Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Cinema at the End of the World Edition

[ProstheticConscience]

Split Second

with Rutger Hauer, Kim Cattral, and various British people.

1992 non-budget version of dystopian 2008 London. It's underwater due to global warming, forcing the cops to drive around everywhere in jeeps through knee-deep water (everyone remember that?). Hauer is hardboiled police detective *cough* Harley Stone, all leather trenchcoat wreathed in cigar smoke and bulging-eyed intensity. He's on the trail of a possibly supernatural serial killer who killed his partner years ago, and he's the kind of movie cop who can get suspended, punch a captain in the face, wave his impossibly large gun around wherever he wants and get away with it. He's stuck with straight-laced newbie Dick Durkin (and it took me several tries to remember his name wasn't Dirk Diggler), his ex-partner's ex-wife (Cattral) shows up to be the damsel in distress, and they all risk peril in Harley's apartment, which could easily be featured in a Hoarders episode. Seriously, there are pigeons randomly fluttering around. People keep dying horribly, Stone keeps littering and not eating properly, and (You're serious? That's the name we're going with?) Dick Durkin finds his inner badass. General stupefaction happens.

Wow. Just...wow. Definitely in the so bad it's good genre...but I have no interest whatsoever in seeing it ever again. Special effects reminiscent of an old Kolchak episode. Logic nowhere in sight. Mashes together several police procedural/action/horror/future dystopia tropes more or less randomly. Plot? What's that? If you asked anyone in the movie about it, they'd probably deny ever having heard of it. If Rutger Hauer was still alive, I'm sure he'd punch you in the face for even mentioning it. 2021 Nicholas Cage would've been perfect for the role; no doubt he's trying to hatch a plan to go back in time to take over production as we speak. Evil villain is basically Venom wearing sunglasses.

I have no idea why it's called Split Second. Or why it was made. Oh, and bafflingly, the guy who played Dick Durkin was actually married to the actress who played Skylar White on Breaking Bad for like twenty years. Remember that as you watch this.

On Prime and youtube. Weirdest hour and half you'll ever have.

I can't even come up with a suitable quip for the pic. It was that bizarre.

 

[OzzyFan]

Blue Bayou (2021)
3.10 out of 4stars

"As a Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make a life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past as he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home."
This movie is either going to blow you away emotionally or feel overly melodramatic, I am part of the former crowd and given the audience movie ratings, the vast majority seem to be in agreement with me. I feel it earns every emotion it generates and deals with numerous serious true to life ethical dilemmas and events with almost complete realism and expression. There are some powerful scenes in this movie that deal with heavy meaningful subject matter, and they never feel forced or impractical. And when I say that, I am talking about this movie going beyond just talking about and putting a face to the "fine print" "non-sensical" US immigration laws, which extend way beyond their initial creation purposes. Themes of belonging/rejection, forgiveness, morality, family, subsequent chances, poverty, peace, one's non-present past(I think I worded that correctly), foster/estranged parenting, and even life itself are covered. Not to mention the acting is top notch at bringing this story to life.

The Evil Dead (1981)
3.25 out of 4stars

"Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons."
The low budget gory horror/dark comedy that put Raimi on the map and oh what fun it is to ride and see play out. It definitely delivers on it's promise of over the top "adolescent nightmare" fuel in the most NC-17 rated way possible. Can something be scary and darkly funny at the same time? The answer is yes. I know very little about the behind the camerawork, but some of the "tricks" and "methods" used in this that I learned of afterward were fun tid bits of information. The imagination going on here in many facets is fascinating, especially considering the tools available. If I wanted to nitpick on things that don't matter when a film brings what it brings like this does, I could but I won't. Definitely worthy of it's cult classic reputation though, what an excellent result of a film. My favorite of the trio for sure given it's rawness and last half of the film's material.

The Evil Dead 2 (1987)
3.00 out of 4stars

"The lone survivor of an onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits holes up in a cabin with a group of strangers while the demons continue their attack."
Plot sound familiar to the first one? Well, that's because it is and it isn't. It's essentially Evil Dead 1 with a more thorough script, an extra side story, almost entirely new characters, better special effects, new visual horror surprises/"sight gags", and almost entirely the exact same setting. It's good, it's fun, it delivers on it's promise, albeit with most sequels, it's missing the freshness/magic/traits-qualities that made the first one what it was.

