Author Topic: Respond to the last movie you watched  (Read 684642 times)

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6510 on: March 07, 2022, 11:34:21 PM »
You are the first person I know who didn’t watch Kill List first. Now, I wonder what your expectations might be going forward? A Field is closer to his usual experimentation, and In the Earth works as a folk horror companion.

I have no plans to see any others. Should I see Kill List? The plot summary didn't grab me.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6511 on: March 08, 2022, 01:25:38 AM »
Rankings, for fun. Also want to say, this year's crop of animated shorts and doc short subjects were a thousand times better than last year's, especially the docs, which were super disappointing last year.

The animated program actually had a warning after the first two that the others would contain sexual content, were not appropriate for children, and that there would be a pause in action to allow families with children to leave the theater.

Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
1. The Windshield Wiper
2. Beast
3. Boxballet
4. Affairs of the Art
5. Robin Robin

The Windshield Wiper is probably the most ambitious of the three with its vignettes that attempt to answer "What is love?" It was certainly the most dazzling of the five, and also took the biggest swing. To absorb Beast, a tale about a broken woman with a streak of madness, I probably need to see it at least one more time. I do wonder if people read more into it than necessary because it's from Chile, a country with which the U.S. has a strange and messed up history. Robin Robin is the only one I didn't care for; cute animation, but the story is stale and the songs stink.

Oscar-Nominated Documentaries - Short Subject
1. Lead Me Home
2. Audible
3. The Queen of Basketball
4. Three Songs for Benazir
5. When We Were Bullies

I think all of these are good, but the top three by far the best. The Queen of Basketball is the crowd-pleaser of the bunch, and favorite to win the award. I love a good sports story, and we get two here, one of one of the great women's basketball players most of us would never get to know because of the absence of a professional league at her time, and the other of a great football team from a school for the deaf in Maryland. It's pretty awesome that the deaf are getting their moment, between Sound of Metal, CODA, and now this. However, Lead Me Home is both the best and most important, a doc about people without housing in L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle, their hopes and dreams, their life stories, and their daily realities. This is the one everyone in the U.S. needs to see, right now.

Benazir tells a decent story, but is underdeveloped. When We Were Bullies struggles to find its thesis, though I'll grant that it attempts to parse feelings of guilt and remorse over the past, which is destined to fail, at least in part, though I really like the editing and the use of the yearbook pictures as virtual clippings.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2022, 01:28:10 AM by Eric/E.T. »
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jdc

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6512 on: March 08, 2022, 02:12:48 AM »
You are the first person I know who didn’t watch Kill List first. Now, I wonder what your expectations might be going forward? A Field is closer to his usual experimentation, and In the Earth works as a folk horror companion.

I have no plans to see any others. Should I see Kill List? The plot summary didn't grab me.

Not that my tastes may have any influence, but Kill List is a top 100.  I should check out his other films
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1SO

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6513 on: March 08, 2022, 07:58:47 AM »
You are the first person I know who didn’t watch Kill List first. Now, I wonder what your expectations might be going forward? A Field is closer to his usual experimentation, and In the Earth works as a folk horror companion.

I have no plans to see any others. Should I see Kill List? The plot summary didn't grab me.
Kill List is generally regarded as Wheatley's peak, but it was his 2nd feature, before people learned how weird he likes to get. The plot summary has to dance around a central mystery about why this person is hired and why these people have to be killed. It's not a long build-up to a Shyamalan twist, but an engaging mystery with more questions than answers.
It's also #313 on the Horror/Thriller 1000.

But you've already seen A Field in England, and if you're looking for another experience like that, the logical choice is In the Earth, which I describe as "A metaphysical, folk horror, psychedelia with an elusive, ever-changing plot involving a small group of people engaged in an escalating struggle over the very idea of man's relationship with nature. Characters who both care for and graphically harm each other while the soundtrack throbs along, the lights strobe and the edits chop like a blender."

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6514 on: March 08, 2022, 11:07:02 AM »
Well, perhaps I'll give those a go.

