Films you've seen recently and would recommend WITH reservations

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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
zone of interest. formally its great, or at least very consistent (ie it never breaks its distance, stillness, etc), and the sounds (not really the music though which surprised me as its mica levi but apparently a lot of her score got cut) are really intense, and basically made me clench my gut for the whole film (incredibly effective, and prob best experienced in the cinema), but something about it left me cold. which is maybe the point. youre not meant to warm to anything or anyone, or feel anything. but it didnt exactly stimulate me intellectually either. its just a study of mundanity (or the banality of evil etc etc as everyone has said). though it cant be that mundance ofc as you know it is a high ranking nazis family who we are observing. but it seemed too single minded and myopic really to make me consider anything i was seeing beyond what was plainly in front of me. the film has no real context or scope, and it prob doesnt need it as most ppl know about the holocaust already but the way the camp doesnt intrude into their convo at all (barring a comment from the mother in law), just seemed weird and a bit unrealistic. i found it more of an arthouse exercise using the holocaust to make it more horrific than a film that really tells you something new about the holocaust. the fact it zeroes in on a nazi family so tightly makes it unique, but it just seemed like it didnt tell me anything new tbh. but as a film, it is intense, and one that stayed with me for ages after, though im just not sure why, which has made me think its all to do with the sound design. the best thing i can say about it is it made me want to see/read about hoss, the commander, more. i found out there was a german film made in the 70s about him, but its more of a character piece, and drills down on his unwavering commitment to what he was doing, but how he treated it as a job, just as work, not much else, putting it above everything/everyone else.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
Disagree with this, but it did hit me in the gut, I guess that's where it lives or dies. There were some slightly pretentious feeling bits but overall thought it was great.

(It's on iplayer ATM)
www.bbc.co.uk

Aftersun

Sophie is beginning to remember a formative holiday she took as a child.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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i saw it the first time and def felt the emotion inside it. the second time i felt it was dull, plain, and lazy in expecting you to care through doing so little. the girl is great though. and i still dont know why ppl love paul mescal so much, beyond fancying him. i saw him in all of us strangers too, where he affected an accent (couldnt pinpoint what accent though, which might say more about me than him), but andrew scott was amazing in that, and totally made up for the slightly silly/sentimental ending. that was a weirdly sour/sad gay film though for this decade, almost a throwback to the whole history of sad/tragic gay movies, at a time when theres much more gay representation, a bit like andrew haigh was like 'hey hey you happy fucks, i want you to remember it wasnt always like this'. the scenes between scott and claire foy as his mum were really moving, but the film needed a bit more of how those things shaped his life in the present day, ie more on his present life, not just flashbacks, cos i thought the ending was a bit of a lame cop out, albeit one i still found moving.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I watched Wim Wenders' Perfect Days last night. In many ways a beautiful and moving portrait of a man who's learned to find the joy in small, simple things, a tribute to unfairly looked down upon toilet cleaners (and which made me want to get really good at cleaning), while also suggesting that the protagonist has adopted this apparently contentful routine in order to stave off crippling trauma and depression...

But there were a few bum notes, not least the extremely on the nose selection of songs he plays while driving around Tokyo.

So I dunno how people on here would feel about it. I wanted to love it but I wondered at the end if it was too much of a cipher, and if the protagonist was a bit of a sentimental construct.
 
R

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
Perfect days is a very nice, beautiful, soothing film, but also utterly contrived, idealised and wishful. A film on a toilet cleaner who cleans spotless toilets whose life, while with its problems, also seems a bit too buffed clean. Wenders is a master director though.
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
The Sweet East. An Honor Levy type character causes havoc playing a wiley siren all across the eastern seaboard while falling down the rabbithole of all manners of social and political radical loser. The last act is genuinely bad but the rest of it is very funny. Feels horny in a way it feels like cinema isn't allowed to be anymore, movie sex is usually antiseptic or gonzo but rarely engages with the actual substrate of desire.
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
The visuals are as stunning as you'd imagine, extremely great work there. First ten minutes of the film are a certified rush.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
Oppenheimer, which a quick search shows has only popped up in the 'would NOT recommend' thread.

I have half a mind to stick it in the 'unreservedly recommend' thread because I really did like it quite a bit, but there's no doubt that it's jam packed with all of Nolan's flaws—cringey exposition, clunky dialogue, bombastic music etc.

However, I will also say that there's something so WEIRD about Nolan's films, including their flaws, that makes them worth watching. Like the editing. The first hour or so is a bit like the typical Hollywood biopic but it moves along at such a ridiculously frantic pace that it feels almost avant-garde. And although I was rolling my eyes a lot and also feeling turned off by the absence of breathing space (this is the opposite of 'slow cinema'), the pace definitely hooked me in.

Then there's the way it's shot, all those IMAX shots—which make predictable sense applied to sweeping (gorgeous) aerial shots of landscapes but also render these fairly standard dialogue scenes hyper-vivid.

The sequence leading up to the first test is really gripping, tense and anxiety inducing. There's a sense of horror accruing around the bomb, this cursed object. The explosion itself, as many have said, was a big let-down visually, it just doesn't manage to convey the scale of the explosion at all, which is a shame, because everything leading up to it manages to convey the scale of the threat. (Also there's these snapshots of the quantuum world in Oppenheimer's mind that are effective in inducing dread, presumably done with CGI, as the bomb arguably should have been.)

I didn't fancy watching this at the cinema /IMAX much at all (mainly due to the length but also I didn't really understand what was so interesting about Oppenheimer) but now I wish I had.
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didnt realise he was english
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Just saw Four Lions, and right away there was mention of baked beans, so I figured certain dissensus regulars may be familiar with it.
 
kid charlemagne

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
im aware of that one, but sadly immediately think of the ellroy series and am dissapointed they arent connected lol. premise sounds great
 
dilbert1

dilbert1

Well-known member
Have just watched two of American director, screenwriter, cinematographer, novelist, comic book artist, animator and Black Metal musician S. Craig Zahler’s films, Bone Tomahawk (2015) and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017). The former, a Western and his directorial debut, sports a star-studded cast including Kurt Russell, David Arquette, Patrick Wilson and Matthew Fox (from Lost), along with a dash of insane violence and gore. Both were highly entertaining and had a very postmodern feel, almost like a Netflix or Redbox b-movie but stranger and more artistic.
 
dilbert1

dilbert1

Well-known member
I closed my eyes during the bloodiest parts, though. Was very impressed with Vince Vaughn’s martial arts choreography in 99
 
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