rms
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Remember seeing part of this in film class years ago. Gotta figure out how to watch this, looked amazing
The Official Movie Thread
- Thread starter Manic Ferocity
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Remember seeing part of this in film class years ago. Gotta figure out how to watch this, looked amazing
RadicalThrasher
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CiG
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Looks awesome!
That reminds me, have you seen the 1984 movie Alley Cat? I watched it last night, just threw it on while I was fucking around in the kitchen and it turned out to be a sleazy R-rated vigilante movie with a big-titted lead actress who does kung fu!
The main dirtbag even has a giant scar on his face. It's great.
Have you heard of it? I believe the lead actress also had a role in Avenging Angel but I don't remember her. Anyways the whole thing seemed right up your alley.
That reminds me, have you seen the 1984 movie Alley Cat? I watched it last night, just threw it on while I was fucking around in the kitchen and it turned out to be a sleazy R-rated vigilante movie with a big-titted lead actress who does kung fu!
The main dirtbag even has a giant scar on his face. It's great.
Have you heard of it? I believe the lead actress also had a role in Avenging Angel but I don't remember her. Anyways the whole thing seemed right up your alley.
RadicalThrasher
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CiG
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RadicalThrasher
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RadicalThrasher
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CiG
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The new Jane Campion film The Power of the Dog was fantastic. Liked it a lot. Benedict Cumberbatch really impressed me for maybe the first time ever, and the way Campion slowly unravelled and revealed the "twist" of the film (if it can be called that) was really awesome. I didn't see it coming at all, but it was done with such class that in hindsight it was almost stupidly obvious but for my own preconceived notions on the subject. She really played with the audiences expectations.
CiG
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I recently watched a pretty good frontier period folk horror/western called The Wind.
I feel like @Einherjar86 would really appreciate this one. Basically pure atmosphere and beautiful cinematography, the director (her debut btw) said The Shining was a big reference point for her while making this and in hindsight I see it. It's a slowburning mixture of supernatural and psychological horror, feels very classy and minimalistic. The soundtrack and location are just as much characters as the actors.
Also, speaking of movies directed by women...
My top 10 woman directors:
1. Andrea Arnold (American Honey, Wuthering Heights, Fish Tank)
2. Jane Campion (An Angel at My Table, The Piano, The Power of the Dog, Bright Star, In the Cut)
3. Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Girlhood, Tomboy)
4. Naomi Kawase (Suzaku, Hanezu, Sweet Bean)
5. Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here, We Need to Talk About Kevin)
6. Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, The Bling Ring, The Virgin Suicides)
7. Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Bad Batch)
8. Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, The Rider)
9. Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Near Dark, Detroit)
10. Catherine Breillat (Bluebeard, A Real Young Girl, Fat Girl, Anatomy of Hell)
Einherjar86
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no country for old wainds
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challenge_everything
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Dune made me happy. Such a rarity to have a blockbuster movie chime so well with my vision of the book. Visually stunning, and the casting was mostly spot on (Josh Brolin excepted). As per usual, my biggest complaint is mumbling dialogue being drowned out by an overbearing soundtrack.
CiG
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Finally checked out China Moon. Pretty uneven movie. The first act was a palpable effort for me to get through, with Charles Dance stinking up the scenes doing his terrible southern accent. Then once the investigation starts and the pieces start to fall into place and you realise what's going on it's really good. Then the ending is pretty dumb.
She just shoots Benicio in front of the cops who just killed Ed and nobody rushes in? As far as they're concerned she just blew away an honest detective, and it just ends on a shot of the full moon? Mindboggling decision.
challenge_everything
Active Member
Nitram was brilliant. It deeply disturbed me, without any scenes of violence. Caleb Landry Jones is incredible; all sullen and bloated and bug-eyed. You're looking for something to explain his behaviour or warning signs others should have identified, and although there are times he seems like a born monster, more often he seems like a weird autistic kid not dissimilar to some I know. The family dynamic is fascinating too - on the face of it they're supportive and patient but the mother is stoic to the point of borderline sociopathy and the father has depressive tendencies. Nitram seems like a hereditary blend of the two. I don't even know what to make of the absurdity of him being bequeathed a fortune by an eccentric spinster. There's a lot to unpack.
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challenge_everything
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What exactly did it study? The film was so utterly empty of anything even approaching an analysis of the subject.
I don't think the shooting needed to be showed, but because majority of the film was an atmospheric slow boil with very little substance, I think it needed an explosive ending to justify that. If he'd directed it differently, the shooting becomes unnecessary.
Literally the only scenes that could be described as "disturbing" was anything involving a gun. When he's practice shooting and Helen gets upset by the presence of a gun in her house, when he's at the gun store and we're shown just how lax the regulations were at the time, when he offers a gun to the surfer guy and freaks him out. Then to top it all off we're given a generic factoid at the end about how many guns there still are in Australia.
The whole movie was basically a vehicle for anti-firearm propaganda, and it feels to me like he caved to public pressure. If you're going to ignore public outrage over even making the film in the first place, which he did, I personally think it becomes that much worse to sanitize the incident.
challenge_everything
Active Member
What sort of analysis do you expect, or want, from a biopic? I don't want didacticism from a movie like this. In terms of developing the character and the family dynamic, I don't think it could've done it much better. It constantly provokes the viewer to think about what shaped Nitram to be the way he was. Nature v nurture, how much is it inherent mental illness, how treatable was it (the scene with the apathetic psychiatrist is revealing), how much is he pushed over the edge by the tragic events in his life (even though those events are partly precipitated by Nitram himself). There is considerable skill in the way Kurzel throws all these ingredients in the mix but you never get the sense he is pushing one conclusion or other.
