8187 replies to this topic

[Rob Gordon]

Watched this charming film last night

[Elemeno P.T.]

Magnolia.

This one might not make much sense, but A Perfect Storm made me cry so hard that I couldn't breathe when I was younger.

Also I watched Punch Drunk Love yet again and I have decided that it is literally perfect. The perfect movie in every single way, down to the smallest detail. Every shot, every movement, every nuance in every face and every color in every frame. Perfect. Beautiful art. I tried as hard as I could to ruin it for myself, to find a flaw, but I was unable to. I recommend that you guys revisit it and take another look if you haven't already.

Amen. Favorite film of the decade. I was visiting some old friends last weekend- a few of the smartest people I know thought the movie was bland at best...amazing how art divides.

[velocity]

What do you guys think about Closer? I watched it last night and I must say, fantastic movie.

It was sort of horrifying, no?

[jjh]

Put it was pretty sad watching those kids get mindfucked for 90 minutes straight in Jesus Camp.

Along the same lines (Religion)

Deliver Us From Evil - was heartbreaking watching the parents of the abused being interviewed

[vamos]

Magnolia.

This one might not make much sense, but A Perfect Storm made me cry so hard that I couldn't breathe when I was younger.

Also I watched Punch Drunk Love yet again and I have decided that it is literally perfect. The perfect movie in every single way, down to the smallest detail. Every shot, every movement, every nuance in every face and every color in every frame. Perfect. Beautiful art. I tried as hard as I could to ruin it for myself, to find a flaw, but I was unable to. I recommend that you guys revisit it and take another look if you haven't already.

Amen. Favorite film of the decade. I was visiting some old friends last weekend- a few of the smartest people I know thought the movie was bland at best...amazing how art divides.

After watching this movie with my friends I was thrown into a serious fit of anger and frustration. They all walked away from it saying that it was "sort of funny." I just thought, "Thats it? Thats all you have to say?"

[vamos]

What do you guys think about Closer? I watched it last night and I must say, fantastic movie.

It was sort of horrifying, no?

Yeah it was a pretty scary movie. One that I definitely can relate to as I've been in a relationship like those before. Pretty scary shit that will fuck your mind up and send you into fits of paranoia, take it from me.

[mouthbreather]

What do you guys think about Closer? I watched it last night and I must say, fantastic movie.

It was sort of horrifying, no?

Yeah it was a pretty scary movie. One that I definitely can relate to as I've been in a relationship like those before. Pretty scary shit that will fuck your mind up and send you into fits of paranoia, take it from me.

Excellent movie. I have it in a pile of movies to rewatch.

[Tony]

What do you guys think about Closer? I watched it last night and I must say, fantastic movie.

It was sort of horrifying, no?

Yeah it was a pretty scary movie. One that I definitely can relate to as I've been in a relationship like those before. Pretty scary shit that will fuck your mind up and send you into fits of paranoia, take it from me.

Excellent movie. I have it in a pile of movies to rewatch.

It gave me the impresssion of being a mediocre Off Broadway play with dialogue that's neither natural enough to be realistic or poetic enough to be High Style. It's not a patch on 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' or even 'Carnal Knowledge'.

[theremin]

Watched this charming film last night

Good flick.

[AFTERSHOCK]

Magnolia.

Also I watched Punch Drunk Love yet again and I have decided that it is literally perfect. The perfect movie in every single way, down to the smallest detail. Every shot, every movement, every nuance in every face and every color in every frame. Perfect. Beautiful art. I tried as hard as I could to ruin it for myself, to find a flaw, but I was unable to. I recommend that you guys revisit it and take another look if you haven't already.

Amen. Favorite film of the decade. I was visiting some old friends last weekend- a few of the smartest people I know thought the movie was bland at best...amazing how art divides.

After watching this movie with my friends I was thrown into a serious fit of anger and frustration. They all walked away from it saying that it was "sort of funny." I just thought, "Thats it? Thats all you have to say?"

Put me in the Hater's Camp for both of these films.
I'm sorta intellectual and both movies completely failed to justify the time I spent watching 'em.

[Ogawa]

Viewing it as an intellectual is probably the wrong way to appreciate it. It's pure emotion.