Army of Darkness (1992)
2.50 out of 4stars
"A sardonic hardware store clerk is accidentally transported to 1300 A.D., where he must retrieve the Necronomicon and battle an army of the dead so he can return home."

Yep. The last step in this trilogy was an action adventure horror comedy. This is much more blatantly comedic and much less 'horrific' than the previous installments and has a completely different vibe. It's fine in it's own right for what it is, an over the top horror action adventure comedy that is often funny and good weird and purposely campy. That said, it suffers a lot for numerous reasons. There are obvious and indirect factors that account for this, and one obvious as previously stated is it's comparison and succession to the previous 2 films. The other major factors that did hurt this include bigger budget, universal studios/producer limitations/demands (as evidence by the 15mins longer directors cut that includes an alternate ending/reshoots, forced title change, Universal wanting a PG-13 rating and settling for R even after the original submission got an NC-17 rating, and that probably doesn't come close to covering everything), too much CGI, and desert like setting/shooting circumstances. Altogether, sounds like there was a lot of issues in the creation of this movie.

Eh. Don't take my word for it. As I tried to convey, others might like it a lot more. According to the review sites, it's right up a lot of people's alleys. It just wasn't up mine, and I score very subjectively. FWIW, I didn't like any of Romero's trilogy, especially the last two, and you loved them, so you might just want to ignore my opinion.

Edit: On the other hand, definitely take my word for it with Out of Death. Ignore my opinion of that at your own peril.

Thanks. It's also getting a lot of blasted to mediocre reviews since it's release. Prisoners of the Ghostland might be something I wait till it's free to see.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Evil Dead (1981)
3.25 out of 4stars

"Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons."
The low budget gory horror/dark comedy that put Raimi on the map and oh what fun it is to ride and see play out. It definitely delivers on it's promise of over the top "adolescent nightmare" fuel in the most NC-17 rated way possible. Can something be scary and darkly funny at the same time? The answer is yes. I know very little about the behind the camerawork, but some of the "tricks" and "methods" used in this that I learned of afterward were fun tid bits of information. The imagination going on here in many facets is fascinating, especially considering the tools available. If I wanted to nitpick on things that don't matter when a film brings what it brings like this does, I could but I won't. Definitely worthy of it's cult classic reputation though, what an excellent result of a film. My favorite of the trio for sure given it's rawness and last half of the film's material.

The Evil Dead 2 (1987)
3.00 out of 4stars

"The lone survivor of an onslaught of flesh-possessing spirits holes up in a cabin with a group of strangers while the demons continue their attack."
Plot sound familiar to the first one? Well, that's because it is and it isn't. It's essentially Evil Dead 1 with a more thorough script, an extra side story, almost entirely new characters, better special effects, new visual horror surprises/"sight gags", and almost entirely the exact same setting. It's good, it's fun, it delivers on it's promise, albeit with most sequels, it's missing the freshness/magic/traits-qualities that made the first one what it was.

Army of Darkness (1992)
2.50 out of 4stars
"A sardonic hardware store clerk is accidentally transported to 1300 A.D., where he must retrieve the Necronomicon and battle an army of the dead so he can return home."

Yep. The last step in this trilogy was an action adventure horror comedy. This is much more blatantly comedic and much less 'horrific' than the previous installments and has a completely different vibe. It's fine in it's own right for what it is, an over the top horror action adventure comedy that is often funny and good weird and purposely campy. That said, it suffers a lot for numerous reasons. There are obvious and indirect factors that account for this, and one obvious as previously stated is it's comparison and succession to the previous 2 films. The other major factors that did hurt this include bigger budget, universal studios/producer limitations/demands (as evidence by the 15mins longer directors cut that includes an alternate ending/reshoots, forced title change, Universal wanting a PG-13 rating and settling for R even after the original submission got an NC-17 rating, and that probably doesn't come close to covering everything), too much CGI, and desert like setting/shooting circumstances. Altogether, sounds like there was a lot of issues in the creation of this movie.

