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PHILosophize
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 Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:46 pm Post subject: |
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Midsommar
- Good, not great
- 7.2/10
- Not scary
- Cool scenery/style/cinematography
- At some points had a few The Holy Mountain inklings (but don't get me wrong, it wasn't even close to being close to the craziness of The Holy Mountain)
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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| PHILosophize wrote: | Midsommar
- Good, not great
- 7.2/10
- Not scary
- Cool scenery/style/cinematography
- At some points had a few The Holy Mountain inklings (but don't get me wrong, it wasn't even close to being close to the craziness of The Holy Mountain) |
PHIL is a Jodorowsky fan?! My dude!
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ribeye
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| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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NBCUniversal makes new theatrical releases available online
| Quote: | | Blockbuster films like “Mulan” and “F9” (“The Fast and the Furious”) have postponed their theatrical releases, but NBCUniversal has taken a different approach for upcoming films. “Trolls World Tour,” one of the studio's biggest films of the year, will now be released via streaming only on April 10. Movies currently in theaters like “The Hunt,” “The Invisible Man” and “Emma” will also be available online as early as March 20. It’s unclear if the rest of the year’s lineup will see similar streaming releases. Films will be priced at $19.99 to rent for a 48 hour window. |
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| ribeye wrote: | NBCUniversal makes new theatrical releases available online
| Quote: | | Blockbuster films like “Mulan” and “F9” (“The Fast and the Furious”) have postponed their theatrical releases, but NBCUniversal has taken a different approach for upcoming films. “Trolls World Tour,” one of the studio's biggest films of the year, will now be released via streaming only on April 10. Movies currently in theaters like “The Hunt,” “The Invisible Man” and “Emma” will also be available online as early as March 20. It’s unclear if the rest of the year’s lineup will see similar streaming releases. Films will be priced at $19.99 to rent for a 48 hour window. |
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$20 bucks for The Hunt? Idk
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Cutheon
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| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Cutheon wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Hey, greenfrog!
Since you have a NYT subscription, could you post the obit for Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz? He died in 2011. Thanks. |
Can't tell if you're joking, but in case you weren't, here ya go:
| Quote: | Raúl Ruiz, a Chilean director who presented a labyrinthine, cryptic picture of individual psychology and social relations in “Mysteries of Lisbon” and more than 100 other films, died on Friday in Paris. He was 70.
His death was announced by Chile’s minister of arts and culture, Luciano Cruz-Coke. The cause was complications of a lung infection, François Margolin, who produced several of Mr. Ruiz’s films, told The Associated Press.
Although most of Mr. Ruiz’s films played in arthouses and film festivals, he began reaching a broader audience when “Three Lives and Only One Death,” starring Marcello Mastroianni, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, after which he began making films with international stars.
These included “Genealogies of a Crime” (1997) with Catherine Deneuve, “Comedy of Innocence” (2000) with Isabelle Huppert, and several films with John Malkovich, including the Austrian biographical film “Klimt” (2006).
He also made American films, including the Hitchcockian “Shattered Image” (1998), which starred William Baldwin and Anne Parillaud.
“Time Regained” (1999), his retelling of the Proust novel, was a grand period piece that reflected his lifelong attraction to complex, interwoven social dramas, with a lineup of stars that included Ms. Deneuve as Odette de Crécy, Mr. Malkovich as the Baron de Charlus and Emmanuelle Béart as Gilberte.
Mr. Ruiz later indulged his passion for storytelling on a large social canvas in the 2010 film “Mysteries of Lisbon,” a twisting, incident-packed chronicle of the Portuguese aristocracy during the civil wars of the 19th century, which many critics regarded as the capstone to his career.
Based on a sprawling 19th-century novel by Camilo Castelo Branco that was originally published in serial form, the film was shown in Europe as a television series stretching over six hours before being edited to a film of just over four. It made its debut in the United States at the New York Film Festival in 2010 and captivated critics with its scope and narrative complexity, full of deft twists and turns. “The world of his movies — as experienced by the characters and the audience alike — is at once soothingly, elegantly familiar and booby-trapped with surprises,” A. O. Scott wrote in a profile of Mr. Ruiz for The New York Times Magazine in July. “There are sudden disappearances, long-buried secrets coming to light, supernatural happenings and bizarre coincidences. In his universe, improbability is the rule.”
Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was born on July 25, 1941, in Puerto Montt, in the south of Chile, and grew up in and around Valparaiso. His father was a merchant marine captain with whom he sailed all over the world on his summer vacations.
As a boy, he steered clear of the local movie house that showed serious Mexican, French and Italian films, favoring the theater that showed Flash Gordon serials and cowboy movies.
He began writing plays at a furious rate while still a teenager, and although he studied law and theology at the University of Chile, he gravitated toward the film club and the department of experimental film.
After spending a year at the film school run by Fernando Birri in Santa Fé, Argentina, he worked as an editor on television news programs in Chile and as a scriptwriter for soap operas produced by Televisa in Mexico, an experience reflected in his career-long fascination with popular culture and the conventions of serial narrative.
Mr. Ruiz came of age as a filmmaker soon after the socialist politician Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970. He had already built a small reputation for his first feature, the experimental sociopolitical comedy “Three Sad Tigers,” which won the top prize at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1969.
In an interview with Bomb in 1991, he called it “a film without a story,” describing it in terms that indicated his natural bent toward artistic subversion. “All the elements of a story are there but they are used like a landscape, and the landscape is used like story,” he said.
Employed by the state film agency, Chile Films, Mr. Ruiz took an oblique, surreal approach to political issues in several idiosyncratic films dealing with pressing social questions, notably “The Penal Colony,” a fanciful reinterpretation of the Kafka story, and “The Expropriation,” about an agronomist who is sent to take over a landowner’s estate and encounters a web of social contradictions.
After Allende was overthrown in 1973, Mr. Ruiz sought asylum in France with his wife and sometime collaborator, the filmmaker Valéria Sarmiento, who survives him. There he embarked on an astonishingly varied and productive career as a director for film, television, video and the theater in a half-dozen languages, earning a critical reputation as one of the most compelling, idiosyncratic and elusive talents in the cinema.
In France, where he tended to use the French spelling of his first name, he translated his personal situation into a film, “Dialogue of Exiles” (1974), about a group of displaced Chileans struggling to find a footing in Paris. He then embarked on a series of films made for European television, notably the dislocated, experimental “Man Scattered and World Upside Down” (1975), made for German television, and “The Suspended Vocation” (1977) and “The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting” (1978), both made for French television.
In the early 1980s he returned to theatrical filmmaking, beginning with “The Territory,” co-produced by Roger Corman, which followed the fortunes of a group of tourists who lose their way in the forest and descend into barbarism. In the absurdist, parablelike “Top of the Whale,” also made in 1981, an anthropologist studying the last two members of an Indian tribe in Tierra del Fuego finds that they speak a language consisting of one word.
With “The Three Crowns of the Sailor” (1982), a set of complex, interwoven narratives related by a sailor to a student for the price of three Danish crowns, Mr. Ruiz entered into his mature phase and began attracting international attention. As with many of his subsequent films, including “City of Pirates” (1983), he played expertly with, and slyly confounded, conventional notions of storytelling, character and point of view. “If you can make it complicated, why make it simple?” he said in an interview at the 2004 Rotterdam film festival.
In 1985 Jack Lang, the French culture minister, appointed him director of the House of Culture in Le Havre. For the Avignon festival, he directed his first play, Calderón de la Barca’s “Life Is a Dream,” which he later reconceived as a film, with the same title, about a member of the Chilean resistance who forgets information vital to the movement and can only recapture it by watching science-fiction films that evoke the Calderón play.
At his death he had just completed “La Noche de Enfrente” (“The Night Ahead”), based on stories by the Chilean writer Hernán del Solar. |
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Cutheon
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| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 6:31 pm Post subject: |
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| ^deleted post in political thread, moved here |
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Cutheon wrote: | | ^deleted post in political thread, moved here |
Thank you so much
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loslakersss
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:35 am Post subject: |
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| I watched The Handmaiden on Amazon last night. It was good and hooks you in almost right away. Any fans of Parasite should check out this Korean gem as well. |
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 7:30 am Post subject: |
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Holy (bleep), what a weird treasure trove of free, rare flicks: RareFilmm
And since Disney will never ever release or stream it, here's the racist Disney "gem" Song of the South (1946): link.
ETA: dang, this site has Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The Movie Orgy, and Lady in the Dark.
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Cutheon
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 10:07 am Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Cutheon wrote: | | ^deleted post in political thread, moved here |
Thank you so much |
Anytime. (bleep) paywalls. |
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 10:17 am Post subject: |
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Some directors are uploading/unlocking their movies on Vimeo right now in solidarity with humanity and all movie lovers.
