Author Topic: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 395868 times)

mañana

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #370 on: June 10, 2010, 01:50:39 PM »
Nice job, Bondo and mx. Of those four, The Thing is the only one I've seen, and I like it so I'm cool with it going on.
There's no deceit in the cauliflower.

tinyholidays

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #371 on: June 10, 2010, 08:38:29 PM »


VS


I like to do a lot of screencaps for reviews, but neither of these discs would load up on my VLC player, so, y'all are just gonna have to use your 'maginations. I'm pretty sure most of you would've seen Last Crusade already anyway.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

1989. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam. Story by George Lucas and Menno Meyjes.

There's no denying that Last Crusade is a fun movie. From beginning to end, it says to the audience, Hey. We're friends. All these people, we're all friends having a romp. You're going to have a good time here. There are a lot of self-references, encouraging the audience to delight in their relationship to the franchise.

When I think about Last Crusade, I think about the end sequence, and that remains the most interesting part of this movie. Somewhere in the middle, around a Nazi tank camel chase situation, I was, like, this whole movie is one long chase scene. It's like my dreams. (I have a lot of chase dreams.)

It felt familiar, but it was designed to feel familiar, you know?

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The Loveless

1982. Written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery.

What a strange little art film. The Loveless, set in 1959 south Georgia, focuses on Vance (Willem Dafoe) and his group of ex-con motorcyclists. They roll into town and spend time fixing a bike. 82 minutes, and it's a slow burn. You can feel the tension of the Georgia heat. Every character pauses an uncomfortable amount of time between words, every interaction is laden with sexual desire and violence. There's a lot of time where the camera just sits as people move about their small activities in the corner of the shot. At the same time, the film is dynamic, and it's going someplace.

When I finished watching this, I immediately started the audio commentary because I just wanted to understand why this thing existed. I was not surprised to discover that Monty Montgomery went on to work as a producer with David Lynch. There's a recognizable Lynch flavor here.

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Verdict:  While I am confident that 95% of the people who watch these two films would prefer to see Last Crusade again, I felt a lot more stimulated by The Loveless. It's a curious piece, and it's full of people trying things, as opposed to people trying to sell movie tickets. 

Bondo

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #372 on: June 10, 2010, 08:46:56 PM »
Let me be the first to say.

You choose...poorly.

How can you boot out the best Indiana Jones film in the first round  :'( Resurrection I say.

smirnoff

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #373 on: June 10, 2010, 09:04:28 PM »
Loveless sounds interesting, and it took down a titan :) Nice job TH.

pixote

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #374 on: June 10, 2010, 09:37:05 PM »
Between her Oscar and her bracket defeats of Ghostbusters and Last Crusade, Bigelow's gonna get a big head.

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michael x

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #375 on: June 10, 2010, 09:53:09 PM »
I <3 Last Crusade, but I don't really mind it losing since it's not serious bracket contender in my mind. And The Loveless certainly sounds interesting.

tinyholidays

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #376 on: June 11, 2010, 12:53:51 AM »
Let me be the first to say.

You choose...poorly.

How can you boot out the best Indiana Jones film in the first round  :'( Resurrection I say.

Since I am completely impoverished, I do everything poorly.

I would not hesitate to say that Raiders is the best Indiana Jones movie. The supporting characters work so much better there, and the film doesn't rely upon the audience's ready familiarity with its subject.

smirnoff

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #377 on: June 11, 2010, 06:14:19 AM »
Raiders doesn't need any more exposure anyways ;)

Bondo

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #378 on: June 14, 2010, 03:42:50 AM »
Vampire’s Kiss (Robert Bierman, 1988)

This is a very Nick Cage performance and I’m sure people who like big, silly Nick Cage performances in terrible films, like Bad Lieutenant, might like it. He is so over the top and seems to be speaking in a brand new accent. Worse yet the character is at no point likable, and if There Will Be Blood proves anything, it is that I can’t stand big, unlikable protagonists.

Another pet peeve of mine that this managed to violate was non-nudity nudity. This is to say, we get an early sex scene between Cage and Jennifer Beals, playing the vampire, where she is topless but we can see clearly that she is wearing pasties. It isn’t that her character is supposed to be wearing them. The character is supposed to be nude and we are supposed to just ignore that clearly she isn’t. This completely takes me out of the film. There are two solutions to this. Actually have the actress be naked (and cast an actress willing to do the scene or get a body double) or shoot the scene in such a way as to not see the pasties. Either one works, but what doesn’t work is to just film it as a nude scene without actually having the actress be naked. It is just sloppy. Oh, and they use the exact same clip at two different points in the film. I’m sure someone will say this is intentional but I’m not intentionally bad is still bad.

So the film starts two points down and unfortunately does little to climb out. There isn’t an interesting character progression. There is a descent into madness, and I suppose that could be interesting, but since you never care about the character to begin with, it isn’t affecting. If you are someone who likes very big, over-the-top performances, go ahead and try this. But otherwise you should probably go ahead and stay away.

IMDB link



IMDB link
Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)

Well, this was a bit of a relief after watching Vampire’s Kiss. It is a pretty restrained family drama. It starts with a mother dropping her two kids at their grandmother’s and then running off and driving her car into a lake. We then follow the girls as they grow up, first under the care of the grandmother, then great aunts and finally a rather strange aunt.

We see the effect that their mother’s abandoning/death has had on them and the effect that their grandfather’s death in a train accident, has had on their relatives. This all takes place set in a small town somewhere in the northern Rockies, perhaps Montana or Idaho, and has that kind of snow-bound, Lutheran demeanor you get there. That which stands out or operates at a higher emotional range is rather looked down upon.

Verdict: There is nothing particularly special about Housekeeping, but it is a passable little film; the kind of thing I might expect to play at Sundance these days. This makes it still far better than the excessive and frustrating Vampire’s Kiss.

pixote

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Re: 1980s US Bracket: Verdicts
« Reply #379 on: June 14, 2010, 03:57:06 AM »
The Jonathan Rosenbaum-approved Housekeeping will face Woody Allen's Another Woman in the next round, while the duder-approved Vampire's Kiss goes the way of the duder-approved The Addiction.  That boy sure loves his vampires.  I'm pretty sure the reason he's not posting more is that he's been camped out for Twilight: Eclipse since mid-April.

Nice verdict, by the way.

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