craner

Beast of Burden
That's They Call Her One Eye isn't it? Fucking filth.

Was it you who put that in the 'Films I Do Not Recommend' thread because it made you hurl?

If it wasn't, I apologise. I'm sure someone did, though. It was a great post, if I recall. Made me want to watch it, anyway.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Nah, not me, I loved it.
Best film I've seen for ages is another Fassbinder one - The American Soldier. Fantastic kind of pseudo-noir - I don't know why I say pseudo, maybe it's just because Fassbinder's films are always slightly skewed from the norm so none of his films are actual genre films, it's not a parody, it's just not quite a noir even though it has all the elements except for maybe a femme fatale. Another difference would be the way that most of the characters in your average pulp film are fast-talking wiseguys whereas in this almost everyone appears to be in a daze (or hypnotised). An obvious comparison would be Alphaville (Fassbinder used the actor who played Lemmy Caution in one of his other films playing himself) but I enjoyed this a lot more.
The film's plot such as it is follows a hitman who has returned to Germany from the US and who is working for some dodgy cops to kill witnesses who have outlived their usefulness - he stands out as cold and blank in a film full of cold and blank people. There is a brief and bizarre subplot in which a person who is seemingly his brother harbours an unrequited sexual love for him although goes unexplained and uninvestigated - as do the reasons for the victims' deaths and pretty much everything else. But that's not really the point of course.
There are many references to other films (a character called Murnau, a story that is told which apparently Fassbinder later made into Fear Eats The Soul) but these don't feel like flashy Tarantino-esque flourishes, they just seem to add some kind of extra dimension.
The strangely dissociated scene where the main character visits his family must have been an influence on David Lynch as must the singing scene in a bar and, especially, the amazing final scene, one of the most powerfully weird I've seen..... ever in fact.

SPOILER
This is the final scene so you may not want to watch it, however it doesn't give away any of the plot as such and I think it's worth seeing in its own right if you're not planning to watch the movie - plus it might make you change your mind.


I love that music, Fassbinder has a joint writing credit on that as well as directing the film and being the guy with the moustache that you see getting gunned down. Clever chap.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"it didnt really conclude everything like it should have done (i wasnt sure if he had stopped taking them at the end or what, and there was no explanation of what he would do if he ran out)"
Taking what?
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
The Hellstrom Chronicle - bonkers 70s eco-insect-world-domination-paranoia 'documentary' hosted by fictitious 'scientist' intoning about the awesome power of insects with much footage of termites, bees, ants at war with each other and organising their societies all in the name of proving that we are not necessarily as great as we think we are compared to them. Oh, and a great Schifrin soundtrack.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
sometimes you just need a mindless film, and I caught '21' the other night and really enjoyed it. helped by presence of uberfit girl from Rules of Attraction, and Kevin Spacey playing a total dick (the only role I find him believable in).
 

Gregor XIII

Well-known member
Aleksei Germans My Friend Ivan Lapshin. On Stalinist secret police right before the purges. I can't figure out what I think, so it might belong more in the 'films I would slightly reservedly recommend' thread. Check it out. And explain it to me. I don't really know.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've wanted to see that Hellstrom thing for a while. I'm sure there is another pseudo doc about insects taking over as well - or maybe I've just seen adverts for that film with a different picture to the one on IMDB.
 

sufi

lala
Herzog's early shit is unfuckwithable.
the scene with the new born babies in strzcek is amazing, as is the whole of land of darkness & silence, just amazing

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) in 3d :cool: i can highly recommend
it's very important that he says the word 'jungle' in all his films
 
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rivetrenuck

Well-known member
I have a string of films i watched recently and wouldn't hesitate even for a second to recommend to any passer by.

