The bad transfer is almost like an extra stylistic effect, making the story seem even more murky than as it was originally filmed--and it was plenty murky. Neal's Roberts probably isn't supposed to be but comes off as kind of deranged. One minute he's a sullen pushover, but then he flies off the handle at slight provocation. The strangest shift was probably at the beginning of the flashback, when he gets sore that his dame is moving to LA and promised not to speak to her ever again. Next thing, he's pounding away at the piano in his club without a band, playing really brilliantly except he keeps shifting to a new song every twenty seconds or so. That is something that didn't seem intentional, although I'd believe it was. It makes the whole thing seem just a little bit more like a memory--a much more interesting way of accomplishing that than the standard fog flying around everywhere through these early scenes.
Further evidence for the total subjectivity of the flashback: his gf, once she's out in LA, apparently just sits there waiting by the phone with a blank hopeful expression on her face. Roberts apparently only remembers his side of the conversation, as he doesn't leave time for her to respond to any of the questions he asks. There's even a cut to her open face while he just rambles right on through her lines. Maybe he was on speed? It's the only time he ever appears happy in the film, and it seems like crazy happiness, not just being really happy about anything. Also, I think he just got up in the middle of his shift playing the piano and left the club to make his manic phone call.
Best shot in the whole film is Ann Savage walking toward the car after Roberts says he'll give her a lift. It's held just a little longer than it needs to be for the effect of just pushing the plot along, and it's really kind of a beautiful shot, with Savage's road-weary face and hair and her sure stride. The length of the shot turns it into something far prettier than it was intended to be, and it's kind of funny that it was probably basically an editing blunder, because I don't know if the vocabulary for that type of shot quite existed yet at the time this was made. But it's pure film, right there.
Then, later, in the car, with Vera sitting in the passenger seat exactly as Haskell had when he died, and Roberts is talking about that very fact, and suddenly Vera's eyes are open! Totally creepy! I didn't see her eyes open or anything, and she doesn't move her head or body at all which just made it extra scary. Her eyes are just suddenly open and she's staring at him, and he doesn't notice at first so he just stares out ahead of the car and rambles on in the voiceover. Then, Bam! Closeup of Vera screeching, "What have you done with the body!" Really brilliant!
Ann Savage really does steal the movie. She seems to be the only one in the show who can actually act, and the way she screeches half her lines outshrews even Liz Taylor, but with barely even a breath she's sometimes all of a sudden very sexy. It's amazing how she goes from repulsive to sexy so quickly, often without the help even of changed camera angles or anything. But you never really feel anything about her but fear.
Really funny but kind of cheap how Roberts lectures Vera on the way to the used car guy about how she should let him do all the talking, but when they get there he doesn't say a word. And then in the voiceover he talks about "we haggled" for the right price, but it still seems like he probably didn't speak.
Also it was especially creepy that Vera seemed the most purely attractive and sexy when she was dead. She was shot to look beautiful at that point, even. Instead of showing what would have been a truly gruesome picture, most likely, at that point she becomes a true femme fatale.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Nightmare Alley
I definitely want to see this one again.
I wasn't expecting much. I just wanted to watch an old noir movie, and I didn't have any Netflix on hand, so I decided to try to find one on Netflix's Instant Viewing thing, but, surprisingly enough, it proved pretty hard to find old noir films they have ready for instant viewing. Nightmare Alley was the only one I found after about thirty minutes of searching, so I decided I'd settle for it. But I really was not expecting I'd find such an enjoyable little movie.
The whole "Are you going to marry her," seemed to me like a sinister version of that question as it's posed by all sorts of children, especially the way they forced Stan to marry the girl. It actually took me a couple of minutes to figure out that it might have been not as bizarre a thing for its setting. It was how they showed Stan had had sex with her.
wow I'm tired right now... write more later....
I wasn't expecting much. I just wanted to watch an old noir movie, and I didn't have any Netflix on hand, so I decided to try to find one on Netflix's Instant Viewing thing, but, surprisingly enough, it proved pretty hard to find old noir films they have ready for instant viewing. Nightmare Alley was the only one I found after about thirty minutes of searching, so I decided I'd settle for it. But I really was not expecting I'd find such an enjoyable little movie.
The whole "Are you going to marry her," seemed to me like a sinister version of that question as it's posed by all sorts of children, especially the way they forced Stan to marry the girl. It actually took me a couple of minutes to figure out that it might have been not as bizarre a thing for its setting. It was how they showed Stan had had sex with her.
wow I'm tired right now... write more later....
Killer of Sheep
(backlogged to 9/10/07, 1:21am)
I'm glad I found out about this movie being shown at the Red Vic, since it's apparently kind of hard to find.
After about two and a half weeks, the strongest image in my mind of this movie is the scene when Stan dances with his wife, the way she starts to so hungrily kiss and grope him and how distractedly he just kind of walks away; it could've come off as too disaffected like the worst Antonioni or something, but it doesn't, it felt really potent. And then Stan's wife standing there, and does she leave the frame or not? and the window, empty, divided into nine smaller squares of white against the dark gray and black everything else, burning away in the middle of the frame. The way Burnett held the shot, too, on just that empty window. It's just so amazing when the reality of a specific object in actual time pokes through the narrative of a movie. (is that maybe part of the secret of how this thing works?)
The whole part where Stan goes with his friend to get the motor, the quirky behavior of the people in the house who sell him the motor, his friend hurting his fingers and then carelessly leaving the motor on the back of the truck, that whole scene was probably the most narratively fulfilling: it was funny and heartbreaking, very much in the way of an old Italian movie, like Umberto D or The Bicycle Thief.
The scene toward the beginning with the kid peeking out from behind the wooden board and the other kids throwing rocks at him, that scene was kind of ruined by my reading of Ebert's review before watching it. I tried to hard to make what I was seeing seem as perfect as how it had sounded as described by Ebert: there's a true instance of a spoiler!
Many of the reviews had said the scenes in the slaughterhouse were so disturbing, but I wasn't really all that disturbed by them. I mean, slaughterhouses suck, but I already knew that. Why was that such a sticking point for so many of the reviewers?
I'm glad I found out about this movie being shown at the Red Vic, since it's apparently kind of hard to find.
After about two and a half weeks, the strongest image in my mind of this movie is the scene when Stan dances with his wife, the way she starts to so hungrily kiss and grope him and how distractedly he just kind of walks away; it could've come off as too disaffected like the worst Antonioni or something, but it doesn't, it felt really potent. And then Stan's wife standing there, and does she leave the frame or not? and the window, empty, divided into nine smaller squares of white against the dark gray and black everything else, burning away in the middle of the frame. The way Burnett held the shot, too, on just that empty window. It's just so amazing when the reality of a specific object in actual time pokes through the narrative of a movie. (is that maybe part of the secret of how this thing works?)
The whole part where Stan goes with his friend to get the motor, the quirky behavior of the people in the house who sell him the motor, his friend hurting his fingers and then carelessly leaving the motor on the back of the truck, that whole scene was probably the most narratively fulfilling: it was funny and heartbreaking, very much in the way of an old Italian movie, like Umberto D or The Bicycle Thief.
The scene toward the beginning with the kid peeking out from behind the wooden board and the other kids throwing rocks at him, that scene was kind of ruined by my reading of Ebert's review before watching it. I tried to hard to make what I was seeing seem as perfect as how it had sounded as described by Ebert: there's a true instance of a spoiler!
Many of the reviews had said the scenes in the slaughterhouse were so disturbing, but I wasn't really all that disturbed by them. I mean, slaughterhouses suck, but I already knew that. Why was that such a sticking point for so many of the reviewers?
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Deep Red
I read in a Reel.com review of Blowup that Dario Argento, who was a film critic at the time of Blowup, was upset by the invasion of the two teenage girls while David Hemmings is assembling the narrative of his photographs. He apparently thought it was indicative of Antonioni's inability to keep the plot moving. Which really seems to me like it was kind of the point of that scene, but whatever. The Reel.com review said something about Deep Red, which also stars David Hemmings, being Argento's response or corrective to Blowup. I think that negatively influenced my viewing of the film at first. I kept looking for parallels, or things that might seem to be directed at Blowup. Frankly, if this was meant to in some way one-up Blowup, it's a complete failure.
There are a lot of weird things in the movie, though. The Blue Bar: was it supposed to look like that famous painting of the Hollywood bar at night, the one with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean? I don't know enough about that painting, but the bar looked so much like it that it seems like the painting must either have been painted of the exact bar used in the film, or it was meant to look like that. I couldn't figure out what the point of the reference was there, though.
About the only thing that really seemed like a nod at all to Blowup was the way David Hemmings sees for just one second the murder-lady in the window when he walks into psychic-lady's house, but Argento lets it go by quickly and Hemmings is never really sure what he saw until the very end. That was easily the best thing about the movie, even though Argento almost ruined it with the flashback when Hemmings is investigating the apartment again. The flashback completely eliminated the question mark in the viewer's mind about what Hemmings saw.
The parts that were meant to be scary really worked, unless the violence was supposed to be scary. Especially the weird little robot thing that floats toward the professor before he gets killed. It was one of the most legitimately creepy things I've seen in a movie, especially because it seemed completely out of place. And then when it turns out not to be supernatural but to be a robot thing, well, that's not an explanation of why it's there. Also, the scene when David Hemmings sets the flashlight on the table and then hacks his way into the walled-in room, with the darkness behind the hole because of how bright the light immediately on this side of the hole is, was really creepy. Even the pulled back shot of Hemmings looking into the room with rotted corpse in the middle of his flashlight light was creepy.
At least in this movie, Argento obviously had some fascination with random things from the world being dangerous. Hemmings' little scare on the outside of the old house, when the facade starts crumbling beneath him was the first instance I can think of it, and it really was bad. It just seemed like random suspense for no reason, and the fact that it was because Hemmings had just stupidly decided to scale the side of the building without a ladder or anything made it even dumber. I mean, it was kind of funny, but completely out of the place for the movie. Then Carlo gets hooked by a passing garbage truck, is dragged through the streets until he's nearly dead, and has his head smooshed by a random passing car. All of which was actually pretty funny, I thought, but I wasn't sure that Argento meant it to be for laughs. And the final scene with murder-lady, Carlo's mom, who gets her necklace caught in the elevator which then beheads her. So anticlimactic from a plot point of view. And, really, the shot of her head being severed was kind of hilarious.
The murder scenes were easily the most compelling scenes in the movie, which was kind of the opposite of Belly of the Black Tarantula, in which the scenes with the investigator and his wife were most enjoyable to watch. The domestic scenes in this between Hemmings and reporter-chick were not especially compelling. There was this weird kind of slapstick thing going on with reporter-chick's car, and their conversations about chauvinism and feminism were really stupid. And the arm-wrestling scene? It's possible that was in there to make you think reporter-chick might be the killer, since she was demonstrating her strength. But overall, their romance seemed to come out of nowhere and Argento either didn't care enough to bother with it or really had no idea how to develop that kind of thing. It as interesting to the extent that reporter-chick seemed to be invading from some other movie every time she was on-screen. Then Argento seems to pretty much forget about her after she gets stabbed. Clearly, the relationship between Hemmings and reporter-chick was not as important as the amount of screen time it got.
Almost forgot: the conversation between Hemmings and Carlo about what Hemmings saw also seemed to in some way be a nod to Blowup. Was having it come out of Carlo's drunk ass meant to be mocking Blowup pretensions? It was all one shot, with Hemmings on the far left and Carlo on the far right, and most of the middle of the shot taken up by the statue of some reclining god. Really, it was almost a good shot. I wonder now if knowing who that god was would have added anything to it?
The other weirdest shot: Hemmings and reporter-chick walking down the hallway of the school. They kept looking at each other in a way that seemed like it was being kind of pointed out, especially reporter-chick, but it was unclear what the significance of it was. I actually really liked that. It was intriguing and not confusing in a bad way.
There are a lot of weird things in the movie, though. The Blue Bar: was it supposed to look like that famous painting of the Hollywood bar at night, the one with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean? I don't know enough about that painting, but the bar looked so much like it that it seems like the painting must either have been painted of the exact bar used in the film, or it was meant to look like that. I couldn't figure out what the point of the reference was there, though.
About the only thing that really seemed like a nod at all to Blowup was the way David Hemmings sees for just one second the murder-lady in the window when he walks into psychic-lady's house, but Argento lets it go by quickly and Hemmings is never really sure what he saw until the very end. That was easily the best thing about the movie, even though Argento almost ruined it with the flashback when Hemmings is investigating the apartment again. The flashback completely eliminated the question mark in the viewer's mind about what Hemmings saw.