The comedic crescendo of this trilogy remains mind boggling to me, but it works in a weird way. If you haven't seen Ash vs Evil Dead, you're good to go now - I just went through it for the second time, there's a lot of real funny stuff, but it's even dumber than the third film.

 

[kihei]

The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021) Directed by Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and four others 7B

The Year of the Everlasting Storm is an anthology film consisting of seven short films by seven different directors from around the world. The film's purpose is an interesting one, to respond to our jumbled feelings and nagging frustrations concerning the year and a half we have collectively just experienced as a result of the Covid crisis. Almost by definiton, anthology films are of varying quality and interest, with some segments being demonstrably better than others. This collection has a pretty high batting average. The first two segments are masterpieces, both having to do with Covid's effect on home life. Life directed by Iran's warm, playful Jafar Panahi is a wonderful vignette about an old school grandma come for a visit who is not impressed by the family house pet, a three-foot iguana (plus tail) named Iggy who is something of a charmer actually. Break Away by Singapore's Anthony Chen is a poignant, piercing study of a family breakdown focusing on a frustrated mother and an inept father slowly and sadly growing further and further apart. The anthology ends with Night Colonies, a brief film by Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethkul about an assorstment of very different bugs flying around neon lights or running around unmade beds. The metaphorical implications are rich but open-ended: do the bugs represent our place in the universe?; the creatures who will survive us?; the meaningless of existence? It's an odd little work for sure, but somehow it nontheless seemed to me to be a very appropriate ending to the anthology. The remaining entries consist of a good little horror movie about transportiing a dead body; an attempt by a father to reunite with his three children (which really doesn't fit the rest of the collection); a brief documentary on cyber security and Pegasus spyware; and a new grandmother plotting a way to break quarantine. It has been a hellish period of world history for just about everybody and The Year of the Everlasting Storm does a good job of creatively responding to a perplexing and existence-altering time.

subtitles and English


Best of '21 so far

1. The Cloud in Her Room, Zheng, China
2. Red Moon Tide, Patino, Spain
3. Undine, Penzold, Germany
4. The Year of the Everlasting Storm, Panahi, et al, various countries
5. Identifying Features, Valadez, Mexico
6. Manor House, Puiu, Romania
7. The Dig, Stone, UK

 

[Chairman Maouth]

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

2 1/2 hours of utter shite.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Took a little break from the gialli and watched these:

Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (Tarantino, 2003/2004) - Lots of splendid imagery, clever narrative tricks, and empty allusions (an interextual feast, but with little payoff). Like some of the lesser Greenaway films, it feels like the director has a lot more fun with the material than the spectators, but it's still a very ambitious project, with pretty good results. 8/10

Long Shot (Levine, 2019) - Damn I hate Seth Rogen. This film manages to be funny in a few moments (smiley funny, not laugh out loud funny), but this guy is too much to bear. 3/10

Doctor Sleep (Flanagan, 2019) - I liked The Haunting of Hill House, but otherwise I'm not a big fan of Flanagan. He's more of a doer than an artist, and that often bugs me. Here he does more than ok on a suicidal project (I mean, it was impossible to follow Kubrick into this). It doesn't have the atmosphere, the style or the signature of The Shining, it's nowhere close in terms of complexity or efficiency (none of that oh so effective uncanniness that made the original a real scary horror film), but it's an engaging enough story, well told even if never really surprising, even with the cliché bad guys cult that long for immortality. The film is pretty ballsy and that's a plus, and even if some of the allusions to the original were eye-rolling dumb (the set for the interview... why?), the recreation of the Overlook Hotel was really impressive. I guess I missed the place, and I guess it was a fun enough ride - just don't question the logic of that story too much, I don't think it would hold on too well. 5/10

 

[Osprey]

