ysbreker

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Any Luis Bunuel fans here? I'm just getting into him. LOVED The Exterminating Angel but haven't seen anything else. 

 

This morning I watched a film called Un homme qui dort (The Man Who Sleeps). I think it can be found in its entirety on youtube. It tells the story of an alienated young man who decides to do no more in life than is absolutely needed to survive. He wanders around Paris while a narrator reads from his diary. He seems to accept some kind of ultimate truth in indifference but as the film continues on this presents an increasing sense of anxiety and hopelessness. Despite the nihilistic themes, it's a very pretty film and a relaxing watch.

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I love Un Chien Andalou but the only other Bunuel I've seen is Simon of the Desert, which I found to be kind of a bore. A director I keep meaning to check out more.

 

I watched the Aubrey Plaza/Dave Franco/Alison Brie historical comedy The Little Hours last weekend, and while the trailer only emphasizes the "lol, olden times nuns saying fuck" aspect (and kind of spoils too many later plot points) I actually found it to be a hysterically funny and smart movie that basically transposes a college sex comedy to the 14th century and consistently makes great choices with it's tone and fluid anachronistic dialogue.

 

That said, an aspect that I haven't really seen anyone mention and one that makes it hard to recommend is that Aubrey Plaza's character in this is an actual rapist, who commits two sexual assaults (one on a woman and one on a man) that are both played for laughs. In both scenes the initiation of the act couldn't be more violent or coercive but, in a choice that makes it way worse and insidious for me, both parties ultimately end up being into it. Hearing an audience crack up at Dave Franco being sexuallly assaulted at knifepoint was an awful experience, one made even worse because I think there's a lot about this movie that's good but maaaaaaan. That aspect fucking sucks.

 

It claims it's based on The Decameron, but I'll leave it to someone like Gorm to suss out what that even means and how relevant it actually is.

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It isn't uncommon for a situation where a male is a victim of rape to be played for laughs, sadly. It's unfortunate that advocacy for male victims is so often tied up in a lot of other "Redpill" horseshit as far as the people being vocal about it. 

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I've seen a handful of Bunuel films (his name always makes me laugh because I can't help but think of bunuelo, basically a donut ball). The ones that stood out to me were the Diary of a Chambermaid, and That Obscure Object of Desire.

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I saw Jackie yesterday because some friends wanted to see it and was quite disappointed. I've seen a great movie from Pablo Larrain and that's El Club, but the rest have disappointed me so far (Neruda with it's awful out-of-focus effects and Jackie with it's boring material).

 

I have seen five Buñuel movies in the past few years. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie has a similar core idea as The Exterminating Angel, I guess, but I didn't like it as much. My personal favourite is Viridiana, it has some really memorable scenes. Los Olvidados is very bleak, it's worth watching too.

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On 7/23/2017 at 10:19 AM, Erkki said:

I just saw Night of the Living Dead for the first time. It wasn't bad, but I was expecting more. But definitely worth seeing just for being the first movie to show modern zombies, I guess.

 

If you haven't done any reading on the impact that NotLD had in its time, it's worth doing to appreciate its role in history and culture beyond just having zombies.  The level of violence and gore in it set the stage for today's gore porn horror, and at the time challenged what was even considered within protected 1st Amendment expression in the US.  A black protagonist in a film that wasn't explicitly about race was still a rarity.  All in all it's just really interesting how many different things intersected in that one film. 

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Valerian and the city of the thousand planets is pretty cool! And exceedingly French. I went in with low expectations for the story (not being the biggest fan of The Fifth Element) and was constantly pleasantly surprised. You'll find plenty of faults in the characterizations and some seedy scenes perhaps, but as a colorful and sly and lavishly colorful, familiar-yet-weird space adventure, this has everything you could crave for.

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On 7/20/2017 at 9:25 AM, Patrick R said:

 

If Stop Making Sense ever comes to a rep theater near you (and with the recent death of it's director Jonathon Demme that's more likely now than ever) you should run, not walk, to go see it.

 

 

Ended up seeing another Demme memorial screening and can now say the same about Melvin & Howard, a truly unique and beguiling comedy that's ostensibly about the "real life" story of Melvin Dummar, the gas station attendent who was allegedly bequeathed 1/16th of Howard Hughes' estate, but actually is an incredibly shaggy character drama/comedy about a hapless blue collar guy constantly struggling with money, no matter how much he has. The Howard Hughes will doesn't even factor into the story until the last 15 minutes.

 

It's a beautiful human film packed with memorable scenes and interesting characters, and slowly discovering the wild winding structure of the film is a real treat. I highly recommend it, but don't go in expecting the high concept comedy the premise seems to imply.

 

 

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I watched Sausage Party and enjoyed it. The narrative structure is a mess (the A-plot is a character slowly learning what the audience and many other characters already know), and the humour can occasionally get a bit lazy, but it's enjoyable for the first hour and then it gets really good for the last thirty minutes as it gets more inventive. The last section reminds me of A Bee Movie (which I thought was great) in the way that it takes a Pixar 'the-secret-life-of' premise and goes in completely unexpected directions.