[Tony]

'shock you didn't like Magnolia either did you? EDIT: Oh wait I didn't see which two films you were talking about. Also if you're 'sorta intellectual' you should have noticed the mood the films were trying to evoke.

[bleach]

ftr, Eight Below is the saddest movie you can rent

[M_Rots]

I think "intellectual" is like "kinky":If you have to say you are, you're probably not.

[brobee]

What do you guys think about Closer? I watched it last night and I must say, fantastic movie.

It was sort of horrifying, no?

Yeah it was a pretty scary movie. One that I definitely can relate to as I've been in a relationship like those before. Pretty scary shit that will fuck your mind up and send you into fits of paranoia, take it from me.

Excellent movie. I have it in a pile of movies to rewatch.

It gave me the impresssion of being a mediocre Off Broadway play with dialogue that's neither natural enough to be realistic or poetic enough to be High Style. It's not a patch on 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' or even 'Carnal Knowledge'.

otm. closer is absolutely unrelatable, unrealistic and just plain preposterous emotionally. i wanted to like it, but it was unpleasant and not good. the other movie which i dislike as much as this is 21 grams, another pedigreed 'prestige' movie lacking a realistic context or behavior to justify the unrelenting gloom and misery. just cause a movie is depressing doesn't make it automatically good.

[AFTERSHOCK]

'shock you didn't like Magnolia either did you?

EDIT: Oh wait I didn't see which two films you were talking about. Also if you're 'sorta intellectual' you should have noticed the mood the films were trying to evoke.

Hated Magnolia.
Didn't quite hate Punch Drunk Love, but I don't need to see it again.

And I hate it when a movie tries to force me into an emotional reaction.
It should just come naturally.

[vamos]

What separates the movies that force you from the movies that are natrual?

[M_Rots]

And I hate it when a movie tries to force me into an emotional reaction.
It should just come naturally.

All movies manipulate the viewer. It's the nature of the medium.

Further, we all go to the movies to be manipulated; to feel something we don't normally feel; to feel more strongly than we are otherwise capable of; to experience something we would otherwise never experience. You think it comes naturally, but that only means a filmmaker has done an exceptionally good job. Movies which are more obvious in their manipulations are more clumsily handled, perhaps, but theyre doing what all movies are meant to.

[Tony]

'shock you didn't like Magnolia either did you?

EDIT: Oh wait I didn't see which two films you were talking about. Also if you're 'sorta intellectual' you should have noticed the mood the films were trying to evoke.

Hated Magnolia.
Didn't quite hate Punch Drunk Love, but I don't need to see it again.

And I hate it when a movie tries to force me into an emotional reaction.
It should just come naturally.

Magnolia was about emotional manipulation. The characters do it to each other and the director sets the whole thing in the mold of a melodrama of symphonic amplitude. A Jacques Demy film without songs. The prominence of the Aimee Mann songs showed that it would have worked just as well as a musical. Punch Drunk Love really should have been a musical.

[Tony]

Does Dave Kehr clarify things?

We may still be waiting for the Great American Novel, but John Ford gave us the Great American Film in 1956. The Searchers gathers the deepest concerns of American literature, distilling 200 years of tradition in a way available only to popular art, and with a beauty available only to a supreme visual poet like Ford. Through the central image of the frontier, the meeting point of wilderness and civilization, Ford explores the divisions of our national character, with its search for order and its need for violence, its spirit of community and its quest for independence.

He's certainly explaining the themes that may or may not exist in the film, but I still don't understand what makes the film great. The drama isn't terribly compelling, the characters aren't very well-drawn (no explanation for John Wayne's change of heart at the end). The comic relief (the bit with the squaw, the bathtub stuff, the wedding fight scene which feels like a Mel Brooks film) feels out of place.

Certainly the landscapes are beautiful, but it doesn't take a "supreme visual poet" to make those landscapes look that way. And there's nothing in the way its shot or constructed that implies anything deeper. The themes Kehr is describing are themes that can be found in pretty much any Western, if one interprets hard enough.

'The Searchers' also questions assumptions Ford had been making in his own films. The frontiersman character (Wayne) is shown to be a loathsome racist. Very few Hollywood westerns of the time were so conflicted about the kind of men who are needed to establish 'nationhood' establish 'nationhood'. It should be seen in the context of the Civil Rights movement.