love

Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684007 times)

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #200 on: January 19, 2017, 01:23:20 PM »
Gleason  (Clay Tweel, 2016)
This very good, occasionally devastating documentary is only half about ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). It's just as much about the relationships between parents and their children. The ravages of ALS act as a catalyst for former NFL player Steve Gleason to contemplate, at a very young age, everything he'd like to tell his young son Rivers before it's too late — consolidating a lifetime's worth of parental guidance and memories into a mere instant. The documentary is thus as thought-provoking on a philosophical and spiritual level as it is touching and gut-wrenching on a emotional level. The presence of Steve's own dad adds a whole other fascinating dimension to the meditation on the bond between fathers and sons, but I won't go into that here. Gleason himself is so likable and easy to root for, just like in his playing days, when he was the undersized guy who succeeded through pure effort. His wife Michel is equally heroic through the many trials created by the disease, making the disruptive impact on their marriage doubly hard to watch. Gleason is full of great scenes, both those that contrast Steve's former athletic prowess with how his body now betrays him; and those that capture the struggle of love to endure in the face of life's greatest trials. The faith healing scene, in particular, continues to haunt me. The nice soundtrack (Pearl Jam, The Head and the Heart, Old Man Canyon) is an added bonus, and the editing is pretty top-notch as well.
Grade: B+

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #201 on: January 19, 2017, 02:27:15 PM »
Cameraperson  (Kirsten Johnson, 2016)
One of the most interesting movies of the year, Cameraperson is something like a found footage film, with Kirsten Johnson assembling together leftover material from various docs she's done the photography for over the last twenty-five years. An introductory title encourages us to view the footage as her memoir, creating the suggestion that we are the sum of what we see. And Johnson has seen some horrible things, with many of her assignments concerned with the aftermath of atrocities (Bosnia, Rwanda, 9/11, Afghanistan, Penn State, James Byrd). Most of the individual shots and scenes are captivating in their own right, allowing Cameraperson to remain engaging just as a sampler platter of various documentary moments. Although Johnson largely avoids explicit connections between the various scenes, the main theme that jumped out at me is the way that idea that, even in tragedy, there's beauty to be seen — or even created (by the photographer's construction of a shot, for example, ripping distracting pieces of grass away from the camera's frame). Johnson speaks to this herself in her return to Bosnia, which she remembers as a beautiful place, despite having been witness to horrors there on her previous visit. Similarly, when we see KJ's home footage of her mom, diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the focus isn't on the sad eventualities of the disease but rather on a daughter's love for her mother. Only later do we learn that this footage is from years earlier and that mom died in 2007. This is the power both of memory and of cinema, keeping the past alive in the present.
Grade: B+

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

Junior

  • Bert Macklin, FBI
  • Global Moderator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28709
  • What's the rumpus?
    • Benefits of a Classical Education
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #202 on: January 19, 2017, 02:49:26 PM »
Silence

Martin Scorsese is one of those directors who wears his influences wherever he goes. His movies feel simultaneously indebted to the past and fresh because he also brings his own vision to everything he touches. The same is true for Silence, a film he's been trying to make for 20+ years. Though it is reductive in the extreme, I couldn't help but see this in part ass Scorsese's most obvious tip of the hat to filmmakers like Malick, Coppola, Kurosawa, and Bergman. Though his camera doesn't rove like Malick's, Scorsese shares here a vision of man intimately connected to nature, and a flair for combining the two sumptuously (not to mention the oft-whispered voice-over that runs throughout the film). He also matches Coppola's tight control of tone and narrative over the course of a long descent into madness in a deeply foreign land. Kurosawa's influence might be the most obvious, as his home country provides the setting and I haven't seen such a fully formed and beautiful representation of Japan since Ran. But it is Bergman who proves to the be the most telling predecessor, because Silence sometimes plays out like a slower, less funny version of The Seventh Seal. Both films are preoccupied with figuring out their protagonists' place in a rapidly changing and often hazardous world. This combination of influences from all-time great directors should entice any cinephile to the theater, though their trip might not prove as fruitful as it was for me.

More than almost any other movie I can think of, Silence demands a viewer who is willing to go on a long journey and bring their own interest in the topic or art of cinema with them or risk being left to wonder why they just spent nearly three hours watching a guy worry about God in Japan. It's not a crowd-pleaser nor is it even daring in the way that gets some movie-buffs going. This is in some ways a very standard movie, but one which will turn off people looking for any old movie to watch. There is a lot of talking and also a lot of, um, silence. There aren't many particularly exhilarating sequences or shots, but the film is also gorgeous. Scenes don't often linger, but the film lasts much longer than most people will have patience for. Character motivations are clear and often stated outright, but the film is also intensely concerned with minute changes in dispositions and relationships. It's an epic and a character study, small and large in scale at the same time.