The parts that were meant to be scary really worked, unless the violence was supposed to be scary. Especially the weird little robot thing that floats toward the professor before he gets killed. It was one of the most legitimately creepy things I've seen in a movie, especially because it seemed completely out of place. And then when it turns out not to be supernatural but to be a robot thing, well, that's not an explanation of why it's there. Also, the scene when David Hemmings sets the flashlight on the table and then hacks his way into the walled-in room, with the darkness behind the hole because of how bright the light immediately on this side of the hole is, was really creepy. Even the pulled back shot of Hemmings looking into the room with rotted corpse in the middle of his flashlight light was creepy.
At least in this movie, Argento obviously had some fascination with random things from the world being dangerous. Hemmings' little scare on the outside of the old house, when the facade starts crumbling beneath him was the first instance I can think of it, and it really was bad. It just seemed like random suspense for no reason, and the fact that it was because Hemmings had just stupidly decided to scale the side of the building without a ladder or anything made it even dumber. I mean, it was kind of funny, but completely out of the place for the movie. Then Carlo gets hooked by a passing garbage truck, is dragged through the streets until he's nearly dead, and has his head smooshed by a random passing car. All of which was actually pretty funny, I thought, but I wasn't sure that Argento meant it to be for laughs. And the final scene with murder-lady, Carlo's mom, who gets her necklace caught in the elevator which then beheads her. So anticlimactic from a plot point of view. And, really, the shot of her head being severed was kind of hilarious.
The murder scenes were easily the most compelling scenes in the movie, which was kind of the opposite of Belly of the Black Tarantula, in which the scenes with the investigator and his wife were most enjoyable to watch. The domestic scenes in this between Hemmings and reporter-chick were not especially compelling. There was this weird kind of slapstick thing going on with reporter-chick's car, and their conversations about chauvinism and feminism were really stupid. And the arm-wrestling scene? It's possible that was in there to make you think reporter-chick might be the killer, since she was demonstrating her strength. But overall, their romance seemed to come out of nowhere and Argento either didn't care enough to bother with it or really had no idea how to develop that kind of thing. It as interesting to the extent that reporter-chick seemed to be invading from some other movie every time she was on-screen. Then Argento seems to pretty much forget about her after she gets stabbed. Clearly, the relationship between Hemmings and reporter-chick was not as important as the amount of screen time it got.
Almost forgot: the conversation between Hemmings and Carlo about what Hemmings saw also seemed to in some way be a nod to Blowup. Was having it come out of Carlo's drunk ass meant to be mocking Blowup pretensions? It was all one shot, with Hemmings on the far left and Carlo on the far right, and most of the middle of the shot taken up by the statue of some reclining god. Really, it was almost a good shot. I wonder now if knowing who that god was would have added anything to it?
The other weirdest shot: Hemmings and reporter-chick walking down the hallway of the school. They kept looking at each other in a way that seemed like it was being kind of pointed out, especially reporter-chick, but it was unclear what the significance of it was. I actually really liked that. It was intriguing and not confusing in a bad way.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Blow Up
(with commentary)
For some reason, I was kind of excited when I saw there was audio commentary with auther Peter Brunette on the Netflix DVD I have, even though I have no idea who Peter Brunette is. I just tried watching it, but I could only make it about a third of the way through. I had to stop when Peter said, "presumably the line about queers and poodles wouldn't have made it into the script these days." Come on. Why not? Because he finds the line offensive, or because he assumes that everyone would find the line too offensive, or because he thinks everyone's more enlightened these days, or because he thinks the PC police would have stopped it? I mean, I assume this guy's supposed to be some kind of film historian or something, but does he watch any movies that actually come out these days? Of all the things in this movie that wouldn't make into a "Hollywood" film these days, why choose that to single out? Especially when I don't think there'd really be much fuss about the line anyway. What world does Peter Brunette live in?
The other problem with the commentary was just the general problem that many movie commentaries seem to have, which is that he kept talking about the film in such a way to avoid "spoilers," but why? Who is going to watch the movie for the first time with the commentary on? I think if you're doing a commentary, you can safely assume that anyone who listens to the commentary has already seen the movie at least once. So talk about the movie that way.
Peter Brunette, although he seems like a pleasant and intelligent enough guy, fell back too many times on his little critical tricks. Also, although he paid lip service to the complexity of the presentation of photog guy, he seemed incapable himself of anything but disgust for him. Even ordinary things like how he flips the camera from one hand to another, Brunette couldn't point out how suave it was without the word "suave" having some pretty obvious disgust quotes around it. Also, the fact that the junk shop leaves him utterly speechless is a little disappointing. He can't seem to talk about it because he doesn't know what it "means," because it doesn't fit into any of his critical tricks. Although I'm not saying this is the ultimate thing about the junk shop scene, it seems to me like at least one worthwhile conjecture is that photog guy is there because he thinks junk is interesting. Maybe Brunette couldn't offer that or another opinion because there wasn't anything easily condemnable about his interest in the junk shop? Who knows... Actually, it seemed to me like a simple case of not being able to offer any idea about the junk shop because he couldn't think of anything "profound" about it.
I really was hoping for an interesting commentary, though. Pretty much everything Brunette said about the film was obvious, surface-level criticism. "He's setting up a binary between the merry-makers and the poor people." Not only is that obvious, but it doesn't really expand on any of the oddness of the merry-makers. Or the fact that if that's all it is, it's a completely unbalanced binary, because the merry-makers veer so close to the completely surreal that the almost seem like they have to have some kind of rhetorical weight, whereas the poor people who come immediately after do not seem at all surreal. So while there's certainly an intentional juxtaposition of the merry-makers to the dour faces of the poor, they can't simply be a binary; they're not equivalent enough.
I worry, though, that by being so dismissive of Brunette but so emphatically in love with the movie that I'm setting Antonioni up to be "the master" just as much as Brunette so nauseatingly does in his commentary. Well... The film is a truly singular example of a spectacular film. Brunette's commentary is mediocre commentary. Nothing too disturbing about that formulation, I think. Or I want to think right now.
Another annoying thing Brunette did: all that talk about the camera being this "cold, medal" thing that was "mediating" between photog guy and the supermodel, or some such nonsense. Now, it is interesting that photog guy does seem to get some kind of emotional distance from reality through his camera, but that's more a psychological thing that's specific to him; there's nothing less real about taking a picture of something than just looking at that thing. Yes, it changes the way you're interacting with that thing, and just as with photog guy here it is possible for a person with a camera to use the camera for some kind of emotional distance from what they're photographing, but that's a psych thing, not an ideological thing. But simply taking a picture of something does not make your experience of that thing somehow less authentic. It merely is another aspect of your experience. The garbage Brunette spewed about the "cold, medal" camera was just lazy falling back on crit speak.
For some reason, I was kind of excited when I saw there was audio commentary with auther Peter Brunette on the Netflix DVD I have, even though I have no idea who Peter Brunette is. I just tried watching it, but I could only make it about a third of the way through. I had to stop when Peter said, "presumably the line about queers and poodles wouldn't have made it into the script these days." Come on. Why not? Because he finds the line offensive, or because he assumes that everyone would find the line too offensive, or because he thinks everyone's more enlightened these days, or because he thinks the PC police would have stopped it? I mean, I assume this guy's supposed to be some kind of film historian or something, but does he watch any movies that actually come out these days? Of all the things in this movie that wouldn't make into a "Hollywood" film these days, why choose that to single out? Especially when I don't think there'd really be much fuss about the line anyway. What world does Peter Brunette live in?
The other problem with the commentary was just the general problem that many movie commentaries seem to have, which is that he kept talking about the film in such a way to avoid "spoilers," but why? Who is going to watch the movie for the first time with the commentary on? I think if you're doing a commentary, you can safely assume that anyone who listens to the commentary has already seen the movie at least once. So talk about the movie that way.
Peter Brunette, although he seems like a pleasant and intelligent enough guy, fell back too many times on his little critical tricks. Also, although he paid lip service to the complexity of the presentation of photog guy, he seemed incapable himself of anything but disgust for him. Even ordinary things like how he flips the camera from one hand to another, Brunette couldn't point out how suave it was without the word "suave" having some pretty obvious disgust quotes around it. Also, the fact that the junk shop leaves him utterly speechless is a little disappointing. He can't seem to talk about it because he doesn't know what it "means," because it doesn't fit into any of his critical tricks. Although I'm not saying this is the ultimate thing about the junk shop scene, it seems to me like at least one worthwhile conjecture is that photog guy is there because he thinks junk is interesting. Maybe Brunette couldn't offer that or another opinion because there wasn't anything easily condemnable about his interest in the junk shop? Who knows... Actually, it seemed to me like a simple case of not being able to offer any idea about the junk shop because he couldn't think of anything "profound" about it.
I really was hoping for an interesting commentary, though. Pretty much everything Brunette said about the film was obvious, surface-level criticism. "He's setting up a binary between the merry-makers and the poor people." Not only is that obvious, but it doesn't really expand on any of the oddness of the merry-makers. Or the fact that if that's all it is, it's a completely unbalanced binary, because the merry-makers veer so close to the completely surreal that the almost seem like they have to have some kind of rhetorical weight, whereas the poor people who come immediately after do not seem at all surreal. So while there's certainly an intentional juxtaposition of the merry-makers to the dour faces of the poor, they can't simply be a binary; they're not equivalent enough.
I worry, though, that by being so dismissive of Brunette but so emphatically in love with the movie that I'm setting Antonioni up to be "the master" just as much as Brunette so nauseatingly does in his commentary. Well... The film is a truly singular example of a spectacular film. Brunette's commentary is mediocre commentary. Nothing too disturbing about that formulation, I think. Or I want to think right now.
Another annoying thing Brunette did: all that talk about the camera being this "cold, medal" thing that was "mediating" between photog guy and the supermodel, or some such nonsense. Now, it is interesting that photog guy does seem to get some kind of emotional distance from reality through his camera, but that's more a psychological thing that's specific to him; there's nothing less real about taking a picture of something than just looking at that thing. Yes, it changes the way you're interacting with that thing, and just as with photog guy here it is possible for a person with a camera to use the camera for some kind of emotional distance from what they're photographing, but that's a psych thing, not an ideological thing. But simply taking a picture of something does not make your experience of that thing somehow less authentic. It merely is another aspect of your experience. The garbage Brunette spewed about the "cold, medal" camera was just lazy falling back on crit speak.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Blow Up
2nd time
Memory is weird. I didn't remember at all the scene when photog guy goes and actually sees the corpse in the park, even though this time it seemed like a very striking scene. I wonder if it was so striking because I didn't remember it? When he went to the park the second time, I thought it was the scene when he went and found nothing, so the sudden presence of the corpse was rather alarming.
Also, at the end, I was sure there was a shot of a tennis ball bouncing away, or something like that. I was sure of it, in fact. I kept expecting it, and the whole time was composing this sentence in my head, "The final shot of the tennis ball bouncing is the only misstep in the whole movie." Does that mean, then, that there are no missteps in the whole movie?
I can still remember things about when I watched this for the first time, with Joe, who didn't like it at all, but it was one of those movies I didn't think all that much of at first. I thought there were some kind of intriguing things about it, but mostly was kind of boring. But letting it float around in my head for a while really worked apparently, because I knew well before I watched it this time that I'd like it a lot if I ever saw it again.
Seeing the scene with Vanessa Redgrave "dancing" to the music this time reminded me of something else I'd seen, but probably what it reminded me of was that very scene. The way she moves is amazing. Of all the near-explicitly surreal moments in the film, that is by far the best. I almost want to call it Lynchian, even though this was way before Lynch. I can't think of anything like it an any other movie I've seen, though.
Listing to the "music only" track right now. What a strange feature for a film with almost no music through the first five-thirteenths of the movie.
At present, Wikipedia has this to say about the movie:
"Ultimately, the film is about reality and how we perceive it or think we perceive it. This aspect is stressed by the final scene, one of many famous scenes in the film, when the photographer watches a mimed tennis match and, after a moment of amused hesitation, enters the mimes' own version of reality by picking up the invisible ball and throwing it back to the two players. A tight shot shows his continued watching of the match, and, suddenly, we even hear the ball being played back and forth. Another version of reality has been created. Then, at the very end, Hemmings, standing all alone in the green grass of the park, suddenly disappears, removed by his director, Antonioni."
I don't know why I find that such a stupid explanation of the movie. Is it "the film is about"? I don't know. But it not only seems really pretentious to me, it also fails completely to capture or explain what is so compelling about the movie. I mean, I guess whoever wrote that isn't a professional critic or anything... But I do imagine that it's probably a paraphrase of what's written an many Film 101 textbooks.
