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

[Raxivace]

142. Hangman (2017) - A DTV murder mystery in the vein of films like Se7en. Two detectives and a reporter chase a killer whose murders are inspired by the classic children's game “Hangman", who leaves clues at the scene of each crime that point to the next victim.

For a DTV movie it's alright. I do think there's a genuine effort to make something interesting (Like a shot at the end of the film where the center of a spiral staircase is framed in a POV shot as if it's the extension of the barrel of a detective's gun) but most of the movie feels kind of cheaply made, and feeling like a riff of Se7en, while inevitable, doesn't do the movie a whole lot of favors. The end of the movie tries to cast some doubt on whether the real killer has been caught by the police, suggesting he either had an accomplice or has inspired a copycat of some kind- this isn't successful but I appreciate the attempt at ambiguity.

Al Pacino is here is doing his mumbly Pacino thing as a retired detective, Karl Urban (The guy that plays Bones in the Abrams Star Treks) does his best with what he's given as a detective whose wife was murdered in the past, and Brittany Snow as the reporter is alright I guess but her character is just kind of there for most of the film.

Why does Pacino keep doing these kinds of films? Not that DTV movies or B-movies can't be masterpieces, but for like 20 years it seems like Pacino only has been looking for easy projects he can kind of just sleepwalk through.

Also this was produced by Saban Films- the people behind Power Rangers of all things.

143. The High Sign (1921) - Although this was the first short Buster Keaton produced himself, it was not the first one he actually released. That honor went to the masterpiece One Week - Keaton felt The High Sign in comparison was not very good and waited a while to release it.

It's not bad. Buster plays a guy who, after running a fraudulent sharpshooter attraction, is hired to be a bodyguard for a man who owes debts to some gangsters and their hired assassins. However, Buster is also hired to BE an assassin by those gangsters and his target is even the other man who hired him so shenanigans ensue. My favorite gag is the long build up involving a police officer having his holstered pistol being replaced with a banana, only to try and pull the gun on somebody later on in the film. A criminal eats the banana, scaring the cop off, and then throws the peel to the ground. We get kind of a modern anti-gag as several people then walk over the peel without even tripping or falling.

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

I saw two that stand out for me. First one is Arrival (2016). I never thought I would cry at the end of some sci-fi movie. I must say I was deeply moved. Amy Adams, who is one of my favourite actresses, was fantastic.

I quite liked this one. I was pleasantly surprised that the twist involving Adams' character got me.

Second one is Kick-Ass (2010), a sort of unconventional superhero/action/comedy movie. I really had a great time watching it, and I loved Chloe Grace Moretz' role in it. Nick Cage was also very cool. Always have a great time watching him.

Haven't seen this one though I tend to enjoy Nic Cage.

I also loved two Linklater movies: Boyhood (2014) and Before Midnight (2013). I gave them 9/10 on imdb (Do you still rate movies there? I started doing it on a regular basis in 2014.).

I quite liked both of these. I thought Before Midnight was kind of a perspective flip on Before Sunset- when you think about, they're both essentially movies about Ethan Hawke cheating on his wife, though the context between them is so different and the big fight scene in Midnight is one of the more uncomfortable ones I've seen in an American movie in quite a while.

Boyhood I quite liked, if only for the nostalgia I have for growing up in a very similar time and place and way as the main character. I'm glad to see that movies like Moonlight are using a similar structure (Even if they're not being literally filmed over 12 years) to tell stories of other experiences that exist in this country.

There may not be much point to it any longer but I still do rate things on IMDb. Old habits die hard I guess- I just didn't have the heard to delete the IMDb app off of my phone.

I saw two very good Asian movies recently and I would like to recommend them to you in case you haven't seen them. First one is Chaser (2008), an interesting serial killer movie from Korea. Second one is The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003), a film by legendary Japanese director Takeshi Kitano. Also check out some other Kitano's movies if you haven't already. By far my favourite Kitano is his most popular film Fireworks (1997).

I have not seen either of these or any of the Zatoichi movies, believe it or not. In fact I haven't seen any of Kitano's films yet either. :( I'll be on the lookout for them.

[Lord_Lyndon]

Regarding Al Pacino: Have you seen him in Angels in America (2003)? I thought he was excellent in this. Haven't seen him in much else since 2000.
Regarding Karl Urban: He was the lead in Dredd (2012) movie. That was a fun actioner. One of my favourite action films.

[Gendo]

Karl Urban is always a fun surprise. I didn't know he was in Thor: Ragnarok until I saw his name in the end credits. That guy never looks the same twice.

[Raxivace]

Yeah I was kind of surprised it was him until I directly started comparing some pictures.

Regarding Al Pacino: Have you seen him in Angels in America (2003)? I thought he was excellent in this. Haven't seen him in much else since 2000.
Regarding Karl Urban: He was the lead in Dredd (2012) movie. That was a fun actioner. One of my favourite action films.

Haven't seen either of these. :(

The last thing I saw Pacino in was 88 Minutes, where he plays a college professor that has to figure out who is trying to kill him in 88 minutes of real time and if he doesn't he dies.

[maz89]

Hi Lyndon. Good to see a new face here.

I saw two that stand out for me. First one is Arrival (2016). I never thought I would cry at the end of some sci-fi movie. I must say I was deeply moved. Amy Adams, who is one of my favourite actresses, was fantastic.

I quite liked Arrival too, although I was left somewhat disappointed. By spelling out the end in the way that it did, the film limited its vision as a cosmic space spectacle about human's encounter with the unknown and settled instead for being about a seemingly lonely woman who develops an appreciation of her place in life. The latter movie is rousing (and I definitely enjoyed it), but is it more powerful than the former? I guess that's up to the viewer to decide. Also, the whole 'saving the world from the brink of war' subplot felt a bit out of place in a movie that had more abstract ambitions.

Still, I was hypnotized by Villeneuve's tone (I loved how he weaved in the circularity motif in the visuals - the circular hallway in the hospital, the opening sequences that also bookend the film thereby forming another 'circle', the memorable panning shot of the wooden panelling on the ceiling that resembles the floor beneath it). Max Richter's On The Nature of Daylight was also absolutely sublime.

I also loved two Linklater movies: Boyhood (2014) and Before Midnight (2013). I gave them 9/10 on imdb (Do you still rate movies there? I started doing it on a regular basis in 2014.).

Both are gems. I gave Boyhood an 8.5 and Midnight a 9.5. I love the Before trilogy, and tried to retrace the couple's steps in Vienna when I visited there last summer. Is it possible to be nostalgic for a 'past' you saw in fiction? I was.

Have you seen Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy? I recently saw it, and was captivated. It has a similar walk-and-talk strategy as that used in the Linklater films, but there's a critical 'difference' that emerges during the course of the film and it really goes to delightful, thought-provoking places with that chain of thought.

[Gendo]

I love Linklater... Boyhood, School of Rock, Bernie. I haven't seen "Before" yet... I own Sunrise and Midnight, and have been waiting to find Sunset before watching all 3.

[Raxivace]

A big part of the Before trilogy is the passage of time between the films, so you'd be fine watching Sunrise now and waiting until you actually have Sunset to watch that.

All three movies are available on Criterion now btw.

I haven't seen School of Rock in a long time but its a movie I really liked as a kid. That was part of that period where Jack Black seemed to make an effort in acting (Even if they were some goofy movies) but I dunno what's' really happened with him since then. I'd love to see him to work with someone like Linklater again.

[maz89]

School of Rock is so much fun. I've seen it a couple of times on TV and it never fails to entertain. The acting and chemistry of the cast is top notch. You're right, I can't think of any other movie in which I was as entertained by Black. Did those child actors do anything else? Anyway, it made me happy to learn later in life that Linklater was the one who had directed it.

And I second Raxi on his suggestion. The sequels might even play better if you don't watch them immediately. I don't remember if I had spaced out my viewings of Sunrise and Sunset (probably not), but I do remember thinking how cool it would have been if I had seen the 1995 original long before Sunset's release, just so I could have basked in the romantic fantasy of Sunrise a bit more (and perhaps been even more amazed by the disquieting passage of time between Sunrise and Sunset). And then Midnight happened and I got my wish.

