The Official Movie Thread

[Summerian]

Here's my five best films of all time, this should be pretty controversial:

Videodrome
The 39 Steps
Bad Timing
Cross of Iron
Taxi Driver

Videodrome and Taxi Driver aren't half as good as we're being told.
The 39 Steps - good for its time.
Bad Timing 1980? Have not seen. Anything like Chloe 2009? Liked that flick.

Cross of Iron was good but not top 5.

 

[no country for old wainds]

no country: Great review! I'll definitely check out Enemy. I did really like The Double it was very stylistic (which i love), but I do understand the one dimension of the entire film (sorta bleak hopelessness). Will dl Enemy soon as it sounds like there's a lot more crazy/interesting characters to play with.

i think THE DOUBLE is actually good at what it does, it's just a little too terry gilliamish for my tastes.

 

[SentinelSlain]

Videodrome and Taxi Driver aren't half as good as we're being told.
The 39 Steps - good for its time.
Bad Timing 1980? Have not seen. Anything like Chloe 2009? Liked that flick.

Cross of Iron was good but not top 5.

I'll explain my choices a bit more.

On videodrome:

It's kind of hard to explain. I think it's the film, out of the ones I've scene, where Cronenberg most effectively pulls off his long standing theme of fantasy/media altering reality or something along those lines. I love the part where the older lady says that he should stay away from videodrome because the people behind it have something he doesn't, a philosophy. The whole plot is really, really good in my opinion, maybe not the ending, but it's good enough. I think the early sexual parts with Debbie Harry come across as some of the most authentic stuff I've seen, despite involving bdsm and being part fantasy. I think all of the characters play their parts really well and are well cast. It's a very intriguing film in lots of ways and it's refreshingly dark and concentrated.

One thing about it is that for me it kind of lays waste to lots of other highly regarded films with similar ideas, for example Strange Days, The Matrix, Tron and The Brood (well that's not so highly regarded, but it's a bit of a cult movie). It kind of does it better, despite the lack of cgi, maybe because of it, not sure.

Taxi Driver:

For me it's the best exploration of loneliness and social failure / angry white male-ism. It's also a good depiction of living in a shitty inner city area, from my experience. It's probably quite good at showing poor post war integration as well. It's shot great, great lines. The way they show madness in that movie is scarily familiar sometimes. haha

The 39 Steps:

Upon first glance this seems dated or "good for its time", but if you let yourself be taken in by it, it's obviously better made than any of its derivatives. The interactions and filming are just perfect. It's a work of art.

Bad Timing:

This film isn't technically perfect, it's maybe a bit to jarring for some, but I just really like it somehow. Theresa Russell was sex on legs back in the day, which blatantly helps, a bit like Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.

I will admit that I have not seen either that many neo-noir (it isn't one but has similarities) or psychological thriller / romance films to compare it to though. Something about the weird awkward chemistry between the leads makes it so endearing to me, as well as the general way the film pans out and is fucked up.


Cross of Iron

Bare in mind I don't like Westerns, so this is the only Pecknipah film that I'm especially enthralled by. For me it's like number one WW2 film, because it combines the fun and action of something like Where Eagles Dare, with a meaningful tale about class and so on. It's also infinitely more watchable than things like Schindler's List and anything made as a kind of headstone to the holocaust. What's funny, for me, is that on paper it shouldn't be that different to say The Big Red One, but this is a 10/10 film and the big red one is a 4, total shite.

There, all is explained.

 

[rms]

i think this is more than just "nationalism justifying killings". they seem largely unaware that they need to justify anything, they recollect and rationalise and reenact their worst deeds candidly as though they were nothing. this kind of brainwashed perspective is rarely taken to such extremes and rarely captured on film in this way.

Of course they don't need to justify the killings in their own minds, they were told that Communism was bad and for the good of Indonesia was to kill Communists. This is no different than any national war/slaughter whatever. That's my nationalist point.

but to me it's kind of irrelevant how different the massacre was, it's how different the film's examination of that massacre (and by extension the nature of all massacres and their culprits) is that makes it special. oppenheimer examines it from the perspective of the perpetrators by having them reconstruct their memories as miniature works of cinema, and those works are rendered surreal and harrowing and bizarre not only by the nature of the contents (which have rarely been accessed so directly on film), nor by the childish enthusiasm and complete lack of appropriate feeling with which they're performed, but by the repressed emotions and delusions that spill out into them.

