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Post by Jay on Oct 30, 2021 10:04:14 GMT -8
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Like Jeremy, I was also prompted by comments here to give this one a watch even though I thought I had already seen parts of it (as it turns out, I have seen parts of 5: The Dream Child). My impressions of it weren't terribly different either: On par with the first, consistently engaging on a visual level, unevenly acted, with Freddy and his fondness for bad puns as mindgames as the true star. There are a couple of other points to supplement that general take, which is that I like Nancy as a protagonist because it's a change of pace from other films in the horror / slasher genre. She wasn't institutionalized, nor was she imprisoned, or otherwise rogue ala Linda Hamilton in the Terminator franchise, but instead empowered herself by going to graduate school for psychiatry. It's more agency than one has come to expect. Another thing to praise is the general concept and motif. As a kid, Freddy was terrifying as something that invaded your dreams when you inevitably slept, but I see him more now as that as well as symbolic of the sins of the previous generation, denied, repressed, and inflicted on the next, which is scarier on a more existential level.
Vampire's Kiss (1989)
As a cult piece firmly entrenched in meme culture, yeah, sure, I wanted to watch Nic Cage ham it up. Overall though, I wasn't as into it as I anticipated being, so I'll make a few short points:
1) Cage as 80s guy is an interesting role, but his verbal tics and affectations combined with the self-importance and somewhat orange hair ended up reminding me of the former president. 2) Between the suits that characterize his wardrobe and the mussed and shaggy-in-front hairstyle once he's gone mad, I now believe the character of Peter Loews to be a forerunner of emo style. 3) As is perhaps endemic of 80s movies, an uncomfortable amount of the plot revolved around Egotistical White Guy Powertripping and Harassing his Woman of Color subordinate. That's seriously most of the screentime.
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Post by guttersnipe on Oct 30, 2021 23:21:16 GMT -8
The exchange of "Oh, God... where am I??" / "You're in the goddamn crapper" remains one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
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Post by Jay on Oct 31, 2021 10:45:17 GMT -8
I was quite fond of the lines "My girlfriend left me! I'm a vampire! Kill me! Kill me!," which I relayed to a friend. She responded that she thought she heard that My Chemical Romance song. But as a sort of quirk of moviemaking, it's interesting now to look at it recognize that all of those delusional scenes, like when he can't find his reflection, would probably be played straight now and we would see how from his own perspective, he couldn't see himself. It seemed novel in that way.
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The Night Eats the World (2018)
One of the quoted Wikipedia reviews for this one is "Even within the fairly small number of movies about a lone (or nearly-alone) survivor facing some endless apocalyptic or purgatorial non-future, Night is short on ideas." Is it though? I think it's short on overt surprises, but after reading that remark, I came around to wanting to defend the movie even if I'm not sure I'd ever be compelled to re-watch it. Here's the premise: Sam broke up with his Parisian girlfriend, but she took some of his stuff which includes some demo tapes, as he is a musician. He goes to a party hosted by his ex and her new beau in search of the tapes and, through plot machinations, ends up passing out in a small locked room, after which the zombie apocalypse happens overnight outside. With the subtext of a major breakup, Sam seems concerned for his fellow man broadly, but doesn't miss human company all that much. He instead reassembles a music studio for himself where he rigs together an array of accoustic mechanisms to accompany the drum kit he found in a punk's former room. Mostly, he fills the void with attempts to create music and exercise. As the months pass he starts to lose his grasp on reality bit by bit, making poor decisions and chatting up an elderly zombie locked in the lift of the apartment building where he's barricaded himself. All bubbles need some breakage and in the final act, he encounters a fellow survivor whose influence convinces him to cease his solipsism and try to venture out into the world again in the hopes of finding some surviving human contact.
Is this an idealess movie? I'm not sure. The basic premise has been seen on shows like TWD where you had the "Clear" episode in which Morgan, in isolation since early in the first season, has become unhinged and locked himself in a heavily-trapped building. If you're reading it on that premise or the idea of a survivor combing through a building for supplies, then it seems short on ideas. It's been done, though perhaps not with this particular span of time, nor as a feature-length bottle movie where we see the main character go from stylish man to survivor with open facial sores. One twist is in that the zombies can run (and twitch) but are largely silent, unable to communicate with others, ciphers who sometimes appear en masse but lack individuation and coordination. From this I would say that the central "idea" of the movie is really a kind of depression, and we could take Sam's self-isolation in the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for the same, unable to recognize or share with others. For a while, his own artistic interests are enough to sustain him, and I find that compelling, a sort of riff on the famous "NO! THERE WAS TIME NOW!" episode of The Twilight Zone where the main character survives the end of the world, but breaks his glasses and can't read all the books he want to. Music eventually isn't enough for Sam, and he starts to break down upon hearing casual conversations, incidentally recorded along with the demos, and this pushes him back out into a hostile and unfamiliar world.
I don't want to claim that this is a great movie. There's nothing particularly exceptional about it, although I enjoyed the sets and the main character's seeming range as a single dude on the decline. But there are ideas at work here and it can strike pretty close to home if you've ever experienced a personal disaster and shut the world out in response, only to discover that yourself is somehow not enough.