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Yesterday I discovered that Martin McDonagh, the Irish playwright who wrote and directed the films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, directed a short film with Brendan Gleason (one of the best actors around) in 2004 that won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. It's called Six Shooter and it very much operates in the pitch black tone of In Bruges, mixing a witty script with absolutely horrible things happening to already emotionally devastated people. The humor gets pretty dark but it's also really really funny, and if you liked In Bruges I'd recommend it.

 

 

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Oh Hello is a recorded Broadway comedy special on Netflix and it's one of the funniest things I've seen in a long while. Comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll play Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, two 70-something New York City weirdos who love Steely Dan and drugs. It's largely a satire of bad theater cliches and one-man shows, but it's also just fucking crazy and weird and funny. Really really amazingly funny. Steve Martin cameos.

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I started watching Patriot on Amazon Prime and am really enjoying it. Its a dark comedy spy show with a great cast.
 

 

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I've been watching/re-watching some John Carpenter films the past week, I'll just mention two:

 

Escape from LA, I don't know what to make of this movie. It had a budget 10 times higher than that of the first movie, yet the SFX look like absolute garbage. Even for the time, if you consider how good Starship Troopers looks (twice the budget, one year later, but still). Even TV show like Voyager has better CG. Then there's the fact that the movie is at times a scene-by-scene remake of the first movie, they even tell the same jokes the same way. I don't mind it actually, because I can listen to Kurt Russell say "call me Snake" all day, it's just weird. Did Carpenter resent making this movie or something? I had fun with it, mostly because I like Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi and Michelle Forbes, but it's not a good movie. The attempts are satirizing LA are quite weak.

 

Big Trouble in Little China, I've seen this movie mentioned as one of Carpenters best, something I don't understand at all. This was easily my least favourite movie of this that I've watched and I stopped to see how much of it was left at least four times. I was utterly bored by the whole thing, didn't think any of the jokes were particularly funny and the endless fights were tedious to get through. The Chinese mysticism thing didn't grab me, and so many events in the movie feels completely random (which can work, I just don't think it does here). The only good part was the exploding head.

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I agree with you on Escape From LA (though I can't give it a pass in any way, I really think it is completely unredeemably awful), but I think Big Trouble in Little China is pure charm, bolstered on the running joke that big strapping all-American John Wayne-type hero is actually a total ineffectual goon and that Dennis Dun does all the work and gets the girl. There is a thoughtful subversion of the white savior trope that you don't expect out of a movie so unrelentingly silly. But I've come to understand it's more of an acquired taste, so you aren't alone in not getting the love. 

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This is pretty much apropos of nothing, aside from Escape from LA and it both featuring rescuing women in a vaguely dystopian future, but I heartily recommend Streets of Fire. It features a cracking 80s soundtrack, Willem Dafoe as a PVC clad biker gang leader, Diane Lane, and the B actor Michael Pare being asked to deliver the one note that's precisely in his wheelhouse.

 

 

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I agree entirely with juv3nal. Streets of Fire is an absolutely beautiful movie and if you have any fondness at all for Jim Steinman (songwriter behind Meatloaf's seminal 70's theater rock album Bat Out Of Hell and also the 80's hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart") it is a must see. A MUST SEE.

 

 

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I do really enjoy BTILC but it can drag. I think the main problem is that they go into the baddy's lair, have a few adventures then leave and go back home for a bit before starting over again! If Carpenter had kept them in there once they're in, it would immediately trim about ten minutes off the film and probably feel like it trimmed 25...

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I really enjoy Big Trouble in Little China, but it is definitely one film firmly set in context of its era. Nostalgia isn't what keeps me loyal to the film, however it is a tonic of forgivness when it is clear to see how many flaws it has.

Spoiler

If your only requirement for the ritual was green eyes, then for goodness sake why would you never think to look for a woman of a different ethnicity?! 

The film is full of silly antics and strange story choices that can leave the viewer shaking their head at best and a gaping plot hole at worst, but you shake it off quickly knowing that is just what this film is: magical buffoonery. 

 If you enjoy classic visual effects and puppetry, strangely capable yet inept heroes, and good old cheesy one-liners then BTILC could easily be your favorite John Carpenter film. Is it the best though? Maybe not. 

 There's the additional fun fact about how pop culture influences each other: Lo Pan's lightning tossing minions were the inspiration for Raiden from Mortal Kombat. Easy to see the link of goofy action and strange interpreations of American views of other cultures and "mysticism".

 

Come to think of it, how many movies were there in the late 80s to mid 90s about a white protagonist getting involved in an awful Hollywood interpreation of eastern culture? ...Is this how we got Power Rangers?  

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7 hours ago, Patrick R said:

Well this is the only one that comes to mind but if you are in the mood for cheesy action, it's a classic.

 

 Wow how did I not know about this one? Clearly I have not seen enough buddy cop movies. 

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That looks rad! It is NEVER going to run in theatres here, but maybe in the sneak, maybe, hopefully...?

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