(later) The scene when Vanessa Redgrave disappears into the crowd is one of two Antonioni moments that I know of that are technically amazing. I have no idea how he did it. I slowed down the DVD, and I just can't figure out at all where she goes, how she disappears, etc. Maybe if I knew more about technical aspects of film it would be easy. Maybe it's a simple thing. But I can't see it. It doesn't look like it'd be possible for it to be a simple splice of one shot with her into one shot without her; there's too much else going on. The other scene is in The Passenger the final long shot looking through the window where the camera moves forward and somehow passes through the bars of the window, even though I know the camera must be too big to make it through there. How did he do it?! Brunette, of course, is no help, but he does point out the interesting (though obvious, but I had meant to write it here) point that when seeing that scene for the first time the viewer does wonder just as much as photog guy presumably does if he's actually seen Vanessa Redgrave standing there before she disappears. She's only there for a couple of seconds, and it of course takes a couple of seconds for us to recognize her, and then she's gone. And watching this movie in a theater when that was the only way it could be seen, wow that would've been frustrating. I would've had to pay to see it again and if what I really wanted to know was if she was there the I would've had to sit through the rest of it and try to remember exactly what to look for, and then it would've been over so quickly again, and I wouldn't have been sure if she really did disappear or if I just kind of lost her in the crowd of other people, and there would've always necessarily been a lot of time in between every time I was able to see it. What an incredibly frustrating bit of film.
Memory is weird. I didn't remember at all the scene when photog guy goes and actually sees the corpse in the park, even though this time it seemed like a very striking scene. I wonder if it was so striking because I didn't remember it? When he went to the park the second time, I thought it was the scene when he went and found nothing, so the sudden presence of the corpse was rather alarming.
Also, at the end, I was sure there was a shot of a tennis ball bouncing away, or something like that. I was sure of it, in fact. I kept expecting it, and the whole time was composing this sentence in my head, "The final shot of the tennis ball bouncing is the only misstep in the whole movie." Does that mean, then, that there are no missteps in the whole movie?
I can still remember things about when I watched this for the first time, with Joe, who didn't like it at all, but it was one of those movies I didn't think all that much of at first. I thought there were some kind of intriguing things about it, but mostly was kind of boring. But letting it float around in my head for a while really worked apparently, because I knew well before I watched it this time that I'd like it a lot if I ever saw it again.
Seeing the scene with Vanessa Redgrave "dancing" to the music this time reminded me of something else I'd seen, but probably what it reminded me of was that very scene. The way she moves is amazing. Of all the near-explicitly surreal moments in the film, that is by far the best. I almost want to call it Lynchian, even though this was way before Lynch. I can't think of anything like it an any other movie I've seen, though.
Listing to the "music only" track right now. What a strange feature for a film with almost no music through the first five-thirteenths of the movie.
At present, Wikipedia has this to say about the movie:
"Ultimately, the film is about reality and how we perceive it or think we perceive it. This aspect is stressed by the final scene, one of many famous scenes in the film, when the photographer watches a mimed tennis match and, after a moment of amused hesitation, enters the mimes' own version of reality by picking up the invisible ball and throwing it back to the two players. A tight shot shows his continued watching of the match, and, suddenly, we even hear the ball being played back and forth. Another version of reality has been created. Then, at the very end, Hemmings, standing all alone in the green grass of the park, suddenly disappears, removed by his director, Antonioni."
I don't know why I find that such a stupid explanation of the movie. Is it "the film is about"? I don't know. But it not only seems really pretentious to me, it also fails completely to capture or explain what is so compelling about the movie. I mean, I guess whoever wrote that isn't a professional critic or anything... But I do imagine that it's probably a paraphrase of what's written an many Film 101 textbooks.
(later) The scene when Vanessa Redgrave disappears into the crowd is one of two Antonioni moments that I know of that are technically amazing. I have no idea how he did it. I slowed down the DVD, and I just can't figure out at all where she goes, how she disappears, etc. Maybe if I knew more about technical aspects of film it would be easy. Maybe it's a simple thing. But I can't see it. It doesn't look like it'd be possible for it to be a simple splice of one shot with her into one shot without her; there's too much else going on. The other scene is in The Passenger the final long shot looking through the window where the camera moves forward and somehow passes through the bars of the window, even though I know the camera must be too big to make it through there. How did he do it?! Brunette, of course, is no help, but he does point out the interesting (though obvious, but I had meant to write it here) point that when seeing that scene for the first time the viewer does wonder just as much as photog guy presumably does if he's actually seen Vanessa Redgrave standing there before she disappears. She's only there for a couple of seconds, and it of course takes a couple of seconds for us to recognize her, and then she's gone. And watching this movie in a theater when that was the only way it could be seen, wow that would've been frustrating. I would've had to pay to see it again and if what I really wanted to know was if she was there the I would've had to sit through the rest of it and try to remember exactly what to look for, and then it would've been over so quickly again, and I wouldn't have been sure if she really did disappear or if I just kind of lost her in the crowd of other people, and there would've always necessarily been a lot of time in between every time I was able to see it. What an incredibly frustrating bit of film.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Superbad
As funny as expected. I'm really looking forward to watching Michael Cera's career. Hopefully it's a long one. Dude is hilarious.
The scene with Michael Cera singing in the room full of drugged out guys: I'd hate to think how that scene would've ended up in Adam Sandler's or most other comedy director's hands. Or maybe it was just all Michael Cera, and nobody could've fucked it up. The weird thing is when I saw that scene in the previews, I thought it was him trying to be cool with a bunch of friends or something, and it was exactly as funny.
Elliot thought the stuff with the cops was the funniest stuff; I definitely thought the interactions between Michael Cera and the guy who played Seth were the funniest. How much of that is because I loved Arrested Development so much?
I thought the blood on the pants thing veered a little too close to American Pie 2 territory for me, but I guess really the movie had no pretension to be anything other than a really good example of exactly that sort of thing, so it's probably unfair of me to be put of by it. But I still was.
Why is heterosexual male friendship always to be interpreted as homoerotic among a certain significant portion of the intelligentsia? It's always pronounced in this way that makes the pronouncer superior to the characters; like the pronouncer has seen through the two males' relationship in a way that the two characters would just never be able to. It seems, if anything, more an example of the way most people think men are just never not thinking about sex, or that men are oversexed or something. These two guys' friendship is indicative of their repressed homosexual longing for each other that they can never express because they are forcing themselves to be heterosexual, as if it were completely impossible for a man to feel closeness to another person without it being sexual. Sure, some guys might have problems expressing their emotions to each other because they've been conditioned to think of themselves as compulsively oversexed creatures who can't truly feel emotions without sex. Whenever there are movies about female friendship (which, sure, are sadly too rare and far less common than male friendship movies) there is not this kind of snarky chatter about how they're really lesbians.
Went to this with Patrick, Elliot, and Erin.
The scene with Michael Cera singing in the room full of drugged out guys: I'd hate to think how that scene would've ended up in Adam Sandler's or most other comedy director's hands. Or maybe it was just all Michael Cera, and nobody could've fucked it up. The weird thing is when I saw that scene in the previews, I thought it was him trying to be cool with a bunch of friends or something, and it was exactly as funny.
Elliot thought the stuff with the cops was the funniest stuff; I definitely thought the interactions between Michael Cera and the guy who played Seth were the funniest. How much of that is because I loved Arrested Development so much?
I thought the blood on the pants thing veered a little too close to American Pie 2 territory for me, but I guess really the movie had no pretension to be anything other than a really good example of exactly that sort of thing, so it's probably unfair of me to be put of by it. But I still was.
Why is heterosexual male friendship always to be interpreted as homoerotic among a certain significant portion of the intelligentsia? It's always pronounced in this way that makes the pronouncer superior to the characters; like the pronouncer has seen through the two males' relationship in a way that the two characters would just never be able to. It seems, if anything, more an example of the way most people think men are just never not thinking about sex, or that men are oversexed or something. These two guys' friendship is indicative of their repressed homosexual longing for each other that they can never express because they are forcing themselves to be heterosexual, as if it were completely impossible for a man to feel closeness to another person without it being sexual. Sure, some guys might have problems expressing their emotions to each other because they've been conditioned to think of themselves as compulsively oversexed creatures who can't truly feel emotions without sex. Whenever there are movies about female friendship (which, sure, are sadly too rare and far less common than male friendship movies) there is not this kind of snarky chatter about how they're really lesbians.
Went to this with Patrick, Elliot, and Erin.
The Long Goodbye
I absolutely loved this movie. Robert Altman seems to be a frustratingly mixed bag. This movie in incredible, and from what I remember I liked Nashville a lot, but it's been years since I saw that. Three Women was okay, but not even close to this, I think. Short Cuts was kind of interesting, but not only in a TV movie on a Sunday afternoon kind of way.
The camera is almost never still in this movie, but it's not jerky the way non-stationary cameras usually are on contemporary movies. The camera floats around outside of every scene. It's beautiful. I especially liked the way the camera sometimes would float backwards out of the scene, to the point that the actors seemed to be performing in the background, although there was nothing in the foreground. It's such a weird little touch that I can think of very few movies doing, and it would be really hard to do it, I think, without it becoming annoying. Maybe a lot of people would find it annoying here, too, but I, obviously, loved it.
Elliot Gould is really what makes the movie, though. His performance just might be one of my favorite film performances ever. The way he basically mumbles every line, to the point that it sometimes doesn't seem possible that the other characters actually hear anything he says. The effect of that little quirk is the viewer feels closer to Marlowe than any of the other characters, because it is almost like we're getting to hear his private thoughts--without any voiceover narration or any actual private thoughts being aired.
The cat in the first scene really acted like it lived in that house. I wonder how they did that. Was it actually the cat of the house? The cat also seemed really familiar with Elliot Gould, which makes me wonder if it was Gould's cat, if that was Gould's house. I doubt it, but however they did it, the cat looked really naturally at home, which I think is kind of amazing.
My favorite shot in the whole film came when the husband and wife were talking to each other and they sent Marlowe outside. So the scene is their discussion, which you see through the giant window, and in the reflection of the window you can see Marlowe strolling around on the beach, throwing stones or whatever. It is really a beautiful shot. It did seem a little out of place, though, only because it's the only time in the movie, I think, where there's a significant amount of time spent with Marlowe not as the focus of the scene, or not really present. There are small moments of that throughout, so it's not like it violates any precedent really, but the length and seeming significance of the shot did seem sort of out of place. The shot was so pretty, though, that it didn't really matter.
The chicks, though, who live in the apartment across the way from Marlowe, seemed like a total misstep by Altman. They were far enough outside the realm of normal human behavior that they bordered on surreal, which made them seem as if they must be there for some kind of symbolic purpose, but I don't think they really were supposed to be. I assume that simply the weird surreal thing is what Altman was going for, but they just didn't really bring anything to the film aside from the funny couple of lines by the guy who was supposed to be following Marlowe.
Also, from a plot standpoint, Marlowe tracking down his old friend in Mexico seemed closure enough. The fact that Marlowe then shot him was really jarring, and frankly I think it shouldn't have happened. Based on the little bit of the interview with Altman I watched, I assume this was supposed to be Marlowe's ultimate giving in to the new morality or lack thereof. It almost seemed like some sort of following of the dictum that the main character of a story must be a protagonist, which means he must undergo some kind of change. But the change seemed completely forced. It was not consistent with Marlowe as he was at any other point in the film. It seemed kind of like adding an exclamation point tacked on the end of an ellipsis. I have this idea that that's the sort of thing you have to deal with in Altman films, though: sometimes really misguided things put in that he probably thought were really smart or cool but are actually just kind of stupid.
The camera is almost never still in this movie, but it's not jerky the way non-stationary cameras usually are on contemporary movies. The camera floats around outside of every scene. It's beautiful. I especially liked the way the camera sometimes would float backwards out of the scene, to the point that the actors seemed to be performing in the background, although there was nothing in the foreground. It's such a weird little touch that I can think of very few movies doing, and it would be really hard to do it, I think, without it becoming annoying. Maybe a lot of people would find it annoying here, too, but I, obviously, loved it.
Elliot Gould is really what makes the movie, though. His performance just might be one of my favorite film performances ever. The way he basically mumbles every line, to the point that it sometimes doesn't seem possible that the other characters actually hear anything he says. The effect of that little quirk is the viewer feels closer to Marlowe than any of the other characters, because it is almost like we're getting to hear his private thoughts--without any voiceover narration or any actual private thoughts being aired.
The cat in the first scene really acted like it lived in that house. I wonder how they did that. Was it actually the cat of the house? The cat also seemed really familiar with Elliot Gould, which makes me wonder if it was Gould's cat, if that was Gould's house. I doubt it, but however they did it, the cat looked really naturally at home, which I think is kind of amazing.
