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Author Topic: 70's US  (Read 17905 times)

roujin

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #40 on: February 23, 2015, 11:11:38 PM »
Mostly the first poster.

roujin

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #41 on: March 20, 2015, 06:56:32 PM »

51. What's Up Doc? (Peter Bodganovich, 1972)

Bogdanovich's vibe is almost too relaxed here. Some of the wackiness is too underplayed, too loose - it hangs around. He would find a more natural marriage between classical screwball scenario and his Hollywood New Wave sensibilities with They All Laughed. O'Neal can never get past being a pretty boy trying to act aloof, his abs give up the game. Streisand is pretty great here and she's game for pretty much everything. The film's best achievement is the car chase, which is a ton of fun, but it says something when the parts that don't feature the main characters are the best.

★★


52. Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1972)

Anger's editing creates a strange, oneiric effect, where his images become a half-remembered mixture of myths and pomp and spectactle. I don't take much too seriously the content (or the ideas?) of his films, but one always gets the sense of of some kind of private ceremony is taking place, some kind of communion between Anger and some sort of image. Which is interesting and worthwhile.

★★


53. Blume in Love (Paul Mazursky, 1973)

Mazursky's chosen milieu is probably what works against him the most for me, as I couldn't stand just about any of these people. It's to his credit though that Segal's Blume remains more or less sympathetic throughout, even at his most unctuous and pathetic. His character's actions come from a place of selfishness disguised as love that was dramatized rather effectively The film's denouement, however, is too hard a sell. Although draped in about two layers of remove and critical distance, it's still too weakly supported by the rest of the film to be as powerful as it could be.

★★


54. Jeremy (Arthur Barron, 1973)

Sweet teenage romance film that benefits from the complete lack of irony or guile. It's incredibly upfront about its intentions and its earnestness in the face of teen romance films that treat everything as a joke is definitely welcome. It also nicely understands the stakes involved for all its characters, and is never melodramatic, even when its characters act like it. The effect is incredibly modest, almost banal, in the best sense of the word. But, Barron's handheld camera often destroys moments. At its best, it comes off as haphazard; at its worst, it's annoying and distracting. It aims for a verisimilitude but its too clumsy to be effective.

★★


55. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (Woody Allen, 1972)

Series of skits that all outstay their welcome. The funniest one is Wilder's bit with the sheep, which features great, remarkable facial reactions from Wilder. Some of the rest are fun in theory, but not execution (the entire Italian cinema bit is miserable, along with the transvestite bit). Ultimately, the comic ideas remain underdeveloped and not all that funny. So, a sketch film.



roujin

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #42 on: April 17, 2015, 09:50:52 AM »
Pics will come later today.


56. The Telephone Book (Nelson Lyon, 1971)

Pretty freewheeling early 70's comedy about a woman who hears the world's greatest erotic phone call. It's all about revealing the nice and funny fetishes that everyday folk have in a manner that's good-natured and fun. She runs into porno visionary Har Poon as he auditions women, she runs into a man who wants to expose himself to her on the subway but gets freaked out when she exposes herself to him; it's wackier and funnier than it sounds. Interspersed with all this are interviews with former obscene callers. They talk about the way they would call and their various tics . It's fun stuff. The film finds a perfect (and lonely) visual metaphor to end with but then overwhelms it with a whacked out animated finale that's overkill.

★★★


57. All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)

Fosse's cuts and staging are completely unlike those deployed in the 50's classic Hollywood films he choreographed and danced in. Now in the director's reign, he cuts and emphasizes sudden changes in direction and favors expressive new poses. Rhythmically, it's just completely different. Fosse's gloss on Fellini is self-absorbed in a way that's ridiculous, but comes off as self-critical and acerbic enough to escape accusations of being self-serving. Mainly, it's just a weird, weird movie, a disruptive, wild vision that constantly surprises with its inventive restlessness.