I fundamentally disagree it was anti-firearm propaganda, not even close. The gun shop scene doesn't occur until 3/4 of the way in, and makes up barely a few minutes of total run-time. Such an important detail could hardly have been omitted. If anything, the sense I got from the movie was that he was so fucked up, his life was going to lead to violence regardless of the availability of guns (see the scene where he beats his father). The scene with the surfer had nothing to do with gun control and more about his inability to empathise or relate to other people in a normal way. I admittedly wasn't a fan of the factoid epilogue either as it seemed like a studio intervention but a 5 second blurb as the credits roll shouldn't colour what was otherwise 2 hours of excellent filmmaking.
Not sure what I can say if you didn't find it generally disturbing. I found Jones' performance so disquieting even in the small moments like when he's knocking on doors to mow lawns. Regardless, there's nothing remotely sanitized or 'cop out' about it.
I fundamentally disagree it was anti-firearm propaganda, not even close. The gun shop scene doesn't occur until 3/4 of the way in, and makes up barely a few minutes of total run-time. Such an important detail could hardly have been omitted. If anything, the sense I got from the movie was that he was so fucked up, his life was going to lead to violence regardless of the availability of guns (see the scene where he beats his father). The scene with the surfer had nothing to do with gun control and more about his inability to empathise or relate to other people in a normal way. I admittedly wasn't a fan of the factoid epilogue either as it seemed like a studio intervention but a 5 second blurb as the credits roll shouldn't colour what was otherwise 2 hours of excellent filmmaking.
Not sure what I can say if you didn't find it generally disturbing. I found Jones' performance so disquieting even in the small moments like when he's knocking on doors to mow lawns. Regardless, there's nothing remotely sanitized or 'cop out' about it.
CiG
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You seem to be arguing against things I haven't said. I never said the gun shop scene could have been or should have been omitted, just that the only scenes that gave me a sense of disturbance were the scenes where guns are involved.
Also, the scenes where he's target shooting with his old airgun and upsets Helen happens well before his trip to the gun shop. You're acting like guns have no presence in the film until "3/4 of the way in" haha.
It's ironic that you say you don't want didacticism from Nitram, yet that's how I ended up feeling about the film. That it was ultimately more preachy than it was interesting or visceral.
And it was absolutely a sanitized cop out, speaking as someone who has done some deep diving into Martin Bryant in the past, this aimless cinematic Malick-esque depiction of the guy's life is pretty weak. Again, something I could forgive if the final act properly boiled over into something that sears into the memory. This guy had a history of torturing animals, trying to drown a kid while snorkelling, harassing younger children in his neighbourhood, it was noted by a social worker in 1990 that Bryant constantly said he'd like to go around shooting people, after he and Helen moved out of her house onto a farm he would fire his gun at tourists and neighbour dogs, he would dress in bizarre clothes and restaurant staff and customers would laugh at him, he spent two whole years travelling the world 14 times and being rejected by everybody he met, which clearly played a big role in his motivations. He became suicidal and his alcohol abuse increased dramatically and 6 months later he committed the massacre.
This is all stuff that was left out. They even sanitized his relationship with Helen for some bizarre reason, with all the happy dogs running around, even though the living conditions were so horrendous that the state intervened and rushed Helen and her mother to the hospital, where her mother died. Then a state-enforced clean-up job was done, and eventually it got so bad that Helen was banned from having dogs at her house, which is why she and Bryant moved to a farm in the first place. Helen had even told a family member or friend, I forget which, that she felt like one day Bryant would cause a car crash and kill her.
I mean shit, he didn't just do the massacre and then get arrested. He took a fucking hostage and there was a negotiation situation at his guest house for so long that his phone battery died. Then he killed the hostage and 18 hours later he set fire to the house in an attempt to escape and burned himself severely. There's so much more to this guy's story than what we see on the screen, and what we see is so sanitized except when guns are on the screen. I just don't get the praise.
Also, the scenes where he's target shooting with his old airgun and upsets Helen happens well before his trip to the gun shop. You're acting like guns have no presence in the film until "3/4 of the way in" haha.
It's ironic that you say you don't want didacticism from Nitram, yet that's how I ended up feeling about the film. That it was ultimately more preachy than it was interesting or visceral.
And it was absolutely a sanitized cop out, speaking as someone who has done some deep diving into Martin Bryant in the past, this aimless cinematic Malick-esque depiction of the guy's life is pretty weak. Again, something I could forgive if the final act properly boiled over into something that sears into the memory. This guy had a history of torturing animals, trying to drown a kid while snorkelling, harassing younger children in his neighbourhood, it was noted by a social worker in 1990 that Bryant constantly said he'd like to go around shooting people, after he and Helen moved out of her house onto a farm he would fire his gun at tourists and neighbour dogs, he would dress in bizarre clothes and restaurant staff and customers would laugh at him, he spent two whole years travelling the world 14 times and being rejected by everybody he met, which clearly played a big role in his motivations. He became suicidal and his alcohol abuse increased dramatically and 6 months later he committed the massacre.
This is all stuff that was left out. They even sanitized his relationship with Helen for some bizarre reason, with all the happy dogs running around, even though the living conditions were so horrendous that the state intervened and rushed Helen and her mother to the hospital, where her mother died. Then a state-enforced clean-up job was done, and eventually it got so bad that Helen was banned from having dogs at her house, which is why she and Bryant moved to a farm in the first place. Helen had even told a family member or friend, I forget which, that she felt like one day Bryant would cause a car crash and kill her.
I mean shit, he didn't just do the massacre and then get arrested. He took a fucking hostage and there was a negotiation situation at his guest house for so long that his phone battery died. Then he killed the hostage and 18 hours later he set fire to the house in an attempt to escape and burned himself severely. There's so much more to this guy's story than what we see on the screen, and what we see is so sanitized except when guns are on the screen. I just don't get the praise.
