movies

[Famous Mortimer]

The Exterminating Angel is amazing. Simon Of The Desert was the first Bunuel film I ever saw and it was a hell of an introduction - I hope you like it.

I just watched "Arthur" at the Way Out Club on South Jefferson, they do a monthly 16mm night. Dudley Moore's drunk acting began to annoy me quite early, and it's interesting to see how effortlessly better and funnier John Gielgud is than everyone else, having barely done any comedy in his entire career. Give a good actor funny lines, job done.

[JL21]

JL will be very happy to know that, after, like, a decade of saying I'd get around to it:

I finally watched The Exterminating Angel.

I was kinda respecting it more than loving it for most of its runtime - thinking "Oh, that's clever," more than actually being engaged by how clever it is - but the last five or ten minutes of that film totally knock it out of the park with a double-whammy ending. The "first" ending, in which they all realize they can only leave the party by rigidly adhering to the strictures of high society, was pretty great by itself, especially given that I had no idea how Bunuel was going to work his way out of the corner he seemed to have backed himself into. But the "second" ending immediately afterwards, in which they find themselves (and countless others) stuck in the exact same scenario, this time in a church, was brilliant. It's not just a hilariously mean thing to put the characters through for a second time - it's a razor-sharp takedown of religion, in a matter of minutes, in which Bunuel suggests that church is nothing more than another costume party for rich jerks.

That was [expletive] great. I really need to see more. I'm gonna check out Simon of the Desert and Viridiana soon.

Yeah... all of that is [expletive] outstanding. That is Bunuel in a nutshell- full-on balls to the wall satire of social institutions and social meaning.

My personal favorite is Phantom of Liberty. I also love Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Viridiana, Belle du Jour, Los Olvidados (though in general, his Mexican-era stuff is pretty bland)...

[heyzeus]

Saw Moonlight over the weekend. It was good, but I didn't find it anything to go nuts over. A lot of things it does very very well. A lot of things are at such an emotional remove that I have to question whether the movie resonates at all.

(Example: One of the most important moments in the protagonist's life occurs off camera and is barely even mentioned).

[go birds]

moonlight, to me, is classic oscar bait. But i also I believe it won because of #OscarsSoWhite.

When La La Land was announced, i was genuinely surprised. Then the error was corrected and i was like "that's better"

[The Third Man]

Yeah... all of that is [expletive] outstanding. That is Bunuel in a nutshell- full-on balls to the wall satire of social institutions and social meaning.

My personal favorite is Phantom of Liberty. I also love Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Viridiana, Belle du Jour, Los Olvidados (though in general, his Mexican-era stuff is pretty bland)...

Those are all on my list (well, not Belle du Jour, which I've actually already seen, and thought was alright) for sure. It's funny...as enthusiastic as I would've been about the film, say, ten years ago, when my enthusiasm for film was exploding in every different direction, I think I was actually better-served waiting as long as I did to see that particular film. Not that my particular political/religious sentiments weren't already more or less fundamentally present at that time, but I think some of the particular shading and nuance Bunuel treats his subjects with, as well as the bitterness that underlines the film, would've been either lost on me or gone underappreciated by my younger self. The age I am now - hell, the political climate I'm in now - strikes me as a rather perfect time to have experienced that film.

And I might not have actually chosen this particular time to watch it, were it not for the too-precious joke about it, and Bunuel, in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which I revisited when they put it on Netflix a week ago.

Saw Moonlight over the weekend. It was good, but I didn't find it anything to go nuts over. A lot of things it does very very well. A lot of things are at such an emotional remove that I have to question whether the movie resonates at all.

(Example: One of the most important moments in the protagonist's life occurs off camera and is barely even mentioned).

I get where you're coming from, and I was inclined to think the same after my first viewing, but it really grew on me.

Also, it smokes Boyhood at its own game.

moonlight, to me, is classic oscar bait. But i also I believe it won because of #OscarsSoWhite.

"Oscar bait," to me, has a very specific meaning: usually a period piece, long, stuffy, prestigious, expensive, tragic. Maybe that definition has shifted in recent years, but I have a hard time buying an independent film - one produced from an unpublished play, by two men who actually grew up in the particular neighborhood depicted in the film - about a gay black man, which styles itself largely after arthouse Asian films ala Wong Kar-Wai and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, as "Oscar bait."

[lukethedrifter]

Saw Moonlight over the weekend. It was good, but I didn't find it anything to go nuts over. A lot of things it does very very well. A lot of things are at such an emotional remove that I have to question whether the movie resonates at all.

(Example: One of the most important moments in the protagonist's life occurs off camera and is barely even mentioned).

I get where you're coming from, and I was inclined to think the same after my first viewing, but it really grew on me.

