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Film Thread.
I thought a trio of themed threads about other entertainment media might be good. If you're not interested, please just ignore the thread and pick some threads that interest you from here: http://celephais.net/board/view_all_threads.php

Anyway, discuss films...
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If You Speak Spanish 
you might find this documentary of interest, much of it pulled from interviews with revolutionaires who knew him. No New Agey Hollywood sanitation that both old school Marxist and AntiCommunist find to be nauseating.

Che; Anatomia de un Mito

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3564213335176871572

Interestingly, I read that Redford was interested in producing Atlas Shrugged at one time. The man's brain cells must be in a constant state of war with one another. Fortunately, Randal Wallace, the BraveHeart screenwriter is on board to write it and Jolie will be playing Dagny Taggart. 
 
atlas fucked 
Headthump 
no I dont, but mabe I'll pick up some after my trip to south america later in the year. 
 
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) - extremely disappointed. James Dean is good, albeit heavily mannered, but the rest of this is severely dated, almost nonsensical and totally unconvincing.

Nicholas Ray tries his best with the material he has, but there is so much wrong with the script I dont know where to start. It's extremely heavy handed, contains a large number of caricatures, has some terribly hokey dialogue, and above all has such a simplified approach towards its themes that you wonder why they even tried to address them.

Ray has made some great films, but this is not one of them.

4.5/10 
Red Dwarf 
I recently got into this series and I love it so much. The interesting english, the characters, the imaginative swear words. Very nice! I'm at S02E05 now. 
 
Curse of the Golden Flower - Zhang Yimou's return to the wuxia genre is thankfully a much better effort than House of Flying Daggers and on par with Hero.

Supposedly China's most expensive film ever, it is indeed very very opulent, every shot showing where the money went. Yimou matches the opulence with an operatic greek tragedy and extravagant action, something which will not be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it to work quite well.

What makes it work is Gong Li, doing what only great actors can do in taking a nothing role and turning it into the most important part of the movie. Her performance helps the complicated and highly convoluted plot fit in with the environment of the film.

Yimou paces and builds beautifully, but falters at the end with a climax that is just too long and drawn out. Even so, this is still quality entertainment.

7/10 
Red Dwarf 
just fucking great, I grew up with that stuff. Did you ever see the pilot for the american version of the show? Man did that suck... Lister was just your standard wholesome american lead character, Rimmer didn't even seem that annoying, Holly was played by Daphne from Frasier.

But er, keep watching the good stuff, I love series 5, some amazing episodes there, 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse', and 'Back to Reality' are absolute classics... 
 
Zelig (1983) - I think woody allen's middle period from the late 70's to the late 80's resulted in some remarkable stuff. And this is another one of them. Spinal Tap is probably funnier, but Allen's attempt at the mockumentary genre is still nothing short of genius.

The mockumentary takes a look at the life and story of Leonard Zelig, a chameleon like man in the 1920-1930's who had the ability to change his appearance into that of the people surrounding him, and the reaction of the doctors, media and the general public to his ability.

Combining newsreel footage, fake "documentary" footage and present day "interviews" with real essayists and nobel prize winning writers, Allen's movie is a remarkable technical achievement. It is also brilliantly written, playing it straight all the way, even when the situations are anything but. There is more creativity and talent on display here than in all of Allen's films of the last 10-15 years.

8/10 
 
Blood Diamond - As is usual with Edward Zwick movies, this is too long and has an uncomfortable mix of message movie and action adventure, with the message part being very heavy handed and dodgily handled at best.

What it has going for it is that it works pretty well when it sticks to being a blockbuster action movie and also Leonardo Di Caprio's outstanding performance. Di Caprio probably has the best written character, albeit with a requisite redemptive character arc, and he singlehandedly gets the movie through all the dodgy bits. Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly do their best but are limited by their stock standard one dimensional charcaters.

Zwick seems most comfortable with the action scenes, which are well choreographed and shot, rather than with the effects and consequences of a civil war on an entire poprulation, but this is far from the disaster of The Last Samurai.

