films you've seen recently and would NOT recommend

[fokse vektaire xeven]

The Dark Knight and There Will Be Blood.

Soulless, emotionless, nihilistic.

1.
Personas, rather than characters, who represent ideas/preoccupations (rabid Christianity, corrupt capitalism, chaotic terrorism).

All Superhero fictions function in terms of personas. That IS what they do. I'm not sure what you were expecting. There Will Be Blood- this was supposed to be Faulknerian Blood and Thunder, Biblical- Filmmaking in the tradition of Houston. Not Vittorio De Sica.

2.
Direction that is painfully striving for greatness (TWBB's wordless opening passage where countless situations arise where words would certainly be spoken)

I saw this film knowing nothing about it and the opening didn't seem unnatural- it didn't seem remarkable to me that it was dialogue free and until i read about it afterward. so maybe this has something to do with the experience of being critically primed to watch these big "event" films.

3.
Cinematography direct from the National Geographic - cliched panoramas and colour palettes (sepia, steel blue), dead images that have somehow become shorthand for beauty and technical proficiency

I thought one of the strong points of There Will Be Blood was the the depiction of the desert- it was overexposed, leached of colour, i would say very different from the saturated Technicolour deserts familiar from most westerns. it looks bone dry, drained. Also there is some creative lensing ie in the train...

4.
Nihilistic stories: characters that grind to an impasse. They are unchanging and have no real aims or motivation. The ending of There Will Be Blood is disgusting as it comes out of no emotional truth or discernible narrative arc. It is purely for a cheap thrill.

that isn't true at all, there's a definite sense of the souring of the protagonists amibition, it is revealed over the films' course to be essentially concerned with personal victories rather than gains- subjugated violence. The scene in the cafe ("I did what i said i would") i saw as a turning point.

I saw TWBB on general release and enjoyed it. Yes, it is far from subtle, but then it doesn't pretend to be. it's vigourous, well crafted and somewhat ambitious. I wish there were more films in the US mainstream i could say that of.

it probably doesn't work so well on video. I haven't seen it that way.

 

[boombox]

All Superhero fictions function in terms of personas

If you mean persona as in Batman is a persona for Bruce Wayne, of course. I meant that in TDK and TWWB the characters come across as representing concepts / arguments rather than people - as if the director is writing an annotated essay.

There Will Be Blood- this was supposed to be Faulknerian Blood and Thunder, Biblical- Filmmaking in the tradition of Houston. Not Vittorio De Sica.

There was no blood and thunder - nothing meaningful these characters were fighting for; not even themselves.

Also, this film is nothing like Houston's films. As for De Sica, I wasn't bothered that TDK and TWWB were not a particular type of story in a particular style but that they were barely stories at all and had no style tailored to the subject matter to speak of.

I saw this film knowing nothing about it and the opening didn't seem unnatural- it didn't seem remarkable to me that it was dialogue free and until i read about it afterward. so maybe this has something to do with the experience of being critically primed to watch these big "event" films.

I never go into a film or spend a film thinking about technique. I only notice it if it intrusively jumps out at me. I notice the "depiction", as you put it, of the desert precisely because it is being 'depicted' rather than shown. We know a desert is bone dry and drained but the film blatantly makes a point of this as a symbol.

that isn't true at all, there's a definite sense of the souring of the protagonists amibition, it is revealed over the films' course to be essentially concerned with personal victories rather than gains- subjugated violence. The scene in the cafe ("I did what i said i would") i saw as a turning point.

Their ambition is patently soured from the very beginning. This film could only have worked as a study of two men seeing themselves in the other and hating what they see. However, this is not the approach.

 

[Shonx]

New Rose Hotel

Started watching this too late the other week and fell asleep in the middle - watched the rest yesterday and am none the wiser

Don't know whether I missed some important detail somewhere or was just too bored to pay attention. Seemed repetetive and formless and have no idea what happened by the end. Willem Dafoe doing his looking confused thing a lot.

 

[IdleRich]

"I saw this film knowing nothing about it and the opening didn't seem unnatural- it didn't seem remarkable to me that it was dialogue free and until i read about it afterward. so maybe this has something to do with the experience of being critically primed to watch these big "event" films."

I saw the film on a bootleg dvd before all the hype and it seemed totally unnatural and forced to me. "Direction that is painfully striving for greatness" seems a pretty apt description - although whether I was missing out on something else by not seeing it in the cinema is a different question that's worth asking I suppose.

"Nihilistic stories: characters that grind to an impasse. They are unchanging and have no real aims or motivation. The ending of There Will Be Blood is disgusting as it comes out of no emotional truth or discernible narrative arc. It is purely for a cheap thrill."

Disgusting is a strong word but totally random and thrown in a for a cheap thrill is pretty much how I saw it. I just thought that there was no meat to the film, I wondered if the copy I had was missing a large chunk for a while.