[Gendo]

I haven't seen School of Rock in a long time but its a movie I really liked as a kid. That was part of that period where Jack Black seemed to make an effort in acting (Even if they were some goofy movies) but I dunno what's' really happened with him since then. I'd love to see him to work with someone like Linklater again.

Um, Bernie?

[Raxivace]

I haven't seen School of Rock in a long time but its a movie I really liked as a kid. That was part of that period where Jack Black seemed to make an effort in acting (Even if they were some goofy movies) but I dunno what's' really happened with him since then. I'd love to see him to work with someone like Linklater again.

Um, Bernie?

I hope he runs in 2020?

EDIT: Oh you mean the Linklater movie Bernie. I haven't seen that yet but even that is like nearly seven years old at this point.

[maz89]

Lol. I haven't seen Bernie either.

[Gendo]

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[Raxivace]

144. Why Him? (2016) - Pretty minor comedy that you can mostly predict how will play out from the trailers, though the charisma of Bryan Cranston, James Franco, and Keegan-Michael Key is fun to watch. The highlight was probably Cranston's character learning what bukake means (Don't Google that if you're at school or work).

145. Lucky Logan (2017) - I haven't seen a huge amount of Steven Soderbergh's films but this one was pretty solid. It's a heist film where Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and a surprisingly well cast Daniel Craig play three lower class North Carolinians who decide to rob a Nascar event to make ends meet. Even thought the movie is a comedy, the humor doesn't really come at the expense of the characters being poor or from the joyless hellhole that is North Carolina, but instead just from how everyone interacts together. They're actually good at what they do, so there's a Hawksian joy in watch people perform competently despite the various setbacks that come across them.

146. The Goat (1921) - I expected this to be a cage match between Buster Keaton and some random goat. Not only was that not accurate, there wasn't even a goat in the movie- my best guess is that the title is actually referring to how Keaton is used as a "scapegoat" of sorts by a criminal in the film. Its actually a very good short in its own right- two particular bits that stand out to me are the train sequence that seems to predict Keaton's later work in The General, and the scene where Keaton finds the large wanted poster with his portrait incorrectly used.

147. Psych: The Movie (2017) - Fun reunion for the TV show Psych. It's arguably less of a movie than just an extended episode of the show, but eh its what I expected and I had fun seeing the characters. Basically just for the fans.

148. From Russia With Love (1963) - Don't have a whole lot to say about this one but I really enjoyed it. The Bond franchise has never been a huge part of my life, but I like the ones I've seen and since I've seen Dr. No already I decided to just watch this one. Really felt the Hitchcock influence here, particularly with the train setting that dominated much of the second half of the film and the bit with the helicopter that recalled the cropduster in North by Northwest. I had kind of forgotten that once upon a time Connery was actually a suave presence onscreen, before he wasted his talents on bad films like the Highlander franchise.

Also someone pointed out to me a while back that the big action theme in this movie was likely an inspiration for the one in Evangelion, which is pretty cool.





EDIT: Apparently the pre-credits sequence in From Russia With Love was inspired by, of all things, Last Year At Marienbad.

[Gendo]

Ok that's awesome.. if I'd watched From Russia with Love before seeing this, I almost definitely would have noticed that right away.

I just bought Why Him, just for the actors, so I"ll be checking it out soon.

[Gendo]

LOL the comments on that Bond video!

[Raxivace]

LOL the comments on that Bond video!

LMAO I hadn't even seen the comments on the video before.

[Raxivace]

149. The Night Before (2015) - Another kind of raunchy Christmas movie in the vein of something like Why Him?. It had some decent laughs. Not a whole lot to say about this one either, though Michael Shannon was an inspired bit of casting.

150 .Goldfinger (1963, Rewatch?) - I'm not entirely sure if I'd seen Goldfinger before now, though I've certainly seen some clips of it before. I think the thing that surprised me most was by this film the level of tech that Bond uses has already skyrocketed compared to what he had in From Russia With Love. In that film, the most advanced equipment he had was a particularly tricky suitcase. In Goldfinger, his car alone is basically the Batmobile.

Goldfinger's actual plan too ended up being kind of a clever subversion of heist film plots, since his goal wasn't to steal gold of Fort Knox, but to irradiate it into worthlessness.

Last thing I want to mention is that early in the film Bond makes a jab about the Beatles, which is kind of weirdly alienating toward youth audiences of the time, especially also because George Martin produced the actual Goldfinger song and of course because Paul McCartney himself would later do the Live and Let Die theme.

I think I ultimately liked Dr. No and From Russia With Love better, but Goldfinger was a fun time.

151. Escaflowne (2000) - The 1996 anime The Vision of Escaflowne was an interesting attempt at combing medieval fantasy with mecha anime. While not the first to attempt that by any means, its high production values, strong aesthetics, and focus on shoujo elements really made it stand out even at a time when there were tons of oddball mecha anime being made. It was an interesting little series, and while it had some weird story elements in the second half (The bad guys' plan in the show, for example, involved cursing the heroes with really bad luck while their own soldiers were blessed with really good luck) it was never completely senseless and ranged between optimistic and bittersweet. In 2000, a film retelling of the series was released.

The film is fuckin' bonkers. The inquisitive fish-out-of-water-help-me-I've-woken-up-in-a-strange-fantasy-world heroine Hitomi is not the cheerful heroine of the show, but begins the movie suicidal. As in, she nearly jumps off her school's roof in the film's beginning but backs out only because she's too depressed to go through with it. The pacifistic Van of the series is nothing but in the movie, as he's a heartless murderer that rants about how he wants nothing more than to murder all of his enemies and even does so with a level of violence that would abhor his TV counterpart. Anti-villain turned anti-hero Folken of the show is just straight up a villain in the film who has murdered his parents and wants to kill his brother Van out of pure jealousy. On top of all that, the medieval European aesthetic of the show is traded for an aesthetic more directly based in medieval Japan, though it's no less gorgeous looking. Even the Escaflowne mech itself goes from being a glorified suit of armor in the show to a weird, vampire god-being that sucks the blood out of its pilot to move (And also maybe wants to destroy the world?).

I think the film struggles from having too many of the TV show characters in here. Most of the main cast is present, but at roughly 90 minutes in length it probably should have focused more on the main four or five characters and just eliminated some of the chaff that doesn't get much to do here, unfortunately (I mean they've already eliminated most of the complicated love triangles from the show already, might as well just double down on not having those parts). Or the movie could have been like an hour longer I guess. On top of that I don't really quite buy the love story between Hitomi and Van here, where I at least found it plausible in the show if only because of the sheer amount of time they spent together.

152. Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) - Pretty good.

[Gendo]

I'm a fan of Escaflowne, the show. I remember seeing the movie and just being kind of confused as to what it was trying to do.

[Raxivace]

I'm a fan of Escaflowne, the show. I remember seeing the movie and just being kind of confused as to what it was trying to do.

Yeah I don't really know why they thought the movie would work being so much darker and only being 90 minutes long. This maybe could have worked as a self-contained reboot thing if they had done a full OVA a la Gundam Unicorn with multiple 60-90 minute episodes, but as it is now its just strange more than anything.

The TV series is still good at least. I forgot to mention one of the writers on the TV version was Shoji Kawamori of Macross fame, but he seems to be completely absent from the movie from what I can tell. Perhaps that explains the differences to some extent.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Hey Rax/maz: anything you've seen in my absence you'd like me to respond to? Keep in mind I haven't watched any movies from this year, and lots I haven't seen from last year.

I'm a fan of Escaflowne, the show. I remember seeing the movie and just being kind of confused as to what it was trying to do.

Ditto.

If you want to see a great anime series made into a batshit crazy movie, try Revolutionary Girl Utena if you haven't.

[Gendo]

If you want to see a great anime series made into a batshit crazy movie, try Revolutionary Girl Utena if you haven't.

I own the entire series including the movie. I've only seen the first few episodes so far; hopefully I'll get around to seeing it all soon.

[Raxivace]

Hey Rax/maz: anything you've seen in my absence you'd like me to respond to? Keep in mind I haven't watched any movies from this year, and lots I haven't seen from last year.

