Movie/TV recommendations

[Patrick R]

Genuinely curious about your stance on Godard. 

 

I haven't seen many of his films (Breathless, A Woman is A Woman, Vivre Sa Vie, Sympathy For The Devil) but that's because I haven't liked any of them. I always hate the characters, I find his editing style irritating, and his stories unengaging. But I've seen them all too far apart from each other and too long ago to really go into it much more than that. I'm sure he's a great filmmaker, but he's not for me. Something about him I find aggressively off-putting.

[Patrick R]

And as far as useless remakes go (which is most of them), Oldboy seems more interesting than most. It won't be as good as the original (because the original was, you know, original) but Spike Lee keeping his toe dipped in Hollywood isn't a bad thing. 

[Roderick]

The final scene in Breathless is nothing short of amazing.

 

[Patrick R]

To be fair, Breathless is the one I most want to give another shot, since I last saw that my Sophomore year of high school.

[Ucantalas]

Because, "I wanna' watch a movie, not read it!"

That doesn't explain the baffling remake of "Death at a Funeral", an English film that got an American version 3 years later... (It also had Peter Dinklage in both versions as the same character)

[TychoCelchuuu]

Nobody understands English accents.

[clyde]

I can't understand anything they say in Trainspotting.

[Brannigan]

Because, "I wanna' watch a movie, not read it!"

God, I actually heard people saying crap like that when I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in theaters. Worst.

[Twig]

I have a friend who once told me the reason he can't stand subtitles is because he has ADD and it is very hard for him to focus on the subtitles without being completely distracted by the movement on the rest of the screen.

[miffy495]

Save The Green Planet - kind of impossible to describe because of how eclectic it is, definitely one of the boldest movies I've seen.

 

A few weeks ago I was espousing the virtues of this film to Tegan in Steam chat. One of my favourite movies ever, just for the sheer impact that seeing it for the first time had on me when I was 17. I haven't seen the others on your list, but holy shit is Save The Green Planet a movie.

[tegan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fZ_JOBCLF-I

 

 

 

 

 

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee so excited

[Roderick]

The animation style is so good. So much better than the TT Games games (though they're also pretty fun, don't get me wrong). They totally get Lego!

[feelthedarkness]

Also, Takashi Miike seems an odd example in the former list because his career seems to be defined by his lack of focus. I couldn't tell you what a "Takashi Miike styled" film would be, because that includes Audition and Ishi the Killer and DOA 2 and 13 Assassins and The Box, which span a pretty wildly different styles and subjects and tones.

 

I believe Miike has stated that he deliberately and only makes "genre film", so through that lens, I think they all make sense as a unified effort.  Even though it's pretty easy to see he's not just doing genre. 

[Patrick R]

"Genre films" is an awfully broad lens.

[Frenetic Pony]

I have a friend who once told me the reason he can't stand subtitles is because he has ADD and it is very hard for him to focus on the subtitles without being completely distracted by the movement on the rest of the screen.

 

This is totally my thing, but oddly only with English subtitles. I watched Oldboy just fine (not that I really "enjoyed" such a fucked up movie, but still). But sometimes I'll grab a movie and subtitles will be on, and I can't help but read them every single time, I have to turn them off. Which isn't a big thing 99% of the time, but the point is I can easily see someone having trouble not being distracted by them.

 

Also, speaking of Miike, 13 Assassin's is kinda fucking awesome! I actually liked it quite a bit better than Seven Samurai, which felt a bit aimless and overly long.

[BadHat]

13 Assassins tried way too hard to be badass and dark for me to really enjoy it. Seven Samurai is definitely a slog if you're not in for a long movie, but one of the benefits of that is that I actually knew which character was which.

 

On the other hand, I watched Miike's remake of Harakiri recently and, while it's impossible to replace the performances in the original, holy shit the bamboo sword scene. Wow. I was clutching my stomach and wincing the whole time.

 

A few weeks ago I was espousing the virtues of this film to Tegan in Steam chat. One of my favourite movies ever, just for the sheer impact that seeing it for the first time had on me when I was 17. I haven't seen the others on your list, but holy shit is Save The Green Planet a movie.

If anything can be said for the movie, it'd be that it's impossible for it not to leave an impression.

[TychoCelchuuu]

13 Assassins is one of those movies everyone seems to like that I didn't really enjoy at all. The parts where they fought with swords and stuff were exciting but the rest was just bleh. Seven Samurai is amazing in comparison - fleshed out, human characters I care about, with arcs and desires and so on.

[tegan]

Where does the Ace Attorney movie fall on the Takahashi Miike scale?

 

 

 

I just watched the 2009 animated Wonder Woman movie, 'cause I was craving some superheroine action. Unfortunately it's kind of butt. Two things that stood out:

 

1) this is like the definitive "bloodless carnage" movie. It's so violent, but nobody bleeds.

2) the invisible jet just shows up. There's no effort at all to explain it and nobody ever comments on it.

[juv3nal]

So Wim Wender's Alice in den Stadten (Alice in the Cities) is pretty great.

If you're not familiar with Wenders, he has done a ton of other great stuff, but I'd never seen this one before and happened on it on tv.

This may not be the best entry point to Wenders. Probably Paris, Texas or Wings of Desire are more approachable. Tokyo Ga is a great documentary if you're a film nerd (but then you probably didn't need me to tell you about Wenders).

I also have a lot of affection for Until the End of the World, but it is definitely flawed.

 

edit: oh here's a clip from Alice in the Cities:

[BigJKO]

The animation style is so good. So much better than the TT Games games (though they're also pretty fun, don't get me wrong). They totally get Lego!

 

Yeah! They really nail the stop-motion vibe and the lighting and shading is perfect at making it look like they're actually the right Lego size. I'm not a huge fan of the humour in the trailers, but some of the moments are good.

[Roderick]

13 Assassins: effin' good.
Original Hara-kiri: Hella yes (haven't seen Miike's remaake).
Ace Attorney film: I wasn't impressed by it, it was rather dull. This type of plot doesn't lend itself to a movie well. It's too procedural, without being interesting like Le Samouraï. Everything is spelled out, so off goes your brain.
Alice in the Cities: Haven't seen it, has an interesting nouvelle vague vibe to it.
Lego movie: I love the little imperfections, they're treating it like real Lego. Not just the molding lines and little bits of plastic out of place, but even the dull sheen you get in real life when the metallic color of the torso print reflects the light in a certain angle. DETAILS.

[Hermie]

I kinda feel like Takashi Miike's style is influenced by his body-horror roots. Even the more goofy movies like Phoenix Wright and Tsukiyaki Western Django have a feeling of being kind of visceral (not in the video game trailer sense, but more like a cinematic fixation on the body).

 

The image that comes to mind when thinking of a Miike movie is a close up shot of a creepy guy, staring out, breathing slightly. The camera is just a liiiittle too close to their face, so you feel uncomfortable.

[elmuerte]

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 3 is really terrible, even compared to the first two.

[Roderick]

Tsukiyaki Western Django was by Miike? Man, I've watched more of his films than I realized.

[feelthedarkness]

"Genre films" is an awfully broad lens.

 

Haha, yeah, taken on it's face it's totally broad! Though I think if look at them like "this isn't art, this is a Yakuza film, this is a Body Horror, The is a Hollywood Silver Age Musical" (Happiness of the Katakuris), etc.. there is an order to it. 

 

For a few years he was averaging like 5+ movies a year. Almost 100 since 1991. I remember really liking the Great Yokai War, which is a Terry Gilliamesque Neverending Story thing.