★★★


58. The Wizard of Gore (Heschell Gordon Lewis, 1970)

At its best when it focuses on the performance aspects. G.L.'s camera, steady and unwavering, seems more engaged in these scenes, using stasis and oddness of main performer to try and go after a somewhat trance-like effect. When the film abstracts the action in order to execute its special effects, a climax is reached and there's just nothing left in the film's arsenal. The rest is a wasteland of dead-eyed non-actors and a useless plot to fill the time and add some thematic depth and ambiguity, but the "reality is an illusion" aspect is pretty much nonsense.




59. Girlfriends (Claudia Weill, 1978)

Seems Lena Dunham has been raiding this film's playbook for the last 4 years. Portrayal of female friendship, interdependence and all sorts of character dynamics is admirable and worthwhile. Not only that, it's done with intelligence and charmingly articulates how seemingly irreconcilable character differences fall by the wayside thanks to friendship.

★★★


60. The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977)

The nighttime raid is an expertly executed 30 minutes of filmmaking. Nothing in the film can quite compare to it. There's a true sense of danger there, unpredictability, that the film simply can't sustain. As Craven ratches up the tension, there's a sense of true unavoidable tragedy. The way events spiral out of control and leave earth-shattering consequences is masterfully handled. Craven treats death with true depth - notice the sensitivity displayed when the bodies in the trailer are found (it's the quietest moment in the movie). The rest of the film is dead air comparatively, particularly when the dogs start shoving people off high cliffs.

★★
« Last Edit: April 20, 2015, 05:58:07 AM by roujin »

roujin

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #43 on: July 01, 2015, 07:33:45 PM »
Not dead!


61. Serene Velocity (Ernie Gehr, 1970)

Can't deny that I didn't get much out of this. Alternating shots going back and forth, distances becoming shorter and longer, disorienting you while never fooling you. It's interesting, but I don't get much out of this type of filmmaking.

★★


62. 11 x 14 (James Benning, 1977)

Benning's camera focuses on the edges of narratives. It glimpses events tangential to a plot that may or may not be there. The moments portrayed seem to happen before or after events actually take place. Things don't coalesce, but the approach is interesting and varied enough from shot to shot that it's never boring. Part of the fun is trying to piece something together from this cock-eyed take on a narrative.

★★


63. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)

Two thoughts: 1) the energy and vivaciousness of Jack Nicholson's performance is superb. He brings to the table a set of generational attitudes, us vs. them free-form rebellion, that's undeniably appealing and fun to watch. His interactions with the patients are engaging and Forman wisely has Nicholson's character treat everyone the same to build a sense of camaraderie. 2) Nicholson's revolt is primarily a masculine one; it's based on a rejection of the docile, sexless authority of Nurse Ratched. It posits Nicholson as the ideal Free Man and the rest of the patients as the repressed. His methods are simple: watch baseball, drink, get laid; but in the world of the film, they seem to show some tangible results (Chief talks, Billy doesn't stutter, Cheswick shows some spine). But Nicholson's revolt could essentially be reduced to being one against women (moms, wives, nurses), a plea to let boys be boys. When Nicholson begins to choke Anne Fletcher's Nurse Ratched, it crystallizes everything. One can grapple with the morality of his actions, but I see it in a continuum with all the people who criticize, for example, Anna Gunn's character in Breaking Bad - just another girl trying to stop us from doing badass shit.

★★


64. Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974)

Great rock film. De Palma paints characters in broad brush strokes; characters border on cartoons, but thru style become myths. Williams' songs shuffle through various musical styles working as both celebration and critique of the industry that birthed them. It's a gloriously silly film that because of its conviction also seems to arrive at terribly serious conclusions. It's garish and weird and freaky and often risible, but goddamn if it's not entertaining.

★★★★


65. Real Life (Albert Brooks, 1979)

Brooks' film works because of the interesting friction between the family and the Hollywood intrusion of Brooks. Grodin and company's daily lives and fears and compulsions are presented completely banally and no effort is made to make them interesting characters. Brooks, on the other hand, is an abrasive presence from the start, creating spectacle and drama from the very beginning (he greets the town in song and is kissing the wife by the first weekend), he chooses which events are more interesting (horse operations over daughter's events) and rejecting science for entertainment. There's lots of hilarious little details to be found here and Brooks is always an engaging presence and shows a piercing intelligence for his satirical targets.

