Third Eye Film Society ~ View topic

Author

Message

< Third Eye Film Forums ~ Couch With A View

Befade

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 1:43 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ

Badlands..........I thought I had seen this before........but no, it must have been some tv miniseries about Charles Starkweather. Another sensual film by Terrence Malick. The scenes when Kit and Holly live in the tree house reminded me of The New World. I also was reminded of Gus Van Sant: Elephant, Gerry, and especially Last Days. Both films are visually beautiful, describing something terrible without threat or moralization, paced leisurely, with very down to earth characterizations.

Chumscrubber........I didn't take my eyes off this film from start to finish. It's an unusual combination of black comedy and drama. Good, interesting acting, and a story well told and satisfying. For real family dysfunction I so prefer this to Little Miss Sunshine. The idea is that suburbia looks perfect.......a place to find comfort, stability and happiness in family life. This suburb looks very southwest.........I don't know where it was filmed. Beneath the crazy disconnected adults is the layer of teenagers experiencing angst, despair, and violence along with their own form of disconnection. A chance to watch a daffy Ralph Fiennes (I enjoy him in any transformation) and wonder what on earth will save the confused teenager whose best friend killed himself (played by Billy Elliot's Jamie Bell).

chillywilly

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:16 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8251 Location: Salt Lake City

Moved from CURRENT FILM

Joe,

I really liked Cold Mountain. It was a movie that worked very well, with (as Lorne noted) the shocker of Renee Zellweger winning the Oscar.

Jude Law, Renee Z, Nicole Kidman (who I thought did so much better in the movie than Ms. Squinty Eyes did), Natalie Portman and Philip Seymour Hoffman (to name some of the big hitters) did well in this movie about a soldier during the American Civil war that returns home to his woman and the events that surround his journey.

Anthony Minghella (English Patient, Talented Mr Ripley) was the director, who I thought did a great job with this film (personally thinking he redeemed himself from TEP).

I suggest a viewing. It's worth it, IMO.

_________________
Chilly
"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend"

Joe Vitus

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:20 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

Will check it out.

_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

whiskeypriest

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 2:47 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Cold Mountain was a beautifully shot film, lovely to look at, with an interesting sound track, especially if you are fond of O Brother - T-Bone Burnett was involved with both. But it was slow in a bad way. And Little Miss Piggy Face... Ugh.

_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

gromit

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2006 3:04 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9015 Location: Shanghai

Yi Yi bored me. Far too long. And I grew increasingly tired of those long shots.

Watched Lonesome Jim (2005) the other night, directed by Steve Buscemi. Basically a dysfunctional family drama. Casey Affleck plays a chronically depressed young man who returns home broke, to live with his parents and older brother. There are some good scenes and odd, funny dialogue at times. Mary Kay Place is very good as the chirpy doting suburban mom. I also enjoyed when the younger brother takes over as the girls' basketball coach for his brother. It does strain credibility that this nearly catatonic loser is able to bed Liv Tyler, who looks fine and has a good job as a nurse. For some reason, this kind of wishful thinking is pretty common in movieland. It's a small movie that doesn't feel all that fresh or new, but does give its characters room to breathe and almost grow. Would be a good film to catch on cable soem rainy night. Reminded me somewhat of Garden State.

Lastly, did anyone see Don't Come Knocking, Wim Wenders-Sam Shepard collaboration from 2005. I'm not a Wenders fan, and don't remember hearing one word about this film. Any thoughts?

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

Syd

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:03 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12928 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

Kwaidan

This movie is actually four ghost separate stories told in succession, so it is more an anthology of short films than a single movie. The four stories are:

The Black Hair: a samurai who has fallen on hard times decides to divorce the wife who loves him to take a job in the west. (It doesn't seem to occur to him to take the wife with him.) There he marries the thoughtless daughter of the samurai and becomes rich, but the unhappy marriage makes him appreciate the wife he left behind and he returns to her to find...