For instance, here's Guy Maddin's rare The Green Fog: Vimeo
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 3:06 pm Post subject: |
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| loslakersss wrote: | | I watched The Handmaiden on Amazon last night. It was good and hooks you in almost right away. Any fans of Parasite should check out this Korean gem as well. |
Top three Park for me. A really lovely, twisted romantic comedy.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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Screw it, I'm gonna buy every Coen brothers movie on DVD or Blu-Ray (obviously not Buster Scruggs because it's unavailable and not The Ladykillers because it's terrible and unnecessary).
Physical media ftw!
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Social Distancing Day 1:
Hardcore - upper-tier Schrader, kind of the B-movie counterpart to Taxi Driver. George C. Scott really leans into the ridiculous sleaze.
Boiling Point - this early Takeshi Kitano flick gets mixed reviews, but I think there's something really special here even if it lags a bit behind Sonatine and Hana-Bi.
A Faithful Man - frothy, slyly witty French romantic comedy that doesn't tread any new ground, but is a pleasant light watch. Lily-Rose Depp is going to be a star.
Local Hero - a simple premise that could easily have veered into twee sentimentality, Bill Forsyth instead finds the right tonal balance in this fish out of water comedy through a genuine curiosity, empathy, and generosity for the film's ensemble cast from Paul Reigert's lonely, beleaguered Houston oil company executive to the denizens of the Scottish village he visits to purchase land for a corporate project. There are moments of almost surreal beauty interspersed between the comedic day-to-day bits and Forsyth finds time to comment on corporate culture, alienation, environmental preservation, and more without being heavy handed. |
Miss Bala (2011) - surprisingly underrated
The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) - properly rated as bad |
Day 3:
Humoresque (1946) - I've always appreciated Joan Crawford, but I finally get Joan Crawford. This is a hair's breadth away from being great and a truly great Joan Crawford performance away from being mediocre. Despite some of its unnecessary narrative detours, the movie understands how erotic classical music and virtuoso talent are. Maybe the best Joan Crawford performance of all time.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 9:50 am Post subject: |
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So one of the sweetest movies of all time, David Lynch's The Straight Story, is coming to Disney+ in April. I plan on signing up for a free trial of Disney+ and then cancelling it immediately after watching The Straight Story.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 3:13 pm Post subject: |
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PSA:
| Quote: | Film at Lincoln Center
@FilmLinc
We are pleased to offer our audience the chance to see
@kmendoncafilho
&
@jdornelles
's extraordinary Brazilian film BACURAU, which was playing in our theaters last week, at home. Get virtual tickets here: |
https://twitter.com/FilmLinc/status/1240730391482425344
From the same folks who brought you Neighboring Sounds and Aquarius. It sounds like this will be making the rounds to other independent theaters after its "screening run" at Lincoln Center.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Social Distancing Day 1:
Hardcore - upper-tier Schrader, kind of the B-movie counterpart to Taxi Driver. George C. Scott really leans into the ridiculous sleaze.
Boiling Point - this early Takeshi Kitano flick gets mixed reviews, but I think there's something really special here even if it lags a bit behind Sonatine and Hana-Bi.
A Faithful Man - frothy, slyly witty French romantic comedy that doesn't tread any new ground, but is a pleasant light watch. Lily-Rose Depp is going to be a star.