Off of the top of my head:

-Contempt
-From Russia With Love (Particularly what you think of the possible influence on Eva's music)
-Any of the Buster Keaton shorts I've been posting about recently
-The entire Friday the 13th franchise.
-What a possible combination of all of the above would even look like.

If you want to see a great anime series made into a batshit crazy movie, try Revolutionary Girl Utena if you haven't.

That's on my list of stuff to get to eventually.

[Eva Yojimbo]

If you want to see a great anime series made into a batshit crazy movie, try Revolutionary Girl Utena if you haven't.

I own the entire series including the movie. I've only seen the first few episodes so far; hopefully I'll get around to seeing it all soon.

Keep me updated on what you think. I saw it all twice I liked it so much. I can see where the "shojo Evangelion" descriptions came from. My only complaint was that, being three seasons, there was definitely some filler and the MOTW format got rather monotonous.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Hey Rax/maz: anything you've seen in my absence you'd like me to respond to? Keep in mind I haven't watched any movies from this year, and lots I haven't seen from last year.

Off of the top of my head:

-Contempt
-From Russia With Love (Particularly what you think of the possible influence on Eva's music)
-Any of the Buster Keaton shorts I've been posting about recently
-The entire Friday the 13th franchise.
-What a possible combination of all of the above would even look like.

If you want to see a great anime series made into a batshit crazy movie, try Revolutionary Girl Utena if you haven't.

That's on my list of stuff to get to eventually.

Here's what I wrote on Contempt ~7 years ago in response to someone's negative review in which they said: "There is about 45 minutes of a couple moping around in a near empty apartment arguing about nothing in particular. This film is the biggest bunch of nothing I've ever seen. Will someone please educate me as to why anyone thinks this nonsense has any merit or worth?"

Contempt is basically Godard's version of James Joyce's Ulysses; that is a modernist piece of art that is both interested in the archetypes of the classic mythology (especially those of Homer) including the heroes and their women and how they compare and contrast with modern life. In the film, Piccoli's screenwriter is befuddled as to why his wife (Bardot) is suddenly rejecting him. While there's not an absolute answers there are certain hints that link to the very film the characters are filming (an adaptation of The Odyssey). Bardot frequently but silently requests for Piccoli to save her from the producer. Instead he sends her off with him, seemingly oblivious to her own wishes just so he can please his boss. This is a world where the Homeric heroes no longer exist, but neither does the Homeric relationships between men and nature. But, for me, the brilliance of the film can be summed up in an article that can be found online by Terrence Rafferty: "The greatness of "Contempt" is that Mr. Godard is not, finally, nostalgic for the Homeric harmony Lang speaks of. He knows that ship has sailed. In this picture everything, ancient or modern, "real" or "unreal," has its own stunned dignity, and the movie wants us to see it all as beautiful - as its people, tragically, cannot. Even early '60s furniture. "Contempt" is about men and women rendered graceless by their times, but the movie, substituting rigorous aesthetics for the novel's psychology, shows us where they (and we) went wrong and achieves an extraordinary grace."

This segues into the fact that Contempt is a beautifully and striking shot film. For me, it's Godard's best because of its marriage between the classical and the radical which seems to perfectly gel with the themes themselves. But as the above said there is a grace and beauty given to even the coldness of the modern society in which the characters live. The primary reds, blues, and whites of their apartment. It's also present in Godard's elegant framing. Considering the metaphorical scene in which Godard frames his two protagonists at the far left and right ends of the screen, separated by what is a hideous red (IIRC) wall. And this is modulated with Godard's experiments, like the conversation that's shot with a lamp separating the two speakers. Instead of cutting with shot/reverse shot, Godard tracks the camera between them, using the lighting of the lamp as visual punctuation marks to the dialogue. These kind of details are ALL over the film.

You also have this commentary about the movie industry and how the artistic/expressive voices of directors are drowned out by those of pompous producers that only care about their films making money. I recommend looking up and reading about metafiction especially in the mode of Brecht and how Godard essentially appropriated that theory to film. Basically, metafiction is fiction that discusses the devices of fiction and becomes self-aware of its existence as fiction. It's a movie that reminds us that we're watching a movie; something that's constructed, not real, fantasy, and yet still related to reality in some way. Godard does this explicitly when he repeatedly shows us scenes of films being filmed; not to mention the beginning in which the movie camera turns its gaze on us. But this is especially ironic in a film which was as close as Godard ever got to a big-budget, Hollywood produced film and is echoed in the idea that he got a major star with Bardot. To quote a review from AMG: "t was Godard's first foray into big-budget filmmaking and his first use of a star of the magnitude of Brigitte Bardot. The producers, worried about making their money back, began to request that the director make changes in the movie. Of course, someone as independent and radical as Godard did not take kindly to this. So, when Ponti asked him why he did not have a nude scene exploiting the popularity of Bardot, Godard gave him a nude scene (the one that opens the movie). Of course, he undermines it by making Bardot question whether her husband (Michel Piccoli) likes her different body parts. This change not only makes the scene more about insecurity than sexuality but also interrogates the idea of what makes a nude scene and why somebody would be drawn to it."

Contempt is honestly one of my favorite films because I think it's just about film's most profound statement about the clash and co-existence of the classic world - that Ithaca that's visible only in our projected vision of collective memory which, IMO, that genius final shot tries to capture in its vast emptiness - and the modern world which has seemingly lost all of these things and yet the one in which we still very much live and exist. The film, perhaps, isn't entertaining in the traditional sense, but there is a definite reason it's considered one of the best ever.

From Russia With Love is my favorite Bond. I was obsessed with the series in my early teens and saw it before NGE or NBNW. The music similarity you posted was definitely striking!

Probably too long since I've seen the Keaton shorts to say much besides I immensely enjoyed most all of them. One Week and The Boat were the undisputed masterpieces among them. I also remember loving Neighbors, The Playhouse, and Cops.

My cousin and I both got obsessed with horror movies for a while as kids and Friday the 13th in particular. I only remember bits and pieces of them now, like the lighting resurrection in VI, the boat/lake scene in I (and II?), the psychic/telekinetic girl in VII, the whole boat setting in VIII, the heart eating scene in Goes to Hell. I think the sillier/crazier they got, the more my cousin and I enjoyed them. We even wrote some fanfiction to try to out-scare the each other (though we got more into that with Tales from the Crypt).

[maz89]

Hey Rax/maz: anything you've seen in my absence you'd like me to respond to? Keep in mind I haven't watched any movies from this year, and lots I haven't seen from last year.

Haven't been watching too many films lately, actually (I don't have much time on my hands nowadays and I can only manage to put on TV episodes because those tend to be shorter... and less taxing). I did see Mamoru Oshii's Avalon and Hayne's I'm Not There a while ago. I loved the former for its ostentatiously moody and otherworldly idleness mixed with a film noir vibe. The latter was perplexing, and I had gone in knowing it would be about Dylan in a more metaphoric sense but that bit of knowledge didn't quite help (although the movie was an interesting take, in its own right). What *would* have helped was if I had gone in knowing more about Dylan, the man himself. One other takeaway is that I need to listen to more of the man's music (beyond his more known songs) because there were some great ones in there I hadn't heard before.

[Eva Yojimbo]

^ My "Film Ratings" list informs me I have indeed seen Avalon and even rated it quite highly (8/10), but I'll be damned if I can't remember a thing about it. :/ I do remember I'm Not There a little better, but I'm something of a Dylan fanatic (he's by far my favorite pop music artist and really one of my heroes). The film was interesting but I don't think it worked too well as a whole. Still, it's one of those "interesting failures" that I often say I tend to like more than "uninteresting successes."

One other takeaway is that I need to listen to more of the man's music (beyond his more known songs) because there were some great ones in there I hadn't heard before.

