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Started by SmallBlueThing, 04 February, 2011, 12:40:44 PM

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Tiplodocus

Quote from: I, Cosh on 20 April, 2021, 09:41:38 AM
Quote from: milstar on 20 April, 2021, 09:38:40 AM
War Games
In that strange way that the mind retains tiny details from years ago, I don't think I've seen this film since it was first in the cinema but I can still remember the crucial password.

I can remember the phrase "I'd piss on a spark plug if it would help"
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

The Legendary Shark


Promising Young Woman. I went into this cold, as I do with most of the films I watch, and if I'd read what it was about first I probably wouldn't have watched it because I can't imagine any description would make it sound appealing to me. So I won't tell you what it's about.

What I will tell you is that I found it disturbing, funny, and moving. The subject of the film is a horrible one, made all the more horrible by its everyday, almost mundane nature.

Not an easy watch but highly recommended - I'm probably the worst film reviewer in the cosmos so take this with an enormous tub of salt, but it feels like an important film to me.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Tiplodocus

I'll add my name to the list of PALM SPRINGS (mostly) advocates.

I like Samberg and took ages to remember where I'd seen Miliotti before.

I particularly liked some of the reveals along the way, my kin making a guest appearance, the "seems to know more than she lets on" Grandma and the way that having two people in the loop makes it easier for the writers to construct a metaphor about relationships/marriage.

And yeah, some good songs on the soundtrack.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Barrington Boots

Just finished Falling Down, now on Netflix.

I saw this film at the cinema and remember feeling a lot of sympathy for Micheal Douglas's character and the way he kicks off, in the way we all sometimes want to, at a world full of people and systems that sometimes seem designed to crush the human spirit. I also remember enjoying the way the film unfolds him from anti-hero to villain. Watching it back it's clear he's the bad guy from the start: in his very first interaction with the shopkeeper he's appalling in his violent overreaction, despite the shopkeepers rudeness. It's also easy to see now that this is a film that embraces white middle class male angst: made to feel worthless by a system that doesn't value him, he's raging in a way that now seems really uncomfortable, given he embodies a lot of what ended up being the MAGA movement. It seems America is full of people like him now, and they're terrible people.

That aside I think the film has some great set pieces but feels disjointed - it's not funny enough to be a comedy, but not dark or tense enough to be a decent thriller. I think along the same theme I may watch Fight Club next.
You're a dark horse, Boots.

TordelBack

I've always hated Falling Down, skilful hot-day-in-the-city visuals aside, precisely because Douglas' character is utterly hideous. Even before he really kicks off, the way he talks to the cashier in McDonalds, I just want someone to punch him. Now you might justifiably argue that I'm supposed to find him completely unsympathetic, but that is most definitely not the way the film was promoted, widely received or indeed entered the vocabulary of popular culture. A great deal of modern consumer behaviour and indignation-for-hire punditry seems to owe Schumaker a writer's credit.

And yes I did work a fast-food counter in 1993, why do you ask?

von Boom

Quote from: TordelBack on 22 April, 2021, 08:30:42 PM
And yes I did work a fast-food counter in 1993, why do you ask?
You glamour boys in front of house irritated the shit out of us Morlocks doing the skut-work in the back.

TordelBack

Quote from: von Boom on 22 April, 2021, 09:51:31 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 22 April, 2021, 08:30:42 PM
And yes I did work a fast-food counter in 1993, why do you ask?
You glamour boys in front of house irritated the shit out of us Morlocks doing the skut-work in the back.

Just because a person starts out in the septic tank doesn't mean be has to stay there. I don't care who I trampled on as long as I got away from that fecking aerosolized chip oil.

pictsy

Quote from: TordelBack on 22 April, 2021, 08:30:42 PM
Now you might justifiably argue that I'm supposed to find him completely unsympathetic, but that is most definitely not the way the film was promoted, widely received or indeed entered the vocabulary of popular culture.

I'm glad I've never been exposed to any of that.  I first watched the film on recommendation without knowing a single thing about it.  I found the character unsympathetic and really thought that was the point, especially as it kept escalating, showing how self-aware he wasn't and just what a piece of shit he is.  That was just me taking it at face value.

Barrington Boots

The character really is a horrible bellend of colossal proportions. It's insane to think how differently the film was presented and received 30 years ago.
You're a dark horse, Boots.

CalHab

It's a while since I watched it, but I got the impression at the time that Joel Schumacher's satirical intention was completely overlooked by most.

