those 45 years; rather, it's more like he had effectively moved on, but the discovery of her body dredged up memories for him that were perhaps less resolved than even he thought. To me, a selfless love would've been one focused on helping him resolve those issues rather than thinking this was some kind of taint on the entire relationship. While I get it being "scary" thinking you don't really know someone, I also think it's deeply irrational to think that one aspect of a person's life from half a century ago could or should shatter your entire perception of them.

Again, I actually think what the film portrays is far more real to how most people do act as opposed to how they should, but it's simply a reason why it tempers my sympathies to a degree and I just don't think the rest of the film was interesting enough to make up for that.

Frankly... I'm not impressed. He's extremely garrulous and while he's clearly intelligent I don't think see the level of insight matching up the the level of text.

Haha, yeah. I've read a few of his pieces before and he usually makes sense. Here though, he seems to exhibit the worst tendencies of film criticism when he preaches against Inarritu's aesthetic style (one I suspect he hasn't encountered before, given no mention of Tarkovsky) by completely refusing to appreciate that there can be more to camera movement than the blanket notion that it must be "GUIDED BY THE SUBJECT'S MOVEMENT".

One example I shamefully overlooked, perhaps the best in the history of cinema, is the one in I Am Cuba (starting 2:09):

That shot has been aped more than once in modern films: Scorsese, PT Anderson, and, yes, Inarritu have all borrowed from it. There's an incredibly freeing sense of vitality to be found in a camera that's not tied to characters or plot but is instead indulging in the immersive atmosphere of its setting. The way people come in-and-out of focus, the way the camera is free to roam around and find new things of interest, really creates a "you are there" sensibility as opposed to a "you are watching this person" sensibility. In Scorsese, Anderson, and Inarritu you typically have more of a hybrid of the motivated/unmotivated styles rather than either extreme, meaning that camera can start as unmotivated, lock on to a character/become motivated, and then become unmotivated again. The long take in Boogie Nights is a perfect example of this motivated/unmotivated hybrid:



People accuse that shot of ripping off Goodfellas, but the Goodfellas example is entirely motivated, and only has one real perspective shift (when the camera moves to pick up the table), while this one has several.

EDIT: I found this wonderful article by Paul Schrader (the guy who wrote Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and directed the excellent Mishima) when searching for that I Am Cuba shot in which he discusses the virtues of an unmotivated camera: https://www.filmcomment.com/article/gam ... -movement/

[Raxivace]

Y'all had a big party in my own thread without me.

BTW, have you seen Fargo (the TV show)? The first season is a'ight, the second is goddamn addictive.

I saw the first episode of the first season and didn't have any strong reaction to it. Never got around to finishing the rest.

It reminded me a lot of the movie, which I've always thought was one of the Coen's weaker efforts if I'm being quite honest. Maybe not down to the levels of something like The Ladykillers but I think they made at least three movies in the 90's alone that are better. When people like Ebert say that Fargo is one of the best of the 90's period I really don't see where they're coming from.

Two or three episodes before the end of the season? Again, being totally honest, I knew there was some sort of revelation coming (just because that's the kind of thing Westworld would totally do in its finale), but I didn't see the MiB = William twist coming at all. Nor did I ever consider that Dolores had gained sentience thirty goddamn years ago. So, because they did all the "right things" to build up the reveal, it caught me off-guard, and completely floored me. The tragedy of William falling for a person who (he believed) did not exist anymore and becoming a hardened, murderous asshole (to exact some kind of revenge against this world for making a fool out of him) was beautifully dramatized, especially in light of Dolores' lingering memories of him and what they once had, with a new kind of spin being put on the "unrequited love driving one insane"/"star-crossed lovers" angle (spun here to show lovers separated cruelly by time). It was also a thread that emphasized just how close to humans these robots had always been, the only obstacle in their way being their creator.

Hmm, you bring up a valid reading- perhaps I was letting my cynicism about Lost's ending cloud my memories of the show.

Speaking of which, less impressive for me was the arc of Dr Ford, who went from being apathetic and uncaring about his creatures to totally jumping on-board the Arnold bandwagon. Yeah, the breadcrumbs were being laid throughout the season to make this transition happen, but it wasn't as powerful because the show didn't make us a part of his journey. By dicking us around and always concealing Ford's true intentions, some of the potency of the climax was lost, despite Hopkins doing a great job (...acting ambiguous, lol).

I'm not even sure Ford is actually dead, but we'll see where it all goes.

[Raxivace]

Jimbo ain't got no time for a 100 episode plus/six season show.

Ain't it the truth. For whatever reason I've been far more into literature and music for the past ~6 months and I'm not tired of it yet... but I always come back around to film and TV. I always find it difficult, though, to invest that much time in TV shows. It's just an awfully big time-risk for what rarely (in my experience) turns out to be an adequate reward. Few exceptions of course: Breaking Bad being one of them.

The length is the big part of why I find Lost hard to recommend to others, even with the "this is an interesting failure to dissect" type of qualifier attached. It's twice as long as Breaking Bad, though at least its an interesting mess IMO.

Anyways, IIRC Film Critic Hulk actually works in Hollywood as some kind of script doctor, which probably explains where all of his biases come from. He actually wrote a book on screenwriting, which is both ironic and of questionable value anyways based on what I've heard.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Y'all had a big party in my own thread without me.

I thought you wanted this place to be a rebirth of General Chat, no? No better spot than in your (aka, our patron's) thread. :)

BTW, have you seen Fargo (the TV show)? The first season is a'ight, the second is goddamn addictive.

I saw the first episode of the first season and didn't have any strong reaction to it. Never got around to finishing the rest.

It reminded me a lot of the movie, which I've always thought was one of the Coen's weaker efforts if I'm being quite honest. Maybe not down to the levels of something like The Ladykillers but I think they made at least three movies in the 90's alone that are better. When people like Ebert say that Fargo is one of the best of the 90's period I really don't see where they're coming from

Funnily enough I was just talking to my mom about this today. She was rewatching Fargo on TV for the nth time and I mentioned I never understood why it was so strongly praised over many of their other early and 90s films that range from genuinely better (Barton Fink, Big Lebowski) to just as good if not a bit better (Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona).

Jimbo ain't got no time for a 100 episode plus/six season show.

Ain't it the truth. For whatever reason I've been far more into literature and music for the past ~6 months and I'm not tired of it yet... but I always come back around to film and TV. I always find it difficult, though, to invest that much time in TV shows. It's just an awfully big time-risk for what rarely (in my experience) turns out to be an adequate reward. Few exceptions of course: Breaking Bad being one of them.

The length is the big part of why I find Lost hard to recommend to others, even with the "this is an interesting failure to dissect" type of qualifier attached. It's twice as long as Breaking Bad, though at least its an interesting mess IMO.

Anyways, IIRC Film Critic Hulk actually works in Hollywood as some kind of script doctor, which probably explains where all of his biases come from. He actually wrote a book on screenwriting, which is both ironic and of questionable value anyways based on what I've heard.

I still may very well get around to Lost. I've had the inkling more than a few times recently that I'd like to check out some TV shows. For one thing, it provides a nice break from the very different experience of seeing new movies every day (or every other day as has been more recently typical for me). It can be fun being immersed in a new universe for an extended period: something even closer to reading novels than films are.

If he works as a screenwriter/script doctor then that might explain where our tastes differ. Most screenwriters (not all; Paul Schrader, whom I linked to above, is one exception) view film from a very literary perspective and are often hostile to the aspects that you might coin "pure cinema." It just seems to me that through most of his Revenant review he's failing to really place the film within the right tradition and is critiquing it for being something it's not and wasn't trying to be. Though I am sympathetic to his suspicions that Inarritu may be more of a stylist than an artist, and I think he might be right when it comes to the thematic deficiencies of Birdman. But, frankly, I'll take great stylists over directors who have something substantial to say but fail to say it compellingly.

[Raxivace]

Y'all had a big party in my own thread without me.