For the love of all that is maz89, YES! Pretty much everything from Freewheelin' to John Wesley Harding is essential, and most of them are flat-out masterpieces. After that, you have to jump around a bit:

-Blood on the Tracks is also essential and one of the greatest albums ever
-The Basement Tapes are legendary for basically inventing the Americana genre, but they're best heard in Vol. 11 of the Bootleg Series: The Basement Tapes Complete (original album was a hodgepodge kinda-best-of).
-Desire is also excellent, but not quite a masterpiece

Then Dylan basically becomes the worst artist of the 80s. Seriously, it's unfathomable what happened to him during this decade. Some of those albums are flat-out embarrassingly bad. That said, two of his best songs are from that decade: Every Grain of Sand and Brownsville Girl. Many of the best songs from this decade ended up as outtakes on the Bootleg series (Blind Willie McTell and Foot of Pride especially).

-Oh Mercy is the album that rights the ship. It's not a masterpiece, but compared to the rest of his 80s stuff it is. Two great ones especially from here: Man in the Long Black Coat and Most of the Time.

Dylan's true re-emergence as a great artist starts with Time Out of Mind in '97 and extends through to Tempest in '12, a pretty incredibly 15 year run of albums that are close in quality to his '60s masterpieces. Elvis Costello flat-out called Time Out of Mind Dylan's best album (I don't agree, but I can understand why he's think that; it's awesome).

Nowadays Dylan is bizarrely doing crooner covers in a style that's a mix between a roadhouse blues band and classic big band sound. It's... odd. I still haven't decided what I think of it.

Of course, that just covers his regular discography; Dylan's greatness extends far beyond that, and the Bootleg Series contains much of his best stuff. Vol. 1-3 is essential and contains a wealth of his best material. Vol. 4 is essential as it's one of the most legendary concerts ever (the infamous "Judas!" concert), and vol. 5 is nearly as good as it's Dylan at his live best. After that there's still a lot of quality but less are essential; the last essential Bootleg is Vol. 11 "The Complete Basement Tapes" that I mentioned above.

[Raxivace]

Hey thanks for posting that Contempt review. I liked the movie a lot already, but it really gives me something to think about the next time I give it a look.

From Russia With Love is my favorite Bond. I was obsessed with the series in my early teens and saw it before NGE or NBNW. The music similarity you posted was definitely striking!

As I've been going through these early Bonds From Russia With Love has been my favorite so far, though I dunno if its my favorite overall. As fun as I think the gadgets and stuff are, the relatively restrained approach of FRWL I think works really well.

The potential Eva link is hilarious to me because that means there's a straight line from Last Year at Marienbad to Bond to Eva.

Probably too long since I've seen the Keaton shorts to say much besides I immensely enjoyed most all of them. One Week and The Boat were the undisputed masterpieces among them. I also remember loving Neighbors, The Playhouse, and Cops.

One Week is great, but The Boat didn't really land for me. The Goat on the other hand I think is my other favorite of these shorts so far.

I've been watching these Keatons alongside an excellent podcast called Talking Buster Keaton which dedicates an entire episode to each short film. They've been getting a lot of cool guests too, from different writers and academics to Leonard Maltin to even Teller of all people.

I highly recommend this podcast for anyone looking for something to listen to or looking for an introduction to Keaton in general.

My cousin and I both got obsessed with horror movies for a while as kids and Friday the 13th in particular. I only remember bits and pieces of them now, like the lighting resurrection in VI, the boat/lake scene in I (and II?), the psychic/telekinetic girl in VII, the whole boat setting in VIII, the heart eating scene in Goes to Hell. I think the sillier/crazier they got, the more my cousin and I enjoyed them. We even wrote some fanfiction to try to out-scare the each other (though we got more into that with Tales from the Crypt).

The last ten minutes or so of part one are repeated verbatim in part two IIRC.

I watched through the entire franchise earlier this year, and I kind of had similar thoughts about them. The goofier they got, the more I seemed to enjoy them (Until terrible 2009 film anyways). Parts IV and VI are tied for my favorites (With Part IV being the best of the "classical" formula IMO), with Jason X being in third place for me.

In retrospect I'm a little surprised that even back into the IMDb days we never seemed to have a good discussion about the slasher genre. With Friday the 13th I wanted to see where I was in regards to Ebert's argument about them just being nihilistic violence, being regressive and misogynistic etc., but I found the films to be more ambivalent toward that topic than I think Ebert and others were giving them credit for (Especially when the films start getting really goofy).

[Eva Yojimbo]

Hey thanks for posting that Contempt review. I liked the movie a lot already, but it really gives me something to think about the next time I give it a look.

No problem, I wish I had ever gotten around to writing a proper review as it really is one of my favorite films. You mentioned that it was perhaps Godard's most "normal" movie, and it's often bothered me that my favorite Godard is perhaps his most normal! But in saying that I also realize that my two other 10/10s of Godard, Pierrot le fou and Weekend, are perhaps his two most radical from the 60s, and that I also adore his 80s/90s stuff which is by leaps-and-bounds more abnormal than his 60s work!

One reason I think Contempt works so well is that the certain commercial demands made Godard really focus his style, narrative and themes. There's still a lot of experimentation cinematically but it seems extremely purposeful, meaning it's there to serve the themes/narrative rather than just being there to fuck around with film conventions. I also think the relatively toned-down experimentation helps balance the classic VS modern theme that the whole film is about. Plus, I also think it helped that it was largely a film about Godard's best subject: filmmaking itself. Godard could get a bit overwrought even for me when he got too immersed in politics and philosophy, but filmmaking was the subject he was really most at home in.

Speaking of Godard and filmmaking, have you ever seen Truffaut's Day for Night? You really should make it a priority. Not necessarily because it's a great film (I was kinda meh, but many consider it one of his masterpieces), but because that was the film that caused the rift/enmity between Godard and Truffaut because of their differing philosophies towards filmmaking. Godard wrote a scathing critique about it, Truffaut fired back in epic fashion, and things were never the same again. I weighed in a bit with my review of the film (which I don't think I've ever posted on here/IMDb).

From Russia With Love is my favorite Bond. I was obsessed with the series in my early teens and saw it before NGE or NBNW. The music similarity you posted was definitely striking!

As I've been going through these early Bonds From Russia With Love has been my favorite so far, though I dunno if its my favorite overall. As fun as I think the gadgets and stuff are, the relatively restrained approach of FRWL I think works really well.

The potential Eva link is hilarious to me because that means there's a straight line from Last Year at Marienbad to Bond to Eva.

While there are definitely some later Bonds I like about as much (Spy Who Loved Me comes first to mind), FRWL has always been the one that stuck most in my mind for whatever reason. Maybe because it was back when Bond was just as much suspense/thriller as opposed to a gimmicky action/adventure vehicle.

What's the Marienbad link?

Probably too long since I've seen the Keaton shorts to say much besides I immensely enjoyed most all of them. One Week and The Boat were the undisputed masterpieces among them. I also remember loving Neighbors, The Playhouse, and Cops.

One Week is great, but The Boat didn't really land for me. The Goat on the other hand I think is my other favorite of these shorts so far.

I've been watching these Keatons alongside an excellent podcast called Talking Buster Keaton which dedicates an entire episode to each short film. They've been getting a lot of cool guests too, from different writers and academics to Leonard Maltin to even Teller of all people.

I highly recommend this podcast for anyone looking for something to listen to or looking for an introduction to Keaton in general.

My Ratings list tells me I rated The Goat a 7.5 but I don't remember it; what was it about again? I love The Boat and One Week for similar reasons: basically showing Buster's masterful use of large-scale props that he brought to its zenith in The General.

That podcast looks great. Will definitely keep it in mind when I get around to going back through his films. Have you seen all of Buster's features? Most all of them are great.

My cousin and I both got obsessed with horror movies for a while as kids and Friday the 13th in particular. I only remember bits and pieces of them now, like the lighting resurrection in VI, the boat/lake scene in I (and II?), the psychic/telekinetic girl in VII, the whole boat setting in VIII, the heart eating scene in Goes to Hell. I think the sillier/crazier they got, the more my cousin and I enjoyed them. We even wrote some fanfiction to try to out-scare the each other (though we got more into that with Tales from the Crypt).

The last ten minutes or so of part one are repeated verbatim in part two IIRC.

I watched through the entire franchise earlier this year, and I kind of had similar thoughts about them. The goofier they got, the more I seemed to enjoy them (Until terrible 2009 film anyways). Parts IV and VI are tied for my favorites (With Part IV being the best of the "classical" formula IMO), with Jason X being in third place for me.

