Author Topic: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things  (Read 14326 times)

smirnoff

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2017, 01:46:21 AM »
Chariots of Fire is such a good example of "cinematic" they've made parodies of it. Rare bragging rights for a film.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2017, 02:00:27 AM »
Lone Wolf and Cub (6) - the first 3 films and the last one
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

They are my recommends. TGTBTU because it is great. Lone Wolf and Cub films, because they should be watched (although 4 and 5 are fairly ordinary).

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #12 on: July 29, 2017, 05:15:58 AM »
I've never heard anyone say much good about Ben-Hur but I have this notion that it is a very well reputed movie. How come?
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PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #13 on: July 29, 2017, 06:17:03 AM »
I've never heard anyone say much good about Ben-Hur but I have this notion that it is a very well reputed movie. How come?
It was a big giant blockbuster in its day, got many awards and the chariot scene is impressive and memorable. Because of these things it became a cultural icon, so even though it has not aged well it's still good enough that its past reputation lingers in the present.

Teproc

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #14 on: July 29, 2017, 06:21:28 AM »
Among those I've seen, my priority order would be, vaguely accounting for stuff like Junior's taste (as I understand it) and historical importance and whatnot:

8 1/2
Stalker
Fitzcarraldo
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Lawrence of Arabia
The Last Temptation of Christ

then

Hiroshima Mon Amour
The Wages of Fear
Cool Hand Luke
Une chambre en ville
Breathless

The Lives of Others
Cobra Verde
Frankenstein
A Brighter Summer Day
My Best Fiend
Gates of Heaven
Vernon, Florida
Woyzeck


« Last Edit: June 03, 2018, 02:25:26 PM by Teproc »
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Junior

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #15 on: July 29, 2017, 09:35:50 AM »
Favorites:

Lone Wolf and Cub (6) - the first 3 films
A Star Is Born - which version?

Universal Monsters Box Set - If this is a Shocktober project, I may join you.

I'm really interested in this Lone Wolf series. I just bought it with graduation funds and it seems kinda crazy in a fun way.

It's the 50s version of A Star Is Born.

And yeah, I'll save the monsters for Shocktober.

I like that listing, Teproc. Looks about right based on reputation.
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Junior

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #16 on: August 01, 2017, 12:44:07 AM »
Many, though certainly not all of these will be watched as part of the Top 100 Club. Like my first entry, for example. I'll quote them here for posterity and linkage, but discussion should probably go to the Club thread, since that takes precedence over this little project. Unless you're coming to this later, maybe?

I'm back.

Stalker

How come nobody told me this was a horror film? Well, maybe it's my fault, since I tried to avoid spoilers for a movie I suspected would be a unique experience. I wasn't wrong. The movie is poetic in the way that people get upset at, slow and full of impenetrable visuals married with philosophical ramblings. But it's also poetic in the sense that it is like poetry, built on images and details and not really a story as much as a flow of feelings and a sense of place. This is the stuff that makes it a horror film, the way that the Zone (which mysteriously appeared one day and caused its inhabitants to disappear and is now a trap-filled ruin that has nature mostly taking over human constructions) feels like the fourth character, and it's not a benign one. Though nothing really happens, it feels like something might at any moment. The characters walk in straight lines, wary that their footsteps might doom them to an incomprehensible death. The camera follows behind, one of my favorite kinds of shots, and the characters often turn to look back at the camera/the others. It's paranoia 101, and it's so interesting here juxtaposed against the sheer beauty and ruin that the Zone represents.

The three characters are a Writer looking for inspiration, a Scientist looking for truth, and a Stalker, looking to get them where they're going. Tarkovsky, of course, doesn't let it lie at that, and the paranoia builds as they start to reveal their deeper selves. This is all fine and dandy, story-wise, but it isn't really a story movie. It's a Zone movie. The camera seems to take up the point of view of the Zone. It's a point of view that rarely blinks as many of the shots are long and often contain several recompositions (a wide shot turns into a close up as a character enters the frame from below, for example). So you get absorbed into the world of the film, you succumb to its slow flow of time and space. You see the way the world works and recognize that it isn't at all like our world. And it's a little terrifying and a little exciting but mostly you're just waiting to see if you can get out of this camera setup all the while knowing that the next one will be just a little bit more twisted as the characters and you delve deeper and deeper into the Zone. Once Stalker has its grip on you (and for me that happened with the shot of the family at the beginning in the bed), it doesn't let you get away easily.