I thought you wanted this place to be a rebirth of General Chat, no? No better spot than in your (aka, our patron's) thread. :)

I'm cool with taking the thread in that kind of super broad direction if everyone else is, I just don't want to feel like I'm remodeling the house of someone else to my own tastes when I'm only a guest. I was comfortable doing that on IMDb since it was so huge anyways*, but I'm unsure if that's appropriate on a forum that's much smaller.

*Despite the efforts of a mysterious individual who silenced 6.66. We'll now never be able to identify whoever this is and bring them to street justice. Such is the way of our post-truth life now in Trump's America.

Funnily enough I was just talking to my mom about this today. She was rewatching Fargo on TV for the nth time and I mentioned I never understood why it was so strongly praised over many of their other early and 90s films that range from genuinely better (Barton Fink, Big Lebowski) to just as good if not a bit better (Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona).

I definitely prefer Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski myself, and I think I like Miller's Crossing more too.

With Fargo, I kind of feel like I'm just watching an average crime story being executed competently. It doesn't really have the weirdness I enjoy from the Coens- even their True Grit adaptation has more of what I'm talking about.

I still may very well get around to Lost. I've had the inkling more than a few times recently that I'd like to check out some TV shows. For one thing, it provides a nice break from the very different experience of seeing new movies every day (or every other day as has been more recently typical for me). It can be fun being immersed in a new universe for an extended period: something even closer to reading novels than films are.

If anything Lost is certainly its own weird, frustrating little universe. While I don't think its as good, it does take influence from stuff like Twin Peaks, and it even has some narrative commonalities with NGE (Though I really, really, really doubt it was a direct influence. Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Abrams may be nerds but they're nerds of a different kind than weebs like myself).

Also Nathan Fillion makes a cameo in one episode! I'm not going to tell you which one though.

If he works as a screenwriter/script doctor then that might explain where our tastes differ. Most screenwriters (not all; Paul Schrader, whom I linked to above, is one exception) view film from a very literary perspective and are often hostile to the aspects that you might coin "pure cinema." It just seems to me that through most of his Revenant review he's failing to really place the film within the right tradition and is critiquing it for being something it's not and wasn't trying to be. Though I am sympathetic to his suspicions that Inarritu may be more of a stylist than an artist, and I think he might be right when it comes to the thematic deficiencies of Birdman. But, frankly, I'll take great stylists over directors who have something substantial to say but fail to say it compellingly.

I didn't make it through all of that article myself but it sounds right based on my experience with FCH.

On a somewhat unrelated note, you may be interested in this review of FCH's screenwriting book that takes issue with his references to Shakespeare.

[Derived Absurdity]

You make some good points, Eva. I'm just gonna say you seem to know more about film than I know about everything I know in life put together.



This was my scintillating addition to the conversation.









still don't like Revenant though

[maz89]

What you say in your last two sentences is basically one aspect I praised in my review about never really being able to know someone fully. I think this is a fundamental fact of the human condition, though I understand many people live under the delusion they do fully know those whom they're in relationships with. Likewise, I can sympathize about it coming as a surprise given the 45 years of marriage, but not to the extent that it shakes Kate and their relationship to the core. In a sense, it displays one of the fundamental problems I have about traditional concepts of love and relationships in that while couched in terms of selfless love they often hide what are in fact extremely selfish desires like that of fully possessing another person. I remember us discussing this a long time ago on IMDb and both you and deRider thinking my ideas were rather... odd, but I think they crop in films like this where I see people having rather selfish (again, not unrealistically so) reactions in relationships.

Haha, yeah, I did recall a conversation based around your unorthodox views on monogamous relationships when I was writing that post (where the hell is deRider and will we ever find him again?). But I stress here that one 'can know' (or perhaps 'should know') all of the important things worth knowing about their significant other, especially after having spent their life with them. This does not include knowing every single, random thought that comes into their head but most of what can be considered important. Past serious relationships are important, especially if your SO still thinks about them. It is not a 'selfish' desire to know your partner inside out, or to expect your partner to open up to you entirely about things that shape/d their existence.

What I mean is that Kate really makes this about her when, really, what happens in someone else's life--even someone whom you've spent almost all your life with--should belong to them. It shouldn't reflect on you. No matter what might've happened that ended up with the two of them meeting, falling in love, getting married, etc., it shouldn't change or impact the life they've built in those 45 years.

But he's not just 'someone else'. The point is that Kate feels like she doesn't know her husband as well as she thought she did. Not only does that affect her established view about herself, her husband and their relationship - held for nearly the entire duration of her adult life - but it also leads her down a slippery road to the notion that she might not really know him at all.

It would be one thing if Geoff had been living a secret life during those 45 years; rather, it's more like he had effectively moved on, but the discovery of her body dredged up memories for him that were perhaps less resolved than even he thought. To me, a selfless love would've been one focused on helping him resolve those issues rather than thinking this was some kind of taint on the entire relationship.

But see, Eva, for Kate, it may indeed suddenly seem like Geoff had been living a secret life for 45 years that she had no idea of. She's retrospectively examining all of her memories with Geoff and perhaps looking for the new meanings behind all of the things he might have said or done (or conversely, not said or done). It's like she finds out only now the missing piece of the puzzle of her husband's being, with the main problem being that she didn't even know it was missing. So what else has she missed?

While I get it being "scary" thinking you don't really know someone, I also think it's deeply irrational to think that one aspect of a person's life from half a century ago could or should shatter your entire perception of them. Again, I actually think what the film portrays is far more real to how most people do act as opposed to how they should, but it's simply a reason why it tempers my sympathies to a degree and I just don't think the rest of the film was interesting enough to make up for that.

Not shatter, perhaps, but bring into scrutiny. And while I agree that letting it derail or indeed shatter your relationship is irrational (and that's certainly not what Kate does - there is no anger or resentment), I also think it's a bit more complex than that. Glad you at least acknowledge that this is how people would typically react even if it's not the most 'rational' way to do so, but it's clear that the film didn't connect with you as much because you look at relationships differently.

EDIT: I found this wonderful article by Paul Schrader (the guy who wrote Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and directed the excellent Mishima) when searching for that I Am Cuba shot in which he discusses the virtues of an unmotivated camera: https://www.filmcomment.com/article/gam ... -movement/

Loved going through this insightful piece on the development of camera movements. Will read the other sections too later. I haven't seen I Am Cuba but I'm going to add it to my list. I also feel like I need to see The Conformist, Stagecoach and Intolerance again, as well as check out that documentary on the making of L'Argent. It's sometimes easy to forget the kind of innovative vision, skill and difficulty that was required of early filmmakers in doing even basic camera movements that are effortless for an amateur filmmaker today.

[maz89]

BTW, have you seen Fargo (the TV show)? The first season is a'ight, the second is goddamn addictive.

I saw the first episode of the first season and didn't have any strong reaction to it. Never got around to finishing the rest.

Let me assure you that you do not want to miss the second season...

It reminded me a lot of the movie, which I've always thought was one of the Coen's weaker efforts if I'm being quite honest. Maybe not down to the levels of something like The Ladykillers but I think they made at least three movies in the 90's alone that are better. When people like Ebert say that Fargo is one of the best of the 90's period I really don't see where they're coming from

Funnily enough I was just talking to my mom about this today. She was rewatching Fargo on TV for the nth time and I mentioned I never understood why it was so strongly praised over many of their other early and 90s films that range from genuinely better (Barton Fink, Big Lebowski) to just as good if not a bit better (Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona).

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer Fargo to the idiosyncratic Big Lebowski.* (man, I love that the IMDB emoticons exist here)

*Granted, I saw Big Lebowski way before I'd gotten serious about film so I do need to see it again.

The length is the big part of why I find Lost hard to recommend to others, even with the "this is an interesting failure to dissect" type of qualifier attached. It's twice as long as Breaking Bad, though at least its an interesting mess IMO.

I still may very well get around to Lost. I've had the inkling more than a few times recently that I'd like to check out some TV shows. For one thing, it provides a nice break from the very different experience of seeing new movies every day (or every other day as has been more recently typical for me). It can be fun being immersed in a new universe for an extended period: something even closer to reading novels than films are.