It's the Paul Verhoeven/Dredd/Punisher problem.

dweezil2

Finally got around to watching Justice League: The Snyder Cut.
Succinct review: just as crap, but twice as long.
Savalas Seed Bandcamp: https://savalasseed1.bandcamp.com/releases

"He's The Law 45th anniversary music video"
https://youtu.be/qllbagBOIAo

TordelBack

Quote from: CalHab on 23 April, 2021, 08:38:22 AM
It's the Paul Verhoeven/Dredd/Punisher problem.

Funny you should say that, I used to have a similar problem with Starship Troopers (I'm over it now). At the time, smart pals assured me how bitingly satirical and Riefenstahl-literate it all was, but the vast majority of people I knew seemed to think it was an uplifting militarist romp with tits and Doogie Howser, a conclusion not readily challenged by a reading of the novel.

Sometimes the shiny surface is too shiny, and becomes a mirror.

pictsy

The more times I watch Starship Troopers the less of the satirical I can see.  The first time I watched it I thought it was biting, but every time since I have question that more and more.

I get the point of comparing those properties with Falling Down, but I don't think Falling Down is satire specifically.  I think it's a grim film about a horrible man.  Nevertheless, I see the parallels. 

I don't know much about The Punisher.  I've only watched the three films and they certainly aren't satire or misunderstood.  Still enjoyable as trashy movies, though.


Barrington Boots

The trick with Paul Verhoeven is that his satire is on-point but it's not the overall thrust of the film. Unlike something like, say, Spinal Tap, you can enjoy Starship Troopers or Robocop without realising it's satirical at all: my Mum must have seen Starship Troopers dozens of times through osmosis (she raised three boys) and never realised it was a film essentially about Nazis because it's not really that important to the plot. Verhoeven is having a little sideswipe at Hollywood, at Heinlein and at people who did think it was just a film about soliders fighting giant insects and all a bit mindless fun. Even at the end the characters have neither learned nor accomplished nothing of any real note, everyone decent is dead and the remainder and are just fed back into the meatgrinder.
It's subversive, I think it makes what would have been a very average film excellent.

It's harder to tell with Falling Down what the intent was because the presentation of the main character is such a jumble. His violent, entitled actions are appalling but we're supposed to sympathise at some level with his overreaction to daily frustrations and his actions veer from from sinister to ridiculous - not long after murdering a shopkeeper (he was a nazi, so that's ok, apparently) and calling his wife to threaten her, he has an extended 'funny' interaction with a child showing him how to use a rocket launcher. Tonally it's all over the place and it's difficult to see what the directors intent was, in my opinion.
I definitely remember it being presented on release as a film where we were supposed to have a degree of empathy with Foster as a man who has overstepped the line, but whose grievances are genuine. Perhaps that was simply the way it was marketed.
You're a dark horse, Boots.

milstar

Paradise Alley

One of the earliest (and lesser-known) Stallone's films. Also co-stars Armand Assante, Frank McRae, and Stallone's regular Joe Spinell. This sprawling drama that deals with the lives of three Italo-American brothers in poverty-ridden Hell's Kitchen in NY are a film that perhaps is only watching for young Sly. Otherwise, I regret it for it dawdled my time I rather could spend on Breakfast Club. Essentially, Stallone retells the same story of Rocky, but in a more self-indulgent, if not phony manner. Stallone's (who wrote the film, directed it - his directing debut and sung the ending song) story seems disjointed, and in never a focusing way on deciding what really is - comedy, drama, sports drama; dialogues are over the top cheesy, acting goes from mediocre to bad, Sly overacts and his flamboyant manners more incite unintentional laughs from me, especially when he uses his Italo-American accent. Characters are poorly developed and aside from the three brothers' attempt to get rich, everything else is disposable. Now, I read that reportedly, the studio forced Sly to cut several scenes to improve the pacing, if that so, that's okay. However, the only thing left there is its darn dialogue, that I gotta appreciate Sly's honest attempts at really awful humor. I mean:
"Do you know how many men could've been sitting on top of the world, but they let a dame tell them what to do and the only thing they ended up sitting on top of was a toilet."
And let's not forget a monkey who was left dangling while being tied up.

And there is anything that this film gets from me, is seeing Stallone in a totally non-action role, albeit before his 1980s, celebrated era. Otherwise, watching the film feels like a chore.
Reyt, you lot. Shut up, belt up, 'n if ye can't see t' bloody exit, ye must be bloody blind.