L'Eclisse
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056736/

Cache (dont read too much about it, it will ruin to movie)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/

True Grit
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403865/

The Game
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119174/

The secret is in their eyes
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1305806/

Monsieur Hire
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097904/

I Stand Alone
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157016/
 

Gregor XIII

Well-known member
I saw Bela Tarrs Werckmeister Harmonies this weekend, which is one of the best films I have ever seen. So yeah, highly recommended. I tried to write down something about it on my blog. Part one explains the title, that might be interesting? Part two is kinda confused. It is a weird film. But undoubtedly brilliant.

medium_werckmeister-harmonies_1.2-777715_0.jpg
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
I watched 'Susperia' a few months back to see what all the fuss was about...didn't think much of it. Good soundtrack though.

Watched 'Angel Face' last night - great RKO noir with Jean Simmons as the evil little femme fatale and Bob Mitchum as the sucker - great film.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I watched Ashes and Diamonds yesterday, a Polish film from 1958 by Wadja. I unreservedly recommend it, the only wrong note is the slightly hammy acting when the guys get killed at the start, after that it gets better and better. It's a simple tale but made much more complex by the moral ambiguity of the characters - it's pretty hard to say where the director's sympathies lie or which side he really considers the goodies. Neither I guess, they are both made up of people, some of whom are good and some of whom are not.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052080/usercomments

Some great visual scenes as well, love the bit where they enter the abandoned church and see this damaged statue of Christ hanging upside down from the ceiling.

"I saw Bela Tarrs Werckmeister Harmonies this weekend, which is one of the best films I have ever seen. So yeah, highly recommended. I tried to write down something about it on my blog. Part one explains the title, that might be interesting? Part two is kinda confused. It is a weird film. But undoubtedly brilliant."
OK, that goes on my list. I watched The Man From London the other day which I think was the first of his I've seen and I enjoyed that a lot.
 

Gregor XIII

Well-known member
The only other Tarr film I've seen is Damnation. It is good as well, but not quite so good as Werckmeister. His new one, The Turin Horse, sounds good as well. Nietzche reference in the title, that means that it is a deep film. The Man From London is on my list as well.

I saw Murnaus The Last Laugh (Der Letzte Mann). And it was brilliant. Perhaps the best silent film I've ever seen. Emil Jannings is just magnificent. It'll make you cry while you watch it, and leave you melancolic, thoughtful, but also with a slight feeling that you've been ripped off...

der-letzte-mann.jpg
 

nochexxx

harco pronting
i enjoyed Arribato, didn't particularly get it but loved the quirkiness of the characters and direction which worked wonderfully with the films zany soundtrack. Intrigued by the Pedro Almodovar connect.
 

tox

Factory Girl
Caught Pina 3D last weekend, which along with the recent Herzog, is slowly persuading me that while it's an imperfect technology, 3D may have some longer term merit after all.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Been watching some strange animated films recently - most notably Blood Tea and Red String - a kind of adult stop-motion fairy tale about some unspecified creatures who live under an oak tree. They are employed by sinister white mice to manufacture a doll for them but when they do the creatures fall in love with the doll and refuse to part with it - the mice then steal it and the creatures go on a quest to get it back. Several hallucinatory scenes and a plot that makes no sense at all make this film quite a bizarre trip - my favourite scene is when the mice play some kind of rummy with blank cards as they get blotto on blood tea while a bird with a skull for a head sits on one of their chairs watching, they then start dancing with the doll while one plays the banjo until the egg in the doll's stomach hatches to reveal a woman-headed bird in a scene reminiscent of Alien. Apparently it was made by one woman and it took her 13 years to do all the animation, I have to admire her dedication to spending so long making something so utterly confusing.


Recommended to anyone who enjoyed Valerie and Her Week of Woners or Svankmajer fans etc.
I also watched another aniimated film called Krysar - an extremely impressive expressionist version of The Pied Piper of Hamlyn using wooden puppets. It couldn't compete with the previous film in terms of sheer weirdness though it came close. The atmosphere was there, it's just that the story (despite a different ending) is so familiar I suppose.


Anyone else able to recommend any really good animations along these lines, I really like "adult fairytale" stuff - not porn, you know what I mean.
 
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