My favorite shot in the whole film came when the husband and wife were talking to each other and they sent Marlowe outside. So the scene is their discussion, which you see through the giant window, and in the reflection of the window you can see Marlowe strolling around on the beach, throwing stones or whatever. It is really a beautiful shot. It did seem a little out of place, though, only because it's the only time in the movie, I think, where there's a significant amount of time spent with Marlowe not as the focus of the scene, or not really present. There are small moments of that throughout, so it's not like it violates any precedent really, but the length and seeming significance of the shot did seem sort of out of place. The shot was so pretty, though, that it didn't really matter.
The chicks, though, who live in the apartment across the way from Marlowe, seemed like a total misstep by Altman. They were far enough outside the realm of normal human behavior that they bordered on surreal, which made them seem as if they must be there for some kind of symbolic purpose, but I don't think they really were supposed to be. I assume that simply the weird surreal thing is what Altman was going for, but they just didn't really bring anything to the film aside from the funny couple of lines by the guy who was supposed to be following Marlowe.
Also, from a plot standpoint, Marlowe tracking down his old friend in Mexico seemed closure enough. The fact that Marlowe then shot him was really jarring, and frankly I think it shouldn't have happened. Based on the little bit of the interview with Altman I watched, I assume this was supposed to be Marlowe's ultimate giving in to the new morality or lack thereof. It almost seemed like some sort of following of the dictum that the main character of a story must be a protagonist, which means he must undergo some kind of change. But the change seemed completely forced. It was not consistent with Marlowe as he was at any other point in the film. It seemed kind of like adding an exclamation point tacked on the end of an ellipsis. I have this idea that that's the sort of thing you have to deal with in Altman films, though: sometimes really misguided things put in that he probably thought were really smart or cool but are actually just kind of stupid.
Black Belly of the Tarantula
My first giallo! Actually, it was a little tamer than I expected after the first couple of minutes. The first murder was by far the goriest, and I figured that each muder would escalate in goriness, but that wasn't the case. The first instead set the tone and you just let your imagination run away with what was going on in the other ones, if you wanted. Which I kind of didn't. Or did. I dunno.
I was surprised, though, that the most interesting parts of the movie were actually the parts when the inspector guy is just hanging out with his wife. Interesting in a way that was not at all forced. They didn't try to be anything other than just them hanging out, talking about furniture, I think, mostly. The sex scene was really nice and, well, loving. I assume it was done that way so when we see the rooftop peeping tom watching them, we don't feel implicated along with him. I think if there had been nudity in that scene (or more nudity), if it had been filmed to be an obviously sexy sex scene that the viewer is supposed to get off on, we would have then felt complicit when it cut to the peeping tom guy watching them. It also helped us feel extra embarassed for him when all the police are watching the tape and making crude comments. It was all handled actually kind of deftly in a movie that elsewhere has a decent amount of boobs and blood, and opens with a long slow shot up and down the naked body of the woman getting the massage.
The score was wonderful, of course. Ennio Morricone rules. I especially liked the whispers and hums that seemed to come out at random times.
The whole "psychological" explanation of the killers motives seemed kind of pointless, though, if an obvious nod to Hitchcock. It didn't add anything really to the movie, because we were never wondering about what made the killer click. Kind of like how all the investigation into the life of that VTech shooter guy and his movies and his plays and stuff doesn't make the tragedy any less disturbing or more meaningful, if that had been the point of the final scene. But I don't think it was the point. It seemed like they thought it was some kind of necessary conclusion to that part of the story, but it just seemed empty to me. A place where "depth" isn't actually deep, doesn't actually open up your understanding of anything. It's really just more noise.
I was surprised, though, that the most interesting parts of the movie were actually the parts when the inspector guy is just hanging out with his wife. Interesting in a way that was not at all forced. They didn't try to be anything other than just them hanging out, talking about furniture, I think, mostly. The sex scene was really nice and, well, loving. I assume it was done that way so when we see the rooftop peeping tom watching them, we don't feel implicated along with him. I think if there had been nudity in that scene (or more nudity), if it had been filmed to be an obviously sexy sex scene that the viewer is supposed to get off on, we would have then felt complicit when it cut to the peeping tom guy watching them. It also helped us feel extra embarassed for him when all the police are watching the tape and making crude comments. It was all handled actually kind of deftly in a movie that elsewhere has a decent amount of boobs and blood, and opens with a long slow shot up and down the naked body of the woman getting the massage.
The score was wonderful, of course. Ennio Morricone rules. I especially liked the whispers and hums that seemed to come out at random times.
The whole "psychological" explanation of the killers motives seemed kind of pointless, though, if an obvious nod to Hitchcock. It didn't add anything really to the movie, because we were never wondering about what made the killer click. Kind of like how all the investigation into the life of that VTech shooter guy and his movies and his plays and stuff doesn't make the tragedy any less disturbing or more meaningful, if that had been the point of the final scene. But I don't think it was the point. It seemed like they thought it was some kind of necessary conclusion to that part of the story, but it just seemed empty to me. A place where "depth" isn't actually deep, doesn't actually open up your understanding of anything. It's really just more noise.
Nemesis
8/13/07 Laptop alone 1:00pm
I remember watching this movie at my dad's apartment in Yankton, or I remember my dad watching it. I'm pretty sure it was this movie anyway; the Netflix version was a TV edit and the only image I remembered strongly from the movie was a butt. I'm pretty sure I know which scene it was from, but there was no butt. Mainly I remember the butt and the gritty neo-noir type feel copped from Blade Runner, which describes the first half of the movie fairly well. The title sounds right. It must have been this movie.
I think I mostly read a book while dad watched it, because I was pretty contemptuous of movies like this. Not a "real" movie, just a stupid scifi actioner. Now I'm almost more interested in movies like this than "real" movies, sometimes.
The opening action scenes were actually pretty bad, though. The type that remind me of the gunfights in The Life Aquatic, where people just pose in the middle of the frame and fire their guns, and then you cut to the people whom they're aiming at and watch various of them get hit or other things explode around them. No attempt to make individual gunshots correspond to any individual hits. The characters firing generally don't even appear to be aiming at all. Sometimes they hold their guns stationary; sometimes they wave them around in broad circles. The effect is the same. I wonder why even bother shot an action scene like that. You'd think if you're making an action movie you'd at least be interested in the action enough to try to make it have some kind of order or sense to it.
It's weird how the movie seemed to completely changed once it moved to Java. All of a sudden, the villains got way more weird, as if they just let the actors go crazy. Where it seemed like it was trying to strike a "restrained" note through the first half of the movie, once they go to Java it seemed to be much more about just trying to have fun.
The "fun" seemed most present with the weird well-dressed smiling guy cyborg, who showed up about ten cuts before he really became relevant, almost as if the movie was trying to warn us that we should be ready for him. He seemed to be kind of equivalent to a later level boss in a game like Final Fight or something. He was built up to be like some kind of badass, but as soon as he's dead he doesn't matter. As soon as he enters the movie for real, though, he jumps main-character-cyborg guy and they fall through a window on what appeared to be one of those giant slides they have at carnivals that you ride down in a potato sack. This quick trip down the slide led to two of the weirdest shots in the whole movie. The first came as the two are struggling, with smiling guy on top trying to choke main character guy, and first there's a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, a close up of smiling guy making a weird facial expression and reaching toward the camera. This shot is followed a few seconds later by a shot of what is supposed to again be a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, but this time the background behind smiling guy is all pink and glowy, and he's not wearing a shirt, appears to actually be standing still, and smiling open-mouthed at the camera, when his face cracks open to reveal a gun behind his right eye. They'd had a cyborg do this earlier, but the weirdest part about it was that he wasn't wearing shirt, which made him look like he actually was naked. One of those moments that's almost more surreal than anything an a "surrealist" movie, since it's not lingered on or presented as a surreal moment or anything.
The other interesting thing comes at the end of the slide, when main character guy shoves smiling cyborg's head into a big pipe that's suspended over the slide. Then we watch as the cyborg, whose head is apparently stuck in the pipe and possibly completely destroyed, we watch as his body, practically hanging from the pipe, the lower parts of the legs limp, the arm pointing a gun and randomly firing into the air, making the body wobble back and forth. It's really a pretty creepy little shot. Possibly one of the only shots in the whole movie that really works on the level it's intended to.
Throughout the movie, the characters keep making references to the main character guy's level of humanity. "86.5% is still human!" he says. "You're practically a cyborg anyway. You should join us!" The funny thing is the movie doesn't really seem interested in the slightest in the question of whether he's still "human" with all the mechanical parts in him, which ultimately isn't really that interesting of a question anyway. But it's brought up in just about every conversation main character guy has with another character. It's like the movie thought it had to pay lip service to the idea since it was a science fiction movie and there is often this idea that science fiction movies should explore some kind of question like that, at least a little bit. But really it was nothing more than a recitation of the question. And, ironically, the question probably would've seemed more relevant to the movie if it'd never even been mentioned.
I remember watching this movie at my dad's apartment in Yankton, or I remember my dad watching it. I'm pretty sure it was this movie anyway; the Netflix version was a TV edit and the only image I remembered strongly from the movie was a butt. I'm pretty sure I know which scene it was from, but there was no butt. Mainly I remember the butt and the gritty neo-noir type feel copped from Blade Runner, which describes the first half of the movie fairly well. The title sounds right. It must have been this movie.
I think I mostly read a book while dad watched it, because I was pretty contemptuous of movies like this. Not a "real" movie, just a stupid scifi actioner. Now I'm almost more interested in movies like this than "real" movies, sometimes.
The opening action scenes were actually pretty bad, though. The type that remind me of the gunfights in The Life Aquatic, where people just pose in the middle of the frame and fire their guns, and then you cut to the people whom they're aiming at and watch various of them get hit or other things explode around them. No attempt to make individual gunshots correspond to any individual hits. The characters firing generally don't even appear to be aiming at all. Sometimes they hold their guns stationary; sometimes they wave them around in broad circles. The effect is the same. I wonder why even bother shot an action scene like that. You'd think if you're making an action movie you'd at least be interested in the action enough to try to make it have some kind of order or sense to it.
It's weird how the movie seemed to completely changed once it moved to Java. All of a sudden, the villains got way more weird, as if they just let the actors go crazy. Where it seemed like it was trying to strike a "restrained" note through the first half of the movie, once they go to Java it seemed to be much more about just trying to have fun.
The "fun" seemed most present with the weird well-dressed smiling guy cyborg, who showed up about ten cuts before he really became relevant, almost as if the movie was trying to warn us that we should be ready for him. He seemed to be kind of equivalent to a later level boss in a game like Final Fight or something. He was built up to be like some kind of badass, but as soon as he's dead he doesn't matter. As soon as he enters the movie for real, though, he jumps main-character-cyborg guy and they fall through a window on what appeared to be one of those giant slides they have at carnivals that you ride down in a potato sack. This quick trip down the slide led to two of the weirdest shots in the whole movie. The first came as the two are struggling, with smiling guy on top trying to choke main character guy, and first there's a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, a close up of smiling guy making a weird facial expression and reaching toward the camera. This shot is followed a few seconds later by a shot of what is supposed to again be a POV shot from main character guy's perspective, but this time the background behind smiling guy is all pink and glowy, and he's not wearing a shirt, appears to actually be standing still, and smiling open-mouthed at the camera, when his face cracks open to reveal a gun behind his right eye. They'd had a cyborg do this earlier, but the weirdest part about it was that he wasn't wearing shirt, which made him look like he actually was naked. One of those moments that's almost more surreal than anything an a "surrealist" movie, since it's not lingered on or presented as a surreal moment or anything.
The other interesting thing comes at the end of the slide, when main character guy shoves smiling cyborg's head into a big pipe that's suspended over the slide. Then we watch as the cyborg, whose head is apparently stuck in the pipe and possibly completely destroyed, we watch as his body, practically hanging from the pipe, the lower parts of the legs limp, the arm pointing a gun and randomly firing into the air, making the body wobble back and forth. It's really a pretty creepy little shot. Possibly one of the only shots in the whole movie that really works on the level it's intended to.
Throughout the movie, the characters keep making references to the main character guy's level of humanity. "86.5% is still human!" he says. "You're practically a cyborg anyway. You should join us!" The funny thing is the movie doesn't really seem interested in the slightest in the question of whether he's still "human" with all the mechanical parts in him, which ultimately isn't really that interesting of a question anyway. But it's brought up in just about every conversation main character guy has with another character. It's like the movie thought it had to pay lip service to the idea since it was a science fiction movie and there is often this idea that science fiction movies should explore some kind of question like that, at least a little bit. But really it was nothing more than a recitation of the question. And, ironically, the question probably would've seemed more relevant to the movie if it'd never even been mentioned.
