Author Topic: Write about the last movie you watched (2006-2010)  (Read 5996394 times)

CSSCHNEIDER

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28500 on: March 09, 2010, 11:11:21 PM »
Leaves of Grass
Dir. Tim Blake Nelson

Eh.  Nothing special.  Ed Norton delivers two good performances, the story is dark and twisted with a dash of comedy but it never really grabbed me.

Grade C
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Bondo

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28501 on: March 09, 2010, 11:29:31 PM »
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

The old saying is that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. I think you could also say a conservative is a liberal who watched the first half of Precious. I was really concerned through the first 45 minutes of so of this that seemed to be playing up every racial stereotype that makes me want to go off into a lecture on personal responsibility and reform welfare. It seems every film that looks into a predominantly black school has to have the rowdy students who make the class utterly ineffective. I think how as a student of that age it would have never occurred to me that that was acceptable behavior. You've got her "welfare queen" mother and really hideous diets.

But as the film develops through the second half it goes a long way towards redemption, indulging more liberal motives to desire a more effective social safety net (though I'm a bit surprised at one point she talks about never having seen a doctor...she should be qualified for Medicaid) that gives people a better chance at breaking the cycle of poverty and you see her trying to break out.

I almost think Mo'nique is the main problem here. Her character is so unrelentingly vicious she makes Hans Landa look like a teddy bear and her scenes just seem overwrought. The film introduces more interesting characters that are underdeveloped that I would have rather spent time with. This being the case, it is an imperfect but ultimately worthwhile venture.

joem18b

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28502 on: March 10, 2010, 02:19:13 AM »
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

The old saying is that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. I think you could also say a conservative is a liberal who watched the first half of Precious. I was really concerned through the first 45 minutes of so of this that seemed to be playing up every racial stereotype that makes me want to go off into a lecture on personal responsibility and reform welfare. It seems every film that looks into a predominantly black school has to have the rowdy students who make the class utterly ineffective. I think how as a student of that age it would have never occurred to me that that was acceptable behavior. You've got her "welfare queen" mother and really hideous diets.

But as the film develops through the second half it goes a long way towards redemption, indulging more liberal motives to desire a more effective social safety net (though I'm a bit surprised at one point she talks about never having seen a doctor...she should be qualified for Medicaid) that gives people a better chance at breaking the cycle of poverty and you see her trying to break out.

I almost think Mo'nique is the main problem here. Her character is so unrelentingly vicious she makes Hans Landa look like a teddy bear and her scenes just seem overwrought. The film introduces more interesting characters that are underdeveloped that I would have rather spent time with. This being the case, it is an imperfect but ultimately worthwhile venture.

theater i was sitting in, for the most part, the conservative whites said i tole you so, the liberal whites said well oh my, and the blacks laughed out loud, especially at that sly devil Mo'nique.

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28503 on: March 10, 2010, 03:25:38 AM »

Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)
The film opens with a performance of the Peasant Culture Group given to a dully lit, crowded theatre. The members of this troupe will be our main characters, as we head with them through the changes wrought by the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping. Eventually, with commercialisation and Western pop-cultural influence, we see them as The All Star Rock 'n' Breakdance Electronic Band. You get the picture. We follow the characters through this new, changing landscape, not as the standard characters experiencing and commenting on the significance of change or transition, but as characters just trying to live.
This was a demanding film to watch. Not only because I had constant family-based interruptions, but because I have never seen a film that deals with its material quite in this way. Jia dictates that you pay careful attention, with his long takes, gorgeous, complicated compositions, and switches between the main protagonists in the troupe with very little traditional exposition. His skill and his intellect quickly becomes evident, however, with the choreography of the characters within the mis en scene, the camera and colours all cohering brilliantly. I loved the use of the reds, blasting out at you from the muted greys and blues of the populace and buildings. It's also pretty hilarious at times, with the group leader, Song, giving and copping a heap of grief through the film, and the dance routines or punkish performances really making me chuckle.
The crux of the film, in my mind, is its form. This is an epic dealing with so many things: transition (the troupe becomes privately owned 1/3 through the film), stagnation (the film and the characters always seems to loop back to the walls of the same provincial city) and struggle to transcend, to live anew, when everything is set to drag you back to the status quo. It's as if the characters are lost in a fog, a dream of renewal, of change, perhaps, that seems tantalisingly close in their little city, but peters out - as the final shot so starkly depicts - lost in the morass. Jia foregos the usual staples of the epic: overt conflict and melodramatics, strongly relatable heroes, for a much clearer intellectualisation of the process of lives lived in the emerging new China. If you can get past the radical form, the rewards are many.
I wrote down that it was a sort of collectivist, intimate epic. The grand sweep of history becomes localised into little meetings discussing how much members are willing to put up to become part of the new privately-owned collective. Where female agency is constantly suppressed, by family, by lovers, by the state. And where commercialisation just sort of creeps up and robs the characters blind. Jia eyes are wide open, refusing to romanticise the collectivist past, but also squaring up to the new capitalism with a critical eye.
Whatever it is, and whether I'm even making any coherent sense, it was a spectacularly great film.

sdedalus

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28504 on: March 10, 2010, 03:28:46 AM »
Woohoo!

Saw that it's on the Instant Netflix (along with some other Jias), I'm looking forward to watching it again.
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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28505 on: March 10, 2010, 03:50:59 AM »
Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)

flieger, you write the best reviews on the boards, hands down.  My only complaint is the way you format your reviews.  Why don't you double space between paragraphs or something?   :)  It's kind of hard on my eyes.

Anyway, Platform is my favorite Jia by far.  I love his compositions in it but I reserve the description of complex complicated compositions for, say, 60s and 70s Jancso or 90s Hou.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2010, 04:37:26 AM by Still Walking »
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flieger

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28506 on: March 10, 2010, 04:16:21 AM »
Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)

flieger, you write the best reviews on the boards, hands down.  My only complaint is the way you format your reviews.  Why don't you double space between paragraphs or something?   :)  It's kind of hard on my eyes.

Anyway, Platform is my favorite Jia by far.  I love his compositions in it but I reserve the description of complex compositions for, say, 60s and 70s Jancso or 90s Hou.



 :o  :o  :o  :o

After that compliment, I'll do anything you ask! (blame roujin for the format...)

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28507 on: March 10, 2010, 04:50:23 AM »
"Stalker" (Tarkovsky)

I was riveted. Clearly one of the best films ever made. Nice to see a Sci-Fi film that uses the genre to explore ideas as opposed to being merely a platform for spectacle.

It's one of the few films that left me in awe after seeing them for the first time.
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smirnoff

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28508 on: March 10, 2010, 09:07:36 AM »
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007)

I just caught up with this one yesterday but didn't enjoy it much. The problem is the material. There's not enough of it. Half the movie is spent watching people mill around in slow motion. While this was effective in setting the mood it did nothing to advance the story or keep my attention. Isn't 10 seconds of watching people walk down a hallway long enough? Why, in this movie, does it need to last for a full minute? Lots of time to think, not a lot to think about. That was my experience in a nutshell. Not bad, not good.

I'm much more excited about catching up with Milk. Mainstream Van Sant is what I enjoy (Gerry being the exception).


IMDB link
« Last Edit: March 21, 2010, 08:49:24 PM by smirnoff »

roujin

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Re: Write about the last movie you watched
« Reply #28509 on: March 10, 2010, 10:29:34 AM »
blame roujin for the format

Always blaming someone else. Glad you liked it.