Main Menu

Last movie watched...

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

Previous topic - Next topic

The Adventurer

Kingdom of Heaven - Director's Cut

Surprisingly good, and looks amazing on High-Def Blu-ray. Glad I was the DC first, as I hear the Theatrical Cut is a pile of shit.

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

Tiplodocus

Yeah - I think I enjoyed Kingdom of Heaven. I assume I saw (most of) the directors cut because it was very long (and I missed the last 20 minutes due to a recording glitch).

BOOGIE NIGHTS - Paul Thomas Anderson's love letter to the 70s porn film (as opposed to video) industry. It's billed as a comedy drama on the EPG but it's closer to tragedy.  He seems a little too fond of his subject matter and I didn't like the notional happy ending but it is brilliant, sprawling stuff. 

My favourite bits are mostly silent; the director and the cameraman and their understated reaction to when Dirk Diggler first shows his stuff & then Dirk himself at Alfred Molina's pad realising where he is in his life. The camera lingers on Mark Wahlberg for nearly a minute and you see his eyes darting about, remembering, worrying and nearly breaking down.   And of course the money shot at the end "I am a star!" is ludicrously in your face. 

I'd seen it years ago but I can't recall if you ever see Little Bill's wife in the movie; I missed the first half hour and she's a functional shadow in the bits I saw. I think I'd be disappointed if you actually did see her. 

Flaws: If any it's ambition undoes it. There are so many character to cram in that some of them come off as trite and seen that before. And also, by the end, it seems to lose that authentic sense of time and place that it had at the start. And yeah, that does look like a happy ending. That can't be right.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

TordelBack

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 03 June, 2011, 08:38:24 AM
I'd seen it years ago but I can't recall if you ever see Little Bill's wife in the movie; I missed the first half hour and she's a functional shadow in the bits I saw. I think I'd be disappointed if you actually did see her.  

Prepare to be disappointed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTvWZn95mZQ

It's a good film, but I can't say I actually like it.  Apart from a radiant Julianne Moore.

Keef Monkey

Really liked Boogie Nights, and also found it really tragic. It seems to walk a pretty fine line between really funny caricature and genuinely distressing stuff when the dream starts collapsing. I don't know how many things Tom Jane has to be great in before he gets some recognition (although I guess he has a regular tv gig now).

I didn't find the ending particularly happy to be honest, I was left miserable! Haven't seen it in a while though so I may have read it wrong.

I watched Mic Macs the other night and reeeeeeally enjoyed it. Of Jeunet's stuff I've only seen Amelie (which I forgot pretty quickly to be honest) and Alien Resurrection (which probably wasn't his comfort zone) but I'll be watching more after this. Like an Oceans 11-esque caper movie but so surreal and quirky that it's nothing like that.

Colin Zeal

I don't think Boogie Nights has a happy ending. The only character who does is Buck when he opens his stero store. Everyone else is basically in exactly the same place as they were at the start of the film. Except for Dirk, who can't even manage an erection so won't have porn films to be in.

Tiplodocus

Ish.

That whole tour around Jack Horner's home scene, Reed doing his magic tricks, everybody back as a happy "family" together in the place and doing the things they did when they were at the top of the curve. And given that Eddie is back in role as Dirk as Brock, isn't he just about to "perform" again.  I read the flaccid penis simply as "we can't show you an erect one" rather than he can't get it up.

But yeah, it's not entirely happy (I think I did put "notional" somewhere above).

Just seen Jolene Blalock on CSI. Now that gives me "motivation"
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

I, Cosh

It's a long time since I watched it, but I remember the ending of Boogie Nights being everything crashing down to the tawdriness it was. Dirk giving it handjobs in carparks and Roller Girl going from a sexy free spirit to a tired whore*.

* I have terrible problems using that word because of its connotations which, oh fuck I can't be arsed to try and tease out here.
We never really die.

JOE SOAP

#682
I could go on about how great I think Boogie Nights is-probably the best American film of the 90's- but the end is quite a, dare I say, profound one. I'm sure life in the porn-industry can be a miserable, degrading affair but not everyone ends up dying of AIDS, a drug addict or getting-fucked to-death and while the enjoyable flair of Boogie Nights may allow some viewers to mislead themselves as to the point of Boogie Nights, Dirk does really lose and eventually find himself at the end. He returns to the only family he has, as dysfunctional as it is, made completely of surrogates acting out their familial roles.

Dirk's reveal of his cock at the very end -the only time we see it- is as powerful a scene as it should be. Affirmatively Dirk accepts his role in a family of underachievers/underdogs wanting to be a little more than they are, Jack Horner wanting to be a 'film-maker', Reed Rothchild a 'magician', DIrk an 'actor', Amber a 'mother' and so forth. They aren't particularly smart characters but they're survivors.

There's plenty of desolation, despair, some paedophilia and a little suicide along the way while they reach for their ideal lives some of which are ordinary domestic fantasies of a 'normal' life. Happy/sad ending is a rather bland description of it.