The story is simple. Two Jesuits go in search of another, rumored to be dead at the hands of Japanese Buddhists because he was converting the locals to Catholicism. The two young priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) must keep hidden or else face the same supposed fate as their mentor (Liam Neeson). In the process of trying to find him, they help some of the converted on their faith journeys and perform various sacraments. Thing go bad. I don't want to get too much into the rest of the film except to say that the struggles Garfield's Rodrigues faces cause him to question his own faith and often ask God directly why he and his fellow Christians must suffer so terribly. It's not a new question or even a new way of thinking about it. But it is dramatically interesting, existentially important, and really really really well done. You feel Garfield's torment, you experience some part of the dread and terror that the tortured Christians are subjected to. And the silence oppresses everything.

Indeed, the movie lives up to its title. I don't remember a single bit of score to accompany the images in the way we've all come to expect. Garfield and company experience the kind of trials that would and do leave one crying out for some guidance, but none comes. Only the cicadas--those ever-present insects I first got to know through the outstanding anime Neon Genesis Evangelion--respond, but their drone only adds to the sense, stated by a villainous character in the film, that Japan really is a swamp where nothing grows. Ah, but don't we see evidence of growth everywhere? Isn't every shot shrouded in green? This is where the underlying conflict arises. Yes, this is a movie about a man's faith, but it's also a movie about imperialism. It is difficult for me to see these two European emissaries from the Catholic Church as wholly positive forces in the world. Though the movie is attached to Garfield as the protagonist who therefore gains the audience's automatic sympathy, I think Scorsese leaves at least some room for an alternate perspective, and he does so with his camera. The camera itself is often quite low to the ground and angled up at Garfield's face (among others), especially when he questions God's plans or even existence. These low angles simultaneously achieve two purposes: firstly, they emphasize the lack of communication from the divine presence; and secondly, they further connect the humans to their worldly existence. That second effect ties into the Buddhist ideas of pain and suffering as inescapable parts of existence well as connects them to the natural world. It is a remarkable but simple technique, and it works to both enhance and undermine the top-layer narrative at the same time.

I wouldn't call Silence a nuanced movie, but the effect it had on me was a subtle one. I was engrossed throughout, though also acutely aware of all the noise from my fellow theatergoers. When the movie is predicated on such a quiet mood any noise is liable to take you out of it, and my theater was not lacking loud popcorn chewers or seat-repositioners. However, oddly, that outside noise only served to heighten my awareness of the film's own silence. Never before has a less-than-perfect theater situation actually worked for the film, but lo, Martin Scorsese has accomplished the feat of making such a movie. It's quite an accomplishment. I'm still looking at the world a little differently days later, and that's the surest sign of a great film. It's a shame this looks to be going unnoticed. I understand why, I happen to have the weird confluence of factors which would lead somebody to go crazy for a movie like this one. I also think that this movie will be one of those that future Scorsese fans will discover after watching Goodfellas and Taxi Driver and The Departed 10 times each. Then they'll tell everybody that yeah, those movies are good and all, but to get the true Scorsese experience you have to see Silence, too.

A+
Check out my blog of many topics

“I’m not a quitter, Kimmy! I watched Interstellar all the way to the end!”

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #203 on: January 19, 2017, 04:26:22 PM »
Lion  (Garth Davis, 2016)

Watching Lion, I was excited to finally have a film to root for in the Surprise category of the Filmspots. Then the hour-mark came and the film made its inevitable jump ahead in time and became the very rote story I expected originally.

The first hour is basically just beautiful shots of a small, adorable boy set against the vastness of India — his wide, bright eyes lighting some very dark corners. Sunny Pawar is really wonderfully cast, and Davis and cinematographer Greig Fraser film both him and the landscape with expertise, perhaps giving the editor too many great shots to choose from, resulting in some restless cutting. The lovely score by Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O'Halloran completes the sensory immersion into the child's nightmare, and it's all rather effective.

After the time jump, the baton of adorableness passes to Rooney Mara, but it's not her story, so that's no good. Dev Patel's role is weirdly thankless. There's little doubt what his character will inevitably do, so all his hesitations in doing it are frustrating and boring. Nicole Kidman adds a bit of emotion, especially if you're a mom yourself, but the trappings are too familiar. The flashback moments in this section aren't very well handled and a couple of them were even a bit cringe-worthy.