Also, it smokes Boyhood at its own game.

moonlight, to me, is classic oscar bait. But i also I believe it won because of #OscarsSoWhite.

"Oscar bait," to me, has a very specific meaning: usually a period piece, long, stuffy, prestigious, expensive, tragic. Maybe that definition has shifted in recent years, but I have a hard time buying an independent film - one produced from an unpublished play, by two men who actually grew up in the particular neighborhood depicted in the film - about a gay black man, which styles itself largely after arthouse Asian films ala Wong Kar-Wai and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, as "Oscar bait."

Agreed on both.

[JL21]

I'll admit, I kind of hate the term Oscar Bait, because it's an easy excuse to write off a movie without giving it much of a chance. And it's frequently only applied to good movies- movies good enough that one could see them getting Oscar nominations. And implicit in the term is a cynical point of view that the filmmaker was only trying to win an award rather than making a good movie.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's not a real thing- there are absolutely movies that appeal to Oscar voters for a variety of reasons. I just don't like using it to dismiss a film's quality.

RE: Moonlight, I'll say this much for it... It is an exceptionally well made movie. There are specific cues and actions that repeat in each little vignette. It gives its characters more of a chance to show character growth than damn near any movie you'll see. I don't know that it would have won in some better years, but I thought it was a perfectly acceptable winner in a year that didn't have any major standouts. And I say this, in full disclosure, only having seen 3 of the nominees (Arrival, Moonlight, and Manchester by the Sea).

[thrill]

RE: Moonlight, I'll say this much for it... It is an exceptionally well made movie. There are specific cues and actions that repeat in each little vignette. It gives its characters more of a chance to show character growth than damn near any movie you'll see.

Thought he did an exceptional job filming the sensory experiences of memory, especially how they become slightly more distorted and sense-based the older they are. Like, I'll remember sounds but not be clear on what I saw. Or vice-versa. Or I'll remember some aspects crystal clear and some parts, not at all. I was struck watching the scene with the boys wrestling around the soccer field. It captured a lot. It captured our animal-evolutionary socialization techniques. That could've been a pack of boys or a pack of young wolves rough housing, learning their place in the hierarchy, and young Chiron finding himself completely isolated from it. It was really powerful and immediately sucked in my empathy through the way the sound, light and action was edited to feel like an old memory. I immediately understood who Chiron was and it made me flash back to my childhood and those moments of instinctual socializing that stick out to me. Fighting, playing, recognizing differences in others, wondering about differences in myself, etc.

It really made me think about identity, what we project, what we actually are, and how we sometimes abuse ourselves trying to convince ourselves we're something we might not be out of fear or pride or just protective instinct.

[heyzeus]

RE: Moonlight, I'll say this much for it... It is an exceptionally well made movie. There are specific cues and actions that repeat in each little vignette. It gives its characters more of a chance to show character growth than damn near any movie you'll see.

Thought he did an exceptional job filming the sensory experiences of memory, especially how they become slightly more distorted and sense-based the older they are. Like, I'll remember sounds but not be clear on what I saw. Or vice-versa. Or I'll remember some aspects crystal clear and some parts, not at all. I was struck watching the scene with the boys wrestling around the soccer field. It captured a lot. It captured our animal-evolutionary socialization techniques. That could've been a pack of boys or a pack of young wolves rough housing, learning their place in the hierarchy, and young Chiron finding himself completely isolated from it. It was really powerful and immediately sucked in my empathy through the way the sound, light and action was edited to feel like an old memory. I immediately understood who Chiron was and it made me flash back to my childhood and those moments of instinctual socializing that stick out to me. Fighting, playing, recognizing differences in others, wondering about differences in myself, etc.

It really made me think about identity, what we project, what we actually are, and how we sometimes abuse ourselves trying to convince ourselves we're something we might not be out of fear or pride or just protective instinct.

Good point - that really was an excellent scene, and it told you so much about both Chiron and being a kid in general without having to say a word. Movies, at their best, teach you something by showing it to you, not telling it to you.

I couldn't help but think a lot about Omar from the Wire in act 3 though.

[The Third Man]

Awesome news for the physical media dorks still among us (are there any besides me?):

Kino is not only releasing a 50th anniversary blu-ray set of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly this summer (cool), it will be the first time that the 2h41m American cut will have been available in high-definition (awesome). It's been the #1 pebble in my shoe all these years, the fact that MGM only released a blu-ray of their own extended cut featuring 20 minutes of scenes Leone dropped before the American premiere, which not only murder the pacing and are totally unnecessary, but feature 40-years-after-the-fact audio looping (since dialogue was never recorded for them in 1967). I'm so hyped.