Rocket Science
8/10/07 Embarcadero, w/ Elliot, 7:30pm
Indie-comedy paint-by-numbers, (Rushmore + Royal Tenenbaums + Squid and the Whale + Napoleon Dynamite + Election + Thumbsucker), which isn't meant here to be a criticism. The movie was extremely enjoyable. Afterwards, I told Elliot, "It made me wish I was in high school again," which them prompted me to go off about how much fun all that angst was, which ultimately let to me saying something like "It was all [the angst] so visceral!," and "I mean, it wasn't fun at the time. But looking back on it is fun to remember." Any movie that makes me wax nostalgic about high school must have done something right.
What made this most different from Rushmore, and part of the reason why it probably isn't as good or why it would not hold up to nearly as many repeat viewings as Rushmore, is that the movie is very much from the perspective of the main character. The viewer sympathizes with him, and as much as we laugh at him trying to throw the cello through the window, in the end we want him to get it through. You can't really ever see him from another character's perspective. In Rushmore, it's easy to watch it from the point of view of Bill Murray's character, or the teacher lady. It's also easy to see Max from the perspective of his little friend or his father or the headmaster. In Rocket Science, the other characters exist only insofar as they matter to the main character.
The only possible exception is the character of his father, who avoids that fate mainly by not appearing in the movie after the opening scene until the closing scene, which is possibly the best scene in the whole movie. The way the father at first doesn't even answer the kid's question and instead starts to talk about how he had trouble getting off the interstate to pick up the kid instantly gives the father way more depth as a character than anyone aside from the kid. And the weary way in which he finally does answer the question with pretty much "I don't know," tired but not exasperated at the kid. The scene also opens up the world of the two characters because the conversation is obviously just another scene in the relationship of the two, a relationship we haven't really seen at all. Really, the whole movie is probably best viewed as a perfectly entertaining setup to the final scene in the car.
The other great thing in the car is the moment when the kid says something about how one day he's going to find a way to say what he needs to say at that moment. Like Elliot said, it makes you hope the movie is autobiographical at least a little bit, and that the movie is in some way the way the kind found to speak.
The voiceover narration that opens the movie at first felt a little to close to that of Royal Tenenbaums', but it was written really well and was actually quite a bit denser than RT's. I couldn't figure out why Elliot & I were the only two laughing; it was hilarious.
Indie-comedy paint-by-numbers, (Rushmore + Royal Tenenbaums + Squid and the Whale + Napoleon Dynamite + Election + Thumbsucker), which isn't meant here to be a criticism. The movie was extremely enjoyable. Afterwards, I told Elliot, "It made me wish I was in high school again," which them prompted me to go off about how much fun all that angst was, which ultimately let to me saying something like "It was all [the angst] so visceral!," and "I mean, it wasn't fun at the time. But looking back on it is fun to remember." Any movie that makes me wax nostalgic about high school must have done something right.
What made this most different from Rushmore, and part of the reason why it probably isn't as good or why it would not hold up to nearly as many repeat viewings as Rushmore, is that the movie is very much from the perspective of the main character. The viewer sympathizes with him, and as much as we laugh at him trying to throw the cello through the window, in the end we want him to get it through. You can't really ever see him from another character's perspective. In Rushmore, it's easy to watch it from the point of view of Bill Murray's character, or the teacher lady. It's also easy to see Max from the perspective of his little friend or his father or the headmaster. In Rocket Science, the other characters exist only insofar as they matter to the main character.
The only possible exception is the character of his father, who avoids that fate mainly by not appearing in the movie after the opening scene until the closing scene, which is possibly the best scene in the whole movie. The way the father at first doesn't even answer the kid's question and instead starts to talk about how he had trouble getting off the interstate to pick up the kid instantly gives the father way more depth as a character than anyone aside from the kid. And the weary way in which he finally does answer the question with pretty much "I don't know," tired but not exasperated at the kid. The scene also opens up the world of the two characters because the conversation is obviously just another scene in the relationship of the two, a relationship we haven't really seen at all. Really, the whole movie is probably best viewed as a perfectly entertaining setup to the final scene in the car.
The other great thing in the car is the moment when the kid says something about how one day he's going to find a way to say what he needs to say at that moment. Like Elliot said, it makes you hope the movie is autobiographical at least a little bit, and that the movie is in some way the way the kind found to speak.
The voiceover narration that opens the movie at first felt a little to close to that of Royal Tenenbaums', but it was written really well and was actually quite a bit denser than RT's. I couldn't figure out why Elliot & I were the only two laughing; it was hilarious.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
(8/10/07 w/Elliot & Patrick, the Mariott at California Extreme in San Jose, 7:00pm)
1) Really funny and snappily edited in most places. The 3-D animation of the 2-D games was a great touch; there should've been more of it.
2) I think they were really trying to just make every person in the story as human as possible, but because of the number of people and the short run time, it kind of ends up just showing off the funniest aspects of their lives for us to gawk at. What a bunch of bizarre geeks!
3) The cut from the two guys explaining their bread knife technique of getting the high score on Track & Field and how that "just blew everyone's mind," to the critic, who'd obviously just been told the story, saying, "that blows my mind!" Excellent.
4) Why was Mr. Awesome in this movie? He didn't seem to have any real connection with anyone else in the movie, and it kind of seemed like he was just there for us to point and laugh at. Granted, he was hilarious, but the time wasted on him could have been better spent on some of the actual subjects of the film.
5) Like Elliot said, even though I'd spent the whole day playing old video games before I watched this, when it was over I just wanted to go play more video games.
1) Really funny and snappily edited in most places. The 3-D animation of the 2-D games was a great touch; there should've been more of it.
2) I think they were really trying to just make every person in the story as human as possible, but because of the number of people and the short run time, it kind of ends up just showing off the funniest aspects of their lives for us to gawk at. What a bunch of bizarre geeks!
3) The cut from the two guys explaining their bread knife technique of getting the high score on Track & Field and how that "just blew everyone's mind," to the critic, who'd obviously just been told the story, saying, "that blows my mind!" Excellent.
4) Why was Mr. Awesome in this movie? He didn't seem to have any real connection with anyone else in the movie, and it kind of seemed like he was just there for us to point and laugh at. Granted, he was hilarious, but the time wasted on him could have been better spent on some of the actual subjects of the film.
5) Like Elliot said, even though I'd spent the whole day playing old video games before I watched this, when it was over I just wanted to go play more video games.
The Driver
(8/12/07 laptop, by myself, 4:30 pm)
1) I have to find more movies with Bruce Dern in them. He is awesome.
2) This movie really gives a good sense of being in the city it's filmed in. The way the characters wander around back alleys and the cars fly up and down empty night streets, it feels like it's actually happening in a real place that real people live in.
3) I like that the movie didn't go out of its way to try to invent some pop-psych motive for the characters, especially the Driver. In the hands of lamer folks, there would have been a scene between the Driver and the alibi chick where she asks him why he lives like he does, and either through flashback or based on something he says, we would learn that he was abused as a child or that his dad abandoned him or something--all done under the false impression that it would somehow make his character more "interesting." Instead, it's not even clear what the Driver does when he's not driving other than lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling. If the viewer wants, she can invent all the psychological trauma for him that she can.
4) The car chases are actually kind of beautiful, especially the shots from the "front" of the car, with the bright buildings shining in the black night sky.
5) The whole scene on the AmTrak seemed kind of pointless, though. I'd have cut it. Or at least made it shorter. It messed with the rhythm of the film just a little bit.
1) I have to find more movies with Bruce Dern in them. He is awesome.
2) This movie really gives a good sense of being in the city it's filmed in. The way the characters wander around back alleys and the cars fly up and down empty night streets, it feels like it's actually happening in a real place that real people live in.
3) I like that the movie didn't go out of its way to try to invent some pop-psych motive for the characters, especially the Driver. In the hands of lamer folks, there would have been a scene between the Driver and the alibi chick where she asks him why he lives like he does, and either through flashback or based on something he says, we would learn that he was abused as a child or that his dad abandoned him or something--all done under the false impression that it would somehow make his character more "interesting." Instead, it's not even clear what the Driver does when he's not driving other than lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling. If the viewer wants, she can invent all the psychological trauma for him that she can.
4) The car chases are actually kind of beautiful, especially the shots from the "front" of the car, with the bright buildings shining in the black night sky.
5) The whole scene on the AmTrak seemed kind of pointless, though. I'd have cut it. Or at least made it shorter. It messed with the rhythm of the film just a little bit.
Happy Birthday, Wanda June
8/9/07 The Castro, by myself, 5:15pm
1) I'm really glad I got to see this. Hopefully it gets a DVD release. I wasn't even aware Vonnegut had ever penned a screenplay.
2) In the vein of Edward Albee-like theater of the absurd, with more straight comedy so it's nowhere near as oppressive as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Vonnegut lets the gags take over, and while he does the tension between Penelope Ryan and the returned Harold Ryan is significantly more compelling than during the final twenty minutes, when the gags mostly drop and it focuses in on Harold and Penelope. The final climactic condemnation of Harold Ryan--"You're a clown! That's what you are! A clown!"--kind of misses whatever mark it was aiming for, since up until that point, everyone in the movie is a clown except for Penelope.
3) Wanda June's monologue is the most inspired thing in the whole movie. "Don't feel bad about killing someone, because they're in Heaven now and they're happy you killed them." Sort of the opposite of the running South Park gag where everyone who is dead is in Hell--which always seemed to be a dig at the Evangelical belief that everyone who isn't born again is going to Hell--here the joke seems to be more about the very idea of an afterlife at all, or at least the idea that moving on to an afterlife is just like moving to a new place you can only get to by dying.
4) William Hickey was hilarious as Looseleaf Harper. Too bad it looks like he mostly had small roles in movies around this time. Never heard of him before.
5) The other funniest thing in the movie was the at once obvious and subtle joke when the Baron stands outside the bar in Heaven and takes a leak, followed by a cut to Harold and his son standing on a balcony, where it suddenly starts to rain.
1) I'm really glad I got to see this. Hopefully it gets a DVD release. I wasn't even aware Vonnegut had ever penned a screenplay.
2) In the vein of Edward Albee-like theater of the absurd, with more straight comedy so it's nowhere near as oppressive as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Vonnegut lets the gags take over, and while he does the tension between Penelope Ryan and the returned Harold Ryan is significantly more compelling than during the final twenty minutes, when the gags mostly drop and it focuses in on Harold and Penelope. The final climactic condemnation of Harold Ryan--"You're a clown! That's what you are! A clown!"--kind of misses whatever mark it was aiming for, since up until that point, everyone in the movie is a clown except for Penelope.
3) Wanda June's monologue is the most inspired thing in the whole movie. "Don't feel bad about killing someone, because they're in Heaven now and they're happy you killed them." Sort of the opposite of the running South Park gag where everyone who is dead is in Hell--which always seemed to be a dig at the Evangelical belief that everyone who isn't born again is going to Hell--here the joke seems to be more about the very idea of an afterlife at all, or at least the idea that moving on to an afterlife is just like moving to a new place you can only get to by dying.
4) William Hickey was hilarious as Looseleaf Harper. Too bad it looks like he mostly had small roles in movies around this time. Never heard of him before.
5) The other funniest thing in the movie was the at once obvious and subtle joke when the Baron stands outside the bar in Heaven and takes a leak, followed by a cut to Harold and his son standing on a balcony, where it suddenly starts to rain.
The Bourne Ultimatum
(8/2/07, 8/8/07. alone, both times, AMC Metreon. 11:00am, 9:50pm)
1) Action fun with a serious face, that is sometimes gleeful about its own machinations but can't ever crack a smile, as opposed to Die Hard, which was like a little kid on a roller coaster, ear-to-ear grin the whole time.
2) All the quick cuts make everything seem extremely precise, even the shaky camera. I could almost believe Greengrass planned every little twitch.
3) Really liked the shot of, um... what was his name... the "source" for the British journalist, when they're meeting, how the corner made by the journalist's shoulder and neck frames the source's right eye, then he rubs his forehead and sighs and tilts his head a bit and locks his other eye right into the same position. Dunno why, just seemed really pretty.
4) The Bourne Ultimate Democrat Fantasy: people with consciences inside the gov't release to the public the secret bad stuff, and then Congress comes down on the officials competently and powerfully. Pamela Landy for President!!!
5) An all-out dis of the War on Terror by the guy who directed United 93? Is he trying to karmically pay for it, or is United 93 not the pure propaganda job I figured it for?
1) Action fun with a serious face, that is sometimes gleeful about its own machinations but can't ever crack a smile, as opposed to Die Hard, which was like a little kid on a roller coaster, ear-to-ear grin the whole time.
2) All the quick cuts make everything seem extremely precise, even the shaky camera. I could almost believe Greengrass planned every little twitch.
3) Really liked the shot of, um... what was his name... the "source" for the British journalist, when they're meeting, how the corner made by the journalist's shoulder and neck frames the source's right eye, then he rubs his forehead and sighs and tilts his head a bit and locks his other eye right into the same position. Dunno why, just seemed really pretty.