I think that pretty much sums up why I can't seem to keep going back. Of course, if you've got a range of other passions, the flawed-yet-interesting TV shows are unfortunately the first to get axed. This is why I am relatively more selective about the shows I watch nowadays. Relatively.

It just seems to me that through most of his Revenant review he's failing to really place the film within the right tradition and is critiquing it for being something it's not and wasn't trying to be. Though I am sympathetic to his suspicions that Inarritu may be more of a stylist than an artist, and I think he might be right when it comes to the thematic deficiencies of Birdman. But, frankly, I'll take great stylists over directors who have something substantial to say but fail to say it compellingly.

Yeah, that was a much better dissection. I liked Birdman, but its tonal inconsistencies were jarring. It asks us to sympathize with Riggan's desire to make great art and fulfill his ambition while, at the same time, seeming to poke fun at his delusions of grandeur; it functions as a satirical piece about his obsessive attempts to create perfection and win the critics over (reflecting his superficiality) but then celebrates the great/ridiculous sacrifice he makes on stage to produce a masterpiece that is eaten up by audiences and critics alike. Is the movie making fun of "artists" who take it too far/go insane for the sake of artistic recognition? Or is it claiming that obsession/madness and great artistry go hand in hand, and that immense sacrifice is required to produce something worthy of being celebrated? To be sure, I did love the free-flowing camera in many of the immersive sequences. I also liked the delicious meta aspects (not just Keaton/Batman, but also Watts as a successful stage actress this time, heh... living up to her potential in this universe; the bedroom bathed in an eerily familiar blue light was a nice touch, too). But yeah, Birdman wasn't the best picture that year (not even the best amongst the nominated).

On a somewhat unrelated note, you may be interested in this review of FCH's screenwriting book that takes issue with his references to Shakespeare.

That was definitely one painful deconstruction of a book that I have suddenly zero interest in ever reading... I wonder if FCH ever acknowledged this and came out with his sources.

You make some good points, Eva. I'm just gonna say you seem to know more about film than I know about everything I know in life put together.

This was my scintillating addition to the conversation.

still don't like Revenant though

[Raxivace]

So I've been reading the NGE manga lately and it sure is different. Sadamoto sure changes the story in some ways, a few of which are surprising. The Sachiel battle for example doesn't have the flashback structure, which actually makes it resemble Rebuild 1.11 more than the equivalent TV episodes. No phantom Rei either, story doesn't begin with Shinji on the phone etc. Things in general seem much more explicit (They actually give a flat out explanation on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which I'm not sure is actually ever done in the show much less Rebuild), Shinji finds out Touji is piloting EVA-03 well before the Bardiel attack. Also Asuka knows karate and fights street thugs for some reason.

The biggest change so far is that Touji is straight up killed in the Bardiel battle, which is a change I don't think I really like. It also leads to this moment (Excuse the reversed paneling):



It plays out more like a scene from a Super Robot Wars game than Evangelion proper, though even in those games Shinji telling off Gendo isn't actually a guarantee (MX and V don't have such a scene for example, though from what I've read Alpha 3 has Gendo getting his own EVA-01 to do battle with Shinji within Instrumentality...SRW games are pretty crazy). I suppose Sadamoto is building this off of the moment from earlier where Shinji threatens an armed insurrection against NERV from within his EVA (A moment that was in the anime as well), though in the anime it was the fact that he only did this from within his EVA and only after refusing to fight an Angel, and only after Touji actually lived anyways despite Shinji's fears about what Gendo was making him do that made the moment so interesting. The manga seems to actually justify Shinji's fears and anger almost simplistically, removing a depth of ambiguity that I think existed within the original series.

Rebuild is similar to the manga in some ways in that Shinji already knows Asuka is within EVA-03, though the fact that it's Asuka changes the dynamic entirely compared these prior depictions.

In general the manga seems more like a straight genre version of NGE, which is a bit disappointing considering the source material. Then again I suppose trying to make the story exactly the same as the anime wouldn't work either.

(where the hell is deRider and will we ever find him again?)

I had sent him a PM at IMDb with a link to this place, though because it was shortly before the forums shut down I am unsure that he ever got it.

[Eva Yojimbo]

This will be an unpopular opinion, but I prefer Fargo to the idiosyncratic Big Lebowski.* (man, I love that the IMDB emoticons exist here)

*Granted, I saw Big Lebowski way before I'd gotten serious about film so I do need to see it again.

Heresy! Blasphemy! Tie him up and use his testicles as bowling pins!

I actually avoided Lebowski for the longest time because it sounded so stupid and something I'd hate, this even after I came to love the Coens. I finally saw it and was shocked by how much I loved it. I totally understand why it's developed such a cult following, and it's actually one of the more visually inventive comedies... ever.

It just seems to me that through most of his Revenant review he's failing to really place the film within the right tradition and is critiquing it for being something it's not and wasn't trying to be. Though I am sympathetic to his suspicions that Inarritu may be more of a stylist than an artist, and I think he might be right when it comes to the thematic deficiencies of Birdman. But, frankly, I'll take great stylists over directors who have something substantial to say but fail to say it compellingly.

Yeah, that was a much better dissection. I liked Birdman, but its tonal inconsistencies were jarring. It asks us to sympathize with Riggan's desire to make great art and fulfill his ambition while, at the same time, seeming to poke fun at his delusions of grandeur; it functions as a satirical piece about his obsessive attempts to create perfection and win the critics over (reflecting his superficiality) but then celebrates the great/ridiculous sacrifice he makes on stage to produce a masterpiece that is eaten up by audiences and critics alike. Is the movie making fun of "artists" who take it too far/go insane for the sake of artistic recognition? Or is it claiming that obsession/madness and great artistry go hand in hand, and that immense sacrifice is required to produce something worthy of being celebrated? To be sure, I did love the free-flowing camera in many of the immersive sequences. I also liked the delicious meta aspects (not just Keaton/Batman, but also Watts as a successful stage actress this time, heh... living up to her potential in this universe; the bedroom bathed in an eerily familiar blue light was a nice touch, too). But yeah, Birdman wasn't the best picture that year (not even the best amongst the nominated).

FWIW, I tend to really like tonally and thematically ambiguous films, and I tend not to care a lot whether that ambiguity seemed intentional, or whether it's the product of its creators being really ambivalent themselves about the subject matter. I always think of WH Auden's definition of poetry: the clear expression of mixed feelings. I tend to think that art that can be read in conflicting, mutually exclusive ways is usually more interesting than art that has clearly defined themes and perspectives on its subject matter. So, in a sense, it's not so much the "jarring inconsistencies" that bother me in Birdman, it's more the fact that I just don't think Inarritu has much interesting to add to canon of metafictional commentary beyond the engrossing style/aesthetic. Although I don't recall all the nominees that year, I do remember that Birdman was one of my 2-3 favorites, so I still really liked it despite my reservations. I gave it an 8.5 IIRC.

On a somewhat unrelated note, you may be interested in this review of FCH's screenwriting book that takes issue with his references to Shakespeare.

That was definitely one painful deconstruction of a book that I have suddenly zero interest in ever reading... I wonder if FCH ever acknowledged this and came out with his sources.

I get the feeling that FCH's "sources" are his thoughts combined with what he can half-remember from whatever conversations and reading he's done on the matter. In a sense, I can sympathize because most of my knowledge of... well, everything, was gained in a pretty haphazard manner. I've read/studied so much, listened to so many commentaries, discussed so much with others that damned if I can remember the "sources" for most of what I know. I frequently even forget whether something I say is something I originally thought of or something I picked up from somewhere/someone else. That said, I try to be as forthcoming as possible and more self-aware when I'm not sure about something, rather than stating it authoritatively. That's why I pepper my posts with so many qualifiers just to ward off the notion that I'm absolutely sure about whatever the hell I'm saying. I'd certainly never state the stuff that FCH does about Shakespeare without being darn sure that I'd read it from an authority--and I have read many, many books on Shakespeare, enough that I would've known some of what FCH was saying was BS.