If the cock scene had come anytime before the very end it would have meant nothing, as in, it's not just a cock by then and that's the point, it's his identity and a little more, he's accepted it and his place in the world. Whether he dies a รก la John Holmes after that is another story.


All that and it works in a secret history of the death of celluloid and the birth of video, embraced by the underdogs of cinema, the porn industry much like how embraced the older cinematic underdogs, super 8 & 16mm.

JOE SOAP


I, Cosh

Quote from: JOE SOAP on 04 June, 2011, 01:58:29 AM
...plus it made this song famous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV5764&feature=related
Your first post made me really want to go and watch the film again so I could have an informed opinion about it.

Luckily, I can save time and effort by hating you for this shite. <insert smiley if you need to>
We never really die.

JOE SOAP

Shite has been sublimated, ignorance is your etenal loss.

Daveycandlish

QuoteI watched Mic Macs the other night and reeeeeeally enjoyed it. Of Jeunet's stuff I've only seen Amelie (which I forgot pretty quickly to be honest) and Alien Resurrection (which probably wasn't his comfort zone) but I'll be watching more after this

Track down City of Lost Children (starring Ron Perlman) and his earlier Delicatessen for more quirkiness!
An old-school, no-bullshit, boys-own action/adventure comic reminiscent of the 2000ads and Eagles and Warlords and Battles and other glorious black-and-white comics that were so, so cool in the 70's and 80's - Buy the hardback Christmas Annual!

HdE

Delicatessen is FANTASTIC!

I love the rooftop fight. Dominic Pignon is always great!
Check out my DA page! Point! Laugh!
http://hde2009.deviantart.com/

Professor Bear

X-Men First Class - pigging awful.
There's a real problem with criticising it because as soon as you do you'll get "OH SO YOU WANT A FILM ABOUT THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS BEING STOPPED BY MAGIC FLYING MUTANT CATMEN TO MAKE LOGICAL SENSE DO YOU?" but there's only so much that can excuse from a film's terrible dialogue, painfully unfunny 'comedy' moments ([spoiler]Wolverine [/spoiler]cameo aside), unconvincing characters and just plain bad marriage of script and visuals.  It looks fantastic but a polished turd is still a turd, and any movie whose central premise is 'posh guy who's never worked a day in his life and lived in luxury through the war thanks to his parents' money lectures death camp survivor about why he doesn't have the right to kill the Nazi scientist who shot his mum in front of him while laughing' is in trouble long before you even realise what an unlikable prick Charles Xavier is, setting himself above everyone else morally despite our only seeing him until that point drinking or using his powers to pick up chicks and this is the guy who's going to teach a Nazi hunter how to do things?  There is no reason on God's green Earth to listen to a word the guy says yet the film takes it as read that he's in the right despite his great philosophy being "it's okay to be different as long as you don't rock the boat" so I imagine he's not a big supporter of gay marriage, while Magneto's philosophy is that society should accept people that are different and get on with its day - the bad guy is the only one making any kind of sense, the good guys at best preach about the virtue of lies, conformity and isolation.
And then there's basic internal logic like three guys falling for about half a minute so a teleporter saves them by... making solid ground appear underneath them.  Seriously, I can understand not taking physics in high school, but if you've managed to get to middle age without playing Portal or Angry Birds at least once you're doing something wrong.  Likewise there's a scene that hinges on explaining that a character uses wings to glide because he can't actually fly under his own power, yet later he carries someone one-handed while staying aloft using only one of those wings - which isn't even extended or even catching the wind - to fly horizontally through mid air: I am pretty sure the laws of physics that you have just explained twenty minutes ago onscreen do not work like that.  Then the wing becomes a plot point by being shot out so the guy has to crash - the logic flip-flops and is neither one thing or the other and it doesn't even try to pretend to be camp to escape criticism, it puts on a very serious face and tries to bluff it out and somewhere along the lines things just become terrible or hilarious depending on your temperament.
Personally, I was in hysterics when Prof X was wheeled out in his wheelchair for the first time and it has these huge Xs on the wheels like you'd see on a small child's plastic bicycle, then they star going on about "We're like G-Men - but without the G--" and my brain pretty much just gave up, though not before it offered "hang on now, we saw magneto kill two Nazis by crushing their tin hats when he was 8 years old and didn't know how his powers worked, but an hour later as a grown adult he doesn't know how to kill someone who is wearing a metal helmet that covers all of his head?"

An awful, awful fucking film that at least looks fantastic so broadsheet reviewers can pretend it's 'brainless entertainment' or whatever it is they call something palpably bad but which looks like it might be popular with the oiks.
So yeah, I thought it was pretty good.

Peter Wolf

Quote from: Professah Byah on 04 June, 2011, 11:39:59 PM


An awful, awful fucking film that at least looks fantastic so broadsheet reviewers can pretend it's 'brainless entertainment' or whatever it is they call something palpably bad but which looks like it might be popular with the oiks.


:lol: :lol:

10/10

Thank you.
Worthing Bazaar - A fete worse than death