4) The Bourne Ultimate Democrat Fantasy: people with consciences inside the gov't release to the public the secret bad stuff, and then Congress comes down on the officials competently and powerfully. Pamela Landy for President!!!
5) An all-out dis of the War on Terror by the guy who directed United 93? Is he trying to karmically pay for it, or is United 93 not the pure propaganda job I figured it for?
Rescue Dawn
(8/2/07 alone, at Embarcadero Center, 4:00pm)
1) The thing is, it's a very good movie, but it's hard not to wonder why exactly Herzog made it. Somehow, by making it into a well done war/prison/survival/escape movie, the movie becomes less compelling than the story as told in "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."
2) Probably because of "Little Dieter," it was impossible to ever really feel like Bale was actually the character he was portraying, in the way it normally when watching a good movie. Not at all to fault Bale's performance.
3) My favorite pure poetic/Herzog moment from "Little Dieter," was when the slo-mo napalming video was played with the weird bouncy tribal/folk music over it. Herzog uses the same bit of film here, this time zoomed in on specific parts, with more traditional movieclassical music played over it. Again, the result is that it's not as compelling here as it was in "Little Dieter," or at least not in the same way.
4) Is this in some way a kind of indictment of the traditional Hollywood war/prison/survival/escape-type film? Nothing specifically about the movie itself made me think that, but reflection on the differences between this and "Little Dieter" has made me wonder. I need to see "Little Dieter" again. Even if that wasn't Herzog's intention, I think this movie ultimately functions that way. "Indictment" is the wrong word.
5) Yet another. I was way more disturbed by Dengler's recounting of his friend's death in "Little Dieter" than I was by the portrayal of it here. Here it just felt kind of like another in a long line of such events being dramatized in a movie. There it was singularly horrifying. I need to watch both of these movies again.
1) The thing is, it's a very good movie, but it's hard not to wonder why exactly Herzog made it. Somehow, by making it into a well done war/prison/survival/escape movie, the movie becomes less compelling than the story as told in "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."
2) Probably because of "Little Dieter," it was impossible to ever really feel like Bale was actually the character he was portraying, in the way it normally when watching a good movie. Not at all to fault Bale's performance.
3) My favorite pure poetic/Herzog moment from "Little Dieter," was when the slo-mo napalming video was played with the weird bouncy tribal/folk music over it. Herzog uses the same bit of film here, this time zoomed in on specific parts, with more traditional movieclassical music played over it. Again, the result is that it's not as compelling here as it was in "Little Dieter," or at least not in the same way.
4) Is this in some way a kind of indictment of the traditional Hollywood war/prison/survival/escape-type film? Nothing specifically about the movie itself made me think that, but reflection on the differences between this and "Little Dieter" has made me wonder. I need to see "Little Dieter" again. Even if that wasn't Herzog's intention, I think this movie ultimately functions that way. "Indictment" is the wrong word.
5) Yet another. I was way more disturbed by Dengler's recounting of his friend's death in "Little Dieter" than I was by the portrayal of it here. Here it just felt kind of like another in a long line of such events being dramatized in a movie. There it was singularly horrifying. I need to watch both of these movies again.
The Simpsons Movie
(7/27/07 Century in SF Center 8:00pm w/Patrick, Elliot, Erin)
1)Just like an 87 minute episode that they worked really hard on and filled with as many jokes as possible, and pretty much everything works.
2)A guy sitting behind me said "What the hell?!" at every funny bit in the dumbest-sounding voice imaginable. What an unfortunate way to laugh.
3)Some chick came dressed as Marge and then everyone sang her "Happy Birthday" for some reason.
4)What was with the previews, though? It's like they thought that since it's an animated movie they show previews of family and kid movies. Some demographer messed that one up!
5)Someone should put out a collection of songs that Homer sings. The Spider-pig song was probably my favorite bit in the movie.
1)Just like an 87 minute episode that they worked really hard on and filled with as many jokes as possible, and pretty much everything works.
2)A guy sitting behind me said "What the hell?!" at every funny bit in the dumbest-sounding voice imaginable. What an unfortunate way to laugh.
3)Some chick came dressed as Marge and then everyone sang her "Happy Birthday" for some reason.
4)What was with the previews, though? It's like they thought that since it's an animated movie they show previews of family and kid movies. Some demographer messed that one up!
5)Someone should put out a collection of songs that Homer sings. The Spider-pig song was probably my favorite bit in the movie.
The Last Man on Earth
(7/23/07 laptop, archive.org, 1:00am, just me)
1) Vincent Price was definitely not a physical actor. Why the hell would you put your hand in your pocket before throwing a burning torch? And his attempt to casually lean back onto an outdoor table has got to be one of the creepiest bits of forced nonchalance I've ever seen. The fact that he actually outruns somebody is probably the least believable thing in the whole movie.
2) In the flashback scene, I just couldn't tell if Price was married to the younger hot lady or if he was her dad. It looked like he was trying to kiss her on the face, but it's hard to tell really what the hell he was doing, and all of his other contact with her looked very paternal.
3) When Vincent Price's little granddaughter or daughter was dying on her bed, the half-assed way the little girl didn't even bother to pretend she was acting blind while saying, "Mommy, I can't see you!" actually kind of made the scene more interesting than it would've been if they'd used a competent child actor. I think more movies should use kids who aren't interested in acting like they're in a scene for little bit parts like that.
4) "No. I won't let them put you there, Virg. I promise. No. I won't let them put you there." If only he'd stood there shaking his head and repeating himself over and over again, as the camera zoomed in slowly so you could see with ever-increasing clarity his jowls flabbing back and forth, until the camera finally did that thing where it gets so close to his face that it loses its focus, and then faded out. That would have been amazing.
5) "There was a time when I shopped for a car. Now I'm looking for a hearse." It's somewhat disorienting when a well performed line pops up out of nowhere after half an hour of poorly written dialogue being poorly performed. This film definitely suffers when there's not a voiceover. Price's voice is so good for it that it almost makes sense why he'd be cast in the lead here.
1) Vincent Price was definitely not a physical actor. Why the hell would you put your hand in your pocket before throwing a burning torch? And his attempt to casually lean back onto an outdoor table has got to be one of the creepiest bits of forced nonchalance I've ever seen. The fact that he actually outruns somebody is probably the least believable thing in the whole movie.
2) In the flashback scene, I just couldn't tell if Price was married to the younger hot lady or if he was her dad. It looked like he was trying to kiss her on the face, but it's hard to tell really what the hell he was doing, and all of his other contact with her looked very paternal.
3) When Vincent Price's little granddaughter or daughter was dying on her bed, the half-assed way the little girl didn't even bother to pretend she was acting blind while saying, "Mommy, I can't see you!" actually kind of made the scene more interesting than it would've been if they'd used a competent child actor. I think more movies should use kids who aren't interested in acting like they're in a scene for little bit parts like that.
4) "No. I won't let them put you there, Virg. I promise. No. I won't let them put you there." If only he'd stood there shaking his head and repeating himself over and over again, as the camera zoomed in slowly so you could see with ever-increasing clarity his jowls flabbing back and forth, until the camera finally did that thing where it gets so close to his face that it loses its focus, and then faded out. That would have been amazing.
5) "There was a time when I shopped for a car. Now I'm looking for a hearse." It's somewhat disorienting when a well performed line pops up out of nowhere after half an hour of poorly written dialogue being poorly performed. This film definitely suffers when there's not a voiceover. Price's voice is so good for it that it almost makes sense why he'd be cast in the lead here.
The Karate Kid
(7/12/07 Dolores Park, w/Ell, Erin, Patrick, Zab, others, 7/12/07 9:30pm. Probably 5th or 6th time?)
1) Watching this in a crowded park made it really obvious how structurally good the movie is. There was at least one thing to cheer about every ten minutes.
2) The payoff scene when Miagi shows Daniel how all his hard work waxing on and off was really karate training is just incredibly emotionally satisfying. One of those scenes I wish I could forget about just so I could see it again for the first time, as it were.
3) Another film with a perfect ending. They don't even bother with a denouement, because what would be the point? He kicks evil guy's face, evil guy cries in admiration while he gives Daniel the trophy, everyone cheers, The End.
4) No wonder my younger self had such a huge crush on Elisabeth Shue: she was the gf in this movie and Back to the Future II. It was like a conspiracy to make me fall in love with her.
5) The shower Halloween costume has got to be the best Halloween costume ever. I want to meet the person who thought of that.
1) Watching this in a crowded park made it really obvious how structurally good the movie is. There was at least one thing to cheer about every ten minutes.
2) The payoff scene when Miagi shows Daniel how all his hard work waxing on and off was really karate training is just incredibly emotionally satisfying. One of those scenes I wish I could forget about just so I could see it again for the first time, as it were.
3) Another film with a perfect ending. They don't even bother with a denouement, because what would be the point? He kicks evil guy's face, evil guy cries in admiration while he gives Daniel the trophy, everyone cheers, The End.
4) No wonder my younger self had such a huge crush on Elisabeth Shue: she was the gf in this movie and Back to the Future II. It was like a conspiracy to make me fall in love with her.
5) The shower Halloween costume has got to be the best Halloween costume ever. I want to meet the person who thought of that.
City Lights
(7/9/07, castro theater w/Ell&Erin, 7:00p)
1) This movie is just good and fun and happy and beautiful
2) The ending is perfect, and it would make a good example if one were making an argument for the relevance of silent films. No amount of dialogue could have made that ending any better or more perfectly executed. All he needed to do was smile shyly. Reminds me of the likewise perfect ending of Before Sunset: it's all in the way Julie Delpy dances and Ethan Hawke smiles. And, of course, the fadeout.
3) Interesting how the drunk driving scenes are played up for light laughs. I can't imagine anything but the crassest of contemporary comedies using drunk driving in that way.
4) I love the early twentieth century faith and hope in science demonstrated by the blindness cure. Of course science will cure blindness! And then the blind person will be happier and more prosperous! (or maybe some of the prosperousness had to do with the thousand dollars the tramp gave her... also, I think the newspaper said the procedure was free for poor people, so I'm not exactly sure why she needed the money for it...)
5)Easily the greatest boxing scene ever filmed.
1) This movie is just good and fun and happy and beautiful
2) The ending is perfect, and it would make a good example if one were making an argument for the relevance of silent films. No amount of dialogue could have made that ending any better or more perfectly executed. All he needed to do was smile shyly. Reminds me of the likewise perfect ending of Before Sunset: it's all in the way Julie Delpy dances and Ethan Hawke smiles. And, of course, the fadeout.
3) Interesting how the drunk driving scenes are played up for light laughs. I can't imagine anything but the crassest of contemporary comedies using drunk driving in that way.
4) I love the early twentieth century faith and hope in science demonstrated by the blindness cure. Of course science will cure blindness! And then the blind person will be happier and more prosperous! (or maybe some of the prosperousness had to do with the thousand dollars the tramp gave her... also, I think the newspaper said the procedure was free for poor people, so I'm not exactly sure why she needed the money for it...)
5)Easily the greatest boxing scene ever filmed.
The Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer
(6/23/07 AMC Loews in Metreon w/Ell. 7:00p)
The single biggest problem with this movie (aside from Galactus being an apparently non-sentient space-tornado) is that the Silver Surfer is able to stop Galactus single-handedly... and survive! Which means that it was within the Surfer's power to stop Galactus the whole time, and he really had no motivation NOT to stop him, but he simply sat back and watched Galactus devour all the other planets he'd devoured... How did no one on the writing staff for this movie not notice that?
The single biggest problem with this movie (aside from Galactus being an apparently non-sentient space-tornado) is that the Silver Surfer is able to stop Galactus single-handedly... and survive! Which means that it was within the Surfer's power to stop Galactus the whole time, and he really had no motivation NOT to stop him, but he simply sat back and watched Galactus devour all the other planets he'd devoured... How did no one on the writing staff for this movie not notice that?
American Cannibal
(6/24/07. Red Vic w/Ell & Erin. 7:00p)
1) My fellow filmgoer said to me that there would have certainly been ways for the makers of the documentary to find out if the girl had actually died or not, and I'm unsure about whether or not that's true, but I definitely was a little uncomfortable about the way they kind of made the confusion the focal point of the end. I guess, if you're making a documentary and someone in that documentary suddenly and unexpectedly almost dies, it would be pretty difficult to resist the feeling that you'd just struck oil, at least for the part of you that is thinking constantly about how you can shape everything you're filming into a narrative. The death of an innocent is, after all, pretty damn dramatic. But if you're trying to make a point that reality TV is disgusting because the people making it are cavalier about the lives their filming, jumping all over the result of that carelessness and running around the country to shoot the insouciant face of that girl's brother seems to kind of loosen your foothold on the moral high ground. I guess if they reall do have no idea what happened to the girl, though, there's not much else to do with it.