The Woman of the Snow: Two woodcutters, one old and one young, are caught in a snowstorm and take refuge in a boatman's hut. During the night a pale woman enters the house. The young man wakes to see her leaning over the old man, breathing her icy breath over him and taking his life. She then comes to the young man, but touched by his youth, spares him under condition he never reveals what he's seen or she'll return to kill him. He goes home, meets a charming young woman, marries her and they have two children and are very happy, until one night he is reminded of the snow woman and starts to tell his tale...

Hoichi the Earless. Many centuries ago, there was a decisive battle at Danoura between the Genji and Heike clans. The Heike were defending the child emperor and his grandmother. In defeat she and the emperor and many of their followers committed suicide by jumping into the sea. Their souls were reincarnated as the Heike Crabs whose backs still bear a pattern resembling a human face.

Hoichi is a blind singer fond of singing songs about the war between the Genji and Heike and the great battle. One day a warrior comes and asks him to sing to the emperor's court. Being blind, Hoichi cannot tell that this warrior is a ghost and the court he's being taken to is the graveyard of the warriors (of both clans) killed in the great battle.

In a Cup of Tea, the briefest story, tells of uncompleted stories, in this case, one of a warror who is astounded to see a reflection in a cup of tea that is not his own face. He is haunted by the spirit whose face is in the cup of tea, and, when he fights the spirit, is visited by the spirits retainers.

These are not really intended to be O. Henry type stories; in fact the endings of the first three are telegraphed well in advance. The director is after mood and look, and achieves a genuine weirdness. Of the four, I thought The Black Hair was the most conventional and least effective. The other three are visually astounding and do transport you to alternate realities. The strange backgrounds in The Woman of the Snow (it looks like eyes are woven into the landscape), the sea battle in Hoichi the Earless (which looks as much like something from the stage as a real battle scene), the background and emperor's court from Hoichi and the daimyo's house in In a Cup of Tea, are amazingly effective. Some of the stories end oddly from a Western perspective.

_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter!

Syd

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:47 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12928 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

The Seventh Seal

This movie is best known for its chess match between the knight Antonius Block and Death, which was hilariously parodied in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, where they challenge Death to Battleship and Twister. The movie is also parodied in Woody Allen's Love and Death, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, and the short where everyone is speaking mock Swedish. Thus the famous chess match and the end of the movie are no longer as effective as they used to be. However, the movie is much more than that; it is filled with one brilliant scene after another.

The story is that Antonius Block and his squire Jöns have returned from ten years of fruitless crusading to a homeland ravaged by the Black Death. (The movie is usually said to take place in Sweden, but his destination, Elsinore, is in Denmark.) Antonius is met on the shore by Death, but to buy time, challenges Death to a chess game. Death cannot take Antonius while the game is in progress, and if Antonius wins, he gets to live. Antonius doesn't have much hope of winning, but if he can postpone Death long enough, he might be able to get home and see the wife he left behind shortly after they married. On the journey, Antonius and Jons face the physical and moral devastation caused by the Black Death, including a frightening encounter with a procession of flagellants. At one point Antonius goes to confession and doesn't realize that his confessor is Death. Antonius's faith has been shaken by his experiences in the Holy Land, his encounter with Death and the state of his homeland, and is looking for some sign of the God he fought for. In one scene he asks a condemned witch if she can introduce him to the Devil so he can ask Satan about God, since if anyone should know about God, it is Satan.

Although Max von Sydow's knight is the hero of the film, I think the most effective character is Gunnar Björnstrand as the squire Jöns. Unlike Antonius, who is still looking for a reason to believe in God so that this world might have some meaning, Jöns is firmly within this world, viewing it with cynical humor and integrity, engaging in conversation with an artist who is filling a church with a mural celebrating the Dance of Death, or rescuing a young artist who is being tormented by a crowd which is being egged on by the very mendicant who sent him and Antonius on their pointless crusade.