Didn't really talk about the massacre at all or what occurred in it, so not sure where this point is coming from. The take is obviously interesting, but how is it different than the guy who wrote We Were Soldiers or the accounts of Band of Brothers that Ambrose put together in books?

this seems all the more clever when taking into account that it was cinema which inspired these gangsters in the first place, and now it becomes the place where they reckon with their own acts, in one case causing a conscience to emerge kicking and screaming.

Well, if i'm not mistaken, a large American/CIA influence trained and help these guys eradicate communists, but I don't believe or participate in the idea that somehow the incredibly limited supply of '50's gangster movies influenced people enough to kill millions of Indonesians. But if you want to believe that then i guess that point hits harder for you.

there's also a narrative running alongside it all about the sins of cinema in creating these monsters, and subsequently the beginnings of the medium's redemption. i find all of this very interesting or, at the very least, original.

Original? This point has been brought up politically since GTA was made for PS2 and probably heard it from gangster movies before. Taking out the agency and responsibility of these Indonesians because of gangster films is ridiculous.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Didn't really talk about the massacre at all or what occurred in it, so not sure where this point is coming from.

your initial blanket criticism of the film was "Countries use nationalism to justify murders/killings/war all the time, why is the Indonesian massacre so different?"

my point is that to me it barely matters what specific massacre it's examining or how different that massacre is; the film is about all massacres, the psychological weight of killing on the killer, the nature of memory, the nature of film, etc. it mines a lot of interesting territory and doesn't live or die by that one point of contention you're focusing on.

The take is obviously interesting, but how is it different than the guy who wrote We Were Soldiers or the accounts of Band of Brothers that Ambrose put together in books?

i'm not very well versed in war lit, maybe if i was i'd find ...KILLING less interesting, but i am well versed in cinema and i sure as hell haven't seen anything like those surreal and hallucinatory reenactments before, let alone ones made by the perpetrators themselves. i also think the candid, repressed and delusional tone of many of the subjects' comments and anecdotes is quite singular, but maybe we should agree to disagree there.

Well, if i'm not mistaken, a large American/CIA influence trained and help these guys eradicate communists, but I don't believe or participate in the idea that somehow the incredibly limited supply of '50's gangster movies influenced people enough to kill millions of Indonesians. But if you want to believe that then i guess that point hits harder for you.

well, they state themselves in the movie that gangster movies shaped their personas and the style of their violent acts. regardless of whether it's true, it's part of the movie's concerns, and there's no doubt a lot of violent acts over the past century have been influenced by movies so it remains a point worth exploring.

Taking out the agency and responsibility of these Indonesians because of gangster films is ridiculous.

i agree, but neither me nor the film were arguing otherwise. the issue is complex, it's a film of ambiguities; the killers have agency and responsibility but so does the regime in which they grew up, and so too do filmmakers. there are a lot of factors at play which converged to create the madness of that massacre. the film aims a lot of implicit anger at the killers but also attempts to empathise with them as human beings, and the same goes for its feelings toward cinema as well; it accepts the movies' capacity for influencing bad things but also demonstrates in that climax its ability to alter perspectives and inspire the emergence of a conscience in the most ostensibly heartless of people.

 

[Chimaera]

Maybe the wrong thread for this, but I went to see a live broadcast of this at the cinema.

Gillian Anderson is a fucker of an actress! Think I enjoyed this more than the Marlon Brando film.

Maybe it was just because this particular play did loads of really cool stuff with the presentation, but it actually translated really well to the big screen, far better than I thought it would.

 

[unknown]

not to mention ben foster is a pretty intense actor. I'd love to see him as Stanley Kowalski

 

[Chimaera]

Oh yeah, he was great. I think my only real complaint is that Vanessa Kirby, who played Stella, slipped out of her accent a few times. She was still fantastic though.

 

[Addo_Of_Nex]

Had no idea Nixon was posting on the forums again. Fucking awesome.