2) I sort of kept expecting throughout the film that there would be some dramatic "reveal" moment, where the audience would suddenly be let in on some level of trickery or plotting on the parts of either Gil & Dave or the documentary filmers. I kind of still am expecting that.
1) My fellow filmgoer said to me that there would have certainly been ways for the makers of the documentary to find out if the girl had actually died or not, and I'm unsure about whether or not that's true, but I definitely was a little uncomfortable about the way they kind of made the confusion the focal point of the end. I guess, if you're making a documentary and someone in that documentary suddenly and unexpectedly almost dies, it would be pretty difficult to resist the feeling that you'd just struck oil, at least for the part of you that is thinking constantly about how you can shape everything you're filming into a narrative. The death of an innocent is, after all, pretty damn dramatic. But if you're trying to make a point that reality TV is disgusting because the people making it are cavalier about the lives their filming, jumping all over the result of that carelessness and running around the country to shoot the insouciant face of that girl's brother seems to kind of loosen your foothold on the moral high ground. I guess if they reall do have no idea what happened to the girl, though, there's not much else to do with it.
2) I sort of kept expecting throughout the film that there would be some dramatic "reveal" moment, where the audience would suddenly be let in on some level of trickery or plotting on the parts of either Gil & Dave or the documentary filmers. I kind of still am expecting that.
Live Free or Die Hard
(6/28/07. Century 9 in SF Center, alone. 1:00p)
1) Bruce Willis has a nearly perfect head.
2) Classic Hollywood computers! When the bad guys try to kill Mac guy's puter, it says "UPLOADING VIRUS."
3) Every shot in this movie is super slick, so it's weird when Mac guy and Bruce Willis are arguing at Woodlawn and there's a rather obvious editing fake, and Mac guy is obviously not saying the things you hear his voice saying.
4) "Yippee-ki-yay mother[blam]" ?! I didn't even notice it was PG-13 until that point. Why the fuck was this movie PG-13?
5) The "Asteroids" arcade machine in Warlock's basement. I wanted them to stop the movie so I could play it.
1) Bruce Willis has a nearly perfect head.
2) Classic Hollywood computers! When the bad guys try to kill Mac guy's puter, it says "UPLOADING VIRUS."
3) Every shot in this movie is super slick, so it's weird when Mac guy and Bruce Willis are arguing at Woodlawn and there's a rather obvious editing fake, and Mac guy is obviously not saying the things you hear his voice saying.
4) "Yippee-ki-yay mother[blam]" ?! I didn't even notice it was PG-13 until that point. Why the fuck was this movie PG-13?
5) The "Asteroids" arcade machine in Warlock's basement. I wanted them to stop the movie so I could play it.
The Muppet Movie
(7/1/07. YBCA w/Elliot & Erin. 3:00p)
1) Kermit, by himself, singing, "Life's like a movie. Write your own ending." Gave me goosebumps.
2) When Miss Piggy pulled Kermit down into the bushes, where the camera couldn't see them any more, I definitely had some disturbing images running through my poor little head.
3) It's always good to see a little Steve Martin from back when he was just about the funniest guy on the planet.
4) Plus: Richard Pryor? James Coburn?! Orson Welles!!
5) I wish I had never known about Gonzo's relationship with his chicken. I grew up on Muppet Babies, and being a chickenlover is not where I wanted to see Gonzo go... I'll try to remember him floating majestically away with his balloons instead.
1) Kermit, by himself, singing, "Life's like a movie. Write your own ending." Gave me goosebumps.
2) When Miss Piggy pulled Kermit down into the bushes, where the camera couldn't see them any more, I definitely had some disturbing images running through my poor little head.
3) It's always good to see a little Steve Martin from back when he was just about the funniest guy on the planet.
4) Plus: Richard Pryor? James Coburn?! Orson Welles!!
5) I wish I had never known about Gonzo's relationship with his chicken. I grew up on Muppet Babies, and being a chickenlover is not where I wanted to see Gonzo go... I'll try to remember him floating majestically away with his balloons instead.
Transformers
(7/4/07. AMC Loews in Metreon, w/Elliot & Erin. 4:00p)
1) Michael Bay, you still suck, but this movie was awesome!
2) John Turturro should be in every movie.
3) The hot girl telling John Turturro to take his clothes off after Bumblebee peed on him: creepy. The "S7" superman insignia on the front and "SIMMONS" like a jersey name on the back of his wife-beater: hilarious!
4) Witwicky and the hot chick didn't feel weird that the Transformers just kind of sat there and stared at them while they were making out? Couldn't the Autobots at least have revved their engines in conspiratorial approval of Witwicky, or something? Would that have made it more or less creepy?
5) Spontaneous applause when Megatron says, "I AM MEGATRON!!!" to the giant empty chamber he's just thawed out in. That's how you know a flick's good.
1) Michael Bay, you still suck, but this movie was awesome!
2) John Turturro should be in every movie.
3) The hot girl telling John Turturro to take his clothes off after Bumblebee peed on him: creepy. The "S7" superman insignia on the front and "SIMMONS" like a jersey name on the back of his wife-beater: hilarious!
4) Witwicky and the hot chick didn't feel weird that the Transformers just kind of sat there and stared at them while they were making out? Couldn't the Autobots at least have revved their engines in conspiratorial approval of Witwicky, or something? Would that have made it more or less creepy?
5) Spontaneous applause when Megatron says, "I AM MEGATRON!!!" to the giant empty chamber he's just thawed out in. That's how you know a flick's good.
The Great Dictator
7/6/07. Laptop in by bedroom, by myself, 11:00pm
1) This film is not at all self-contained. I don't know if it would be possible to really judge it in any way except as a response to the rise of fascism in Europe. You could try but you'd kind of be missing the point.
2) So its 1938 or so and you're the most famous filmmaker in the world, and its obvious to you that what's happening with Hitler in Europe is all sorts of fucked up, but for some reason a huge percentage of everyone else is not seeing coming what you're seeing coming. What more could you think of to do than to make a film portraying Hitler as absoulutely ridiculous?
3) What did it mean to be the most famous filmmaker in the world in the late '30s? Certainly it meant something different than it would mean today. How would you feel about your film if five years later it turned out that the guy you did everything you could to make appear absurd was responsible for the horrific deaths of millions of people? I mean, at least you tried, but how would that effect your idea of the potential power of film?
4) So many hilarious moments in this film, but the ballet Hynkel does with the balloon/globe thing was funny and beautiful and pathetic and horrifying all at once, especially when he lays on his desk and bounces it in the air with his butt.
5) Film critics are dumb. The barber's speech at the end is effective because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the film. It's not a flaw.
1) This film is not at all self-contained. I don't know if it would be possible to really judge it in any way except as a response to the rise of fascism in Europe. You could try but you'd kind of be missing the point.
2) So its 1938 or so and you're the most famous filmmaker in the world, and its obvious to you that what's happening with Hitler in Europe is all sorts of fucked up, but for some reason a huge percentage of everyone else is not seeing coming what you're seeing coming. What more could you think of to do than to make a film portraying Hitler as absoulutely ridiculous?
3) What did it mean to be the most famous filmmaker in the world in the late '30s? Certainly it meant something different than it would mean today. How would you feel about your film if five years later it turned out that the guy you did everything you could to make appear absurd was responsible for the horrific deaths of millions of people? I mean, at least you tried, but how would that effect your idea of the potential power of film?
4) So many hilarious moments in this film, but the ballet Hynkel does with the balloon/globe thing was funny and beautiful and pathetic and horrifying all at once, especially when he lays on his desk and bounces it in the air with his butt.
5) Film critics are dumb. The barber's speech at the end is effective because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the film. It's not a flaw.
Thesis Statement
This post sort of functions as the thesis statement for this blog.
I wanted to start keeping track of every movie that I watched, plus where/when/w/whom I watched it. It seemed like a project that would be way easier to accomplish as a blog than on paper, since a blog could easily store everything and would allow easy searching for when I wanted to look back to see what I'd thought about a movie, or something.
The reason for wanting to do this in the first place is that I watch a lot of movies, and I wanted to start keeping some kind of record of that so I could look back and see just how many movies I'd watched, and also to prevent myself from becoming a totally passive viewer. If I'm going to be spending such a large portion of my time on this activity, I'd like to make it productive for myself in some way. I can't help it; I'm just built like that.
That said, what I'm not really interested in doing is rating or reviewing movies. A lot of movies that are technically bad end up making me think a lot more than movies that are technically very good. Or at least an equal amount. So this is my little space for that.
I wanted to start keeping track of every movie that I watched, plus where/when/w/whom I watched it. It seemed like a project that would be way easier to accomplish as a blog than on paper, since a blog could easily store everything and would allow easy searching for when I wanted to look back to see what I'd thought about a movie, or something.
The reason for wanting to do this in the first place is that I watch a lot of movies, and I wanted to start keeping some kind of record of that so I could look back and see just how many movies I'd watched, and also to prevent myself from becoming a totally passive viewer. If I'm going to be spending such a large portion of my time on this activity, I'd like to make it productive for myself in some way. I can't help it; I'm just built like that.
That said, what I'm not really interested in doing is rating or reviewing movies. A lot of movies that are technically bad end up making me think a lot more than movies that are technically very good. Or at least an equal amount. So this is my little space for that.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
(written 8/23/07, 11:14pm)
2nd time.
The opening shot of this movie is, I think, better than anything else that follows it, but not because the rest isn't really good. The opening shot is one of the most pure examples of that thing that I mostly only find in Herzog movies that I rarely find anywhere else. There are some other good examples of it throughout the movie, but the opening shot presents it without any connection to anything else, so it's not diluted in any way by the narrative around it.
Could a whole film be made of nothing but these moments? To what extent is "Fata Morgana" an example of that? I don't know... I need to watch "Fata Morgana" again...
The German title is kind of amazing, but I guess "The Enigma" is really a better title. Hard to say, though. I like the way the German title works on a more purely poetic level, I'd say. Or, at least, an associative level. It's not just a name for the movie but adds something to the meaning of it. (meaning? ugh...)
The weird flattened shots that are maybe supposed to be through Kaspar's eyes are also good examples of that Herzogian thing; also, the scene with the blind guy playing the piano, and that amazing little song he sings. I wish I knew if it was really a song.
Even though the penultimate scene with the doctors satisfying their perverse curiosity by taking Kaspar's body apart and dissecting his brain is an obvious Romantic argument by Herzog against the dispassion of science and I probably wouldn't agree with him about it exactly, the scene works in exactly the way he wants it to. Those scientists are fucking dicks. Put Kaspar back together!
Another example of pre-Lynching Lynch: the scene when Kaspar runs back to the doctor after being stabbed, with his arms in the weird position the whole time he's running and his mouth open in a silent scream (is it silent? I definitely remember expecting it to be silent, but now that I think about it he may have actually been making some nows when he ran on screen, just not a normal "OHMYGODIVEBEENSTABBED" noise.) Bruno S. pulls it off exactly.
Overall, though, I just can't buy into Herzog's argument that Kaspar is somehow "smarter" than the nineteenth-century intellectual straw men Herzog surrounds him with. It's a definite example of Herzog getting in his own way. Sure, there were many problems with nineteenth-century thought, but trying to make it like someone who just has pure thought, undiluted by society, will naturally turn into a person who says things that make more sense or are more amusing to a twentieth-century audience is kind of silly. Things we think now will seem kind of dull to people in a hundred years; not necessarily because they are dull, but because that's just how these things work.
Also, like The Elephant Man or many other movies, this is an example of allowing the audience to congratulate itself for being morally superior to "humanity," by presenting an intriguing character who is obviously misunderstood by the cretins around him. The audience gets to feel good about itself for understanding in a way none of the other characters in the film do, and it's not because the film has opened up a way into the character in such an effective way, but just because that's how the film's set up. In The Elephant Man and, I think, most examples of this type of thing, it's tolerance for the grotesque or, more generally, "tolerance" in general, that the audience gets to feel good about. Here, it's more along the lines of seeing through the superficialities of intellectual thought. I just can't trust that type of thing unless the film has tried equally as hard to make the other viewpoint as understandable, but I'm not sure if that could really be done.
Aguirre, though, doesn't fall into this habit of forcing the audience into identification with some character. The audience most likely does identify the most with the dark-haired chick in Aguirre, but she's not really a major character. Anyway, it's not like Herzog isn't capable of making a movie in such a way that doesn't try to make the audience feel good about itself, but that's obvious how much of Kaspar Hauser works.