ATHBO disc 11:

Anchoress - Based (somewhat loosely) on the story of Christine Carpenter, who had herself put in a cell next to the church so that she could be closer to Mary. This is another more recent British film with beautiful b&w photography. I believe this is the first film in the set with "name" actors (Pete Postlethwaite, Christopher Eccleson, Toyah Wilcox) and they are all quite good, and Natalie Morse shines in the lead. It's a film I found to be remarkably well done, with obvious Bergman and Dreyer comparisons but also a touch Buñuellian sacrilegious satire. One of the few in the box that I could see myself revisiting. Rating: Very Good (88)

Only two films, two shorts, and the documentary left to go. At this point I consider "folk horror" to be a rather useless genre tag. These movies are far more disparate than they are similar. Many of them are not horror at all, or only in the vaguest sense.

smirnoff

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6515 on: March 08, 2022, 11:26:26 AM »
Against the Ice (2022, Peter Flinth)

This would almost certainly make a better book. The story of how Danish explorers did some important cartography on Greenland... that's a potentially neat bit of history. Unfortunately the story told here is really not much different than a plane crash in the Himalayas or the Shackleton story, or any other survival story that takes place in a very cold place. It's cold, you have to eat things you'd rather not eat, you get skinny, you get attacked by animals, and you eventually find your way out after growing a very scruffy beard.

I respect it because it's a true story, but I didn't really find anything about it enjoyable. It doesn't make a good movie.

3/10


oldkid

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6516 on: March 08, 2022, 02:55:23 PM »
Drive My Car

Yep, it's as good as the hype.  Quiet, sometimes slow, but emotionally resonant and powerful.  The emotions slowly build and build as we find more information about our characters, until the resolve, which is completely satisfying to me.  Sure, it's three hours, but it is a completely worthy three hours.  Spending time with people who deserve the time and the energy.

4.5/5

Now I have to decide if I prefer this one or Power of the Dog for 2021.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6517 on: March 08, 2022, 03:24:22 PM »
It was already on my shortlist but you put it up a few notches.

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6518 on: March 08, 2022, 04:54:33 PM »
At this point I consider "folk horror" to be a rather useless genre tag. These movies are far more disparate than they are similar. Many of them are not horror at all, or only in the vaguest sense.
I'll see how you feel after watching the documentary, but I think this collection is as useful to defining Folk Horror as any DVD collection of an actor's "Classics" that's mostly comprised of obscure titles they could get the rights to.

MartinTeller

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Re: Respond to the last movie you watched
« Reply #6519 on: March 08, 2022, 11:27:24 PM »
ATHBO disc 12:

Penda's Fen - The set ends with two productions from BBC's "Play for Today" series. This one is the more "cinematic" of the two and you wouldn't necessarily guess it was made for TV. Very very interesting and unusual film... at heart a coming-of-age film, but densely packed with themes and symbolism and wisdom. Commentary on sociopolitical issues, homosexuality, religion, family, identity, the school system. And with surreal flourishes that make it probably one of the strangest things to ever air on a major network. I might be underrating this one, it certainly seems to be one that would reward repeat viewings. Rating: Very Good (85)

The Pledge (short) - Dumb. It didn't help that it was the worst transfer in the set, but even so I could tell it was dumb and pointless. Not even the Michael Nyman score was that great. Rating: Crap (25)

The Sermon (short) - The newest thing in the box, from 2018. Nicely executed but a little blunt and obvious. Rating: Good (73)

Robin Redbreast - Severin saves the best for last. This, this, THIS is what I wanted from this box set. That is to say, I wanted more stuff like The Wicker Man. It's very much cut from the same cloth (I have tried to find out if it was an influence on Wicker Man, they might talk about it on the commentary track) but with plenty of differences and twists as well. Unlike Penda's Fen, you can very much tell this was shot for TV, it's much more of a "teleplay", but there are a few cinematic touches. Despite the low production value, it's a really gripping story with great performances and all those hints of paganism lurking around. I saw something on the internet that put this film, Wicker Man, and Kill List in the same bucket so the Wheatley film (and Into the Earth) is going on my watchlist. In this case I might be overrating, but I was just so pleased to get something like what I expected from this collection. Great (90)


And so here are my rankings for all the features:

Robin Redbreast
Il Demonio
Anchoress
Tilbury
Penda's Fen
Witchhammer
Celia
Viy
Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach

Lake of the Dead
A Field in England
Eyes of Fire
Dark Waters
Clearcut

The Dreaming
Alison's Birthday
Leptirica
Kadaicha

Wilczyca


Overall it's better than I expected, but only the top 5 are ones I would possibly care to see again. I'm grateful to have seen them, but I don't need to keep this. After I listen to the Robin commentary and watch the documentary, it's going in the sell pile.

 

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