Better Off Dead (1985) - 6/10

An average teen with a talent for drawing (John Cusack) challenges a local bully to a sporting competition in order to win a girl in this Savage Steve Holland romantic comedy. I was very familiar with the VHS cover (a closeup of Cusack looking over his sunglasses), but I don't think that I'd ever actually seen the movie, for some reason. Well, part of the reason is probably that I find John Cusack pretty bland and lacking in personality compared to Matthew Broderick, Michael J. Fox and other actors who made similar movies in the 80s. Fortunately, here, he has Booger from Revenge of the Nerds to somewhat make up for it. I don't even know the actor's name. He's just always been "Booger from Revenge of the Nerds" to me. My favorite line was when he said, with all seriousness, "Look, I've been going to this high school for 7 years. I'm no dummy." A lot of other attempts at humor weren't so funny, but it was all good-natured and at least "smile funny," to borrow from Pranzo. It's a very formulaic 80s movie, right down to the theme of pursuing the dream girl while overlooking the sweet, plain girl (you'll never guess which one he ends up with!), but it's a pleasant and nostalgic comedy. I enjoyed it.

One Crazy Summer (1986) - 6/10

An average teen with a talent for drawing (John Cusack) challenges a local bully to a sporting competition in order to win a girl in this Savage Steve Holland romantic comedy. No, I didn't make a mistake. It's virtually the same plot, the same actor and the same writer/director as the previous movie... which was a success, so I guess make it over again the following year, right? At least it's a little different, taking place around Nantucket and the water (instead of school and ski slopes), a setting clearly inspired by Jaws and even parodying it at a few points. I didn't realize when I started it that I saw it multiple times when I was younger. It was fun to re-discover something that I liked when I was young. In addition to the other similarities to Better Off Dead, it brings back "Booger from Revenge of the Nerds," though his character is a lot mellower and smarter in this one. Taking his place as the "crazy friend" (and compensation for Cusack's lack of personality) is Bobcat Goldthwait, who's a riot and almost steals the film. The highlight is probably when he puts on a Godzilla costume and accidentally causes mayhem while stumbling about, frantic to get the costume off. The humor is a little dumber in this one, yet, ironically, I laughed and smiled more. That may be because I'd seen it before and the jokes were ones that I'd laughed at before... or it could just be because Goldthwait is hilarious. Regardless, I enjoyed it, even if it was a re-hash.

 

[Chili]

The Hurricane -1937

Paradise for a young couple on a South sea island...and then an incident in a bar lands the man in a colonial style prison where his attempts to escape add years to his 6 month sentence. The highlight of the film is the hurricane (or cyclone), frighteningly real. The actors looked believebly terrorized as they struggle with the wind and water. Good film available on Youtube.

 

[Pink Mist]

Vertigo (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Ok, so about a decade ago I did what every young man does at some point in their life: I got into a hobby to impress a girl. I was dating someone who was casually into film, so in order to impress her I decided to REALLY get into film. Around this time, Sight and Sound released their greatest films of all time list (so I guess this was 9 years ago) so it was the perfect guide to begin my film odyssey. No idea how I knew about Sight and Sound at the time, but it may have been because of the media that Vertigo replaced Citizen Kane as the top film in their list for the first time ever. Naturally I started off with Vertigo in my quest to become pretentious and annoying about film. This is to say Vertigo is a landmark film for me in that it is probably the first film I watched when I wanted to get ~ serious ~ about film. There was a lot of pressure for this film, I mean it was declared the Greatest Film of All Time and it had the weight of all my young and naïve expectations of what the Greatest Film of All Time should be upon it. To Vertigo’s credit it held up to the pressure, and ever since I’ve been a film fan. While my love with that girl didn’t last, my love for film is still strong. Now, I don’t think Vertigo is the Greatest Film of All Time – I don’t even think it’s Hitchcock’s best (that would be Rear Window) – but it is a damn fine film and I have no complaints with its place in the film canon. It is a near perfect film, with gorgeous use of colours and atmosphere, loads of tension and suspense, and all-time great performances by James Stewart and Kim Novak. I’ll always have a soft spot for this film.

 

[Osprey]

Naturally I started off with Vertigo in my quest to become pretentious and annoying about film.

I had to briefly stop reading here to hit the Like button. I wish that I could tell you that your quest was successful, though. Sorry. Keep working towards that goal, though, and I'm sure that you'll get there.

