Movies (recently seen)

[apotheosis]

Best movies that have come out relatively recently I would have to say are 300, The Departed, and Borat. I suggest everyone see those movies if you have not already. Every single one was excellent. They came just as I was beginning to believe they no longer made good movies, and I was able to regain my faith in the film making industry.

[Hi! My name is: Katie]

Has anyone seen any good documentaries recently? I saw SiCKO, but I'm not sure that counts as a REAL documentary. I am just dying to see Living Goddess, about the Kumaris, or child goddesses... It looks completely fascinating, and I really hope it is well done. I also love documentaries on sharks, but never remember the titles... I think one was called Jaws maybe?

300 was great.
Departed was stinky.
Pan's Labyrinth deserves even more kudos.


Oooh... what is a really good foreign horror flick?

[Nappi]

I watched Sicko on the internet and thought it was the only film M Moore has made that you could say was a documentary.I cant stand his politics or even him,but this movie kinda made me rethink some views on the whole subject.Of course I fell asleep and missed the last thirty minutes of it.Still the testimonies were thought provoking and believable.I just hope it doesnt come out that they were all phonies.

I seen an advertisement for a new Documentary coming out on sharks that will be in super HD,it looked pretty enticing.I think it was on the Nat Geographic.

[End Master]

I got Departed on DVD and I still haven’t gotten around to watching it yet! I guess I’ll get around to watching Pan’s Labyrinth now.

300 is coming out this Tuesday so I’ll definitely be buying that and I already own Borat.

Off the top of my head, Dead Alive is a good foreign horror movie. Takashi Miike does some good ones. They don’t exactly fit the traditional idea of a “horror” movie, but you could certainly put them there.

[Vesnic]

Suspiria is a classic horror flick from Italy. It's not so much horror as just really disconcertingly bizarre and nightmarish. Its most famous scene involves a man and a dog standing in the middle of an empty plaza. I won't tell you what happens...

[donteatpoop]

Ninja Scroll

'nuff said

[apotheosis]

I watched the Jimmy Neutron movie on Nickelodeon this morning.. it may have just been a 1.5 hour episode... not sure... but yeah. It was.... actually slightly entertaining. I must have taken brain damage at some point in the last 48 hours....

[Vesnic]

You people have such unrefined taste in film!

Are there no other film snobs in the house? I want to talk about mise-en-scène and denouement and, naturally, le grand bullshitte!

[apotheosis]

Ves, I have refined tastes. I plan on seeing Superbad when it comes out.

[End Master]

Well what were you looking for exactly?

I know you said Susperia, but I’ve never really been a Dario Argento fan. Thought most of his movies were overrated. I liked Lucio Fulsi a little better, but his movies are sort of slow moving and boring at times as well. But a lot of “Giallo” movie are, so I’ve never really liked most of those.

I know I’ve raved over Takshi Miike tons of times so I won’t bother again. I suppose his American equivalent would be David Lynch, but his movies have always been a bit hit or miss with me.

There’s Irreversible which is French and the events in the movie play out backwards. Monica Bellucci is in it. Some of the highlights, Gay S&M Bar, 9 minute rape scene, and some guy getting his head graphically smashed in by a fire extinguisher.

Not quite French, but there’s a Belgian movie called Man Bites Dog which I’ve always liked. Basically a camera crew following around a Serial Killer as he explains his work. It’s even in black and white if that adds anything to its French art fag status.

I guess Gummo could be considered an "art film". Art film about inbred small town hicks, but its still got that quality.

And I think I’ve already mentioned City of God and Oldboy before in other threads.

[apotheosis]

I think I liked Bigblotbob's review of City of God. He really summed it up... though you will greatly disagree end. He imed this to me, he submitted it to Urban Pollution.