Local Hero - a simple premise that could easily have veered into twee sentimentality, Bill Forsyth instead finds the right tonal balance in this fish out of water comedy through a genuine curiosity, empathy, and generosity for the film's ensemble cast from Paul Reigert's lonely, beleaguered Houston oil company executive to the denizens of the Scottish village he visits to purchase land for a corporate project. There are moments of almost surreal beauty interspersed between the comedic day-to-day bits and Forsyth finds time to comment on corporate culture, alienation, environmental preservation, and more without being heavy handed. |
Miss Bala (2011) - surprisingly underrated
The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) - properly rated as bad |
Day 3:
Humoresque (1946) - I've always appreciated Joan Crawford, but I finally get Joan Crawford. This is a hair's breadth away from being great and a truly great Joan Crawford performance away from being mediocre. Despite some of its unnecessary narrative detours, the movie understands how erotic classical music and virtuoso talent are. Maybe the best Joan Crawford performance of all time. |
Days 4&5:
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010): it took two evenings to get through this 4.5 hour beast from Raúl Ruiz and I don't know if the movie - which was screened in six episodes on television in Europe - fully cohered to me. But it's a playful, rich historical melodrama that spans Portugal, France, Italy, and northern Africa with attractive people in gorgeous period costuming all with juicy tales of unrequited romance, secret affairs, uncertain parentage, and more whose narratives all seem to coincidentally intersect because Ruiz luxuriates in the frothy artifice of it all. This is my first Ruiz film - a super prolific Chilean director who has made over 80 movies all over the world in multiple languages - and the internet informs me that he loves to draw attention to narrative artifice with embedded stories, which is what Mysteries 4.5 hour runtime is - constant digressions, sidesteps, leaps forward, etc. as Ruiz weaves together a handful of characters' tragedies in a way that feels both personal and expansive. There are some clever visual gags throughout and Ruiz clearly has fun deconstructing the period melodrama.
It's worth wandering into and letting yourself go the first time without trying to remember every detail, but by the two and a half hour mark starting another new narrative thread got exhausting for me and it started to be more of a chore to watch. Maybe I would've liked it better as an entire film if I saw it in a theater, because there are so many gorgeous set pieces throughout with DP André Szankowski's camera tracking and swaying around lusciously appointed drawing rooms, ball rooms, opera houses, mansion courtyards, etc. and Ruiz deploying the split diopter judiciously like Visconti meets De Palma. Or maybe it would work better as an HBO miniseries split up over six weeks.
Anyway, good flick with a lot going for it even if I don't love it as much as some of the diehard film nerds. Now I need to watch something short, fast, loud, and dumb.
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panamaniac
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Screw it, I'm gonna buy every Coen brothers movie on DVD or Blu-Ray (obviously not Buster Scruggs because it's unavailable and not The Ladykillers because it's terrible and unnecessary).
Physical media ftw! |
 If you purchase from online make sure to clean the package before opening. |
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 6:30 pm Post subject: |
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| panamaniac wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Screw it, I'm gonna buy every Coen brothers movie on DVD or Blu-Ray (obviously not Buster Scruggs because it's unavailable and not The Ladykillers because it's terrible and unnecessary).
Physical media ftw! |
If you purchase from online make sure to clean the package before opening. |
Most definitely. I realized I only had The Big Lebowski on DVD after giving away a bunch of old VHS copies of their other 90s flicks. I picked up The Hudsucker Proxy, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Barton Fink on sale on Blu-Ray, now waiting for the next Criterion sale to pick up Blood Simple and Inside Llewyn Davis.
I wish someone would issue better Blus of No Country and Fargo.
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ocho
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Screw it, I'm gonna buy every Coen brothers movie on DVD or Blu-Ray (obviously not Buster Scruggs because it's unavailable and not The Ladykillers because it's terrible and unnecessary).
Physical media ftw! |
Mister Mussburger such a nice a man. Imma give him the double stitch anyway.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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One of the better "Best of the 2010s" lists out there, imo, given that it's both reflective of a knowledgeable, idiosyncratic taste, but also features so many well-written essays about so many distinct films: Nick Davis' Top 100 of the 10s.
I disagree with a lot, but I love to read the man's thoughts, and he's even changed my perspective on a couple of films like Son of Saul through his writing.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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| ocho wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Screw it, I'm gonna buy every Coen brothers movie on DVD or Blu-Ray (obviously not Buster Scruggs because it's unavailable and not The Ladykillers because it's terrible and unnecessary).
Physical media ftw! |
Mister Mussburger such a nice a man. Imma give him the double stitch anyway. |
My love for the Coen brothers has increased over the past decade as I've gotten deeper into Hollywood golden age cinema.
Paul Newman got that movie through and through.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 9:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Social Distancing Day 1:
Hardcore - upper-tier Schrader, kind of the B-movie counterpart to Taxi Driver. George C. Scott really leans into the ridiculous sleaze.
Boiling Point - this early Takeshi Kitano flick gets mixed reviews, but I think there's something really special here even if it lags a bit behind Sonatine and Hana-Bi.
A Faithful Man - frothy, slyly witty French romantic comedy that doesn't tread any new ground, but is a pleasant light watch. Lily-Rose Depp is going to be a star.