What you say in your last two sentences is basically one aspect I praised in my review about never really being able to know someone fully. I think this is a fundamental fact of the human condition, though I understand many people live under the delusion they do fully know those whom they're in relationships with. Likewise, I can sympathize about it coming as a surprise given the 45 years of marriage, but not to the extent that it shakes Kate and their relationship to the core. In a sense, it displays one of the fundamental problems I have about traditional concepts of love and relationships in that while couched in terms of selfless love they often hide what are in fact extremely selfish desires like that of fully possessing another person. I remember us discussing this a long time ago on IMDb and both you and deRider thinking my ideas were rather... odd, but I think they crop in films like this where I see people having rather selfish (again, not unrealistically so) reactions in relationships.

Haha, yeah, I did recall a conversation based around your unorthodox views on monogamous relationships when I was writing that post (where the hell is deRider and will we ever find him again?). But I stress here that one 'can know' (or perhaps 'should know') all of the important things worth knowing about their significant other, especially after having spent their life with them. This does not include knowing every single, random thought that comes into their head but most of what can be considered important. Past serious relationships are important, especially if your SO still thinks about them. It is not a 'selfish' desire to know your partner inside out, or to expect your partner to open up to you entirely about things that shape/d their existence.

Certainly one "can know" all the important things if their partner is willing to share them; but the "should know" implies a moral component that I simply don't agree with. If someone wants to keep parts of their life to themselves, then I think that's perfectly fine. In fact, there are even situations when it might be preferable. There are many possible reasons why Geoff kept it from Kate, none of which I think reflect badly on him: perhaps it was too painful for him to talk about/remember, perhaps he really thought he had moved on and it simply wasn't important anymore (possibly a kind of coping mechanism), maybe he felt kinda guilty that his initial feelings for Kate were more of the "rebound" variety despite what they became. The fact that Geoff ends up telling her about it so off-handedly when he receives the letter suggests (to me), that he didn't not tell her for any kind of malicious reasons. People have different ways of coping with tragedies, and some of them involve trying to keep it so much to themselves that even they kind of forget about it; a thought that if they're the only one that knows, and if they can pretend/act as if it didn't happen, then eventually it will be as if it really didn't. The letter is almost like a "reminder" to Geoff of something he'd forgotten, or really tried to forget.

What I mean is that Kate really makes this about her when, really, what happens in someone else's life--even someone whom you've spent almost all your life with--should belong to them. It shouldn't reflect on you. No matter what might've happened that ended up with the two of them meeting, falling in love, getting married, etc., it shouldn't change or impact the life they've built in those 45 years.

But he's not just 'someone else'. The point is that Kate feels like she doesn't know her husband as well as she thought she did. Not only does that affect her established view about herself, her husband and their relationship - held for nearly the entire duration of her adult life - but it also leads her down a slippery road to the notion that she might not really know him at all.

But see, Eva, for Kate, it may indeed suddenly seem like Geoff had been living a secret life for 45 years that she had no idea of. She's retrospectively examining all of her memories with Geoff and perhaps looking for the new meanings behind all of the things he might have said or done (or conversely, not said or done). It's like she finds out only now the missing piece of the puzzle of her husband's being, with the main problem being that she didn't even know it was missing. So what else has she missed?

I absolutely understand all of this, but my point is that I find this reaction/thoughts irrational and, to a certain extent, objectionable, and thus less sympathetic. Again, I understand WHY she feels/thinks what she does, I think it's quite realistic to how people think/behave, I just don't think it SHOULD be like that. What I find irrational about it is this: the whole "slippery slope" thing shows a real lack of insight into psychology. People compartmentalize. Just because they're secretive about one thing--especially if that one thing was a tragedy or something else very out-of-the-ordinary--isn't evidence that they're secretive in general, or that they've hidden/kept the majority of who they are from you. I'm essentially saying there shouldn't be this kind of "slippery slope" thinking. I mean, it's impossible to be with someone for 45 years and NOT know them pretty darn well. Even if there's one big thing you don't know this in no way suggests that everything else you know or think you know is wrong or suspect, or that the person is completely different from who you thought.

EDIT: I found this wonderful article by Paul Schrader (the guy who wrote Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and directed the excellent Mishima) when searching for that I Am Cuba shot in which he discusses the virtues of an unmotivated camera: https://www.filmcomment.com/article/gam ... -movement/

Loved going through this insightful piece on the development of camera movements. Will read the other sections too later. I haven't seen I Am Cuba but I'm going to add it to my list. I also feel like I need to see The Conformist, Stagecoach and Intolerance again, as well as check out that documentary on the making of L'Argent. It's sometimes easy to forget the kind of innovative vision, skill and difficulty that was required of early filmmakers in doing even basic camera movements that are effortless for an amateur filmmaker today.

Definitely make I Am Cuba a priority. I reviewed it here: http://forum.evageeks.org/post/374150/F ... -2/#374150 The plot/characters are pretty forgettable and obvious Soviet propaganda, but as pure cinema it's about as impressive as it gets.

If you forget the difficulty of operating old cameras you can always get a nice refresher by just looking at this:
http://www.jackcardiff.com/uploads/pics ... camera.jpg

Granted, that's Jack Cardiff with a technicolor camera probably from the 40s... but... geez.

[Eva Yojimbo]

You make some good points, Eva. I'm just gonna say you seem to know more about film than I know about everything I know in life put together.

still don't like Revenant though

:) You're too easily impressed. If you read a couple of David Bordwell books you'd quickly catch up with me (maybe supplemented with a few others on general aesthetic philosophy/theory). As a short cut, if you're mostly just interested in contemporary films, Bordwell's The Way Hollywood Tells It would probably make an ideal read. I haven't read that one myself (I think Rax has), but I've read enough on Bordwell to know it's probably definitive.

It's also fine that you don't like The Revenant. I'm a pretty staunch subjectivist when it comes to the arts, especially in regards to qualitative judgments. Knowledge can increase one's appreciation and may even change your tastes, but I don't think qualitative opinions get any closer to being "right" just because of that knowledge. Really, I'd be more interested in your thoughts on some of the masterpieces that are in the same "tradition" of filmmaking as The Revenant. I've mentioned Tarkovsky and he'd be a good start. His Stalker is a nice balance between "challenging" art-house fare while still being relatively accessible. Some other suggestions would be Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu or Sansho would be the best places to start), or perhaps Edward Yang (Yi Yi) for something more contemporary.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Y'all had a big party in my own thread without me.

I thought you wanted this place to be a rebirth of General Chat, no? No better spot than in your (aka, our patron's) thread. :)

I'm cool with taking the thread in that kind of super broad direction if everyone else is, I just don't want to feel like I'm remodeling the house of someone else to my own tastes when I'm only a guest. I was comfortable doing that on IMDb since it was so huge anyways*, but I'm unsure if that's appropriate on a forum that's much smaller.

I think it'd be fine as long as we keep this thread to film talk and move the OT to the appropriate forums. Really, the vast majority of the GC's were film/TV talk anyway, and it shouldn't be too hard to move the news/political/games stuff into the other forums.

Funnily enough I was just talking to my mom about this today. She was rewatching Fargo on TV for the nth time and I mentioned I never understood why it was so strongly praised over many of their other early and 90s films that range from genuinely better (Barton Fink, Big Lebowski) to just as good if not a bit better (Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona).

With Fargo, I kind of feel like I'm just watching an average crime story being executed competently. It doesn't really have the weirdness I enjoy from the Coens- even their True Grit adaptation has more of what I'm talking about.

I think the appeal of Fargo probably lies in their combination of their excellent feel for crime/noir films and their burgeoning sense of unique settings/people/characters. The people/accents/behavior are just weird enough to have a quirky appeal, but not so much that they turned off viewers. However, I do think the "crime" element is handled less imaginatively than in Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing, and for comedy I definitely think Raising Arizona and Lebowski are funnier.