 

[mistersloane]

Yeah totally, I wish the producers or whoever had had the guts to let them make the three hour film they'd obviously written and wanted to do, the ending is just tacked on and ruined what for me was a really pleasurable watching experience. I think in that light criticism is due, cos you cant watch a film for what you want it to be, unfortunately. I thought that with Magnolia as well, ultimately both are better films in one's head than in actuality, it's quite a clever game to play - y'know, ambition - but he hasn't got there yet. Boogie Nights is fab tho.

 

[craner]

Last Night, The Wax Mask. It's so worthless I can't even be bothered to write about it, although Romina Mondello is possibly one of the most beautiful actresses I have even seen.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm Not There, the horrendously confused (and confusing) pretention-fest 'meta-biopic' of Bob Dylan that came out last year, using six characters, played by six actors, to supposedly represent different aspects of his personality or periods of his life. Cue over two hours (I watched about half of it) of sixth-form-standard pseudo-profundity, heavy-handed symbolism and oh I just can't be arsed to write anything more about it, just don't bother with it. I'm not even into Dylan in the first place. Just as well it wasn't me who rented it out, I guess!

 

[craner]

Jess Franco's Justine. Pitiful, except for the bits featuring Jack Palance and Rosalba Neri. At this point, Palance was consuming so much fine red wine that he was practically brain-damaged, and it shows: he acts like a bipolar Berserker. Rosalba Neri, of course, has the most intense and unhinged erotic screen presence of all time. Together, they're pretty good, but here it's like a drop in a sea of slop.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Ollie, you should compile a list of "50 films that are total gash but have hawt chicks in them".

 

[craner]

Rosalba was in a film called Sentivano uno strano, eccitante, pericoloso puzzo di dollari. This translates, roughly, as And They Smelled the Strange, Exciting, Dangerous Scent of Dollars, which is surely one of the greatest movie titles of all time (at least second to Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key).

I have a suspicion that Neri is the best of her generation, but it's hard to prove, because her film career is either patchy or difficult to trace or simply appalling. Her most interesting-looking films remain out of print (the mid-60s spy flicks and spaghetti westerns, Top Sensation, Amuck, The Devil's Lover, And They Smelled the Strange, Exciting, Dangerous Scent of Dollars, etc...) The most widely available being garbage like Slaughter Hotel, French Sex Murders, Justine. But even in these turds, in which her roles are brief, she turns in raw, hot, haunting performances. I think that her spirit lingers in all those eurocult films people love or hate and the strange thing is - unlike, say Luigi Pistilli or Barbara Bouchet - she's hardly present.

 

[craner]

The other good thing about her is that she quit in 1976 and no one has ever seen her since.

 

[Mr. Tea]

French Sex Murders

Ha, gotta love the 'does exactly what it says on the tin' school of movie titles.

 

[craner]

I also threw on Amando De Ossorio's Return of the Blind Dead last week but I couldn't even finish watching this paltry piece of shit.

 

[IdleRich]

"I also threw on Amando De Ossorio's Return of the Blind Dead last week but I couldn't even finish watching this paltry piece of shit."

The first one is kinda half good and half terrible. There are some powerful scenes but they are totally undermined by loads of rubbish ones. When I saw I the dvd it came with very extensive trailers for the (three?) sequels but they just looked like they would be more of the same and I couldn't really be bothered with them.
Tried to watch Django, Kill (If you live shoot) yesterday and the day before but the damn dvd keeps jumping and is effectively unwatchable. Shame because the film looks as though it will be really good.

 

[craner]

It's a fantastic film: gay cowboys, bloodsucking bats, it's got the lot! Did you get the Blue Underground DVD though? The UK Argent version sticks you with the English dub which almost ruins the entire film, plus the transfer isn't as colourful.

 

[craner]

Yours for a fiver.

 

[IdleRich]

"It's a fantastic film: gay cowboys, bloodsucking bats, it's got the lot! Did you get the Blue Underground DVD though? The UK Argent version sticks you with the English dub which almost ruins the entire film, plus the transfer isn't as colourful."

Yeah, it is the Blue Underground one but as it's unwatchable I guess that's beside the point. I will have to get it some other way I suppose.
Edit: from Amazon perhaps, cheers.

 

[craner]

Just checking!

 

[craner]

Ollie, you should compile a list of "50 films that are total gash but have hawt chicks in them".

I guess the No. 1 film in that regard would be Mario Bava's Five Dolls For An August Moon. Which is, I suppose, a 'bad' film, but I adore it. I love all of Bava's movies (except the boring Westerns, a genre he didn't really enjoy), so I could be partial here.

But it's "gash", I guess, and features a gang of superior chicks, including an eye-poping debut by Edwige Fenech, for as long as she stays alive.

 

[craner]

Litres of J&B.