Anyway, I haven't really been keeping up with much as of late. It's mostly been re-viewing things in the process of inundating my girlfriend with 60s-80s European stuff she was unfamiliar with (Bergman, Godard, Herzog, Fassbinder, etc.) The two movies from this year that have really stood out to me are obvious ones, Under the Skin and Blue Ruin. I'm still trying to catch up on some essentials from 2012 and 2013, as it is.

 

[no country for old wainds]

sup nexon. UNDER THE SKIN is great, let me pimp this piece written by a colleague at the mag i write for. i'm not so fond of BLUE RUIN although it's fine. my fave of the year, if it counts as 2014, is easily ben wheatley's A FIELD IN ENGLAND; an absolute feast viscerally, thematically, comically. metal as hell (WITCHFINDER GENERAL is a huge influence), and a total headfuck. KILL LIST and SIGHTSEERS are also good movies, but this is his best to date.

other faves are miyazaki's perfect swansong THE WIND RISES, wes anderson's best in years THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, johnnie to's completely batshit insane screwball procedural BLIND DETECTIVE (pimping another piece by another colleague), and christine molloy/joe lawlor's tragically underseen MISTER JOHN which i wrote about here.

im working on a top 50 of the decade list for the halfway stage, ill drop a link here when it's done. seen a lot of great stuff this past few years.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

Really good review of Cronenberg's new one Maps to the Stars from UK critic Mark Kermode:



Too bad this probably wont see a Stateside release until next year but I'm so in when it makes its way over here. Someone on another board said it had TIFF audiences squirming in their seats. I haven't been this excited for a new film since Killer Joe.

 

[Hannibal_Lecter]

Don't really know if anyone here actually gives a shit about superhero movies, but the Deadpool movie now has an actual official release date of Feb 12 2016

 

[Addo_Of_Nex]

sup nexon. UNDER THE SKIN is great, let me pimp this piece written by a colleague at the mag i write for. i'm not so fond of BLUE RUIN although it's fine. my fave of the year, if it counts as 2014, is easily ben wheatley's A FIELD IN ENGLAND; an absolute feast viscerally, thematically, comically. metal as hell (WITCHFINDER GENERAL is a huge influence), and a total headfuck. KILL LIST and SIGHTSEERS are also good movies, but this is his best to date.

other faves are miyazaki's perfect swansong THE WIND RISES, wes anderson's best in years THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, johnnie to's completely batshit insane screwball procedural BLIND DETECTIVE (pimping another piece by another colleague), and christine molloy/joe lawlor's tragically underseen MISTER JOHN which i wrote about here.

im working on a top 50 of the decade list for the halfway stage, ill drop a link here when it's done. seen a lot of great stuff this past few years.

Cheers. Yeah, it took a couple of viewings for me to really warm up to The Grand Budapest Hotel, but I would say it's the best thing he's done since Tenenbaums. I unfortunately fell asleep right at the beginning of Mister John a couple of months ago; definitely need to remedy that. As far as the others go, I've obtained them in different ways and plan on getting to them within the next couple of weeks.

And yeah, get that "top 50 of the decade" list done, motherfucker. I know I'm far from the only one that awaits your RYM lists with bated breath.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

My brother and I are trying to come up with our top 5 most entertaining movies. Something you can always watch no matter what. Whether you're alone, have company and have conversation going or just have it on in the background.

Mine might seem hacky but fuck it, so far I have (in no order): Terminator 2, Jaws, Predator, Aliens

I can't decide on a 5th, I might have to go with The Thing (1982). Pulp Fiction and The Matrix are really close.

haha I think my choices have a lot to do with the soundtracks

 

[unknown]

those are all some of my favorite movies.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Yea they are classics.

and ya know my biggest guilty pleasure of all time is Home Alone 1 & 2. I'll watch them every time they're on. It's pathetic.

 

[unknown]

Constantine is probably my biggest guilty pleasure movie.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

Oh boy, yea I hear ya on that one. I feel the same way about alot of Keanu Reeves movies. Speed, The Devils Advocate, The Replacements haha. I thought Scanner Darkly was awesome too.

 

[rms]

Man The Thing does not fit on that list! Those are all awesome films to watch, but I think The Thing is so much more than Aliens. But Jaws I don't get on that list, but damn can't think of any that should be on there.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

What would your 5 be? Ya know if you had a drunk weekend at a cabin with some friends and needed something entertaining and not too serious