On a somewhat unrelated note, you may be interested in this review of FCH's screenwriting book that takes issue with his references to Shakespeare.

That's a pretty brutal takedown and really confirms my suspicions about FCH being a bit of a Dunning-Kruger type.

[Raxivace]

The Leftovers Season 2 - lol.

[maz89]

FWIW, I tend to really like tonally and thematically ambiguous films, and I tend not to care a lot whether that ambiguity seemed intentional, or whether it's the product of its creators being really ambivalent themselves about the subject matter. I always think of WH Auden's definition of poetry: the clear expression of mixed feelings. I tend to think that art that can be read in conflicting, mutually exclusive ways is usually more interesting than art that has clearly defined themes and perspectives on its subject matter. So, in a sense, it's not so much the "jarring inconsistencies" that bother me in Birdman, it's more the fact that I just don't think Inarritu has much interesting to add to canon of metafictional commentary beyond the engrossing style/aesthetic. Although I don't recall all the nominees that year, I do remember that Birdman was one of my 2-3 favorites, so I still really liked it despite my reservations. I gave it an 8.5 IIRC.

I agree, but ambiguity works when the multiple, conflicting perspectives around the same subject are examined in some kind of depth, and presented in a way that don't feel entirely disconnected from the (showy) aesthetic. In flipping between satire and conventional drama, Inarritu dulls the sharp edges of his satire and, at the same time, never lets his characters become worth caring about. To be honest, I was kind of apathetic about Riggan's suicide, more-so when the camera (predictably) romantically sweeped across the hospital window to capture Birdman's fluttering wings. A better director, perhaps, could have melded the tonal changes more fluidly, whilst finding greater insight in the artistic process/creative struggle vs the superficial desires of artists in their thirst for fame/recognition vs the actual price of producing great art. Something akin to 8 1/2 or the previously mentioned Barton Fink.

I gave Birdman a 7.0-7.5 myself, and preferred Boyhood in that year (now, that was an 8.5).

Certainly one "can know" all the important things if their partner is willing to share them; but the "should know" implies a moral component that I simply don't agree with. If someone wants to keep parts of their life to themselves, then I think that's perfectly fine. In fact, there are even situations when it might be preferable. There are many possible reasons why Geoff kept it from Kate,

I don't disagree with the chain of thought leading to the conclusion that Geoff's intentions in keeping it a secret were far from malicious. I'm simply looking at it from Kate's perspective - it was still a shock to her. Perhaps, she and Geoff had an earlier conversation in which they discussed their past relationships - like most couples do - and Geoff, for any of the reasons you mentioned, did not bring it up? I'm not saying Geoff was wrong in keeping it to himself, but that doesn't mean Kate is being irrational for being a bit depressed when finding out about it a bit later. Relationships are complicated that way... which brings us to the main point of contention:

What I find irrational about it is this: the whole "slippery slope" thing shows a real lack of insight into psychology. People compartmentalize. Just because they're secretive about one thing--especially if that one thing was a tragedy or something else very out-of-the-ordinary--isn't evidence that they're secretive in general, or that they've hidden/kept the majority of who they are from you. I'm essentially saying there shouldn't be this kind of "slippery slope" thinking. I mean, it's impossible to be with someone for 45 years and NOT know them pretty darn well. Even if there's one big thing you don't know this in no way suggests that everything else you know or think you know is wrong or suspect, or that the person is completely different from who you thought.

Funny, because if I imagine myself to ever be in Kate's position, I reckon I would be plagued by similar kinds of insecurities and doubts, and I would re-examine every intimate moment I shared with my SO. Perhaps that's just the ("irrational") way Kate and I are wired, but I do believe that a "big thing" can truly cause you to re-examine everything else you know about a person. People may compartmentalize... so what else have they compartmentalized?

On a lighter note, Eva... I think you could be a counselor and help people look at their problems 'rationally'. If you could tell all of what you've written in your last few posts directly to Kate, trust me, she would feel a LOT better.

Definitely make I Am Cuba a priority. I reviewed it here: http://forum.evageeks.org/post/374150/F ... -2/#374150 The plot/characters are pretty forgettable and obvious Soviet propaganda, but as pure cinema it's about as impressive as it gets.

Thanks, already set on download.

If you forget the difficulty of operating old cameras you can always get a nice refresher by just looking at this:
http://www.jackcardiff.com/uploads/pics ... camera.jpg

Granted, that's Jack Cardiff with a technicolor camera probably from the 40s... but... geez.

Wow, what a beast.

[maz89]

The Leftovers Season 2 - lol.

That bad, huh?

Also, apologies for taking over this thread and making it like General Chat. This is definitely not all about Raxivace's 2017 List of Movies anymore.

[Raxivace]

The Leftovers Season 2 - lol.

That bad, huh?

It's not terrible but boy does it shit away most of what I liked about season 1.

Season 1 was primarily a character driven story that was relatively grounded except for the central premise of people disappearing- there was other stuff that could be supernatural but was also not totally outlandish to explain away "logically"- it walked a tightrope and walked it well. The whole thing kind of felt more like "art" cinema than genre TV.

Season 2 features a new setting, some new characters (Which are pretty good to be fair, save for one major exception I have some issues with since he edges dangerously close to being a "Magical Negro" stereotype), but does away with the character study focus to a plot focus straight up with cliffhangers of the week. It kind of devolves into the worst aspects of Lost. Events happen that seem impossible to happen with any way other than magic. Characters are more simplistic than before, some major ones from the first season are either majorly sidelined or whitewashed into simplicity.

Like there's a major plotline this season about whether a character has been raping their comatose wife. He says she briefly came out of her coma one night and they had consensual sex before she fell back asleep. No one believes this. The season ends with her straight up coming out of the coma, announcing they had consensual sex that night, and is now magically awake. All of the ambiguity is washed away for feel good bullshit.

Season 2 is more popular among fans and "television critics" because of course it fucking is. There are good things about it but it just feels like such a let down to me. I would still recommend season 1 to people because it works as a solid standalone miniseries, but season 2 feels designed for an entirely different type of audience. Maybe check it out if you like season 1 as much as I did, but beware that its different.

Also, apologies for taking over this thread and making it like General Chat. This is definitely not all about Raxivace's 2017 List of Movies anymore.

It's no biggie, it probably would have happened eventually anyways.

[maz89]

Season 2 is more popular among fans and "television critics" because of course it fucking is. There are good things about it but it just feels like such a let down to me. I would still recommend season 1 to people because it works as a solid standalone miniseries, but season 2 feels designed for an entirely different type of audience. Maybe check it out if you like season 1 as much as I did, but beware that its different..

That neat resolution of that comatose wife storyline isn't encouraging, and I'm surprised it otherwise has characteristics that the critics liked. Let me know how season 3 fares so I can decide if I still want to pull the trigger on this one.

[Derived Absurdity]

You make some good points, Eva. I'm just gonna say you seem to know more about film than I know about everything I know in life put together.

still don't like Revenant though

:) You're too easily impressed. If you read a couple of David Bordwell books you'd quickly catch up with me (maybe supplemented with a few others on general aesthetic philosophy/theory). As a short cut, if you're mostly just interested in contemporary films, Bordwell's The Way Hollywood Tells It would probably make an ideal read. I haven't read that one myself (I think Rax has), but I've read enough on Bordwell to know it's probably definitive.

It's also fine that you don't like The Revenant. I'm a pretty staunch subjectivist when it comes to the arts, especially in regards to qualitative judgments. Knowledge can increase one's appreciation and may even change your tastes, but I don't think qualitative opinions get any closer to being "right" just because of that knowledge. Really, I'd be more interested in your thoughts on some of the masterpieces that are in the same "tradition" of filmmaking as The Revenant. I've mentioned Tarkovsky and he'd be a good start. His Stalker is a nice balance between "challenging" art-house fare while still being relatively accessible. Some other suggestions would be Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu or Sansho would be the best places to start), or perhaps Edward Yang (Yi Yi) for something more contemporary.