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Post by guttersnipe on Oct 31, 2021 14:08:52 GMT -8
The work's just not going to go away, Alva. Nothing just... goes away.
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Post by Jay on Nov 1, 2021 12:22:10 GMT -8
I can't imagine that this would interest anyone but Bosquiara but...
Mack the Knife (1989) A week or two ago, I was discussing adaptations with a friend and both of us were flabbergasted that in an era of almost unrivaled economic equality, we weren't seeing nearly enough revivals of Threepenny Opera or The Beggar's Opera. For me, this invariably led down a rabbit hole, scoping out when there had last been one, at which point I discovered 1989's Mack the Knife. Raúl Juliá as Macheath?!? Well, that alone was going to be enough to sell me on it, but you also have Richard Harris as Mr. Peachum, Roger Daltrey as the Street Singer (chorus role), and Bill Nighy as Tiger Brown, so indeed why not, except that at no point in time has it been released on home media. Travesty! Deprivation! Except like a lot of cultural errata, it's actually on YouTube, as I recognized it probably would be a few days later. The presence of Raúl Juliá makes it almost impossible to evaluate objectively as I would watch whatever with him in it. Beyond that, I felt engaged throughout, in spite of the familiarity I had going in, and that they did a fine job in the early goings of presenting London as still a kind of soundstage for an audience, even as they transitioned into footage from a live production in the last number. The complaints I have about the whole thing are both obvious and highly subjective, but the last third of the show is incredibly rushed, as if they were absolutely married to a two-hour runtime or else someone was going to get murthered. Two prominent musical casualties of this were omissions of the Second Threepenny Finale, "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" which is one of the score's darker numbers, and "Solomon Song," which left the Jenny role that much thinner. Other solo numbers were nixed as well, but those two were really the ones that deflated the third act for me and made the concluding comedy feel more romantic than absurd.
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 3, 2021 0:51:07 GMT -8
Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch is so densely-packed with wildly inventive visuals and complex voice-over narration that it's rather overwhelming on a first viewing. How he keeps films with such elaborate set design and art direction, with so big a cast of stars, under control in terms of production budget, is remarkable. There's an enormous amount of sly deadpan humour here, and he packs more creative visual design into any five minutes of this film than most directors manage in their entire ouevre. The narration moves so fast and is so whip-smart that some of it is invariably going to be inscrutable, especially if you don't get many of the cultural references, but this is a hugely ambitious piece of work. And the critic from Variety nailed it with this line: "In the past, the director has been accused of making overly contrived dollhouse movies, and while he repeats many of his favorite tricks — toying with aspect ratios, centering characters in symmetric compositions, revealing a large building in intricate cross-section — this time it feels as if there’s a full world teeming beyond the carefully controlled edges of the frame." It's not overly engrossing on a basic narrative level -- you may regularly find yourself just trying to keep up -- but damned if there isn't some world-class technique on display. And to those who say he's "made the same movie (stylistically) over and over again", well, there are few filmmakers in the world producing work as elaborately detailed, with such specific quirks, as his films in the past decade. The French Dispatch is certainly not for everyone, but it's definitely for me.
Edgar Wright's Last Night In Soho, on the other hand, goes down much more easily, but probably ends up being his most conventional film to date by the time the credits roll. It's a nicely stylized tribute to the music and fashion of late-'60s London, with some strong, evocative performances from its two central female cast members and handful of veteran performers. While its source of inspiration may partly be Roman Polanski's very oppressive and unsettling Repulsion, this is a warmer, more energetic piece of work, that unfortunately devolves a bit into a more traditional supernatural thriller partway through. Still entertaining overall, though, and notable for being Diana Rigg's final big-screen appearance.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 4, 2021 20:13:54 GMT -8
I was hoping to make time for French Dispatch this weekend, but I think it's already left my local theater. It seems it will have a healthier big-screen run in parts of Brooklyn where The New Yorker is widely circulated, but I do my best to avoid those areas. Oh well.
Anyone have thoughts on Dune Part One? It was long and suffers a bit from the abrupt ending, but it's absolutely stunning to look at, with spectacular music, editing, and visual effects. Performances are really good, too - I'm not big on Chalamet, but he's boosted by great work from the likes of Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, and Jason Momoa. Some misleading marketing (Zendaya barely has more screentime in the movie than she does in the trailer) shouldn't dilute the film's technical accomplishments, nor how carefully it distills the complexities of Frank Herbert's novel to create an easily digestible yet thematically rich onscreen saga. Bring on Part Two.
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 4, 2021 21:17:04 GMT -8
I debated whether to see Dune after the other two movies I mentioned on Tuesday, but I figured it would be out for another couple of weeks, unlike the first two, which have limited mainstream box-office appeal. I'm not the biggest fan of Villeneuve -- I find much of his work too humourless -- but I enjoyed his Blade Runner sequel, and figure I'd probably enjoy Dune as well, even though I'm not generally into blockbusters set in a desert.