"Why do people make movies? And do we, the critics, judge them based on what they're attempting to achieve or what how well they achieve it? Can one's failure spoil the other? I think City of God answers a few of these questions for me upon my having recently viewed it.
Firstly, why was it made? It seems through the symmetry of the narrative that Mierelles and Lund want to show the nihilistic cycle of poverty that leads small children to kill innocent people for money and bond together into gangs. They show the narrator/protagonist Rocket(Alexandre Rodrigues) growing up as his friends eventually all join and run gangs based on the sale of drugs and some kind of warped sense of order. Eventually they grow up to a certain point and their replacements who are given the most obvious introduction in the narration to let us know where they'll eventually end up:"That was the first time I met the runts." This is a noble cause, and the filmmakers should be commended for telling the truth about an awful situation in the world that most people aren't aware of.
Or should they?
The film seems to be trying very hard to make us know they don't condone the violence but never makes us feel why the violence is damaging to the youth and community. When studying the actual form of the film as opposed to it's anti-violence rhetoric(,hidden in the mechanical form as opposed to in it's dialogue, throwing the lay viewer off to it's true message,) you can see Mierelles' training in advertisements become apparent, and his need to remain comfortably within the meaningless viral medium as a hindrance to what could make the film effective. Mierelles and Lund have storyboarded all life out of their film, making it prey exclusively on the id and have the effect of actually glorifying the violence by refusing to let themselves feel for their characters, cynically distancing themselves through the constant cutting and handheld camera. The viewer is never shown suffering in any lasting way, and as a result it is ultimately numbing. Carl Dreyer's Joan of Arc was a deeply humanist film because it showed suffering unflinchingly and cut through it's intellectual justifications. City of God never shows any characters that are more than vessels for basic ideologies and narrative cliches. It, like a commercial, avoids all actual internal conflict in favor of the easy pull of repetitive rhythmic death; snuff with the same effect as a pornographic film. Like Ray Carney once said about Schindler's List, the viewer is meant to "...feel good about feeling bad."1
The characters never gain any depth and become absurdly comedic, rendering the film socially impotent. When the new gang of kids emerges at the end of the film, their rendering didn't give me a deeper feeling that their actions were an escape from their reality, but a nostalgic recollection of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. By trying to be non-judgmental the filmmakers have actually distorted the truth by phasing out the consequences of violence."

[End Master]

I probably liked it for the “wrong” reasons anyway. The “message” (or lack thereof) didn’t really matter to me one way or another. I understood that there was supposed to be some sort of anti-violence message in there and all of that. But I basically liked it for showing how fucked up the situation was and how utterly hopeless it seems. The more nihilistic it got the better.

I already knew about stuff like that going on in that part of the world anyway through docs and just reading up on it. Typically I go to the movies to be entertained in some way. I liked the story, the brutality and I liked how they showed passage of time. So it’s a good movie to me.

Over the top villains like L’il Zee don’t really bother me. If anything he was one of the better movie villains I’d seen in awhile. Movies generally have unrealistic bits in them anyway.

I think one of the other reasons why you don’t really feel anything for anyone though too, is because really none of the characters are all that sympathetic in the first place. Even Rocket who’s the only “good guy” in the film, is just so dull compared to all the gangster characters that you could care less about him in the scheme of things. He did serve the purpose of a narrator though.

Really other than Rocket, none of the other characters needed too much "depth." Their whole lives are basically about survival and killing. Just like predatory animals actually which is what most of them were. I think they showed just enough "depth" with a couple of the other major drug dealers who are presumably a little higher on the evolutionary scale, but again they're little more than animals so they really weren't going to be that "deep" to begin with. Hell, most people in real life (criminal or not) don't run too deep.

[donteatpoop]

Are you shitting me? Have you seen Ninja Scroll? It's one of the greatest animes of all time. Spirited Away ranks right up there with it.

Memento is also one of my favorite films.

Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs as well, but the Kill Bills (while entertaining) were not as hip as I had hoped they would be.

Four Rooms is one of the best comedies of all time.

Has anyone seen Mirror Mask yet? I've raved about this film for a few years now, but I'm apparently still the only one to see it.

Want to see a creepy fairy tale of sorts? Tideland was excellent.

[apotheosis]

Equal parts sadism, nihilism, hedonism with a dash voyeurism and wit and you have Endmaster.

[End Master]

I know. I’m terrible.

I got Ninja Scroll on DVD. I still haven’t seen Spirited Away though.

I’d say I also liked Pulp and Dogs more than the Kill Bills.

Didn’t see the others DEP mentioned. If you want dark comedies I'd recommend Death to Smoochy, Very Bad Things and Comic Book Villians.