I used to frequent Bordwell's website occasionally. I don't remember how I got introduced to him (it may have been from you, actually, or it may have been from me searching the Internet for some good Christopher Nolan critiques). I'll order The Way Hollywood Tells It.

I might watch The Revenant again though at some point with a more open mind after reading your analysis (although, let's just be real here, probably not, I mean... come on), I'm willing to accept that my dislike of Inarritu and his general self-serious oh-look-at-me-i'm-such-a-serious-and-important-filmmaker vibe has colored by perceptions of it. Also I dislike Leonardo DiCaprio for some reason, so that certainly didn't help.

Thanks for the suggestions. Getting into Tarkovsky dovetails nicely with my other desire to be more familiar with Soviet art and culture.

[Raxivace]

Season 2 is more popular among fans and "television critics" because of course it fucking is. There are good things about it but it just feels like such a let down to me. I would still recommend season 1 to people because it works as a solid standalone miniseries, but season 2 feels designed for an entirely different type of audience. Maybe check it out if you like season 1 as much as I did, but beware that its different..

That neat resolution of that comatose wife storyline isn't encouraging, and I'm surprised it otherwise has characteristics that the critics liked. Let me know how season 3 fares so I can decide if I still want to pull the trigger on this one.

Yeah I'll let you know how it goes. For better or worse I'm on this ride to the end.

I tend not to like mainstream television criticism in general since more often than not I feel like people writing about tv only know how to talk about narrative and even at that it seems to be only in relation to traditional narrative styles. Even the more academic writing I've looked into isn't much better. Like I read two separate books about The Wire, and I can count the number of times that there was anything related to form between the two of them on one hand.

[maz89]

Definitely make I Am Cuba a priority. I reviewed it here: http://forum.evageeks.org/post/374150/F ... -2/#374150 The plot/characters are pretty forgettable and obvious Soviet propaganda, but as pure cinema it's about as impressive as it gets.

Wow... what kind of visual sorcery is this. Throughout the film's four vignettes, the camera ascends, descends, swoons, swirls, dives, rotates, spins, and glides with a natural aplomb, possessing an almost supernatural ability to move in whichever direction it wants to in order to sustain the visual momentum, the mood, the story. The characters, the plot, the settings - these all become a playground for Kalatozov in which he can perform his hypnotic visual acrobatics. The characters are representations of the Cubans suffering under the dictatorship of Batista, be it the young woman who turns to prostitution to escape from rampant poverty, the old farmer whose livelihood is taken away and who burns down the output of his labor in a moment of disorienting madness, the young rebel whose conscience prevents him from pulling the trigger to kill the dictator but who gives up his life to fight against the system, and finally, the young father and husband who joins the resistance after tragedy hits so close to home. What ties the vignettes together are brief interludes of a female narrator ("The Voice of Cuba') who talks of the pain and suffering of the Cuban people at the hands of tyrants. The film therefore examines sociopolitical depravity as seen in the trials and tribulations experienced in the four parables, highlighting the necessity of unity and rebellion to fight evil. These themes are well-rendered even if they aren't entirely nuanced - the Americans are all dull, soul-sucking pieces of human filth and, towards the end, the ugliness of war and armed conflict is glossed over, even romanticized. Ultimately, this is a minor offence; what matters is how these vignettes are brought to life by the camera, the only 'character' that really matters.

[Raxivace]

So someone on Reddit noticed something a little odd in Rear Window.

Here's a screengrab of the moment in particular.

I can't say I've ever noticed that room flashing up like that before. I think this whole theory of a second voyeur in the narrative is a bit of a stretch, though I dunno what to make of the flash.

Any ideas?

[maz89]

^I don't have any. Seeing that Hitch was so meticulous, I'm thinking that it's unlikely that it was entirely missed in the editing room... but then, it doesn't explain why it was left there. Maybe to provoke exactly these kind of 'second voyeur' theories, eh?

[Eva Yojimbo]

Sorry for the disappearance, guys: spring cleaning for about a week, then my keyboard broke (took a few days to get a new one), and I've spent the last several days with my new headphones. Will try to reply to everything later today or tomorrow, but this is just to let everyone know I'm... errr, alive, and stuff. :)

[maz89]

Sorry for the disappearance, guys: spring cleaning for about a week, then my keyboard broke (took a few days to get a new one), and I've spent the last several days with my new headphones. Will try to reply to everything later today or tomorrow, but this is just to let everyone know I'm... errr, alive, and stuff. :)

I figured you went into hibernation like you normally do when you go back to consuming music or lit. Surprised that part of the reason was a broken keyboard. Ah, well, shit happens.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I agree, but ambiguity works when the multiple, conflicting perspectives around the same subject are examined in some kind of depth, and presented in a way that don't feel entirely disconnected from the (showy) aesthetic. In flipping between satire and conventional drama, Inarritu dulls the sharp edges of his satire and, at the same time, never lets his characters become worth caring about. To be honest, I was kind of apathetic about Riggan's suicide, more-so when the camera (predictably) romantically sweeped across the hospital window to capture Birdman's fluttering wings. A better director, perhaps, could have melded the tonal changes more fluidly, whilst finding greater insight in the artistic process/creative struggle vs the superficial desires of artists in their thirst for fame/recognition vs the actual price of producing great art. Something akin to 8 1/2 or the previously mentioned Barton Fink.

I gave Birdman a 7.0-7.5 myself, and preferred Boyhood in that year (now, that was an 8.5).

I think it's the "conflicting perspectives... examined in some kind of depth" that I thought Birdman was lacking in, more than the conflicting perspectives themselves, or them being disconnected from the aesthetic. I was also rather apathetic about the characters, but much like with The Revenant the aesthetic sucked me in enough that I was interested if not particularly sympathetic, if that makes sense. It's definitely not on the level of either 8 1/2 or Barton Fink.

I was strangely disappointed in Boyhood, which I think I gave a 7/10. I really like Linklater as a director, and I really though his career-long obsession with time would be the perfect fit for a film that involved real-life aging... but throughout the runtime I kept waiting for it to be more than it was, which was basically a charming, slice-of-life (or several-slices-of-life) drama with moderately interesting characters. Though I did like the almost Ozu-like sense of zen about the whole thing, and it has gotten better in memory (as I thought it might).

I don't disagree with the chain of thought leading to the conclusion that Geoff's intentions in keeping it a secret were far from malicious. I'm simply looking at it from Kate's perspective - it was still a shock to her. Perhaps, she and Geoff had an earlier conversation in which they discussed their past relationships - like most couples do - and Geoff, for any of the reasons you mentioned, did not bring it up? I'm not saying Geoff was wrong in keeping it to himself, but that doesn't mean Kate is being irrational for being a bit depressed when finding out about it a bit later. Relationships are complicated that way...

I think the shock and even a bit of depression is understandable, but I do think Kate takes it too far to where it becomes an obsession, where she makes it all about her without ever considering it from Geoff's perspective or realizing that it doesn't have to reflect badly on their entire relationship. It's making a mountain out of a small hill thing.

On a lighter note, Eva... I think you could be a counselor and help people look at their problems 'rationally'. If you could tell all of what you've written in your last few posts directly to Kate, trust me, she would feel a LOT better.

Haha! Thanks. I've heard that before, actually... I've also heard I'd make a good lawyer with my ability to rationally argue from a set of facts. Guess the therapist/lawyer thing would depend on whether I wanted to use my powers for good or evil.

Definitely make I Am Cuba a priority. I reviewed it here: http://forum.evageeks.org/post/374150/F ... -2/#374150 The plot/characters are pretty forgettable and obvious Soviet propaganda, but as pure cinema it's about as impressive as it gets.