Local Hero - a simple premise that could easily have veered into twee sentimentality, Bill Forsyth instead finds the right tonal balance in this fish out of water comedy through a genuine curiosity, empathy, and generosity for the film's ensemble cast from Paul Reigert's lonely, beleaguered Houston oil company executive to the denizens of the Scottish village he visits to purchase land for a corporate project. There are moments of almost surreal beauty interspersed between the comedic day-to-day bits and Forsyth finds time to comment on corporate culture, alienation, environmental preservation, and more without being heavy handed. |
Miss Bala (2011) - surprisingly underrated
The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) - properly rated as bad |
Day 3:
Humoresque (1946) - I've always appreciated Joan Crawford, but I finally get Joan Crawford. This is a hair's breadth away from being great and a truly great Joan Crawford performance away from being mediocre. Despite some of its unnecessary narrative detours, the movie understands how erotic classical music and virtuoso talent are. Maybe the best Joan Crawford performance of all time. |
Days 4&5:
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010): it took two evenings to get through this 4.5 hour beast from Raúl Ruiz and I don't know if the movie - which was screened in six episodes on television in Europe - fully cohered to me. But it's a playful, rich historical melodrama that spans Portugal, France, Italy, and northern Africa with attractive people in gorgeous period costuming all with juicy tales of unrequited romance, secret affairs, uncertain parentage, and more whose narratives all seem to coincidentally intersect because Ruiz luxuriates in the frothy artifice of it all. This is my first Ruiz film - a super prolific Chilean director who has made over 80 movies all over the world in multiple languages - and the internet informs me that he loves to draw attention to narrative artifice with embedded stories, which is what Mysteries 4.5 hour runtime is - constant digressions, sidesteps, leaps forward, etc. as Ruiz weaves together a handful of characters' tragedies in a way that feels both personal and expansive. There are some clever visual gags throughout and Ruiz clearly has fun deconstructing the period melodrama.
It's worth wandering into and letting yourself go the first time without trying to remember every detail, but by the two and a half hour mark starting another new narrative thread got exhausting for me and it started to be more of a chore to watch. Maybe I would've liked it better as an entire film if I saw it in a theater, because there are so many gorgeous set pieces throughout with DP André Szankowski's camera tracking and swaying around lusciously appointed drawing rooms, ball rooms, opera houses, mansion courtyards, etc. and Ruiz deploying the split diopter judiciously like Visconti meets De Palma. Or maybe it would work better as an HBO miniseries split up over six weeks.
Anyway, good flick with a lot going for it even if I don't love it as much as some of the diehard film nerds. Now I need to watch something short, fast, loud, and dumb. |
Day 6:
Buoyancy - a white boy Australian director goes out and makes a well shot issues movie about late stage capitalism and developing nations or something. A fourteen year old Cambodian boy looking for better work opportunities leaves home alone and ends up on the Thai fishing trawler from hell. Whether intentional or not, it becomes a parody of a certain kind of "important" international filmmaking style and subject matter by evolving into a pure torture porn horror film with gifted young Sarm Heng as de facto Final Girl.
Tarantino would have made a better overall version of this film, but he could've never captured this director's descent from Malickian pretension to Larry Cohen-esque silly, violent excess. What a weirdo classic.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | | Baron Von Humongous wrote: | Social Distancing Day 1:
Hardcore - upper-tier Schrader, kind of the B-movie counterpart to Taxi Driver. George C. Scott really leans into the ridiculous sleaze.
Boiling Point - this early Takeshi Kitano flick gets mixed reviews, but I think there's something really special here even if it lags a bit behind Sonatine and Hana-Bi.
A Faithful Man - frothy, slyly witty French romantic comedy that doesn't tread any new ground, but is a pleasant light watch. Lily-Rose Depp is going to be a star.