In retrospect I'm a little surprised that even back into the IMDb days we never seemed to have a good discussion about the slasher genre. With Friday the 13th I wanted to see where I was in regards to Ebert's argument about them just being nihilistic violence, being regressive and misogynistic etc., but I found the films to be more ambivalent toward that topic than I think Ebert and others were giving them credit for (Especially when the films start getting really goofy).

For whatever reason I don't have much of a memory of II-IV. I mostly only remember I as it's been on TV a lot and I'd occasionally catch bits and pieces of it.

I wasn't aware of Ebert's article about the genre. I'll have to look it up. All I knew as a kid was that I liked being scared and watching people getting gruesomely murdered. Same thing that drew me to the Mortal Kombat games. Proof that small humans can be just as nuts as the large variety.

[Raxivace]

No problem, I wish I had ever gotten around to writing a proper review as it really is one of my favorite films. You mentioned that it was perhaps Godard's most "normal" movie, and it's often bothered me that my favorite Godard is perhaps his most normal! But in saying that I also realize that my two other 10/10s of Godard, Pierrot le fou and Weekend, are perhaps his two most radical from the 60s, and that I also adore his 80s/90s stuff which is by leaps-and-bounds more abnormal than his 60s work!

One reason I think Contempt works so well is that the certain commercial demands made Godard really focus his style, narrative and themes. There's still a lot of experimentation cinematically but it seems extremely purposeful, meaning it's there to serve the themes/narrative rather than just being there to fuck around with film conventions. I also think the relatively toned-down experimentation helps balance the classic VS modern theme that the whole film is about. Plus, I also think it helped that it was largely a film about Godard's best subject: filmmaking itself. Godard could get a bit overwrought even for me when he got too immersed in politics and philosophy, but filmmaking was the subject he was really most at home in.

Yeah I found myself the last few times I've watched a Godard being surprised at how normal they seem, though IIRC the last one I had watched before making this thread was Histoire(s) du Cinema and uh most things look normal compared to that lol.

Agreed with your thoughts about the balance in Contempt. The one criticism I have about it is that Godard didn't magically cure Lang's blindness and force him to actually make an Odyssey adaptation.

Speaking of Godard and filmmaking, have you ever seen Truffaut's Day for Night? You really should make it a priority. Not necessarily because it's a great film (I was kinda meh, but many consider it one of his masterpieces), but because that was the film that caused the rift/enmity between Godard and Truffaut because of their differing philosophies towards filmmaking. Godard wrote a scathing critique about it, Truffaut fired back in epic fashion, and things were never the same again. I weighed in a bit with my review of the film (which I don't think I've ever posted on here/IMDb).

Haven't seen Day For Night yet. I had it downloaded at one point but Truffaut has never quite captured me as a filmmaker even though I liked The 400 Blows and Jules & Jim (I've also seen Shoot the Piano Player twice but somehow I remember nearly nothing about it). At some point I'll go back to Truffaut, but Godard is the French New Wave figure that has more of my interest right now, whereas Truffaut's best work IMO is honestly the Hitchcock book/tapes.

I have some familiarity with the Godard/Truffaut feud. Where do you stand on that? I think Godard just comes out of it looking like an ass, though Truffaut's savage quip about Godard being the "Ursula Andress of militancy" was brutal lmao.

What's the Marienbad link?

The opening section with the dude in a Bond mask running around a garden with statues was directly inspired by Marienbad of all things. I feel like I could have guessed something like North by Northwest being an influence on Bond, but Marienbad really surprised me to hear about.

That podcast looks great. Will definitely keep it in mind when I get around to going back through his films. Have you seen all of Buster's features? Most all of them are great.

I've seen most of his features except Battling Butler, College, Cameraman, and Spite Marriage. I'm assuming this podcast will move onto the features after they're done with the shorts, so I've just been waiting it out a bit and enjoying the shorts in the meantime.

One thing that's really surprised me about these shorts is how often Keaton is using variations of "It's all a dream" until Sherlock Jr. where he perfects it. From what I can tell he doesn't start doing these stories until after The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had been released, though I'm not sure if Keaton ever had actually seen it himself.

The Goat has Buster being mistaken for a criminal and on the run from the police and such. I thought it was good anyways.

I wasn't aware of Ebert's article about the genre. I'll have to look it up. All I knew as a kid was that I liked being scared and watching people getting gruesomely murdered. Same thing that drew me to the Mortal Kombat games. Proof that small humans can be just as nuts as the large variety.

The most famous example probably isn't a specific essay but instead an episode he did with Siskel on their TV show where they really dug into it.





Really echoes some of that stuff Ebert would say about Lynch's Blue Velvet in his infamous and misguided review of that film.

Neither of these hurt my respect for Ebert or anything, but I do think he missed the mark here, to an extent at least.

[Raxivace]

153. The Boat (1921) - Don't have much to add on this but it didn't really work for me. Not sure why.

154. The Paleface (1922) - Keaton plays a butterfly catcher of all things that stumbles upon a conflict between oil tycoons and a group of Native Americans. I think it's sort of a western in the same way some of his later work is (Our Hospitality, Go West, The General), though like those films its doesn't quite have all the traits we associate with the genre even as early as films like John Ford's Stagecoach. Paleface, for example, seems to be set contemporaneously to when it was made- none of the intentional evoking of the past and myth we're more used to seeing.

It's arguably racist and also a little patronizing since it has an Avatar-ish plot of Keaton becoming accepted by the Native Americans and also their leader and then leading a battle against the Oil barrons, but I'm a little more forgiving of that in a film from 1922 than one from 2009.

155. Colossal (2016) - You would think the Timecrimes director doing something similar to Evangelion might make for an interesting film. Unfortunately you end up with something that isn't that interesting as a movie about domestic abuse, or as a kaiju vs. robot movie, or a kaiju vs. robot as a visualization of the struggles of domestic abuse movie. It just doesn't have anything interesting to say about why asshole dudes that put on “nice guy" façades exist- apparently they've always just been assholes, which in an era of President Trump is far too simplistic of an explanation.

The story follows Anne Hathaway returning to her hometown after things go sour with her boyfriend. She meets an old friend in town, Oscar, who offers her a job at his bar. Oscar turns out to be jealous of her success (That she doesn't have?) or something. Also Anne Hathaway finds out that when she and/or Oscar steps into a certain public park at 8:05 AM it causes a giant monster form of herself and a giant robot version of Oscar to be projected in Seoul. Oscar becomes an abusive shithead, except he was always an abusive shithead because ????? And apparently Anne Hathaway always knew but just forgot that this dude was a shithead because ????

Instead of enhancing the drama the way the Angel battles of Evangelion enhance the drama of that show do, we end up with a bunch of nameless people half a world away from the neighborhood Hathaway lives in being terrorized and getting killed- it even is featured in the opening scene of the movie but none of our main characters seem to really care that much about Seoul specifically so why have this plot point at all? Apparently nobody in the whole damn world noticed that these projected forms of theirs' are literally just copies of mass produced children's toys as well too, which makes everyone just seem kind of dumb when a halfassed plot point is the monster and the robot becoming these cult like figures.

It's been kind of funny to see how many critics online are tripping over themselves to say how “original" or “unique" it is to use giant monsters fighting robots to visualize domestic disputes is. The truth is that it's anything but original; it makes up a lot of works in this genre (To varying degrees of success). Forget being as good as Evangelion, this isn't as good as fuckin' Brain Powerd. Yoshiyuki Tomino's bad show was at least coherent in its awful ideology, something Nacho Vigalondo seems to have failed at despite once making a film as wonderful as Timecrimes.

156. Thunderball (1965) - Bond has to find two atomic bombs before they can be detonated. I feel like the Bond films have basically slided into their formula at this point so I don't have a whole lot to say about this one, other than the jetpack being cool and the extended underwater shootout battle sequence toward the film's end with like a dozen people on both sides was a bold choice that I don't think was too effective.

157. Casino Royale (1954) - So most people remember Casino Royale with Daniel Craig from about a decade ago. Fewer people remember the parody movie from 1967 that featured people like Orson Welles and Woody Allen. Even fewer people remember the made for TV adaptation of Casino Royale from the 1954.