Although this is a very stark movie, I didn't find it depressing. Bergman does occasionally let in a ray of hope, most memorably when Antonius and Jöns visit a young actor and his wife and child and share a meal of wild strawberries and milk. (The young actor for some reason reminded me of the Fool in La Strada. So, oddly, did the villainous Monk.) Antonius's joy in this scene shows what he might have been like in less terrible times.

This was a film that I was expecting to like a lot less than I did. I taped Wild Strawberries on the same night, so I guess that will be my next Bergman film.

_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter!

Joe Vitus

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:29 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

Last night, about two in the morning, TCM ran The Red Shoes, which for some reason or other I'd never bothered to see. I can't remember the last time I have been so riveted by a movie. I was actually gasping, I was so overwhelmed (this is despite having read about it and already knowing the ending). And what good fortune that there is still a movie out there, a classic yet, that I haven't seen so many times its immediate visceral power has worn off, and that the landscape in my mind covering the great age of studio movies can still be revised. I could talk about what I think are shortcomings in the movie, but it would be a waste of time. Nothing compares to the beauty and intensity it provides.

_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

marantzo

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:26 pm

Guest

At one point The Red Shoes had the record for being held over the longest of any film in New York. It ran for a year I think.

I've never seen it, but my parents talked about it a lot.

Joe Vitus

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 3:37 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

I like the new avatar.

For years I think I avoided the movie because all I'd ever heard was that it made more little girls want to be ballerinas than any other. But it's a fascinating look at the split between an artist's need for both total commitment to art, and drive in everyone for love/companionship ( "You can't change human nature" "Better than that, you can ignore it"), and at a woman torn between the roles men want to assign her (it reminded me in a lot of ways of Kate Chopin's The Awakening). And it's great to see people working and living through their art. The emphasis on dedication and professionalism is appealing.

_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

Ghulam

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:45 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY

I was in high school in India when I saw The Red Soes. I was just enthralled. Have not had an opportunity to see it again, but would love to.

marantzo

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 6:00 pm

Guest

Quote:

I like the new avatar.

Thanks Joe. It's for sale.

Ghulam, if you get TCM, they show it now and then.

movielover14

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:02 pm

Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 160 Location: Salt Lake City,Utah

chillywilly wrote:

I'm going to watch Cold Mountain here soon. I will probably like it.

_________________
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!/The world forgetting,by the world forgot/Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!/Each pray'r accepted,and each wish resign'd-Alexander Pope

movielover14

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:05 pm

Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 160 Location: Salt Lake City,Utah

gromit wrote:

I love Garden State. Zach Braff does an excellent job directing, writing, and acting in it. Zach Braff is such a good actor. He can do comedy and drama. I really want to see his new film The Last Kiss. It's funny the name reminds me of that Pearl Jam song The Last Kiss.

_________________
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!/The world forgetting,by the world forgot/Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!/Each pray'r accepted,and each wish resign'd-Alexander Pope

gromit

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:00 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9015 Location: Shanghai

movielover14 wrote:

A synopsis of The Last Kiss from AMG:

Quote:

A successful 30-year-old (Zach Braff) with a the perfect girlfriend (Jacinda Barrett) and a lucrative outlook on life struggles with the increasing pressures of adulthood as he weighs the merits of settling down with the woman who loves him against risking it all to be with a comely co-ed (Rachel Bilson) in director Tony Goldwyn's remake of Gabriele Muccino's 2001 comedy drama. Crash and Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis adapts a script originally penned by Italian filmmaker Muccino, and Casey Affleck, Eric Christian Olsen, and Tom Wilkinson co-star.

I liked Garden State, but might steer clear of this since it was written by Haggis. Will have to wait til reviews come in. I thought Lonesome Jim, starring Caey Affleck, had some resemblance to Garden State, and I guess I was on to something, as The Last Kiss has Braff and Affleck paired together.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

All times are GMT - 5 Hours

View next topic View previous topic Page 996 of 2427 Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3 ... 995, 996, 997 ... 2425, 2426, 2427 Next Third Eye Film Society Forum Index ~ Third Eye Film Forums

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum