movies

[heyzeus]

And see, I thought Fight Club was not a very good movie.

l.

It's cool. We're all completely, ridiculously wrong sometimes.

[TimeForGuinness]

And see, I thought Fight Club was not a very good movie.

(hand hovering over ban button)

[ghostrunner]

This. When I first saw it, I liked it a lot, and then the more I thought about it I felt it was manipulative. You're conned into rooting for Kevin Spacey's character, who'd be a lot happier if he could just ditch his insane wife and go back to acting like a college student again. The ending was a cop out - realistically there's no way to keep his feel good story going - he'd have to pay some emotional price for all this fun he's been having and make some sort of compromise. So they have a closeted homosexual who hates himself come over and shoot him. Not to mention Annette Bening's character is a crude stereotype. I'd almost say misogynist, though I think that term gets overused.

The paper bag thing gets made fun of a lot, but I find it genuinely moving. I've had a lot of great small moments in my life like that.

If we're going to be this critical of movies, then we should probably cancel the Best Picture award most years.

I don't follow you. I'm this critical of this movie because it deserves it (in my opinion). And really, Annette Bening's character is just awful. That's the worst part of it for me. She's a one-dimensional straw man that exists mostly to justify the husband's midlife crisis. To me he's clearly made out to be the good guy and the wife is just making life hard for everyone.

Having said that, canceling the award is fine with me. Fight Club was out the same year, touches on the same themes in a much more fair and interesting way, and wasn't even nominated.

And see, I thought Fight Club was not a very good movie.

In general, I think everything is a bit too critical in the internet era. All movies have flaws in one way or another. Somebody is going to rail on those flaws, then all of the sudden a movie is crap. I've always liked American Beauty, flaws and all.

The internet brings a lot of criticism of many different things out in the open, but there's always been harsh or negative reviews of movies, and more severe than anything I've said. As far as this film goes, my critique isn't that original. You can find newspaper critics with similar complaints. I think it's a decent movie, but it's overrated and I don't think it was the best movie that year (which was a really good year for movies).

[The Third Man]

I'm on a Sergio Leone kick right now (hence the sig). Finally got around to watching For a Few Dollars More the other day, one of the five or so best westerns I've ever seen I think. I'd only definitely put The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Unforgiven and The Wild Bunch above it among those I've seen. Also finally got around to rewatching A Fistful of Dollars after first catching it like two years ago, great stuff. A cut below the other two in the trilogy, I think, but that's not a knock.

Tonight I watched Duck, You Sucker! Weakest Leone film I've seen yet - which is to say, still really damn good, one of the better westerns I've seen. James Coburn and Rod Steiger don't have the star power/camera presence of an Eastwood, Wallach, Van Cleef, Bronson or Fonda, but they're both very charismatic and enjoyable. It's got its flaws, but nothing to outweigh the many positives.

Hoping to find the time to give The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West each another spin in the next week or so as well as finally watch Once Upon a Time in America which I've owned on DVD for the longest time but have never watched.

[Richie Allen]

I rented The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and then my brother came into town and I didn't get a chance to watch it. Had to return it to the library last night. I'll check it out again in a couple days. It's a 2 disc DVD but I'm not sure what all is on it. I liked the other two in the trilogy so I expect to really like this one. I was on a huge Western kick this past summer. It's tough to get off once you're started. I recommend any of the Jimmy Stewart/Anthony Mann pictures.

[clement]

I absolutely hated 'Fight Club'.

Completely agree with ghostrunner on the Annette Benning character in American Beauty. Was going to say something about it earlier, but I figured I'd sound like the PC police. But yeah, she was evil because she likes to drink wine, listen to classical music, and is ambitious. It's much more righteous to be 40 and work at McDonald's, smoke pot, drive a souped up 1982 Firebird, and lust after the high school cheerleader friend of your teenage daughter.

I watched 'Ken Park' last night. Very controversial, like all of Larry Clark's movies (directed 'Kids', 'Bully'). I really liked the character development, and the brutal honesty of the situations the kids were in. I thought some of the resolutions of the stories were over the top, especially the one involving the kid living with his grandparents, but also the one with the kid who had a drunk a-hole for a Dad. The fairly explicit sex scenes involving such young actors is a little disturbing, but pretty honest. Larry Clark is kinda sensational, but there aren't many directors out there focused on making movies about the very real problems that teenagers in today's world face.

[Arthur Dent]

What's the case against Fight Club?

[clement]

What's the case against Fight Club?

Lots of testosterone to whet the latent homosexual appetites of straight guys, plenty of gratuitous violence to make watching shirtless hunks pummeling each other okay, with a ridiculous twist at the end to justify the insanity you've watched and trick you into thinking the '300'-ish nonsensical experience you just went through was actually "deep".

[clement]

I watched 'Ken Park' last night. Very controversial, like all of Larry Clark's movies (directed 'Kids', 'Bully'). I really liked the character development, and the brutal honesty of the situations the kids were in. I thought some of the resolutions of the stories were over the top, especially the one involving the kid living with his grandparents, but also the one with the kid who had a drunk a-hole for a Dad. The fairly explicit sex scenes involving such young actors is a little disturbing, but pretty honest. Larry Clark is kinda sensational, but there aren't many directors out there focused on making movies about the very real problems that teenagers in today's world face.

This reminded me of a story. When 'Ken Park' actually came out a few years ago, I went to go see it at a cinema in Paris on a weekday afternoon. When I sat down this guy sat two seats away from me and was fidgeting all the time. He got up a couple of times and walked around the (very small) cinema, and then sat back down again each time. He kept reaching into his coat pockets for things and he had like three bags with him that he also kept rummaging through. I was so distracted and made nervous by this guy that I just couldn't take it and I walked out after about 15 minutes and went into a different hall at the cinema and watched something else instead. I seriously thought the guy was gonna pull out a machete or something and chop all of us into pieces.

When I finally got to watch the movie on DVD last night, I didn't remember anything from those early scenes, and there was a pretty memorable scene at the beginning of the movie.

[cpebbles]

It wasn't just a twist, it was telegraphed well in advance, and the lurid visual style of the movie was not just stylized window dressing as it was in 300, it was to entice the viewer into this lifestyle and ideology that Norton's character was considering before he ultimately rejected it at the end (Albeit a bit late). Fight Club is the best movie I know of that a lot of critics and cinephiles will openly trash, and it seems very often that their big problem with the movie is that they don't accept the sincerity of this rejection simply because Fincher did such a great job of selling Tyler's creed through the earlier stages of the movie and because he doesn't ratchet down the humor when things turn serious.