Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684142 times)

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1580 on: November 21, 2017, 02:57:51 PM »
However, I still struggle to overcome the vapid nature of the film's intent. What is the arc of these characters? Where does the story go after the film's conclusion? What do the characters learn? What do we learn?

Answered in the Spoiler Section.

Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1581 on: November 23, 2017, 07:18:46 PM »
Nocturama (2016)

This film that had enough buzz to get on my watchlist became more of a priority when I realized it was from the director of House of Tolerance. Unfortunately, that proved a poor heuristic. Picture a group of 20-somethings who are somehow savvy enough to organized a coordinated terrorist campaign but in every other respect (including political motive) the biggest idiots you can imagine. Now picture how spending over two hours with them feels. It does however get me to my goal of 52 foreign language films on the year (I also reached the same goal vis a vis female directed films). Still a month to go to run up the score.

Teproc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1582 on: November 23, 2017, 07:36:34 PM »
Nocturama (2016)

This film that had enough buzz to get on my watchlist became more of a priority when I realized it was from the director of House of Tolerance. Unfortunately, that proved a poor heuristic. Picture a group of 20-somethings who are somehow savvy enough to organized a coordinated terrorist campaign but in every other respect (including political motive) the biggest idiots you can imagine. Now picture how spending over two hours with them feels. It does however get me to my goal of 52 foreign language films on the year (I also reached the same goal vis a vis female directed films). Still a month to go to run up the score.

Well, they're not idiots so much as vacuous people. I'd argue it's the whole point of the film ! But I understand finding it unpleasant for that reason, certainly. No love for the great use of The Pretenders theme and that My Way scene ?
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Bondo

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1583 on: November 23, 2017, 08:52:55 PM »
The My Way scene was legit, though I have no association with The Pretender as a TV show (I had to google to figure out what you were talking about). Mostly the film was way too long for what it was doing.

aewade90

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1584 on: November 23, 2017, 10:57:14 PM »
For some godforsaken reason, I decided to delve into the Human Centipede trilogy. Having seen the first one on release with the wave of criticism/hype that surrounded it, I thought it was pretty standard gross-out torture porn; not much has changed there. Human Centipede 2 is just spasmed forth from a miserably bleak black hole, and is one of the few films that I truly regret dedicating time to - even as someone who doesn't mind splatter genre fare, it didn't offer anything new or fascinating, but was simply explicitly meaningless.

Human Centipede 3, however, has something that I can begrudgingly admire it for. While it's undoubtedly more hateful and despicable than the previous entries (bringing healthy doses of disgusting misogyny, sexual abuse, and racism to name but a few things it brings to the table), it does a similar thing as 2 does where it acknowledges the films as films. However, this metatextual relationship is exploited to one of criticism, both internal and external - real-life critics' words are put into characters mouths, while director/writer/producer Tom Six is self-inserted (in a way that would make Tarantino or Hitchcock believe their own inserts are too subtle) and voices some of his own criticisms. By doing this, it removes paratextual comparisons to others within the genre (either wider horror, or torture porn) and creates this closed feedback loop where it's really, really hard to compare it to anything but itself.

Now, it doesn't do this with any degree of subtlety or finesse. I don't even believe that it's a good thing, because it just speaks to the ego of Six and how he considers his work. But through this, it creates this text that is so inoculated from comparison, and for the life of me I can't think of any other film that has done so. Outside of the expected viscera and epithets, it carves a unique, singular space and it absolutely does my head in that a goddamn Human Centipede film has done it.

oldkid

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1585 on: November 23, 2017, 11:46:44 PM »
Although 3 sounds interesting, I couldn't even finish the first one.  I'm good.
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aewade90

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1586 on: November 24, 2017, 12:00:20 AM »
Please, no one take it as endorsement of the third movie being worth anyone's time. It's truly trash, and not in a good or even good-bad way. It's just a semi-interesting rose petal on top of a gigantic turd.

1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1587 on: November 24, 2017, 12:08:15 AM »
The Human Centipede 3: Final Sequence (2015)
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The first film was surprisingly mild and the sequel’s stripped down, minimalist approach was the dark sewer of the trilogy. This is the one that nails the tone, a carnival freakshow with garish colors, exaggerated sounds, unapologetic obsession with gross details and performances that ruin the curve of “over the top” for every other film. Lead Dieter Laser (who played the mad scientist in the first film) is in “Garbage Day” mode all the time, while his assistant Laurence Harvey (the lead of HC2) gives a surprisingly good performance. An excellent meta-decision to have director Tom Six play himself, the front of this centipede is Tiny Lister and Eric Roberts also shows up. For all its weaknesses, this one is the purest in vision in what you would expect from a film centered around a human centipede.

Holy Cow! When I finished HC3 - and the image of Laser shouting to the heavens with a bullhorn is the perfect note for this largely imperfect trilogy to go out on - I thought there was actually something at the end that made it worth my time. Too bad nobody else would run this gauntlet, nor would I recommend they try. Now, aewade90, I feel like we just shared a cinematic beer when I thought I would be drinking alone, and we agree on the aftertaste.

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1588 on: November 24, 2017, 03:33:24 AM »
Why do you people do this to yourselves?
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aewade90

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #1589 on: November 24, 2017, 04:02:41 AM »
I've tried to justify it to myself before, too - I went down a similar horror rabbit hole a while ago that ended with me watching some of the Guinea Pig films and The Men Behind the Sun. I don't doubt there's some element of voyeurism that's pretty present in any horror, but to me there's usually something to be gleaned from it in an academic sense - the establishment and refinement of surrealism that's present in giallo that's carried over to mainstream, non-horror films, for example - Edgar Wright's The World's End has a flash of giallo lighting at the revelation, or Winding Refn's Neon Demon which was basically a tribute - and the boundary pushing element that contributes to the artform as a whole (for example, any 80s slasher being rendered tame by the standards of a Sunday night episode of Game of Thrones).

Sometimes it's purely so...for example, the Guinea Pig series only came about because of a dire shortage of local work for the many talented special effects artists of Japan which resulted in them concocting a film as an excuse to flex their art, which they ended up doing so exceptionally well that Charlie Sheen saw it and called the FBI thinking he'd just watched a real snuff film. It ended up feeling like rewatching The Thing, where I'll inevitably end up thinking about how damn good the practical effects are. There's also an exclusive element of bad horror films punching above their weight, because bad horror movies are usually constructed around a single thing that someone did really, really well which inevitably holds my attention a lot longer than an average comedy or the like.

Most of the time, there's at least something to glean from them. I think I half went into the Human Centipede again thinking that maybe it wasn't as hopeless as I remembered. So I'm not entirely sure whether I'm just talking shit in an attempt to justify wasting the 4.5 hours that went into it! Then again, I wrote a paper on Pink Flamingos last semester, so I might just be more bias towards trash and outsider cinema.

 

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