Fucking Barry Nelson of all people plays Bond (You may remember him as Stuart Ullman from Kubrick's The Shining). Nelson's Bond, the first screen Bond period from what I can tell, is purely American (He's even affectionately called “Jimmy" by multiple characters.) Nelson seems to play him more in the vein of a film noir detective kind of hero, which is actually pretty fitting in a lot of ways as a choice even if Nelson himself isn't the best casting in the world.

The villain is played, rather appropriately, by Peter Lorre.

This was all a part of a television called Climax!, which specialized in doing suspense stories and the like. Casino Royale was their third episode ever- their first episode ever was an adaptation of The Long Goodbye, with (If the internet is to be believed) Dick Powell reprising the role of Phillip Marlowe (Meaning that he actually beat Robert Mitchum to playing Chandler's detective twice by about twenty years, contrary to popular belief). Unfortunately it seems that this and most episodes of Climax! are now lost- what I wouldn't pay to see this version of The Long Goodbye. We're lucky that Casino Royale is one of the few episodes we do have, though even this was a lost film for several decades.
These episodes were in color too, though the print of Casino Royale that exists now is black and white from a negative. It at least adds to the kind of noir-ish elements this proto-Eon Productions film has, giving a decent look at another direction the Bond franchise might have taken had it not become the big blockbuster franchise we think of it being now.

These episodes being performed live make it more like a stage play in some ways, but it still kind of works even with Bond.

158. It Happened On 5th Avenue (1947) - Pretty solid Christmas comedy. All the stuff in here about hidden identity and so on made me think of Shakespeare, like those bits in Henry V where he's disguised or something. Really stands strong in contrast to recent Christmas movies I've seen, like Why Him? and The Night Before- not that I disliked those films, but as light of a comedy as It Happened On 5th Avenue it still seems like it juggles larger casts better, thematically stronger, and a little more humanistic. Just the magic of classical Hollywood (Particularly for non-auteur films) at its best, I guess.

159. The Room (2003, Rewatch) - Oh, hai Mark.

[maz89]

One other takeaway is that I need to listen to more of the man's music (beyond his more known songs) because there were some great ones in there I hadn't heard before.

For the love of all that is maz89, YES! Pretty much everything from Freewheelin' to John Wesley Harding is essential, and most of them are flat-out masterpieces. After that, you have to jump around a bit:

-Blood on the Tracks is also essential and one of the greatest albums ever
-The Basement Tapes are legendary for basically inventing the Americana genre, but they're best heard in Vol. 11 of the Bootleg Series: The Basement Tapes Complete (original album was a hodgepodge kinda-best-of).
-Desire is also excellent, but not quite a masterpiece

Then Dylan basically becomes the worst artist of the 80s. Seriously, it's unfathomable what happened to him during this decade. Some of those albums are flat-out embarrassingly bad. That said, two of his best songs are from that decade: Every Grain of Sand and Brownsville Girl. Many of the best songs from this decade ended up as outtakes on the Bootleg series (Blind Willie McTell and Foot of Pride especially).

-Oh Mercy is the album that rights the ship. It's not a masterpiece, but compared to the rest of his 80s stuff it is. Two great ones especially from here: Man in the Long Black Coat and Most of the Time.

Dylan's true re-emergence as a great artist starts with Time Out of Mind in '97 and extends through to Tempest in '12, a pretty incredibly 15 year run of albums that are close in quality to his '60s masterpieces. Elvis Costello flat-out called Time Out of Mind Dylan's best album (I don't agree, but I can understand why he's think that; it's awesome).

Nowadays Dylan is bizarrely doing crooner covers in a style that's a mix between a roadhouse blues band and classic big band sound. It's... odd. I still haven't decided what I think of it.

Of course, that just covers his regular discography; Dylan's greatness extends far beyond that, and the Bootleg Series contains much of his best stuff. Vol. 1-3 is essential and contains a wealth of his best material. Vol. 4 is essential as it's one of the most legendary concerts ever (the infamous "Judas!" concert), and vol. 5 is nearly as good as it's Dylan at his live best. After that there's still a lot of quality but less are essential; the last essential Bootleg is Vol. 11 "The Complete Basement Tapes" that I mentioned above.

Thanks for this detailed write up! I had been meaning to talk to you about where to start with Dylan and this post certainly does the trick.

Anyway, it's a shame that the discussion in this thread is gearing up just as I'm about to go on a one month hiatus. (Fortunately, for a good reason.) I'll show my face around these parts towards the end of Jan/early Feb. Talk to you all soon!

[Raxivace]

Ah that's a shame. We'll see you around when you get back.

[Raxivace]

Also I'll make a new thread for 2018 once this year is up. I need ideas for a dopey reference to include in the title- at IMDb I used Gundam references a lot, but I was thinking of doing something different this time.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I have some familiarity with the Godard/Truffaut feud. Where do you stand on that?

Close to my bedtime (yes, I'm a night-owl) so I'll get to the rest tomorrow, but for now I'll post my Day for Night Review, which doesn't contain any relevant spoilers and discusses the Godard/Truffaut feud:

Day for Night (Francois Truffaut) - 6.5/10

If every Truffaut film was a love letter to film itself, Day for Night is his love letter to film-making. It follows the production of an old-fashioned film called Meet Pamela from beginning to end. Truffaut himself plays the director, long-time star Jean-Pierre Leaud is the male star, Alphonse, Jacqueline Bisset the female star, Julie, while Jean-Pierre Aumont and Valentina Cortesse and many others play supporting roles. It's less of a plot and more of an episodic mish-mash of classic filmmaking anecdotes: the on-set love-affairs, the breakdown of a past-her-prime actress, the death of an actor, the uncooperative animal, etc.

Truffaut strikes an off-kilter, ambivalent tone that's somewhere between sentimentally celebratory of film's magic, and satirically demythologizing about the process that creates that magic. He also seems unsure of whether the type of filming it depicts—namely the studio-bound style of classic French (and American) cinema—is worth celebrating or saving. He likewise ambiguously poses questions about film's value in relation to life, with dozens of quotable lines: “I'd dump a guy for a film, but never a film for a guy." “Movies move along like trains in the night, and people like us are only happy in our work."

In an age before the prevalence of making-of documentaries (like those on DVD extras), I'm sure this film was extra-fascinating for people who had no idea how films were made: how they made snow, or how you orchestrated large crowd scenes, or moved a camera over a swimming pool, or lit a scene with only a candle. It's certainly arguable that these scenes of the mechanics of filmmaking are far more interesting than any of the characters, drama, or even humor.

Of course, none of this seems revelatory now, and the film lacks the snap, bite, wit, and depth of Truffaut's best. Godard out-right called it a lie in a famous letter exchange that turned their friendship into a lifelong enmity. Godard's own masterpiece about filmmaking, Contempt, was far more concerned about the insidious (as he saw them) social structures behind the industry of filmmaking, and he felt that by ignoring this aspect (as well as portraying the “director" as a naïve, chaste individual) Truffaut was still hiding the larger, more important truths behind the filmmaking process.

In a sense, I think Godard was right, but the difference between the two monolithic auteurs is perhaps more fascinating and illuminating than picking sides. When Truffaut depicts his “character's" child-self in a dream stealing 8x10 promotional photos of Citizen Kane outside a theater, he's essentially telling us that he's the same child that knelt at the altar of film. Godard was probably once the same child, but his disillusionment burrowed deeper than Truffaut's (whose only disillusionment was about the process), and it shows in his rejection of all things “classical" about cinema, and his embrace of a variety of experimental techniques (even after he returned to fiction in the 80s).

Whose side you're on will depend on whether you're someone like Truffaut, for whom film doesn't need rescuing from its traditions, and for whom a filmmaker's responsibility is to integrate his work into that tradition; or Godard, for whom those traditions have been corrupted by Capitalistic greed and consumer, populist demand that only reinforces the corruption, and for whom film is an artist's sanctuary in which to “speak truth to power" (as it were). I'm somewhere in between myself, sympathizing with Truffaut's sentimental love of tradition, but likewise with Godard's more singular artistic vision. However, on the merits of each's films about filmmaking (Contempt and Day for Night), I think Godard is the clear winner.