Wow... what kind of visual sorcery is this. Throughout the film's four vignettes, the camera ascends, descends, swoons, swirls, dives, rotates, spins, and glides with a natural aplomb, possessing an almost supernatural ability to move in whichever direction it wants to in order to sustain the visual momentum, the mood, the story. The characters, the plot, the settings - these all become a playground for Kalatozov in which he can perform his hypnotic visual acrobatics. The characters are representations of the Cubans suffering under the dictatorship of Batista, be it the young woman who turns to prostitution to escape from rampant poverty, the old farmer whose livelihood is taken away and who burns down the output of his labor in a moment of disorienting madness, the young rebel whose conscience prevents him from pulling the trigger to kill the dictator but who gives up his life to fight against the system, and finally, the young father and husband who joins the resistance after tragedy hits so close to home. What ties the vignettes together are brief interludes of a female narrator ("The Voice of Cuba') who talks of the pain and suffering of the Cuban people at the hands of tyrants. The film therefore examines sociopolitical depravity as seen in the trials and tribulations experienced in the four parables, highlighting the necessity of unity and rebellion to fight evil. These themes are well-rendered even if they aren't entirely nuanced - the Americans are all dull, soul-sucking pieces of human filth and, towards the end, the ugliness of war and armed conflict is glossed over, even romanticized. Ultimately, this is a minor offence; what matters is how these vignettes are brought to life by the camera, the only 'character' that really matters.

Glad you saw it, and glad you were as enraptured by the visual prowess as myself. I've never seen anything quite like it it. That last line nails it hard.

Sorry for the disappearance, guys: spring cleaning for about a week, then my keyboard broke (took a few days to get a new one), and I've spent the last several days with my new headphones. Will try to reply to everything later today or tomorrow, but this is just to let everyone know I'm... errr, alive, and stuff. :)

I figured you went into hibernation like you normally do when you go back to consuming music or lit. Surprised that part of the reason was a broken keyboard. Ah, well, shit happens.

The broken keyboard thing is annoying. The only keyboard I've ever used that felt completely comfortable to me is THIS ONE, but this is like the third one I've had because the previous two broke within a few years.

[Eva Yojimbo]

You make some good points, Eva. I'm just gonna say you seem to know more about film than I know about everything I know in life put together.

still don't like Revenant though

:) You're too easily impressed. If you read a couple of David Bordwell books you'd quickly catch up with me (maybe supplemented with a few others on general aesthetic philosophy/theory). As a short cut, if you're mostly just interested in contemporary films, Bordwell's The Way Hollywood Tells It would probably make an ideal read. I haven't read that one myself (I think Rax has), but I've read enough on Bordwell to know it's probably definitive.

It's also fine that you don't like The Revenant. I'm a pretty staunch subjectivist when it comes to the arts, especially in regards to qualitative judgments. Knowledge can increase one's appreciation and may even change your tastes, but I don't think qualitative opinions get any closer to being "right" just because of that knowledge. Really, I'd be more interested in your thoughts on some of the masterpieces that are in the same "tradition" of filmmaking as The Revenant. I've mentioned Tarkovsky and he'd be a good start. His Stalker is a nice balance between "challenging" art-house fare while still being relatively accessible. Some other suggestions would be Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu or Sansho would be the best places to start), or perhaps Edward Yang (Yi Yi) for something more contemporary.

I used to frequent Bordwell's website occasionally. I don't remember how I got introduced to him (it may have been from you, actually, or it may have been from me searching the Internet for some good Christopher Nolan critiques). I'll order The Way Hollywood Tells It.

I might watch The Revenant again though at some point with a more open mind after reading your analysis (although, let's just be real here, probably not, I mean... come on), I'm willing to accept that my dislike of Inarritu and his general self-serious oh-look-at-me-i'm-such-a-serious-and-important-filmmaker vibe has colored by perceptions of it. Also I dislike Leonardo DiCaprio for some reason, so that certainly didn't help.

Thanks for the suggestions. Getting into Tarkovsky dovetails nicely with my other desire to be more familiar with Soviet art and culture.

Could've been from me as I've been pretty vocal about my Bordwell worship on IMDb. I think what I've learned from him outweighs all other scholars/critics by like 100:1 at this point.

Really, Inarritu is an amateur at the "-look-at-me-i'm-such-a-serious-and-important-filmmaker" thing and it's perhaps why it doesn't bother me about him much. I find it almost cute in comparison to the real egomaniacs out there like Lars von Trier, and von Trier is far more interesting (if maddeningly uneven) in his attempts at proving it. There's also his habits of saying hilariously bad/wrong things at press conferences, like telling everyone at Cannes (after they saw Antichrist) that they were his guests and he was the best filmmaker in the world so he didn't have to justify anything; or the whole "I'm a nazi" fiasco (which I think was an attempt at humor gone horribly wrong--he was trying to joke about his shock at finding out late in life that he was of German rather than Jewish ancestry). Inarritu has a ways to go before he can approach that level of pretentiousness. Really, if I was to sum up what I like about Inarritu it's simply that he's an ambitious filmmaker in Hollywood trying to make serious art and pulling from influences outside the typical Spielberg-Scorsese-Hitchcock mold that's dominated Hollywood. Compare to someone like PT Anderson, who's equally ambitious but who wears his obvious and thoroughly Western influences on his sleeve, I find Inarritu more interesting if not always more successful.

As for Soviet art and culture, Tarkovsky wouldn't be the best start. I've often said he was perhaps the most famous Russian filmmaker precisely because he eschewed the socio-cultural/political stuff that was so prevalent in their artistic tradition. For that purpose, Eisenstein, Vertov, Kalatazov, Dovzhenko, or Sokurov would be better choices: Battleship Potemkin is a classic and quite obvious Soviet Propaganda. I mentioned I Am Cuba elsewhere in the thread. Sokurov's Russian Ark is basically a trek through a literal and figurative museum of Russian history and culture done all in a single take. Tarkovsky, by comparison, is a poet/philosopher more concerned with metaphysics than sociology (his Andrei Rublev might be the sole example where the two co-exist to any extent).

[Eva Yojimbo]

So someone on Reddit noticed something a little odd in Rear Window.

Here's a screengrab of the moment in particular.

I can't say I've ever noticed that room flashing up like that before. I think this whole theory of a second voyeur in the narrative is a bit of a stretch, though I dunno what to make of the flash.

Any ideas?

Strangely enough, the music and birds seem to synch up with the flash: music swells, flash happens, strings hit a crescendo and birds dive in front of camera. I don't know about the "second voyeur" theory, but I don't know if all that could be just mere coincidence.

^I don't have any. Seeing that Hitch was so meticulous, I'm thinking that it's unlikely that it was entirely missed in the editing room... but then, it doesn't explain why it was left there. Maybe to provoke exactly these kind of 'second voyeur' theories, eh?

Even Homer nods, and even Hitch fails to notice ice disappearing in beverage props: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ ... 1.mov/view

[Raxivace]

I see my assassins have failed to take out Jimbo once again...

I've been mostly playing video games myself (Nothing anyone here would seem to care about, except for maybe Final Fantasy 6 and BioShock 2), and I haven't seen too many movies lately. I've been watching all of the various King Kong movies on a bit of a whim though and I found some obscure ones that I'll post a bit about once I finish through those.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I see my assassins have failed to take out Jimbo once again...

[Raxivace]

You know I couldn't have even told you that was from a James Bond movie. :(

[Eva Yojimbo]

You know I couldn't have even told you that was from a James Bond movie. :(

I got pretty obsessed with Bond back when Goldeneye (the game) came out, and my love of the game translated into me really getting into the films.

[Raxivace]

I like the Bond movies well enough (Enough to see the new movies as they come out at least), but I actually never cared for the Goldeneye game. FPS games didn't really click with me on the N64.

I'd like to go back and watch the Bonds I haven't seen but all of those movies are like two and a half hours long- makes marathoning even a few of them over a week seem excessive.

[maz89]

Guess the therapist/lawyer thing would depend on whether I wanted to use my powers for good or evil.

Glad you saw it, and glad you were as enraptured by the visual prowess as myself. I've never seen anything quite like it it. That last line nails it hard.