6.5/10 
Hollywood Doesn't Seem 
to know what to do with African characters. I found myself comparing this treatment with the Mr Ecko story arc from last season in Lost because of its fresh and somewhat twisted approach to standard African themes, ie. warlords, gun/drug running, and an impotent(or vital depending on the viewpoint of the narrative) church. I was curious what you thought of this, Nitin, given your review of the middle episode of season 2 ranked them a bit lower than the rest you may have different take. 
Mr Eko 
was by far the most interesting and well written character in season 2. So I think we are in agreement over that :) 
Last Night... 
...finally got around to viewing the Southpark WoW send up. What a hoot!

This was followed by a documentary I'd recorded on virtual gold mining... selling WoW gold for actual currency. Very interesting.

Then I stuffed up my night by watching Eragon. Shite! Even four vodka tonics under my belt couldn't save this poorly edited, atrociously acted, cliche ridden, two dimensional pile of... 
 
Bullitt (1968) - pretty good thriller/action film which is reasonably well written and directed and has Steve McQueen defining screen presence. It drags a bit, sometimes unnecssarily so, and none of the other characters are that interesting, but McQueen is magnetic and the action scenes, including the famous car chase, are good.

7/10


Doctor Zhivago (1965) - There's some frequent bad acting and bad dialogue, sometimes both within the same scene, but David Lean's storytelling skills and imperious direction along with Maurice Jarre's excellent score make up for the shortcomings on most occasions. The last 30 min or so don�t work for me as well as the rest of the movie but this is great stuff. Despite the long running time, it is very economical in its pacing and there's not much dead space. In a completely different league to most recent movies along similar lines.

8/10


In the Bedroom (2001) - generally well made and well written, and with phenomenal acting by all involved, this slow burn drama about the effect of a tragedy on a family is very interesting. There are flaws, the slow pacing is not a problem by itself but combined with the narrative stopping dead after a certain event in the film, it does become somewhat of an issue.

Todd Field displays an admirable restraint, never really letting this become the over the top melodrama that it could have become. But it's the perfromances that keep it going, tom wilkinson, sissy spacek, nick stahl and marisa tomei all putting in excellent work.

7/10


Last Year at Marienbad (1961) - Definitely a movie that many people will hate with a passion, Alain Resnais' out and out surrealist arthouse film is probably the most pretentious, indulgent, cold, distant and near incomprehensible thing I have ever seen. It makes David Lynch look like a straightforward storyteller. His previous movie, the great Hiroshima Mon Amour, displayed some of the same characterisitics and dealt with the same themes of memory but it was not as cold, distant or obscure and was much better for it.

The plot, if you can call it that as there is no temporal or spatial connection established between any of the scenes, revolves around the repetition of a series of events at a chateau between a man, a woman and another man. Anything more than that will be differently interpreted by everyone.

I have to say that despite all the negatives, I did find it fascinating to an extent mainly because Resnais's direction gives the impression that its made by someone who knows exactly what they are doing rather than by someone who is making it up as they go along. And I think I managed to piece enough of it together to get an idea of what he was going for.

6.5-7/10 
 
Eyes without a Face (1959) - classily made french film about a surgeon who abducts and operates on young women in order to try and restore the disfigured face of his daughter, who is forced to wear a mask in the meantime.

It doesnt go for the gore or exploitation angle, but is instead more of a gothic psychological thriller/drama with interesting characters, reasonably good acting and impressive direction.

There are some brilliant moments, especially when the daughter is on screen, but I did find that when the movie focuses on other things apart from the daughter, it isnt as involving.

7/10


The Man who shot Liberty Valance (1962) - one of the better films from John Ford that I have seen, although it still suffers from forced sentimentality and obtrusive and annoying comedy like his other movies.

James Stewart plays a senator in the american west who is known in history by the movie title and upon a revisit to the town where it all took place, he recounts his version of the story to a newspaper editor.

When it's not going along the comedy and sentimentality route, it is a pretty impressive western with James Stewart, John Wayne and Vera Miles all in top form.

6.5/10


Broadway Danny Rose (1984) - Not vintage Woody Allen, but it still has its moments thanks to Allen's skill as a writer.

He plays Danny Rose, a theatrical manager of some really bad acts who gets involved in all sorts of trouble when he goes on an errand for one of his more famous acts.

It starts off well enough, with Mia Farrow almost unrecognisable as a bimbo, but like some of his more recent output, the Allen schtick is a bit too overdone, overwhelming and annoying.