BTW, I'm similarly ambivalent about Truffaut: loved The 400 Blows, liked (didn't love) Jules & Jim and Shoot the Piano Player, and haven't really cared for anything since with one major exception: Two English Girls. It's not only by far my favorite Truffaut, but one of my favorite films, period. One of the most painterly, gorgeous films ever. I wrote a pretty epic review where I praise the shit out of it. I can see why it was a favorite of Scorsese's.

[Eva Yojimbo]

For the res:

Yeah I found myself the last few times I've watched a Godard being surprised at how normal they seem, though IIRC the last one I had watched before making this thread was Histoire(s) du Cinema and uh most things look normal compared to that lol.

I think it was after I saw Éloge de l'amour that I realized how surprisingly normal the pre-Vertov Group films were by contrast. In retrospect you can kinda see the break happen with Weekend, with that film acting like an anarchic apocalypse for the entire notion of traditional filmmaking.

I've seen most of his features except Battling Butler, College, Cameraman, and Spite Marriage. I'm assuming this podcast will move onto the features after they're done with the shorts, so I've just been waiting it out a bit and enjoying the shorts in the meantime.

One thing that's really surprised me about these shorts is how often Keaton is using variations of "It's all a dream" until Sherlock Jr. where he perfects it. From what I can tell he doesn't start doing these stories until after The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had been released, though I'm not sure if Keaton ever had actually seen it himself.

With the exception of Cameraman you've seen all the great ones then, though the other three are still quite charming.

Interesting about the prevalence in dream sequences happening after Caligari. It wouldn't surprise me if Buster had seen it, or perhaps he just intuitively made the connection between dreams and cinema.

The most famous example probably isn't a specific essay but instead an episode he did with Siskel on their TV show where they really dug into it.

Really echoes some of that stuff Ebert would say about Lynch's Blue Velvet in his infamous and misguided review of that film.

Neither of these hurt my respect for Ebert or anything, but I do think he missed the mark here, to an extent at least.

Thanks for the links; I'll have to watch them later. I always thought his BV review came out of some paternal feelings he had for Isabella Rossellini.

155. Colossal (2016) - ...Apparently nobody in the whole damn world noticed that these projected forms of theirs' are literally just copies of mass produced children's toys as well too,

Sounds vaguely like Paranoia Agent's ending.

[Eva Yojimbo]

Thanks for this detailed write up! I had been meaning to talk to you about where to start with Dylan and this post certainly does the trick.

Anyway, it's a shame that the discussion in this thread is gearing up just as I'm about to go on a one month hiatus. (Fortunately, for a good reason.) I'll show my face around these parts towards the end of Jan/early Feb. Talk to you all soon!

No problem, and enjoy the hiatus! (just try not to make it ~half-a-year like I did!)

[Raxivace]

In a sense, I think Godard was right, but the difference between the two monolithic auteurs is perhaps more fascinating and illuminating than picking sides.

In terms of like, their actual aesthetic differences this what I tend to feel even if I personally find Godard more interesting. Dialectics, I suppose, is more interesting than subscribing to dogma.

My objections to Godard's argument tend to be more in how he made it. Too much in the way of unprovoked personal attacks for my taste.

I think it was after I saw Éloge de l'amour that I realized how surprisingly normal the pre-Vertov Group films were by contrast. In retrospect you can kinda see the break happen with Weekend, with that film acting like an anarchic apocalypse for the entire notion of traditional filmmaking.

I'm not quite to Weekend yet (It seems my next one is A Married Woman, and then Made in U.S.A. after that and so on) but I remember your posts about his 70's films and while I'm committed to watching them I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

I'm real curious about Weekend since it seems to be a real love it or hate it film based on the reputation, even by Godard standards.

Thanks for the links; I'll have to watch them later. I always thought his BV review came out of some paternal feelings he had for Isabella Rossellini.

I think Ebert is well-meaning here but yeah. Will be curious to know what you think of that episode.

Interesting about the prevalence in dream sequences happening after Caligari. It wouldn't surprise me if Buster had seen it, or perhaps he just intuitively made the connection between dreams and cinema.

It's certainly possible. We might be too far removed historically now to ever get a real answer one way or another.

Sounds vaguely like Paranoia Agent's ending.

Kind of, though I don't think its anywhere near as good as Paranoia Agent. I don't think Kon was ever quite this straightforward and blunt.

[Raxivace]

I've done it. Yesterday, I had the oddest double feature of all time.

160. A Very Murray Christmas (2015) - For what it is it's decent enough, Murray sings Christmas tunes better than I expect. The cameos are fun, with Chris Rock's unexpected appearance making me chuckle the most.

Also damn, Sofia Coppola sure likes showing off attractive women in her movies. Not that I'm complaining, but unless I've just completely missed it people don't seem to mention it much (Though people seem to think she objectified Collin Farrell in her remake of The Beguiled, though I personally didn't feel that to be the case in that film). It's even here in the musical number at the end of Murray Christmas of all things.

161. Touki Bouki (1973) - So I got the first two volumes of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project from Criterion for Christmas. I'm a little ashamed to say that I haven't seen films from most of the countries represented in these two boxsets before, though for the first time in a long time I've been able to watch a film without any real expectations about what they'll be like.

Touki Bouki was the first film in these boxsets (Representing the country of Senegal), and ostensibly is the story of a couple trying to leave on a roadtrip to Dakar and then ultimately find a way to travel to France. I say “ostensibly" because I kind of stopped paying attention to the subtitles after a while and just got absorbed by the score (Writer Richard Porton describes it as a combination of western pop songs, African drums, and avant-garde Jazz) and visuals. Director Djibril Diop Mambety has a very classical style and times though that makes the moments where he breaks away from that to break the 180 degree rule or use candid angles or even just let his camera roll on its side in an odd way I can't quite say I've seen before all the more striking.

Some of this seems to be influence from the French New Wave (Pierrot le Fou popped into my head at times, particularly during a visit to a beach in one scene), but at times I'm reminded more of someone like Herzog (Particular Aguirre's ship among the treetops) as vaguely supernatural elements are included in a style that almost feels like documentary naturalism at times. I suppose it's kind of contradictory in a way, sort of like how even the basic story of the film is simultaneously about leaving Senegal while simultaneously showing many different facets of life there (A fact pointed out in one of the blu-ray special features). Touki Bouki was Mambety's debut feature, though it sure as hell doesn't feel like the work of some thoughtless amateur.

“Poetic" feels like an overused word to describe films these days but it feels appropriate here.

I won't pretend I'm even close to qualified to really talk about Touki Bouki any further, but it's worth a look and only like 90 minutes long.
The only other thing I'll add is that several live animals have their throat slit and bleed out onscreen, so uh don't check this out if you're queasy at all.

[Eva Yojimbo]

In a sense, I think Godard was right, but the difference between the two monolithic auteurs is perhaps more fascinating and illuminating than picking sides.

In terms of like, their actual aesthetic differences this what I tend to feel even if I personally find Godard more interesting. Dialectics, I suppose, is more interesting than subscribing to dogma.

My objections to Godard's argument tend to be more in how he made it. Too much in the way of unprovoked personal attacks for my taste.

I'm absolutely in agreement that Godard's aesthetics are far more interesting. With the exception of Two English Girls and The 400 Blows, I rarely find Truffaut more than charming/clever/witty, but I can understand why what he does would appeal to those for whom Godard's experiments are a bit too much. I also agree that how Godard made the argument made him look like an ass, but I think that's a cautionary tale of what dogma does to people in general where you start to put your ideologies above people and feelings.

I think it was after I saw Éloge de l'amour that I realized how surprisingly normal the pre-Vertov Group films were by contrast. In retrospect you can kinda see the break happen with Weekend, with that film acting like an anarchic apocalypse for the entire notion of traditional filmmaking.

I'm not quite to Weekend yet (It seems my next one is A Married Woman, and then Made in U.S.A. after that and so on) but I remember your posts about his 70's films and while I'm committed to watching them I can't say I'm looking forward to it.

