truth 24 times per second: the new movie thread

[elpollodiablo]

Hey I thought I'd take the opportunity to plug one of my favorite film podcasts, Filmspotting. It's out of Chicago and generally quite good. And this week they're discussing No Country for Old Men which I am breathlessly awaiting.

filmspotting.net

[das kranke Tier]

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that during the two hours that I was watching it, on painkillers immediately after getting my wisdom teeth out, Hellboy was the best movie I've ever seen.

I refuse to revisit it and thus spoil the magic.

It's probably not the best movie you've ever seen, but I liked it, too.

I was made to sit down and watch it recently and it is indeed hell of entertaining!

[elpollodiablo]

Hell of stupid is more like it


THAT'S RIGHT


HELL OF DUMB

[Lindsay With An A]

Last night I watched Gerry. It was godawful. Now I'm slightly predisposed to hating on Gus Van Sant, but I really did give this one a fair chance and could not find anything redeeming about it. A lot of people seem to take it to be some deep philosophical film just because they think a film that boring as got to have some "deeper meaning" hidden somewhere, but Gerry is totally empty. And boring as shit.

Still, as much as I hated this movie, I am really happy that it was made. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that we're living in a world where a filmmaker can still use the money/recognition that he gets from doing a few bigger budget commercial films and then make something as masturbatory as Gerry. Theoretically, I can dig it.

I dunno, any suggestions of films that I might want to check out before writing GVS off forever?

PS - That new Joe Strummer movie is opening in DC this weekend. I'm so excited, it looks really great.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

I dunno, any suggestions of films that I might want to check out before writing GVS off forever?

No, all of his lower budget films are basically Gerry with different characters.

[maggiego]

The only thing by GVS I ever liked was his first-- it may even have been a student film-- called Mala Noche. It's not without its own problems, but it's definitely interesting, if only as a slice-of-life from raunchy 80s Portland. I am not sure whether it's DVD-available, as I saw it as part of a festival.

It's weird, because he seems smart and interesting when I have heard/read interviews, and then his films are really neither of those things.

[das kranke Tier]

I liked Drugstore Cowboy & My Own Private Idaho (though there are parts that cause me to cringe), but I really can't say that I've dug anything else of his.

[Lindsay With An A]

I am not sure whether it's DVD-available, as I saw it as part of a festival.

I'm pretty positive Criterion re-released it sometime within the past few months. That one looked pretty interesting, might have to check it out at some point.

[auto-da-fey]

I don't really dislike GVS, though Gerry does admittedly strain one's patience a bit.

[hannah]

I like Gerry! Not Elephant, though.

[das kranke Tier]

Elephant kinda bugged me the fuck out

[auto-da-fey]

Hell, the only GVS film I've truly and actively disliked is Psycho, unless you can count things you haven't seen, in which case Finding Forrester too.

[auto-da-fey]

Whoops, and Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues, which I did see, unfortunately. That was the worst.

[das kranke Tier]

Whoops, and Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues, which I did see, unfortunately. That was the worst.

Agreed.  A truly awful adaptation.

[hannah]

I have a friend who was all "Elephant just steals from Bela Tarr" which she meant as a negative. 1) That's good and 2) Elephant has too many other problems for that really to be the only point to quibble with. Grad students!

I like not italicizing any of the above. Elephants steal from Bela Tarr, too, you know.

[hannah]

Their lumbering, their greyness.

[das kranke Tier]

It's true....I seen 'em

[Sing The Children Over]

I have a friend who was all "Elephant just steals from Bela Tarr" which she meant as a negative. 1) That's good and 2) Elephant has too many other problems for that really to be the only point to quibble with. Grad students!

I like not italicizing any of the above. Elephants steal from Bela Tarr, too, you know.

Elelphant steals from Elephant. The 1989 Alan Clarke film. Which is forty minutes of nothing but executions in Northern Ireland. No dialogue. No characters. Nothing. Just long takes on steadicam followed by somone getting shot in the kneecaps. Weirdly Danny Boyle produced it. It was the last film Alan Clarke ever made. He died shortly after.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'm of the opinion that van sant did his only really great auteur-type work on "drugstore cowboy" and "my own private idaho" (maybe on the movie maggie mentioned too, i havent seen it), but that he has done ok when brought in to direct movies that are more the product of other people, i.e. "good will hunting", which i did like. "finding forrester" wasn't bad either. but anytime van sant really gets let loose to do whatever he wants, i tend to hate it. "psycho", "elephant", etc.