The ending does what's it's supposed to, and does it well even, but I wish the film could have found a different way to build to it.

Grade: B-



Hi, saltine! Here's a review by Corndog, too.

pixote
« Last Edit: January 19, 2017, 04:29:27 PM by pixote »
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

saltine

  • Administrator
  • Godfather
  • ******
  • Posts: 9800
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #204 on: January 19, 2017, 04:34:48 PM »
Thank you, I read both!  It opened here today and we'll see it this weekend.
Texan Down Under

StarCarly

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4193
  • Something about a pillow.
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #205 on: January 19, 2017, 05:00:52 PM »
I know Under the Shadow gets compared to The Babadook, but is it unpopular to say that Under the Shadow is the better movie?

Just accurate.

Netflix automatically started Under the Shadow with English dubbed audio. Did you guys switch to Persian with English subtitles?
"I've been very lonely in my isolated tower of indecipherable speech."

Films Watched in 2017

Letterboxd

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36128
  • Marathon Man
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #206 on: January 19, 2017, 05:12:24 PM »
Mine started in Persian with English subtitles. That's how I watched it.

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #207 on: January 19, 2017, 05:28:10 PM »
Jackie  (Pablo Larraín, 2016)
I would have been more enthusiastic to see Jackie had I known it was specifically about the week after JFK's assassination. I had instead been dreading two hours of "the lives of styles of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis", but this movie isn't that at all. This is a film about grief; about grieving in public; about history and spectacle and myth-making; about, yes, about Jackie. There's thus no shortage of interesting elements, but I found the film as a whole a bit distancing. Natalie Portman gives a very mannered performance of a very mannered person, shell-shocked by loss, and moment-to-moment she's quite good, but I couldn't reconcile those moments into a complete character. That fact that I was almost always conscious that I was watching a performance seems thematically apt, given Jackie's position in the public eye, but that kind of meta appreciation detracted from my experience more than added to it. The Chilean-born Larraín approaches this very American subject with a vaguely European style that's at times clinical and at times elliptical, and it too is more appealing from moment-to-moment than taken as a whole. Mica Levi's very pronounced score also kept me at a distance from the film, despite being a wonderful piece of music on it own.
Grade: B-

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #208 on: January 19, 2017, 05:47:31 PM »
Moonlight  (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
I hate that I have so little to say about what, to this point, is my favorite fiction film of the year (a title I hope it loses shortly). Moonlight is just one of those extra nice little character dramas that seem so effortlessly engaging that you wonder why every film can't be at least this good — the Marty of 2016. Mahershala Ali carries the film early on — in what I can only hope is an Oscar-winning performance. The rest of the strong ensemble cast takes the baton from him and runs well with it, through three eras of a man's life. The protagonist's search for identity drives the film... actually, it's really the other way around. He's a passive protagonist (which the script handles enviably) and the arc of the film is watching his identity find him. There's one big narrative stumble halfway through, where you can hear the gears of the script grinding through some forced moments, but otherwise Moonlight is a very nicely observed character piece. The color palette of James Laxton's photography is marvelous, making all skin tones equally luminous in a way that too many cinematographers seem at a loss to do.
Grade: B+

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

Terrazine

  • Member
  • **
  • Posts: 81
Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #209 on: January 19, 2017, 06:03:13 PM »
Black Hawk Down (2001)

What a disaster.

Ridley Scott called this an anti-war film, and you could really feel it through its two hour runtime of exhaustion. The relentless violence of massacre shows just how screwed up the whole situation at Mogadishu was, and how unnecessary. Being a Scott production, the technical aspect of it is naturally top-notch. The film features an all-star cast at the top of their game, ranging from Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, William Fichtner, Sam Shepard, and of course, Josh Hartnett. The visual storytelling here is impressive and appropriately gritty, giving the film that atmosphere of death and despair. It's a very pretty film to look at that's for sure. But of course, there were controversies regarding its historical accuracies.

Personally, I could see the dehumanization of the Somalis denizens and why people were upset. It's easy to call it a self-congratulatory movie, especially when it's released shortly after the 9/11 attack and might even have been influenced by it. But I'm willing to see it as more than that, especially with the amount of bloodshed in this film. There are no American flags waving proudly in this one. There's no "Hoo-ah, we're heroes" speeches at the end. It's a very bleak perspective of war, so to call it America's pat on the back for the Mogadishu incident is insulting. I feel like it's more didactic than people give it credit for, almost a cautionary tale in regards to sending young Americans to their death. Thank god for Clinton pulling the troops out.

Unfortunately, a second generation of Bush didn't learn anything during the Iraq raid.

4/5