 

[Pink Mist]

Moby Dick (1956) directed by John Huston

Ishmael (Richard Basehart), a young man seeking adventure, enlists on a whaling ship led by Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck), an authoritative captain obsessed with killing and getting revenge on the white whale who stole his leg. I have not read the novel so I cannot compare how it is to Melville’s work, but as a film it works well. Huston uses a muted colour palette to help establish the 19th century setting which gives the viewer the feeling that they are watching a story told by an old sailor, which of course we are, since it is also narrated by Basehart’s Ishmael character. I thought Peck was an odd choice for Captain Ahab, especially when Orson Welles is also in the film briefly as a preacher and who would seem like a natural choice for Ahab, but Peck does well enough in the roll as the obsessive captain, though he’s kind of hammy. The film is perfectly paced and its two hours flies by and the special effects have aged well I think for the most part. Kind of surprised there hasn’t been a big budget remake of Moby Dick recently because I think it is prime material for one.

 

[Rabid Ranger]

Watched three movies recently, all of which I enjoyed:

* Dial M For Murder-my favorite Hitchcock film. Easy 9.5/10 for me. The half a point deduction is due to the fact the villain should have won

* Ordinary-this is one crazy movie. 8/10. Villain was a bit of a cartoon

* The Aviator-great portrait of Howard Hughes and old Hollywood not to mention the aviation industry. 9/10

 

[Osprey]

The Hurricane -1937

Paradise for a young couple on a South sea island...and then an incident in a bar lands the man in a colonial style prison where his attempts to escape add years to his 6 month sentence. The highlight of the film is the hurricane (or cyclone), frighteningly real. The actors looked believebly terrorized as they struggle with the wind and water. Good film available on Youtube.

I just finished this and... wow. It takes a long time to get to the action, but what a payoff. It's amazing that the climax is 84 years old and still way more intense than any amount of CGI water would be in a similar modern movie. I'm not sure that the movie before that aged as well, though. We're supposed to feel that a great injustice is being done to the lead character, but I just kept thinking how stupid he was and agreeing with the heartless villain that the fool made his bed. At least the ending made up for it and I would watch the whole thing over again just for that. John Ford was really an amazing director. Thanks a lot for the recommendation and the tip about it being on YouTube.

 

[kihei]

The Power of the Dog (2021) Directed by Jane Campion 9B

Set on a picturesque ranch in Montana in 1925, The Power of the Dog tells the story of Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch} a rich rancher who becomes jealous when his brother George (Jesse Plemons) marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a woman Phil hates because she has come between him and the only other human being with whom he has a close relationship. Rose has in tow a teenage son who appears weak and effeminate. They become targets of Phil's irrational wrath. For the first half of this movie, I thought I knew right where this portrait of toxic masculinity was going, and I was not looking forward to watching a bully pull wings of butterflies for a couple of hours. But then everything begin to shift around in unpredictable ways and what followed was a twisty tale not just cunningly rendered but almost fiendishly unexpected.

Director Jane Campion does a superb job of direction, though perhaps a trifle on the chilly side. The cinematography is excellent, the score by Jonny Greenwood is perfect, and the acting is uniformly first-rate. Cumberbatch seems an odd casting choice, but he is brilliant as a man with a very complicated psychology. Despite the twists, the movie plays no cheap tricks either; Campion in subtle ways touches on all kinds of contemporary themes including gender dynamics, forbidden desire, the weak versus the strong, and personal isolation. The Power of the Dog is a movie that rewards close attention. In fact, it requires it; I played back the final twenty minutes of the movie to make sure I got it right. It didn't feel like I was making an extra effort, though--more like I was just allowing myself to pleasantly confirm the brilliance of the execution involved in telling this story.


Best of '21 so far

1, The Power of the Dog, Campion, US
2. The Cloud in Her Room, Zheng, China
3. Red Moon Tide, Patino, Spain
4. Undine, Penzold, Germany
5. The Year of the Everlasting Storm, Panahi, et al, various countries
6. Identifying Features, Valadez, Mexico
7. Manor House, Puiu, Romania
8. The Dig, Stone, UK

 

[Chili]

* The Aviator-great portrait of Howard Hughes and old Hollywood not to mention the aviation industry. 9/10

Like that film too. Before he became a recluse Howard was a leader in aviation development. Melvin and Howard is another film I liked, a story of a claim on his will. An interesting life.

