kid charlemagne

Well-known member
The Ghost Writer. A film by the Great Roman Polanski. Amazing film. Highly recommend. Polanski secretly a leftist, exposing the CIA and British Government for their war crimes. A gripping thriller, engaging mystery the whole way through. Great lead performances from Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. I love a great political conspiracy thriller. Thank you Roman.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I like that one. I think I said when I watched it it's kind of like those middlebrow political drama-thriller-a-bit-actiony things that are being churned out all over the shop - except done properly and thus superior in every respect.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I saw that this film Anora had won at Cannes and i realised that somehow I'd never seen anything by this guy Sean Baker so I thought I should educate myself and watch some of his stuff.... randomly I chose Starlet and I really enjoyed even though the basic plot of an unlikely friendship between a young kinda.... um, well in this case a pornstar, and a crusty older person, is, I'd say, now common enough to be a genre in its own right.

Anyway it was cool so I checked out Red Rocket and that was better yet, so feeling like I was on a bit of a roll I tried Tangerine which was even better, and then The Florida Project which was possibly my favourite of em all. So I'm a total convert to this guy and I even watched this film mentioned on his Wikipedia page which he produced but didn't direct called something like The Feeling When It's Too Late To Do Something and that was also good, just really dry vignettes in the life of this somewhat odd young woman. Some of it is properly funny, I laughed out loud which is a much rarer occurrence than it ought to be when watching films. I forget the director but she also stars I think so I should probably look into what else she's done (if anything) cos she's obviously got something. I could maybe compare it to that show Girls but with all the weirdness and awkwardness turned up and all the boring normal stuff - and any friends or similar - removed.

I can't think of the last time I watched five films that good in a row. Ah actually I also watched Challengers which... I mean it passed the time but really it's very slight, a kinda glossy but empty homoerotic love triangle type thing which piles on loads of jumping around in time and expensive looking dramatic tennis rallies interspersed with what feels like hours of slomo footage of sweat dripping from muscular bodies and sexy synth techno in what can only be a desperate attempt to throw so much at it that it might somehow hide the fact that there isn't really much going on at all. Even so, with all that packed in screaming "please notice me" it's so far behind the films I mentioned above that I completely forgot that I watched it for a minute there.
 

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
I like that one. I think I said when I watched it it's kind of like those middlebrow political drama-thriller-a-bit-actiony things that are being churned out all over the shop - except done properly and thus superior in every respect.
Yea this is about right. mostly due to the fact that theres a director at the helm who is amazing enough to elevate the material, similar to what fincher is able to do with his scripts
 

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
I saw that this film Anora had won at Cannes and i realised that somehow I'd never seen anything by this guy Sean Baker so I thought I should educate myself and watch some of his stuff.... randomly I chose Starlet and I really enjoyed even though the basic plot of an unlikely friendship between a young kinda.... um, well in this case a pornstar, and a crusty older person, is, I'd say, now common enough to be a genre in its own right.

Anyway it was cool so I checked out Red Rocket and that was better yet, so feeling like I was on a bit of a roll I tried Tangerine which was even better, and then The Florida Project which was possibly my favourite of em all. So I'm a total convert to this guy and I even watched this film mentioned on his Wikipedia page which he produced but didn't direct called something like The Feeling When It's Too Late To Do Something and that was also good, just really dry vignettes in the life of this somewhat odd young woman. Some of it is properly funny, I laughed out loud which is a much rarer occurrence than it ought to be when watching films. I forget the director but she also stars I think so I should probably look into what else she's done (if anything) cos she's obviously got something. I could maybe compare it to that show Girls but with all the weirdness and awkwardness turned up and all the boring normal stuff - and any friends or similar - removed.