Local Hero - a simple premise that could easily have veered into twee sentimentality, Bill Forsyth instead finds the right tonal balance in this fish out of water comedy through a genuine curiosity, empathy, and generosity for the film's ensemble cast from Paul Reigert's lonely, beleaguered Houston oil company executive to the denizens of the Scottish village he visits to purchase land for a corporate project. There are moments of almost surreal beauty interspersed between the comedic day-to-day bits and Forsyth finds time to comment on corporate culture, alienation, environmental preservation, and more without being heavy handed. |
Miss Bala (2011) - surprisingly underrated
The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) - properly rated as bad |
Day 3:
Humoresque (1946) - I've always appreciated Joan Crawford, but I finally get Joan Crawford. This is a hair's breadth away from being great and a truly great Joan Crawford performance away from being mediocre. Despite some of its unnecessary narrative detours, the movie understands how erotic classical music and virtuoso talent are. Maybe the best Joan Crawford performance of all time. |
Days 4&5:
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010): it took two evenings to get through this 4.5 hour beast from Raúl Ruiz and I don't know if the movie - which was screened in six episodes on television in Europe - fully cohered to me. But it's a playful, rich historical melodrama that spans Portugal, France, Italy, and northern Africa with attractive people in gorgeous period costuming all with juicy tales of unrequited romance, secret affairs, uncertain parentage, and more whose narratives all seem to coincidentally intersect because Ruiz luxuriates in the frothy artifice of it all. This is my first Ruiz film - a super prolific Chilean director who has made over 80 movies all over the world in multiple languages - and the internet informs me that he loves to draw attention to narrative artifice with embedded stories, which is what Mysteries 4.5 hour runtime is - constant digressions, sidesteps, leaps forward, etc. as Ruiz weaves together a handful of characters' tragedies in a way that feels both personal and expansive. There are some clever visual gags throughout and Ruiz clearly has fun deconstructing the period melodrama.
It's worth wandering into and letting yourself go the first time without trying to remember every detail, but by the two and a half hour mark starting another new narrative thread got exhausting for me and it started to be more of a chore to watch. Maybe I would've liked it better as an entire film if I saw it in a theater, because there are so many gorgeous set pieces throughout with DP André Szankowski's camera tracking and swaying around lusciously appointed drawing rooms, ball rooms, opera houses, mansion courtyards, etc. and Ruiz deploying the split diopter judiciously like Visconti meets De Palma. Or maybe it would work better as an HBO miniseries split up over six weeks.
Anyway, good flick with a lot going for it even if I don't love it as much as some of the diehard film nerds. Now I need to watch something short, fast, loud, and dumb. |
Day 6:
Buoyancy - a white boy Australian director goes out and makes a well shot issues movie about late stage capitalism and developing nations or something. A fourteen year old Cambodian boy looking for better work opportunities leaves home alone and ends up on the Thai fishing trawler from hell. Whether intentional or not, it becomes a parody of a certain kind of "important" international filmmaking style and subject matter by evolving into a pure torture porn horror film with gifted young Sarm Heng as de facto Final Girl.
Tarantino would have made a better overall version of this film, but he could've never captured this director's descent from Malickian pretension to Larry Cohen-esque silly, violent excess. What a weirdo classic. |
Day 7:
Sunrise (1927) - Beautiful to look at, Murnau's technical wizardry and creative eye really pop as the camera almost floats throughout the movie. But like Murnau's The Last Laugh the story is flimsy and the melodrama is banal, syrupy bathos. Maybe a second viewing where I can just marvel at the visuals will work out better, but other great silent film directors like Sjöström, Dreyer, Hiroshi Shimizu, Lang, etc. were all hitting deeper, truer emotional notes.
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Baron Von Humongous
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| Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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Day 8:
Baden Baden - I love this slight, pretty little slice-of-life movie about an aimless 26-year-old woman moving back home for a summer. Great work from first time feature filmmaker Rachel Lang who directs with effortless economy knowing exactly which beats to hit and when. And what a performance from lead Salomé Richard as Ana!
The Old Dark House (1932) - directed by James Whale for Universal inbetween horror masterpieces Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, this long-lost-then-found gem about strangers fleeing a storm to take shelter at a remote, sinister looking home populated by a weird family (the Femms) with dark secrets clearly has had a lasting impression on horror. Whale's haunted house tale more than holds up with some of the best horror movies it's indirectly inspired over the decades and does so through a fun mix of horny camp humor and legitimate creepiness. A wonderful, balanced enemble performance from everyone involved with Boris Karloff as the mute, scarred younger Femm sibling who gets horny and angry when he drinks (same), Ernist Thesiger coded as a "lifelong bachelor" chewing scenery with every prissy retort, and Charles Laughton as a late arriving unexpected guest with a tale of woe are the standouts. It's breezy, fast, fun, and eerie all while introducing and juggling so many characters under one roof. Definitely check it out - it leaves Criterion Channel on 3/31 and is also on Shudder.
Fast & the Furious: Hobbes & Shaw - well, I don't know what I expected.
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