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Post by guttersnipe on Nov 6, 2021 17:12:58 GMT -8
Given that my experience with sci-fi desert films largely amounts to the original Dune, the Mad Max films, the first Star Wars and Kin-dza-dza!, turns out I'm pretty lukewarm on them as well. On the other hand: all hail Tremors.
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 6, 2021 21:45:23 GMT -8
I should clarify that I meant blockbusters where characters are slowly wandering through the desert. If fast-moving vehicles are involved, different vibe entirely.
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 7, 2021 8:50:31 GMT -8
Dune has a nice balance between the slow desert-wandering scenes and the grand-scale action scenes - you have enough time to appreciate the atmosphere of the landscape before the sandworms make their way to the surface. It's not turbo-charged in the vein of Mad Max, but there's plenty of excitement as well.
Part of me wishes I'd seen it in theaters, but it's honestly tough to find time for theatrical screenings of movies above 150 minutes... of which there have been a surprising amount lately. (Doesn't Hollywood prefer films that can hold more screenings each day?) Now if all movies were the length of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, it would be a different story.
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 9, 2021 19:38:40 GMT -8
The acting and direction of Dune was solid, but it wasn't really my cup of tea. It's like Star Wars minus the personality (yes, I realize the Dune novel came before the Lucas franchise), and that's coming from someone who isn't a big fan of Star Wars either. Pretty standard Hero's Journey stuff, and the tone and visual style is so constant that it barely registers any high points. Liked Chalamet better in the Wes Anderson picture: at least he was a bit of a weirdo there (heh).
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Post by Jeremy on Nov 9, 2021 21:30:47 GMT -8
I'm not sure I get the critique that the tone and visual style of Dune are "constant." I agree it's more tonally consistent than a lot of sci-fi fare, but I see that as a strength, which helps the film maintain its immersive feel without jarring viewers from the story. I tend to be more of a story/character critic than a technical guy, but it all blends together impressively well here, from the style to the staging to the music.
The story itself is fairly straightforward, staying faithful to the bones of an old novel that helped write a lot of the modern rules of science fiction, and it ends up feeling a little open-ended due to the (understandable) decision to split the saga in two films. I think the presentation goes a long way, more so than a lot of other movies of its ilk.
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Post by ThirdMan on Nov 9, 2021 21:44:16 GMT -8
I prefer a bit more variation in tone and visuals, especially in a longer movie, is all. I found the picture rather bland and uninteresting. The characters are all basic archetypes with little in the way of interior life or charisma. Clearly too many sci-fi films have borrowed elements from the original novel, and nothing really stood out to me in this film as being unique, in this day and age. It's fine for what it is, and solid in terms of basic craft, but much like Villeneuve's earlier Arrival, I remain mostly unmoved.
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Post by guttersnipe on Nov 10, 2021 5:46:57 GMT -8
Given that my experience with sci-fi desert films largely amounts to the original Dune, the Mad Max films, the first Star Wars and Kin-dza-dza!, turns out I'm pretty lukewarm on them as well. On the other hand: all hail Tremors. I'd forgotten that one of the less-crummy Resident Evil films is desert-borne. So anyway, I got to see Dune a couple of days ago, and pretty damn happy with it. I was initially a little standoff-ish because whereas the Lynch adaption just seems to run with its incomprehensible plot littered with esoteric terminology ("Shai-Hulud", "Kwisatz Haderach", etc), this followed more straightforward rails in terms of exposition and character motivation, where I kind of longed for something of a middle way. Luckily that first half-hour or so gives way to an impressive level of scope and importance that gives weight to my usual misgivings with fantasy (why care about something at a deliberate remove?), and I think once you come to terms with the fact that this is an initial instalment (cannily swerved in all the promo material), the film can really lean into its visual ideas. To that end, I loved Villeneuve's contrast of scale against humanity; figures appear ant-like against colossal structures like the desert (natch), crawler tracks, frescoes and buildings designed for giants, yet individuals are granted the opportunity for their heads to fill the frame when their deeds and decisions are of utmost importance, which lends the film a grand rhythmic poetry. As with some of his other films, Villeneuve gets a huge amount of mileage from a limited palette, largely of burnt copper, off-white, very dark grey and cobalt blue. I also particularly liked the suggestion of visions via nothing more than slo-mo to differentiate those sequences from the linear narrative (that in itself isn't radical, but it reminds us of the director's inheritence of Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Fincher et al). I'm less enthusiastic about some of the casting, if only because it adheres to what I've referred to before as aesthetic morality, or when beauty=good and ugly=evil. To that end the Atreides folk are largely healthy and handsome, the Harkonnen are bald, over- or underweight and guttural, leaving the Fremen as a kind of Orient melange, stocked as they are with blacks, Hispanics, Arabs and Asians, and therefore unpredictable and disposable. But I must say, I was mightily impressed with Rebecca Ferguson's performance. I read a little piece recently where Villeneuve claimed he wanted to stress the importance of women in the film given that they are the real pioneers of the story, and she, Charlotte Rampling and Zendaya do much to emphasise that detail.
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