Still, worth a wach for some moments of sheer genius and hilarity.

6.5/10 
Sunshine 
Can't really be bothered with a big review, but I was really shocked with how impressive it looked, especially for a british film (a high budget one at that)... it has a really classy style of scifi technology which reminded me of 2001, and the lighting and the general look and colour is really impressive.

I liked the way the scope is pretty narrow, they never really tell you anything about the characters before you see them in the few days in which the movie takes place.

Overall it holds your attention quite well for a while, but as Text_Fish said in his review earlier it all goes to shit quite unexplicably later on. It seems like the guys at Fox turned up and said NO NO NO we need a BAD GUY and some FIGHTING and space danger and MONSTERS and you better add it the next 20 minutes or I'm gonna throw my tequila in your face. But it's worth seeing anyway, more power to the british film industry. 
Sunshine 
Agreed, silly premise and scientific liberties aside, the first half of the film was quite good, too bad it kind of became a stupid horror movie towards the end. =\ 
Bullitt 
Nitin's review reminded me... i happened to sit through "Dukes of Hazzard" recently (don't bother,) and I noticed that that movie had a Charger vs. Mustang chase... I wonder if the choice of Mustang was inspired by Bullitt. (I have read that the original choice of the Charger in the TV show was due to Bullitt.) 
Gonna Check This Out 
Oh I Have Heard Crazy Shit About Inland Empire 
but then again what do you expect from Mr Lynch?

pope, please post your thoughts if you see it.

Last night I watched Requiem for a Dream and was a little disappointed given how much I'd heard about it.

It's a definite case of style over substance and I found Darren Aronofsky's take on addiction a suprisingly empty film beneath all the flashiness.

Aronofsky employs every trick in the book, and a thousand others that arent, to hide the lack of depth in his material, but it's not quite enough. What does give it power though is the extraordinary performance by Ellen Burstyn and an amazing score by the Kronos quartet. Decent, but I didn�t find it to be any more than that.

6.5-7/10 
Nitin 
did you ever see the fountain? I agree with you on the lack of substance in Requiem for a dream, but the fountain baffled me so much that i couldn't possibly comment on whether it had any depth at all or it was just style over substance taken to a whole new extreme. What the hell happened? 
Starbuck 
i'm getting it this month, so I'll post when I see it. 
More Impotantly 
has anyone seen spidey3 yet? spidey 2 rocked and I hope this is of a similar level. 
Spidey3 
Would like to. I did enjoy 2 a lot. I think it really got the 'comic book villains are great yet tortured people' thing down in a way the batman movies basically crapped out of. And the central theme about the ordinary versus the heroic - the original premise of the spiderman character - was played out seriously enough to inspire thought and feeling, but not so it plodded into pomposity
And the almost-silent shot of spidey swinging across frame in front of the lit up empire state is the most tactful response to 9/11 I've ever seen.

The combination of villains in 3 is interesting. Sandy bloke I really don't know much about. AFAIR he's a rather secondary henchman type thug. Hope I'm wrong.
The conclusion of the goblin arc - nicely tying the three movies together - could be dramatic or could just turn into angsty rubbish.

The black costume, however, interests me for a more particular reason. It was a story arc concluded in the only Marvel comic I actually ever bought as a kid. I wasn't really as interested in spidey as the other strip in the comic, but it's odd to see it in a movie now, compared to all the other pop culture icons that have been mercilessly cinematised over recent years which I didn't give a shit about the first time round. 
 
kell,

exactly. Every scene felt like a comic book, which I think is very hard to do, from the speeches to the fight scenes to the humour.

Although I like Batman Begins just as much, its almost for the exact opposite reasons. But those two by far are top of the comic book pil for me. 
 
Science of Sleep - I personally regard Eternal Sunhine as one of the best movies of the last decade and its obvious while watching this that Charlie Kaufman was a major contributor to making that what it was.

Michael Gondry indulges in some impressive off the cuff visuals, and he gets a committed and goofy perfromance out of Gael Garcia Bernal but it felt too much like someone knowing what they wanted to but not knowing how to do it.

Frequently hilarious, but as a whole, it didnt quite work.

6.5/10 
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