Which is sort of like something I remember thinking about while watching it this time: that this is one of the few Herzog movies where part of what is so fascinating about the movie is the psychology of the protagonist. In that way, I suppose, the film kind of has to try to make the audience identify with Kaspar, so that the opening up of his mind can be as fascinating as Herzog wanted it to be. But in the end I guess I have to say I prefer the more Herzogian stuff in other Herzog movies. Need a better way of describing that...
2nd time.
The opening shot of this movie is, I think, better than anything else that follows it, but not because the rest isn't really good. The opening shot is one of the most pure examples of that thing that I mostly only find in Herzog movies that I rarely find anywhere else. There are some other good examples of it throughout the movie, but the opening shot presents it without any connection to anything else, so it's not diluted in any way by the narrative around it.
Could a whole film be made of nothing but these moments? To what extent is "Fata Morgana" an example of that? I don't know... I need to watch "Fata Morgana" again...
The German title is kind of amazing, but I guess "The Enigma" is really a better title. Hard to say, though. I like the way the German title works on a more purely poetic level, I'd say. Or, at least, an associative level. It's not just a name for the movie but adds something to the meaning of it. (meaning? ugh...)
The weird flattened shots that are maybe supposed to be through Kaspar's eyes are also good examples of that Herzogian thing; also, the scene with the blind guy playing the piano, and that amazing little song he sings. I wish I knew if it was really a song.
Even though the penultimate scene with the doctors satisfying their perverse curiosity by taking Kaspar's body apart and dissecting his brain is an obvious Romantic argument by Herzog against the dispassion of science and I probably wouldn't agree with him about it exactly, the scene works in exactly the way he wants it to. Those scientists are fucking dicks. Put Kaspar back together!
Another example of pre-Lynching Lynch: the scene when Kaspar runs back to the doctor after being stabbed, with his arms in the weird position the whole time he's running and his mouth open in a silent scream (is it silent? I definitely remember expecting it to be silent, but now that I think about it he may have actually been making some nows when he ran on screen, just not a normal "OHMYGODIVEBEENSTABBED" noise.) Bruno S. pulls it off exactly.
Overall, though, I just can't buy into Herzog's argument that Kaspar is somehow "smarter" than the nineteenth-century intellectual straw men Herzog surrounds him with. It's a definite example of Herzog getting in his own way. Sure, there were many problems with nineteenth-century thought, but trying to make it like someone who just has pure thought, undiluted by society, will naturally turn into a person who says things that make more sense or are more amusing to a twentieth-century audience is kind of silly. Things we think now will seem kind of dull to people in a hundred years; not necessarily because they are dull, but because that's just how these things work.
Also, like The Elephant Man or many other movies, this is an example of allowing the audience to congratulate itself for being morally superior to "humanity," by presenting an intriguing character who is obviously misunderstood by the cretins around him. The audience gets to feel good about itself for understanding in a way none of the other characters in the film do, and it's not because the film has opened up a way into the character in such an effective way, but just because that's how the film's set up. In The Elephant Man and, I think, most examples of this type of thing, it's tolerance for the grotesque or, more generally, "tolerance" in general, that the audience gets to feel good about. Here, it's more along the lines of seeing through the superficialities of intellectual thought. I just can't trust that type of thing unless the film has tried equally as hard to make the other viewpoint as understandable, but I'm not sure if that could really be done.
Aguirre, though, doesn't fall into this habit of forcing the audience into identification with some character. The audience most likely does identify the most with the dark-haired chick in Aguirre, but she's not really a major character. Anyway, it's not like Herzog isn't capable of making a movie in such a way that doesn't try to make the audience feel good about itself, but that's obvious how much of Kaspar Hauser works.
Which is sort of like something I remember thinking about while watching it this time: that this is one of the few Herzog movies where part of what is so fascinating about the movie is the psychology of the protagonist. In that way, I suppose, the film kind of has to try to make the audience identify with Kaspar, so that the opening up of his mind can be as fascinating as Herzog wanted it to be. But in the end I guess I have to say I prefer the more Herzogian stuff in other Herzog movies. Need a better way of describing that...
Aguirre the Wrath of God
(written 8/23/2007, 10:51)
2nd time. The first time I saw this was on my 25th birthday, and I wrote a poem out of it. At the time, it was maybe the second or third Herzog movie I'd seen, and I was still trying to figure him out. I definitely had not decided he does things in his films that are completely different from the way most movies work, and seem in some ways more related to poetry than to novels. Although generally there's still an overall narrative around them, I'm referring mostly to isolated scenes in Herzog movies, whose power is not at all taken from the narrative of the movie, but are just perfect images or bits of film or whatever exactly you call them...
Before the movie, they ran a preview for "Le Doulos," during which some annoying guy behind me clapped loudly when the name of the lead actor (who was also the lead in Breathless) was shown. Same guy clapped really loudly when the words "Directed by Werner Herzog" were on screen. Yeah, I get it, you've seen Breathless... you know who Werner Herzog is (although, really, why the hell would be be attending a double feature of Herzog movies if you didn't at least know who he is?)... Shut up!
The movie definitely seemed a lot slower the first time I saw it. I was surprised to find out this time that it's actually only slightly under two hours long. It felt far tighter, this time. Also, definitely a different translation, which confused me at first, because the first line of my poem, "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the mountain pass," was taken from the subtitles, and this time it was translated as "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the clouds." Frankly, I like the second translation better, but no idea if it's more accurate or anything.
I had this distinct memory of Klaus Kinski hunching his way across the screen, and in the middle of his crossing turning his face out toward the camera so his blue eyes shone, but that never happened. I must have invented it. It would've been a cool shot, though, in a very Herzogian way.
I still think one of the most interesting things about this movie is how I feel just much fear (not exactly fear, but some kind of anxiety) for the actors on the rafts as I do for the characters, if not more. This doesn't seem like a mistake on Herzog's part, but rather kind of the point. You just can't fully surrender yourself to the idea that these are sixteenth or seventeenth century soldiers because it's obvious that the people on the rafts really seem to be in danger, and because they danger seems real and not "real," we direct our anxiety to the actors and film crews instead of the characters and their situations. The only other examples of this I can think of come from Herzog movies, for the most part. Although it's exactly what I found so amazing about the car chase scene in Tarrantino's half of Grindhouse: the whole part when the stunt-chick's on the hood of the car, she appears to be in real actual danger as a person not just as a character, which makes the whole thing so much more thrilling, or actually thrilling in a completely different way, than even the most exceptionally choreographed action/chase/stunt scene in most films. We never really worry about Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum; we only worry about Jason Bourne. Is it ethically okay for Herzog to do this? I certainly would not want to appear in one of his movies.
There are so many incredible scenes in this movie. The horse scene. Aguirre chasing the monkeys around the dying raft. The tiny jungle creature baby (a sloth?) The boat in the tree. (Did Herzog plan the boat in the tree, or did he find it? Either way, it's a supremely poetic shot.)
Also one of the few Herzog films where I think the dialogue lives up the movie Herzog has shot around it.
I really had not been expecting this movie to be as good as it was before I watched it the second time. Right now, I'm practically vibrating with how great this movie is. Absolutely worthy of that word. I think I had a hint of that after watching it the first time, but it was a little bit outside at the time of my realm of understanding of movies.
2nd time. The first time I saw this was on my 25th birthday, and I wrote a poem out of it. At the time, it was maybe the second or third Herzog movie I'd seen, and I was still trying to figure him out. I definitely had not decided he does things in his films that are completely different from the way most movies work, and seem in some ways more related to poetry than to novels. Although generally there's still an overall narrative around them, I'm referring mostly to isolated scenes in Herzog movies, whose power is not at all taken from the narrative of the movie, but are just perfect images or bits of film or whatever exactly you call them...
Before the movie, they ran a preview for "Le Doulos," during which some annoying guy behind me clapped loudly when the name of the lead actor (who was also the lead in Breathless) was shown. Same guy clapped really loudly when the words "Directed by Werner Herzog" were on screen. Yeah, I get it, you've seen Breathless... you know who Werner Herzog is (although, really, why the hell would be be attending a double feature of Herzog movies if you didn't at least know who he is?)... Shut up!
The movie definitely seemed a lot slower the first time I saw it. I was surprised to find out this time that it's actually only slightly under two hours long. It felt far tighter, this time. Also, definitely a different translation, which confused me at first, because the first line of my poem, "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the mountain pass," was taken from the subtitles, and this time it was translated as "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the clouds." Frankly, I like the second translation better, but no idea if it's more accurate or anything.
I had this distinct memory of Klaus Kinski hunching his way across the screen, and in the middle of his crossing turning his face out toward the camera so his blue eyes shone, but that never happened. I must have invented it. It would've been a cool shot, though, in a very Herzogian way.
I still think one of the most interesting things about this movie is how I feel just much fear (not exactly fear, but some kind of anxiety) for the actors on the rafts as I do for the characters, if not more. This doesn't seem like a mistake on Herzog's part, but rather kind of the point. You just can't fully surrender yourself to the idea that these are sixteenth or seventeenth century soldiers because it's obvious that the people on the rafts really seem to be in danger, and because they danger seems real and not "real," we direct our anxiety to the actors and film crews instead of the characters and their situations. The only other examples of this I can think of come from Herzog movies, for the most part. Although it's exactly what I found so amazing about the car chase scene in Tarrantino's half of Grindhouse: the whole part when the stunt-chick's on the hood of the car, she appears to be in real actual danger as a person not just as a character, which makes the whole thing so much more thrilling, or actually thrilling in a completely different way, than even the most exceptionally choreographed action/chase/stunt scene in most films. We never really worry about Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum; we only worry about Jason Bourne. Is it ethically okay for Herzog to do this? I certainly would not want to appear in one of his movies.
There are so many incredible scenes in this movie. The horse scene. Aguirre chasing the monkeys around the dying raft. The tiny jungle creature baby (a sloth?) The boat in the tree. (Did Herzog plan the boat in the tree, or did he find it? Either way, it's a supremely poetic shot.)
Also one of the few Herzog films where I think the dialogue lives up the movie Herzog has shot around it.
I really had not been expecting this movie to be as good as it was before I watched it the second time. Right now, I'm practically vibrating with how great this movie is. Absolutely worthy of that word. I think I had a hint of that after watching it the first time, but it was a little bit outside at the time of my realm of understanding of movies.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Coffy
(written 8/23, 10:40pm)
My first blaxploitation!!! Things I assume are par for the course: the theme songs for the Coffy and King George (which were incredible), overall the wonderful soundtrack, the gratuitous display of female breasts, the empty nods to black empowerment.
There were some very charming things about this movie, beyond just all the breasts. That main thing, obviously, was Pam Grier's presence. The only movie I'd seen with her in it before was Jackie Brown, in which I've always thought she's really good. Maybe I've seen her in other things, but this was, at least, the first movie of the type that gave her her fame. She actually wasn't an especially good actor in this, delivering none of her lines in a way that was convincing from a character standpoint, but she definitely had some incredible charisma going on. I just couldn't take my eyes off of her when she was on screen, even when her breasts weren't exposed.
The movie does not try in any way to remove the viewer's complicity with any of the brutes who tear off the women's shirts. They are obviously bastards for doing that, but it's also obviously done for the viewer to get to see the breasts. Same thing with the almost sex scene between King George and Coffy. King George is a creep for making her take off her clothes and getting her to humiliate herself on the ground, but the character is also doing it so that the audience gets to see it and get off on it. Not that any of that is in any way unique to this movie or even this type of movie, but it happens so often throughout the movie. Maybe even a majority of the scenes function in this way.
King George's yellow leotard, complete with male camel toe, is simply amazing.
My first blaxploitation!!! Things I assume are par for the course: the theme songs for the Coffy and King George (which were incredible), overall the wonderful soundtrack, the gratuitous display of female breasts, the empty nods to black empowerment.
There were some very charming things about this movie, beyond just all the breasts. That main thing, obviously, was Pam Grier's presence. The only movie I'd seen with her in it before was Jackie Brown, in which I've always thought she's really good. Maybe I've seen her in other things, but this was, at least, the first movie of the type that gave her her fame. She actually wasn't an especially good actor in this, delivering none of her lines in a way that was convincing from a character standpoint, but she definitely had some incredible charisma going on. I just couldn't take my eyes off of her when she was on screen, even when her breasts weren't exposed.
The movie does not try in any way to remove the viewer's complicity with any of the brutes who tear off the women's shirts. They are obviously bastards for doing that, but it's also obviously done for the viewer to get to see the breasts. Same thing with the almost sex scene between King George and Coffy. King George is a creep for making her take off her clothes and getting her to humiliate herself on the ground, but the character is also doing it so that the audience gets to see it and get off on it. Not that any of that is in any way unique to this movie or even this type of movie, but it happens so often throughout the movie. Maybe even a majority of the scenes function in this way.
King George's yellow leotard, complete with male camel toe, is simply amazing.
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