movies

[Maclowery]

YES YES YES! ! I can't wait to sneak some booze into a theater and watch some alien ass kicking.

[go birds]

Damn that does look pretty sweet. Idc what anyone says

[Jocephus]

what city is destroyed in that?

[ghostrunner]

what city is destroyed in that?

Looks like all of them.

[Tim]

This thread needs more "Courtney killed Kurt" talk

[Popeye_Card]

Have we discussed "soaked in bleach"???

If not, we should. On Netflix now...

I watched it last week. I'm pretty convinced that Courtney had Kurt killed now, but that's after watching a documentary pretty heavily skewed in that direction.

[Tim]

I remember thinking the note looked suspicious. I had no idea about the shotgun shell

[The Third Man]

I'm on a hardcore Japanese film kick for some reason.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell: The coolest title ever, first off. I just love saying that out loud. GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL. Anyway, title aside, it's a little too heavy on the histrionic group dynamics for my tastes - not to mention more than a little blunt in its anti-war themes - but the sci-fi horror elements are delightfully pulpy fun. It's just that everything between is kind of like off-brand Twilight Zone.

The Living Skeleton: Shades of Diabolique, though with more of a supernatural vibe. I love how fractured the plot is, which only further contributes to the sense of unease. The B&W cinematography is gorgeous. Certainly, by a long shot, the best "haunted ship" film I've ever seen.

Genocide: This film is bizarre. Two American army officers are jockeying to recover a missing H-bomb before Japanese spies can find it. Meanwhile, a Japanese citizen becomes the subject of a murder investigation when super-venomous insects kill the army officers as part of their plan to genocide the human race, with the assistance of a WASP Auschwitz survivor who synthesizes new, super-lethal insects in her free time. Also, a black man is tortured by every character to the point of insanity. It's not very good...but it's absolutely not boring.

The X from Outer Space: Has a goofy old-school charm that's hard to duplicate. The titular "X" is a half-chicken, half-Godzilla-ish kaiju that goes to town on obviously-miniature models while a bunch of badly-written scientist characters try their best to stop his advance. My friend described this as "The movie I'd want to come across while flipping channels at 3 am while high," which is pretty perfect.

Kwaidan: Other than Hoichi the Earless, which runs a bit long for an anthology, this is a great collection of highly-stylized folk tales, each using ghostly antagonists to manifest the existential fears and desires of the main characters. The visuals alone are worth the price of admission, with the most artificial set design this side of The Night of the Hunter and with sumptuous cinematography to bring it all to life. I wish more horror movies were based on old, old-school folk stories. Side note: in a bit of serendipity, the legend that forms the basis of Hoichi the Earless popped up in the novel I'm reading at the moment (1Q84), in the chapter I happened to be on at the time I was watching the movie. That was trippy.

Like Someone in Love: A film in which the characters talk, talk, talk, while almost never managing to be honest or say what they really want - not because they're a bunch of liars, but because really opening yourself up to, and truly connecting with, another human being is hard. There's a reason so much of the film is fleeting glimpses of others through windows and windshields, which makes the ending, if perhaps a bit on-the-nose, a masterstroke.

A Colt is My Passport: I don't think I'll ever age out of loving a good, solid crime flick. The plot is a bit silly, but it boasts some no-nonsense B&W cinematography and keeps it lean and mean at under 90 minutes. The score is particularly interesting, a unique blend of jazzy noir cues and spaghetti western elements.

Eureka: A 3.5 hour film about the survivors of a mass murder/hostage situation, which is equal parts elusive, exhausting, beautiful, and brilliant. Its length and glacial pace combined to try my patience like few other films have, but its thoughtful treatment of tragedy survivors make its rewards worth the wait. Plus, sepia tone is awesome - why don't more movies use it?

A Story of Floating Weeds: I dig on Ozu, but this is my first exposure to his silent work, and the blunt intertitles do an injustice to his typically restrained take on domestic drama. On the bright side, it's every bit as beautifully composed as any Ozu film.

And finally...

Love Exposure: Oh man. I was more excited to see this than probably any film since Spring Breakers, and it didn't disappoint. It's the same type of lurid blend of high- and low-art, religiosity and hedonism, only it happens to be four-hours long and is basically a romantic comedy (with heavy doses of melodrama and goofy action) about a sexually-repressed catholic schoolboy who takes upskirt photographs to rebel against his Catholic Priest father, and the beautiful man-hating sexually-confused girl who falls for him only because he happens to be dressed as a woman at the time. It is, bar-none, the quickest four-hour film I've ever seen in my life (and I wish the original six-hour cut were out there to watch now); not once was I bored or impatient despite what an incredibly bizarre film it is. Sono manages to take all his ridiculous elements and cohere them into a totally cogent criticism of family/religion/institutions and the conflicts within and between them, as well as a surprisingly affecting celebration of love at any cost. That might sound hifalutin given the synopsis, but this movie absolutely has to be seen to be believed. New favorite, right here.

[Vidor]

I'm on a hardcore Japanese film kick for some reason.

What I know of Japanese cineman is pretty much what runs on Turner Classic movies.

Kwaidan

I liked this one a lot. Weird and creepy and fun. The ending to "The Woman of the Snow" was super-predictable but I still enjoyed it.

A Story of Floating Weeds

A Japanese silent film? Nifty. Where did you find it? Almost all of them don't exist. TCM ran "A Page of Madness" recently, which was just super disturbing and weird--like ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'', but weirder.

[The Third Man]

There's a two-DVD set of Story of Floating Weeds and Ozu's own later sound remake, Floating Weeds, available from Criterion. They also have at least a handful of his other silent films available through their Eclipse line. A Page of Madness is one of my most wanted.