★★★

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #44 on: July 01, 2015, 10:35:54 PM »
63. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)

2) Nicholson's revolt is primarily a masculine one; it's based on a rejection of the docile, sexless authority of Nurse Ratched. It posits Nicholson as the ideal Free Man and the rest of the patients as the repressed. His methods are simple: watch baseball, drink, get laid; but in the world of the film, they seem to show some tangible results (Chief talks, Billy doesn't stutter, Cheswick shows some spine). But Nicholson's revolt could essentially be reduced to being one against women (moms, wives, nurses), a plea to let boys be boys. When Nicholson begins to choke Anne Fletcher's Nurse Ratched, it crystallizes everything. One can grapple with the morality of his actions, but I see it in a continuum with all the people who criticize, for example, Anna Gunn's character in Breaking Bad - just another girl trying to stop us from doing badass shit.

★★
My problem with a criticism like this is that it looks past the character. You describe McMurphy as more a symbol than a man. Is that your criticism though? Because it reads like your problem is what he is a symbol of. If he works for you more symbolic than human, is that a fault of Jack Nicholson for being unable to lift the themes up and place them inside a person? Because on those terms I disagree completely. The discussion of symbolic male castration is one you get into upon deeper analysis, but I don't care which ideas they want to put across - why not see it as a condemnation of institutional systems? or the suppression of individualism? - because overriding all of that is one of the finest ensemble of performances ever put on screen.

DarkeningHumour

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #45 on: July 02, 2015, 03:24:53 AM »
I also disagree. Ratchet is not a woman so much as a cog in a system, a self-aware cog that controls most of the system but still a cog in all its sexless utilitarian implications. She doesn't represent a mother figure or some castrating spousal archetype but the smiling tentatively human mask that some oppressive institutions like to don. McMurphy reacts the way he does because she is a machine, she can't be interacted with like a normal person.
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Re: 70's US
« Reply #46 on: July 02, 2015, 11:34:44 AM »
I should have guessed you'd like Phantom of the Paradise as much as you did, ET. It's delightfully wacky.
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roujin

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #47 on: July 02, 2015, 11:38:06 AM »
I think the first point accounts for what you guys are talking about. It accounts for the rebellion against institutions in general and the work of the ensemble. It also mentions how much fun Nicholson is.

Regarding the second point - it does not negate the good work of the ensemble or of Nicholson. It isn't an either/or proposition: McMurphy is both a fully realized character brought to life by Nicholson, and also symbolic of certain attitudes and ideas that perhaps aren't all that palatable.

mañana

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Re: 70's US
« Reply #48 on: July 02, 2015, 12:07:48 PM »
I also disagree. Ratchet is not a woman so much as a cog in a system, a self-aware cog that controls most of the system but still a cog in all its sexless utilitarian implications. She doesn't represent a mother figure or some castrating spousal archetype but the smiling tentatively human mask that some oppressive institutions like to don. McMurphy reacts the way he does because she is a machine, she can't be interacted with like a normal person.
There certainly is an element to the oppression that is a matter of broader institutions; for Kesey it was Eisenhower’s America, for Forman it was communism. But women as a force that puts controls on a natural maleness that is rebellious, individual, and full of life is something that repeats throughout the film as well. Most centrally the nurse, but Billy’s mother and (I think) some of the wives are examples as well. I like the film, but I think there’s a valid critique to be made in this regard.     
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Re: 70's US
« Reply #49 on: July 02, 2015, 02:01:23 PM »
It's certainly a discussion to have, much like discussing feminism in Fury Road. This is the downside of a Star Rating. roujin gives Cuckoo's Nest 2-stars, which I think is insanely low. So why doesn't he like it? What he writes could also go into a rave review. When you like the film, symbols, themes and attitudes are discussion beyond the film's core. When you don't like it, this becomes the core for your negative reaction.