[G.C.R]

Well I really like GVS, what I've seen, which is just My Own Private Idaho, Elephant and Last Days. I really really dug all of them, and cool if you dont, but I thought they were all very good.

[auto-da-fey]

Ten minutes before the new Dario Argento movie began last night, Gaby and I were still stuck in lunatic traffic, thanks to some fucking football game or something at USC. But then suddenly everything clicked, and I even found free street parking a block away from the theater! So fate wanted us to see this movie. Mother of Tears: The Third Mother. It completes the trilogy begun by Suspiria and Inferno, and while it's marred by some serious flaws, I'm really glad we saw it on the big screen, because I can't imagine it getting distribution in the U.S.; not only is it too brutally violent for the MPAA censors, but it even kills some babies, which rarely flies in American horror cinema.

The film itself is not exactly narrative-driven; a centuries-old urn is discovered, and lunacy and violence engulf Rome as Asia Argento runs from place to place for often poorly-defined reasons. But plot isn't the point; her travails are just the template for compounding terror and intensity. Which director Argento often accomplishes, along with some unexpectedly shocking violence; the man has not been tamed by age. All of which makes for effective horror, but which is severely counteracted by some painfully awful material, from the dead mother who appears to Asia Obi-Wan Kenobi-flickering-spirit style to the coven of witches who look like coked-up Hot Topic models, both of which elicited audience laughter every time they appeared. Also Asia turns in a strangely lousy performance here, though as per family tradition she does a nude scene for her father, which is a little less disconcerting now that she's not a teenager.

Anyway, the film could have been a lot better, but it's still the best thing Argento has done in at least a decade (which I say as a Stendhal Syndrome defender; cross that out and it's his best since Phenomena)--which isn't really saying much, admittedly. 

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'm a fellow stendhal syndrome defender. that shit was brutal and awesome. i saw phantom of the opera a week later, and thankfully i saw them in that order, because if i'd seen phantom first, no way would i have bothered to watch stendhal syndrome. dario should have left that particular classic alone.

either way, thanks for the report on that movie. i'm very interested to see it, since it references the suspiria/inferno stuff--i loved those movies. i won't expect greatness, though.

[auto-da-fey]

Also watched Jess Franco's Night of the Skull, a really dull 1976 Agatha-Christie-style murder mystery with greedy relatives hoping to inherit from a dead guy while dying one by one. The sleaze-factor is inexplicably absent, as are Franco's trademarks like the crazy zooms and out-of-focus camera. This could have been directed by any b-movie hack, which makes for a thoroughly mediocre film but does bolster my case that Franco's typical films are marked not by incompetence, but by a volitional disregard for conventional cinematic aesthetics.

[auto-da-fey]

i'm a fellow stendhal syndrome defender. that shit was brutal and awesome. i saw phantom of the opera a week later, and thankfully i saw them in that order, because if i'd seen phantom first, no way would i have bothered to watch stendhal syndrome. dario should have left that particular classic alone.

Yeah, Phantom is pretty weak (though it does have its defenders, and not just among the uncritical-fanboy contingent). Stendhal, meanwhile, seems to get lumped with his other shitty 90s movies like Sleepless and Trauma, but I'm glad you agree that it transcends that dreck.

I hope you get to see Mother of Tears; his last movie, The Card Player, still hasn't received U.S. distribution, to the best of my knowledge, which doesn't bode well for this one (though Card Player was awful, and this one does have a semi-bankable star in Asia, so who knows).

[Sing The Children Over]

I doubt whether any Argento since Phenomena have been given a theatrical release in New Zealand at all. I also count myself as a Stendhal defender. The only one of his I find completely unwatchable is The Phantom. I'm actually kind of fond of Trauma. I feel a list coming on.
Top five Argento films: 1. Deep Red 2. Tenebre 3. Suspiria 4. Bird with the Crystal Plummage. 5. Opera.