I've said several times that this isn't a story movie, but there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. Somewhere in the Zone is a room that will give you your deepest desire once you enter it. Seems like a good deal, except maybe it isn't. The final half an hour or so becomes less about the Zone and more about the nature of humanity, desire, happiness, faith, and, most interestingly for me, cynicism. That this movie which spends so much time on what seems like an absurd quest to an impossible destination ends up as (so far as I can tell) an argument for the power of belief (and cinema to create that belief, because what have I been talking about except the very pinnacle of believing in an unprovable thing) is what moves this from a high spot on my next top 100 to a likely top 10 spot. It is like that other movie you're probably all tired of hearing me talk about, Fanny and Alexander, in that its own technical prowess is not only a tool for the story being told but also the essence of the story itself. Stalker is a truly amazing film experience that demonstrates exactly why movies are magic.

Asuperplus, as if it could have been anything else.
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Junior

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2017, 07:54:03 PM »
I think I gotta go a little faster than this if I want to finish in a year. Especially if I keep adding to the list (picked up It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and the Yojimbo/Sanjuro box set at the end of the Criterion sale).

Forbidden Planet

I very much underestimated this movie watching it on video. Turns out, it's not just good, but very nearly great. The visuals are tremendous, the story and ideas are really engaging, and it's even got its share of good laughs. Excellent big screen entertainment.

I'm not sure I would go quite as far as our host for the month does here, but I've got nothing to argue on a point-by-point basis. Forbidden Planet sets the stage for pretty much every sci-fi movie that followed it and manages to be its own thing in the process. It's a heck of a historical document, matched by sci-fi greats like 2001 and Planet of the Apes which say as much about their own times as they do about the futuristic story they're telling. This time its an invisible threat that originates from the depths of humanity with a heavy dose of psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo to season the broth. This is a fun, pretty, smart-enough, and pretty well-paced movie, and I'm glad I watched it on a big tv so that I could admire the sets and painted elements in all their glory.

I want to wrap up by comparing this a little to Stalker, the last movie I watched for this club. They're surprisingly similar for being almost nothing alike. Where Stalker hides its sci-fi musings in some horror trappings, Forbidden Planet takes the opposite path and hides some horror elements inside a sci-fi story. You can see this happening most clearly in the scenes with the invisible monster, but it's also evident in the "electronic tones" that comprise the score and the shifting disposition of the mad scientist-esque character played by Walter Pidgeon. Although it's never particularly scary, it is fun to see the seeds of movies like Prometheus and Sphere planted in such colorful soil.

B+
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smirnoff

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #18 on: August 15, 2017, 10:26:09 PM »
Stalker

The movie is poetic in the way that people get upset at, slow and full of impenetrable visuals married with philosophical ramblings. But it's also poetic in the sense that it is like poetry, built on images and details and not really a story as much as a flow of feelings and a sense of place.

That would be me. :)) I really appreciate you including this description of the film in your review. I've never investigated the film for myself but I've always steered clear of it because... it just looked like one of those kinds of movies.  Other examples would include El Topo or 8 1/2 or Persona, none of which I've seen but which I imagine are the same way. However there always remains a very small part of me that is curious about films like this... I can't ever say for sure that I wouldn't like them, but I also can't bring myself to watch any more of them. Watching a film you thought you'd like turn out to be garbage is bad enough, but watching a film you thought you'd hate live up to your expectations makes you question what the hell you're doing with your life. :))

Quote
It is like that other movie you're probably all tired of hearing me talk about

Nah, you're good. It probably only seems that way to you. I say if you're enthusiastic about a film go ahead and blab about it until you can't blab anymore. :)

Junior

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Re: Hold On To Your Butts: Junior Watches All the Things
« Reply #19 on: August 15, 2017, 11:22:59 PM »
Heh, thanks for the go ahead on the blabbing front.

I'm glad you included that list of movies you're avoiding. It's an interesting one. The only example you list that I've seen is Persona and I didn't like it very much, in large part because it is super slow. Stalker, as I said, is slow but entirely engrossing where Persona wasn't. I wish I could figure out why I had these divergent reactions. Part of it might just be that Stalker is easier to look at. I think the way the movie is constructed has more to bear on things, but prettiness never hurts.
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