I just finished this and... wow. It takes a long time to get to the action, but what a payoff. It's amazing that the climax is 84 years old and still way more intense than any amount of CGI water would be in a similar modern movie. I'm not sure that the movie before that aged as well, though. We're supposed to feel that a great injustice is being done to the lead character, but I just kept thinking how stupid he was and agreeing with the heartless villain that the fool made his bed. At least the ending made up for it and I would watch the whole thing over again just for that. John Ford was really an amazing director. Thanks a lot for the recommendation and the tip about it being on YouTube.

Cool. Someone on imdb called it 'Les Miserables on the South Seas'. Read that JF wanted to film it on location in Tahiti, instead a lot of money was spent building a set. Beats cgi for me.

 

[nameless1]

Best of '21 so far

1, The Power of the Dog, Campion, US
2. The Cloud in Her Room, Zheng, China
3. Red Moon Tide, Patino, Spain
4. Undine, Penzold, Germany
5. The Year of the Everlasting Storm, Panahi, et al, various countries
6. Identifying Features, Valadez, Mexico
7. Manor House, Puiu, Romania
8. The Dig, Stone, UK

I am surprised you like Undine. I liked the fairy tale aspect, but his previous film Transit is stronger in that regard, so I like that one a lot more. This one was just fine to me.

Paula Beer is very good though. She has quietly amassed an impressive filmography.

 

[nameless1]

Invisible Life [A Vida Invisível] (2019) directed by Karim Aïnouz

In Rio de Janeiro during the 1950s, Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and Guida (Julia Stockler) are two inseparable sisters who live with their very conservative family. Eurídice is a piano prodigy who wishes to audition for an Austrian observatory while Guida is impulsively in love with a Greek sailor boyfriend. One evening Guida doesn’t return for a date with her boyfriend because she has sailed off with him back to Greece. And from then Guida would disappear from Eurídice’s life forever living a life abroad. Except Guida did return home and has been living in Rio but Eurídice is not aware of it. Guida returned to Rio from Greece to her parents with a bastard child and was thrown out by her father and told that Eurídice is Europe and to never speak to them or her sister again. Banished from the family she lives in poverty in Rio wishing to one day be returned to her sister. Lushly photographed, Invisible Lie is a stylish and beautiful but bleak film about patriarchal oppression in Brazil. Really effective melodrama with strong performances by the two lead actors in their parallel roles. The film has been compared to the work of Wong Kar-wai, and there definitely seems to be a lot of his influence on the film with the use of colours and vibe of the film. Worth checking out, I found the story to be very moving, though I’m torn about the use of the epilogue.

I saw it at a film fest a couple of years back, and I still remember it. The mise-en-scene is very memorable, as it really resembles that time period, and I really like the colour of it. It definitely stays with you.

 

[OzzyFan]

Doctor Sleep (Flanagan, 2019) - I liked The Haunting of Hill House, but otherwise I'm not a big fan of Flanagan. He's more of a doer than an artist, and that often bugs me. Here he does more than ok on a suicidal project (I mean, it was impossible to follow Kubrick into this). It doesn't have the atmosphere, the style or the signature of The Shining, it's nowhere close in terms of complexity or efficiency (none of that oh so effective uncanniness that made the original a real scary horror film), but it's an engaging enough story, well told even if never really surprising, even with the cliché bad guys cult that long for immortality. The film is pretty ballsy and that's a plus, and even if some of the allusions to the original were eye-rolling dumb (the set for the interview... why?), the recreation of the Overlook Hotel was really impressive. I guess I missed the place, and I guess it was a fun enough ride - just don't question the logic of that story too much, I don't think it would hold on too well. 5/10

That more of a doer than an artist is interesting. If you had to be more specific on that, how would you? Are saying he doesn't have enough "finesse" and "creativity" for you? I'm curious.

I'm almost through his series "Midnight Mass" right now, which a slow burn cerebral "dialogue-centric" "horror" series that has a lot of conversation material, and I have been impressed so far. I don't think his talent is too questionable, and he's had good success in a non-cookie cutter way in the horror genre, he has a good tight eye behind the camera, he brings depth to his material, creates good atmosphere in his projects that I've seen, and usually gets excellent/sometimes career best performances from his actors. I'm curious of what your specific issue(s) are with him.

