Author Topic: 1990s US Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 712506 times)

Sonse

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #460 on: May 16, 2008, 10:29:05 AM »
Night on Earth vs. Dark City
aka Darkness + Clocks vs. Darkness plus Clocks

I had not seen both so far... It ended up being a tough fight.

Night on Earth

It is a sweet film by Jarmusch. I like its slice of life nature. Ultimately you end up judging it by its parts and not so much as a whole. My favorite episode by far is New York. The performances were great. Müller-Stahl gives a good turn as the "Ossi"-New-New Yorker, although I don't get why he speaks so much German (if nobody understands it why bother?) and Esposito is fun to watch as well (Why did that guy not get more work? I just remember him from The Usual Suspects). I enjoyed it the most. Second is Helsinki. Probably because I like listening to Finnish (I'm grateful that not everybody speaks English here) and recalled my trip there last year. Then Paris, Los Angeles and Rome was my least favorite. I had trouble with Ryder convincing me of her character and Benigni just annoyed me and I hoped for the episode to be over soon.
Thus, overall I liked Night on Earth - it's kinda nice, but didn't do much for me.

Dark City

Loss of identity, detective story, serial killer theme, time, aliens meddling with humans, memories, city vs nature, psychokinesis in stunning visuals with an abundance of film references. Its gloomy, gothic looks are its major attribute: the Metropolis cityscape, the Strangers, which reminded me a lot of the Grey Men in Momo (1986), except that those are heavy smokers and time-stealers... By the way, Müller-Stahl played the head of these bad guys in that movie... Except for Sutherland all performances are solid, given the material. Unfortunately, the film is so over the top and incoherent that I had trouble being sucked into this world right from the beginning. The voice-over narration in the first few minutes is unnecessary as it gives away stuff the film later on tells more or less anyway. As I usually love sci-fi-dystopias and noir I expected enjoying it more than I actually did, but there is still a lot of potential here.

Verdict: Tough decision.. I loved neither and I disliked neither. I think Night on Earth is the less flawed film, but I am willing to award ambition here. So I choose space over Earth by a small margin: Dark City moves on.

Sonse

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #461 on: May 16, 2008, 10:31:07 AM »
@pixote: I don't have much time at the moment. I will let you know as soon as I am able to watch a new match-up.  ;)

sdedalus

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #462 on: May 16, 2008, 11:15:15 AM »
 :'(
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pixote

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #463 on: May 16, 2008, 12:36:08 PM »
Our 60th matchup is in the books!  This is really awesome.

Dark City was a huge favorite over Night on Earth, by the way — with the 33rd seed triumphing over the 111th seed.

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facedad

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #464 on: May 16, 2008, 02:35:34 PM »
:'(
Wow, you've got some tough decisions ahead of you. Maybe I'll kill The English Patient just to watch you squirm.
You're just jealous! Nobody loves you because you're tiny and made of meat!

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edgar00

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #465 on: May 16, 2008, 08:09:03 PM »
Dark City deserves to to move on. Totally underrated.
-Le Chiffre: You changed your shirt, Mr Bond. I hope our little game isn't causing you to perspire.

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sdedalus

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #466 on: May 17, 2008, 01:11:24 AM »
:'(
Wow, you've got some tough decisions ahead of you. Maybe I'll kill The English Patient just to watch you squirm.

I like Night On Earth a lot, but I don't suspect it'll return.
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duder

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #467 on: May 17, 2008, 08:06:13 AM »

Check it out:













During the first third of Baraka, that's what you get, a random assortment of images from all over the world, each one more beautiful than the one before. It's hyptnotic, I was loving it and thinking to myself "another hour of this? Bliss." (also: "I hope they drop the music soon").

At the 30-minute mark however, out of nowhere, we see a tree getting cut down.





Uh oh. The tree falls down.





A local looks in disbelief.





Oh shit, it's a dumb, heavy-handed message movie.

Time to blow up a bunch of rocks.





And why should we not cut down trees and blow up rocks? Next shot:





Ah yes, children. They're the future, apparently. This is all very profound.





Dehumanizing working conditions, yes.







The monotomy of urban life, of course.





Dehuma... we already did that one.





Animals being processed for food. Awful.





Again, we already did that one. Or are you drawing comparisons between the animals in the factory and the people people in the subway?







You are. That's deep. Urban settings, modernity, technology, this is unbearable; cue mystical man in extreme agony:





That'll get the message across in case someone missed it. So is this the part where you go about showing us all the things that are wrong in this otherwise beautiful planet of ours? I bet it plays like a checklist of generic clichés. Let's see, famine?





Check. Poverty?





Check. Prostitution?





Check. War?







Check. Hum... oil fires?!





Check. Overall desolation?





Check. You're not doing the Holocaust, are you?









Look, it's a mini-Night and Fog! How cute. Seriously though, this is terrible, can we get back to the seemingly random though not necessarily meaningless collection of pretty shots? You're so good at that.

















Actually, nevermind, I stopped caring an hour ago. Please go away now.



On to The Addiction then, a pretty straight forward vampire movie disguised as a weighty art film. The narrative arc is what you'd expect, but Ferrara still manages to put a fresh spin on the genre (is it a genre?). For one, he grounds the movie in reality (as much as possible) from very early on, by establishing visual analogies between vampiric blood lust and heroine addiction.









It's immediately much creepier. The main departure from your typical vampire movie, though, is that the vampire here also happens to be a philosophy grad student, so besides biting and sucking on other people's necks, she's constantly trying to justify her actions by invoking Heidegger and Nietzsche (amongst others) and making broad statements about humankind, particularly in regard to a supposed propensity for evil.



There is a difference between jumping and being pushed.


These are all obvious, simplistic, mostly inconsequent, but that's ok because it's part of the character rather than an attempt on Ferrara's or screenwriter Nicholas St. John's part to say something oh so incredibly profound (I'm looking at you, Baraka guy). In the last few minutes of the film, it becomes obvious what it is they're going for, and how much of a red herring the philosophical mumbo jumbo really is.





Also noteworthy are the gorgeous cinematography and Lily Taylor's performance. And Christopher Walken has a few minutes in there somewhere. So yeah, it's fun.


Needless to say, The Addiction moves on.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2008, 10:00:05 AM by El Duderino »
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edgar00

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #468 on: May 17, 2008, 08:37:18 AM »
Well, I'm convinced.
-Le Chiffre: You changed your shirt, Mr Bond. I hope our little game isn't causing you to perspire.

-James Bond: A little. But I won't consider myself to be in trouble until I start weeping blood.

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St. Martin the Bald

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #469 on: May 17, 2008, 10:50:25 AM »
I'm not.
Hey, nice marmot!