I'm real curious about Weekend since it seems to be a real love it or hate it film based on the reputation, even by Godard standards.

I'll be interested to see what you think of these films too. Even though I didn't get through all the Vertov/70s stuff, there was still a lot of interesting stuff in there, but nothing I can say I really enjoyed. Tout va bien and Numéro deux have stuck with me the most. Weekend is just insanity, and while I understand the controversy for me it was mostly just good anarchic fun. Almost like Godard said "fuck it" and decided to throw all the rules and tradition into a shredder and out popped Weekend.

Thanks for the links; I'll have to watch them later. I always thought his BV review came out of some paternal feelings he had for Isabella Rossellini.

I think Ebert is well-meaning here but yeah. Will be curious to know what you think of that episode.

Rereading the BV article, I also think Ebert's biggest disconnect with BV was that the satire clashed too much with the brutal realism. It's been too long since I've seen it to really comment too deeply, but I think that film would've been simply too much without the satire and dark humor.

161. Touki Bouki (1973) - So I got the first two volumes of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project from Criterion for Christmas...

I've got these sets too. Seen all from the first but haven't dug into the second yet (though from the second I'd already seen the Weera film). I don't remember a lot from Touki Bouki but from what I do I pretty much agree with your assessment.Something about it vaguely reminded me of Black Orpheus, perhaps the combination of surrealism and gritty realism that's set in a very specific place and time. TBH, with the exception of A River Called Titas, most of those films haven't stuck with me a lot.

[Eva Yojimbo]

I haven't seen School of Rock in a long time but its a movie I really liked as a kid. That was part of that period where Jack Black seemed to make an effort in acting (Even if they were some goofy movies) but I dunno what's' really happened with him since then. I'd love to see him to work with someone like Linklater again.

Um, Bernie?

I hope he runs in 2020?

EDIT: Oh you mean the Linklater movie Bernie.

BTW, and apropos of nothing, this little exchange was hilarious!

[Raxivace]

BTW I've gone back to watching Nadia. I'm about halfway through it, though I'm coming up on the portion of the show that Anno wasn't involved with that's supposed to be really bad...

While not as good as Eva is, Nadia still has some kind of neat story beats, especially for an anime of this time period. Like even the "Team Rocket" trio of this show are actually allowed to like, be distinct characters and are allowed their only little beats even if they're still used for comedic gags a lot.

[Raxivace]

162. Redes (1936) - Film two from the World Cinema Boxset. From Mexico, Redes is the combined attempt of several artists (Including director Fred Zinnemann, who would go on to direct the American western High Noon) to make a socialist propaganda film about fisherman rising up to create better working conditions. You get a result where the actual aesthetic is kind of neorealistic, though none of the actors are particularly great and the story is a little thin at only an hour in length. Still, its an interesting as a bit of history.

163. You Only Live Twice (1967) - Bond's adventure in Japan. I actually kind of liked how this kind of starts off relatively toned down compared to Thunderball, though once you get some of the goofier stuff (Bond piloting a helicopter, another helicopter that saves Bond from a car chase with a fucking giant magnet to drop a car into the ocean, the army of ninjas) it was pretty fun. The whole plot point where Bond needed to be disguised as an Asian man to hide from Spectre agents was kind of weird though- I don't think it's even necessarily racist or anything as much as a weird narrative choice to include since it's still very clearly Sean Connery you're looking at onscreen.

Also Roald Dahl of all people did the screenplay, what the heck.
-------
Stranger Things Season 1 - Yeah so in another thread I mentioned I'm sick of how we've had like 20 years now of 80's nostalgia in film and television. It's not that I particularly hate 80's films (In fact I quite enjoy a lot of them), but throwbacks to the 80's specifically feel kind of overdone to me at this point. I wasn't planning on watching Stranger Things as a result, but because I received the first season as a Christmas gift I made an effort to sit down and watch through it.

It's a good show, but not a great one. The story follows a fictional Indiana town in 1983 where a small boy has disappeared one night. The boy's friends try to find him, but instead find a strange girl who seems to have psychic powers of some kind and is escaping some kind of shadowy government agency. The story then goes into how the missing boy, the girl, and a bunch of other stuff that is revealed is all connected. The general visual style is stronger than I expected, though there are times when the editing feels like it just has cuts to have cuts for no real reason.

I appreciate that Stranger Things doesn't revel in the dumb kind of irony that bad films like Kung Fury do, and as a pastiche of the works of Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, George Lucas, John Carpenter, John Hughes, Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, a bit of Ridley Scott etc. its successful at combing those influences into a coherent whole in a way I don't think a film like Super 8 is. It would just be nice if it had any kind of perspective, any at all, on any of those artists or the 80's or whatever to temper the uncritical and very conservative approach to nostalgia a show like this promotes. Like Spielberg is great, but perhaps it needed someone like Todd Haynes or David Lynch (The less surreal aspects of his work) or if we're really insane someone like Gregg Araki in its DNA as well.

[Raxivace]

164. The Last Broadcast (1998) - I snuck one last movie in on 2017, and it was pretty appropriately named one too!

Unfortunately its a piece of shit, and kind of ends my movie watching year on a sour note. It's a mockumentary that's sort of a proto-The Blair Witch Project, though the gimmick here is that the "found footage" has been edited into a true crime documentary about the mysterious deaths of a film crew searching for the Jersey Devil. It starts off well enough and kind of interesting, until the big dumb twist with like five minutes to go reveals that the fuckin' documentary filmmaker himself is the killer. Fuck this unmotivated twist, its dumb from an artistic stand point, the character has no motive to do this, and it violates Knox's 7th Commandment and probably one of S.S. Van Dine's shitty ass rules too.

Man fuck 2017 and good riddance.

[Gendo]

150 .Goldfinger (1963, Rewatch?) - I'm not entirely sure if I'd seen Goldfinger before now, though I've certainly seen some clips of it before. I think the thing that surprised me most was by this film the level of tech that Bond uses has already skyrocketed compared to what he had in From Russia With Love. In that film, the most advanced equipment he had was a particularly tricky suitcase. In Goldfinger, his car alone is basically the Batmobile.

Goldfinger's actual plan too ended up being kind of a clever subversion of heist film plots, since his goal wasn't to steal gold of Fort Knox, but to irradiate it into worthlessness.

Last thing I want to mention is that early in the film Bond makes a jab about the Beatles, which is kind of weirdly alienating toward youth audiences of the time, especially also because George Martin produced the actual Goldfinger song and of course because Paul McCartney himself would later do the Live and Let Die theme.

I think I ultimately liked Dr. No and From Russia With Love better, but Goldfinger was a fun time.

Woah, this matches up with my review and thoughts almost point-by-point, except I didn't think about the Beatles thing.

[Gendo]

Also someone pointed out to me a while back that the big action theme in this movie was likely an inspiration for the one in Evangelion, which is pretty cool.

Oh crazy! I didn't notice this in From Russia with Love, but the same exact music was used in the final battle of Thunderball. And throughout the whole battle I kept trying to figure out why the music sounded so familiar. Quite clearly it's because of Eva. Dunno how I missed it in Russia.

[Raxivace]

Wow this thread is old now. It's like I blinked and years and years passed...

Yeah the EVA connection is one of those things that's very bizarre once you first learn about it. Though curiously, all the Bond films that Anno cites as an influence on himself are from the Roger Moore era and not the Connery one.

[Gendo]

Also Roald Dahl of all people did the screenplay, what the heck.

Yeah that was nuts. He only wrote 2 screen plays total. The other being Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was also an Ian Fleming book.

Also yeah I should have mentioned that the whole disguising himself as Japanese was super weird. It didn't factor into the plot whatsoever; at no point did he interact with anyone that needed to think he was Japanese. And pretending to be married was weird enough; but they did an actual wedding ceremony with his new wife?? Why? What possible purpose did actually having the wedding ceremony serve? Everyone watching them get married knew who he really was.

[Raxivace]

Yeah the more I've sit on that over the years the more I don't really understand what they were going for with that. If you just want an excuse for Bond to have an adventure in Japan there are much easier ways to do that, but that whole pretend angle is so strange.