 

[Osprey]

Cool. Someone on imdb called it 'Les Miserables on the South Seas'. Read that JF wanted to film it on location in Tahiti, instead a lot of money was spent building a set. Beats cgi for me.

One of the reviews that I read mentioned that it cost $150,000 to build that set... and $250,000 to destroy it. I don't know if that's true, but I can believe it after seeing the film.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

That more of a doer than an artist is interesting. If you had to be more specific on that, how would you? Are saying he doesn't have enough "finesse" and "creativity" for you? I'm curious.

I'm almost through his series "Midnight Mass" right now, which a slow burn cerebral "dialogue-centric" "horror" series that has a lot of conversation material, and I have been impressed so far. I don't think his talent is too questionable, and he's had good success in a non-cookie cutter way in the horror genre, he has a good tight eye behind the camera, he brings depth to his material, creates good atmosphere in his projects that I've seen, and usually gets excellent/sometimes career best performances from his actors. I'm curious of what your specific issue(s) are with him.

Funny, I've also watched the first three episodes of that (I have no idea how many there is). Not too sure about the depth yet, and I don't know most of the actors so I have no idea about past performances (well, Zach Gilford was better in Friday Night Lights, and Hamish Linklater is kind of bad as of now). When I say "doer", I don't mean that the result is necessary bad, I just mean that there's no real signature, no real drive to any of it. Yes, he can create atmosphere and direct actors, but it doesn't feel like "oh, ok, this is a Flanagan work". You know, the difference between David Cronenberg (an artist, with a strong signature) and Wes Craven (a very competent director, with a good sense of what works with an audience, but to me, a doer, with no real artistry). It is entirely subjective and might not make sense at all!

 

[kihei]

I am surprised you like Undine. I liked the fairy tale aspect, but his previous film Transit is stronger in that regard, so I like that one a lot more. This one was just fine to me.

Paula Beer is very good though. She has quietly amassed an impressive filmography.

I prefer Transit, too. Undine might not make my top 20 in a strong year, but this has so far been the weakest year of the century (except for the The Power of the Dog).

 

[Pink Mist]

Made in Hong Kong [香港製造] (1997) directed by Fruit Chan

Moon (Sam Lee), young wannabe thug who is debt collector for a Hong Kong Triad member, falls in love with the terminally ill daughter of one of his debtors, Ping (Neiky Yim Hui-Chi). The first film in a trilogy of films released by Fruit Chan related to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to China. Made in Hong Kong which presents a character abandoned by his parents, and in death by the girl he loves, is an allegory for the sense of hopelessness and abandonment that is felt in the city of Hong Kong as they were handed off to China. The film is very raw and lo-fi, at times a little too raw, but it feels like a spiritual successor to the punk and nihilistic ethos of Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, presenting a Hong Kong society with no future and brimming with violence. The ending of the film kind of drags far too long, but Made in Hong Kong is a good moody film with a great performance by Sam Lee in his first film role.



Full film on YouTube

 

[Raging Bull]

'Network' was on TCM the other day, that has to be some of the best dialogue ever written for the screen. Ned Beatty is in that movie for like 5 minutes and gives one of the best monologues ever.

 

[Babe Ruth]

Arlington Road. (1999)

This one was a really stupid melodrama.
Another cynical take on suburbia.. it's moral essentially: the more normal your neighbor appears, the more likely he may be a diabolical Tim McVeigh type. Jeff Bridges plays a ridiculously frantic good guy trying to stop the right wing plot..
One bright spot was the teacher from the 'Wayward Pines' series (Hope Davis). She played one of the only realistic & sane characters, and looked beautiful in this one.
Gotta give this one a 3 (on a 10 pt. scale).

 

[nameless1]

'Network' was on TCM the other day, that has to be some of the best dialogue ever written for the screen. Ned Beatty is in that movie for like 5 minutes and gives one of the best monologues ever.

It is one of my all-time favourite film. I dropped it down to 9.5/10 recently, but it will continue to stay in my top 3.