I think I've fallen in love with Kalatozov's visual sensibilities. I just saw The Cranes Are Flying, and while it did not feature the visual acrobatics on the scale of IAC, it was still a beautifully shot movie about a couple torn apart by war. Yeah, it was pretty much another pro-war movie with Kalatozov expressing his undying gratitude for the women that waited hopelessly for men who laid down their lives for their country, a necessary and noble sacrifice for the greater good. It's all quite moody and depressing, thanks to a great performance by Tatiana Samoilova, and what elevates the familiar script is, of course, the dynamic camerawork, particularly in some hypnotic sequences.

The broken keyboard thing is annoying. The only keyboard I've ever used that felt completely comfortable to me is THIS ONE, but this is like the third one I've had because the previous two broke within a few years.

All those wall-of-text wars take a toll on your keyboard, man. Can only explain why my mediocre five year old Logitech wireless keyboard still hasn't died on me.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I like the Bond movies well enough (Enough to see the new movies as they come out at least), but I actually never cared for the Goldeneye game. FPS games didn't really click with me on the N64.

I'd like to go back and watch the Bonds I haven't seen but all of those movies are like two and a half hours long- makes marathoning even a few of them over a week seem excessive.

I'm sure part of my Goldeneye game love was due to pretty much everyone was playing it at the time and the epic team battles we had. Then there was the challenge of beating it on 00 Agent mode, which took me forever but I finally did (last level was a real bitch). The difficulty of that took me back to my Ninja Gaiden/Contra days of throwing remotes across the room.

Bond movies are surprisingly solid most of the way through with only a few real stinkers, but a lot of good-to-excellent entries.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Glad you saw it, and glad you were as enraptured by the visual prowess as myself. I've never seen anything quite like it it. That last line nails it hard.

I think I've fallen in love with Kalatozov's visual sensibilities. I just saw The Cranes Are Flying, and while it did not feature the visual acrobatics on the scale of IAC, it was still a beautifully shot movie about a couple torn apart by war. Yeah, it was pretty much another pro-war movie with Kalatozov expressing his undying gratitude for the women that waited hopelessly for men who laid down their lives for their country, a necessary and noble sacrifice for the greater good. It's all quite moody and depressing, thanks to a great performance by Tatiana Samoilova, and what elevates the familiar script is, of course, the dynamic camerawork, particularly in some hypnotic sequences.

I was slightly disappointed with Cranes after the visual magic of Cuba, but in retrospect it was a pretty amazing film as well. I think I slightly preferred No Letter Sent to it though; pretty great (and underrated) survival film.

The broken keyboard thing is annoying. The only keyboard I've ever used that felt completely comfortable to me is THIS ONE, but this is like the third one I've had because the previous two broke within a few years.

All those wall-of-text wars take a toll on your keyboard, man. Can only explain why my mediocre five year old Logitech wireless keyboard still hasn't died on me.

I'm hoping it's just the excessive use and not the fact that these keyboards are really just unreliable pieces of shit, because I can't stand using anything else at this point.

[Raxivace]

[maz89]

^I don't have any. Seeing that Hitch was so meticulous, I'm thinking that it's unlikely that it was entirely missed in the editing room... but then, it doesn't explain why it was left there. Maybe to provoke exactly these kind of 'second voyeur' theories, eh?

Even Homer nods, and even Hitch fails to notice ice disappearing in beverage props: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ ... 1.mov/view

Dammit, now I can never un-see that.

[maz89]

I was slightly disappointed with Cranes after the visual magic of Cuba, but in retrospect it was a pretty amazing film as well. I think I slightly preferred No Letter Sent to it though; pretty great (and underrated) survival film.

Thanks, I set it on download. Anything else from him that I should make a priority to check out?

[Raxivace]

32. King Kong (1933) - It had been a long, long time since I had last seen the original King Kong, and I had an enjoyable time revisiting it. Don't have much to say about but its wonderful.

33. King Kong (1976) - This one however is bizarre. It stars Jeff Bridges as a scientist guy who sneaks aboard an oil company's ship that is seeking a strange island that may have hidden oil reserves. Bridges thinks there may be strange animal life there and hey there's Kong. From there it plays out how you might expect- the oil company captures Kong, stores him in an oil tank on a ship (Not very subtle), and put on a show with Kong in New York then ends with him eerily climbing the World Trade Center as helicopters attack him.

What makes this one weird is how strangely explicit it is. Jessica Lange is also in the movie and is the sole survivor of a shipwreck of a completely different vessel- she mentions she only survived because she chose not to watch Deepthroat with the rest of the crew. Later on people worry that Kong might rape Lange once she's been captured. It really makes me wonder why a King Kong movie needed to be this explicitly, though I guess 70's Hollywood movies aren't known for their tact or subtlety.

There's also this strange running idea with the Lange character that she's into newspaper astrological readings...and every reading she mentions ends up coming true in the film. Not sure what the idea with that is supposed to be.

34. King Kong Lives (1986) - A sequel to the 1976 film. After Kong falls from the World Trade Center, a group of scientists revive him with a mechanical heart that they must be continually monitoring. Yeah.

Some explorers find a female Kong and bring her to New York. King Kong escapes and runs around America and eventually finds her. They run off together like Bonnie and Clyde. It becomes this weird film about Kong trying to woo the female Kong, with a scene where they have a picnic and King straight up gropes her ass. I'll let you imagine this sight for yourselves. Yeah.

Eventually they get separated as the military pursues them. King Kong gets captured by unrelated rednecks in a mountainous valley somewhere, who trick Kong into getting trapped in a rock slide. The now immobile King Kong is tortured by rednecks. He eventually escapes and eats them. Yeah.

At some point Kong accidentally breaks some equipment that is vital for monitoring and maintaining his heart rate. This means his heart is about to fail him soon. He eventually does die, but the female Kong was pregnant and gives birth in what I assume is supposed to be a reference to The Son of Kong. Yeah.

What the fuck was this movie?

35. King Kong Escapes (1967) - So Japan has a bit of a history with King Kong. Before even the original Godzilla came out in 1954, there were actually TWO King Kong movies made...that are unfortunately are both now lost, probably due to World War II. Ishiro Honda then made King Kong vs. Godzilla- I didn't actually rewatch this yet, but I did watch the separate movie that Honda made after that one- the fourth Japanese Kong movie, King Kong Escapes.

In the film, the UN finds King Kong on an island, and brings him over to Japan. Some supervillain type wants to defeat Kong though...with a giant robot he has made- Mecha Kong. Kong is captured and escapes at one point, and eventually defeats Mecha Kong in combat.

It's a super campy and goofy movie, but enjoyable enough and resembles the Godzilla movies of the time a lot, unsurprisingly considering Honda directed it.

36. Majestic Prince: Genetic Awakening (2016) - Majestic Prince was a 2013 comedy mecha anime about a group of goofballs that have to learn to work together to save the world. Pretty typical for the genre, but was known for its high quality and well choreographed CGI action scenes. I don't think I've seen CGI done as well on a TV budget before or since. This movie is basically more of the same, but enjoyable enough.

37. Shane (1953) - Probably the most famous western I had yet to see. It seems super classical even for its era (Especially compared to the stuff Ford and Mann were doing that same decade)- as a gunslinger named Shane comes into a town, helps settle some local conflicts, and then eventually leaves. There's a running idea that Shane wants to retire from gunfighting and such but can't help but be drawn into it- the final shot of the movie doesn't have him riding off into the sunset but instead a dark cloudy sky. It strikes me as a fairly ominous glimpse into the future that awaits him.

It's a good film, but I kind of feel like I enjoy the stuff that riffs on it and that same basic type of western story more. Even something like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has a very similar set up, though Ford finds much more complex things to do with it.

38. Black Widow (1954) - A mystery/noir that aired on TCM yesterday. It starts off more like some kind Frank Capra love triangle type of story, until one of the women in the seeming triangle turns up dead in a dude's apartment like 30 minutes in.

I dunno, Ginger Rogers is good playing against type here, and I like all of the rest of the cast. Its shot in color for no real reason though, and rather bafflingly its in CinemaScope. For a movie that's mostly static medium shots of people standing around in apartments. It feels super stagey as a result. Not one of my favorites though the mystery is enjoyable enough to follow.