I can't think of the last time I watched five films that good in a row. Ah actually I also watched Challengers which... I mean it passed the time but really it's very slight, a kinda glossy but empty homoerotic love triangle type thing which piles on loads of jumping around in time and expensive looking dramatic tennis rallies interspersed with what feels like hours of slomo footage of sweat dripping from muscular bodies and sexy synth techno in what can only be a desperate attempt to throw so much at it that it might somehow hide the fact that there isn't really much going on at all. Even so, with all that packed in screaming "please notice me" it's so far behind the films I mentioned above that I completely forgot that I watched it for a minute there.
I've only seen Red Rocket, which was quite good, but I'm not sure how much it'd work for me on rewatch. Challengers was great imo. I'll admit the time jumping does allow the director to cut corners in the script, distracting the audience by how quickly character dynamics change, but even then, the
hours of slomo footage of sweat dripping from muscular bodies and sexy synth techno
Is what's going on. these tennis scenes are form and the language in which the characters and their relationships are operating on, and the representations in how they act and feel towards each other, and their own expressions of their emotions. Zendaya lays it out that scene with patrick where she describes tennis as a relationship, he just wants to fuck and not talk about tennis, but those are two in the same for zendaya, and thats why the last scene, and how it pays off is so important, it is essentially mirroring the hotel scene from before, zendaya is watching them sensually embrace, and the ending is equally cathartic for all three of them.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
Anyway it was cool so I checked out Red Rocket and that was better yet, so feeling like I was on a bit of a roll I tried Tangerine which was even better, and then The Florida Project which was possibly my favourite of em all.
thought that florida project was good in lots of ways, basically enjoyed it, but also think that it's part of that almost structural thing now where films about poor people - which is what that film was about really, the main theme, what is it like to be a child growing up like that, in that slightly chaotic unstructured way with no money and so on - are made by people on the outside looking in. felt like it was made in sympathy and good faith. but it also felt like it was made by someone who's never lived like that who was trying to imagine what it's like. as though he'd had that classic us travel experience of rolling up at some dingy motel and seeing all the people living there and trying to work out what that would be like.

there's loads of films like that. the more recent ken loach ones having that same feeling. it's been ages since i saw it but american honey is one of the exceptions, that one really rang true strangely enough. i don't know why, it's in the details somewhere, hard to put your finger on
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
thought that florida project was good in lots of ways, basically enjoyed it, but also think that it's part of that almost structural thing now where films about poor people - which is what that film was about really, the main theme, what is it like to be a child growing up like that, in that slightly chaotic unstructured way with no money and so on - are made by people on the outside looking in. felt like it was made in sympathy and good faith. but it also felt like it was made by someone who's never lived like that who was trying to imagine what it's like. as though he'd had that classic us travel experience of rolling up at some dingy motel and seeing all the people living there and trying to work out what that would be like.

there's loads of films like that. the more recent ken loach ones having that same feeling. it's been ages since i saw it but american honey is one of the exceptions, that one really rang true strangely enough. i don't know why, it's in the details somewhere, hard to put your finger on

I remember seeing American Honey in the cinema and there seemed to be to be a lot of fuss about it at the time but then it kinda dropped out of view.

I'm sure you're right about the impetus behind The Florida Project but to me I didn't feel that while watching it... and so obviously it worked better overall for me.

That said I have been thinking a fair bit recently about how over the years I, as an obviously very middle-class, English, white boy have spent a lot of time in dodgy ghettos and such for various reasons and I was thinking about how I rarely see that kind of experience depicted - and I guess the reason is that no-one wants to make a film about those kind of places and their inhabitants while at the same time admitting their own privileges, so they either remove themselves from it altogether or pretend they were from a different background. Or at least I'm struggling to think of a film (say) which shows the kinds of experiences I'm talking about honestly from a perspective like mine.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Is what's going on. these tennis scenes are form and the language in which the characters and their relationships are operating on, and the representations in how they act and feel towards each other, and their own expressions of their emotions. Zendaya lays it out that scene with patrick where she describes tennis as a relationship, he just wants to fuck and not talk about tennis, but those are two in the same for zendaya, and thats why the last scene, and how it pays off is so important, it is essentially mirroring the hotel scene from before, zendaya is watching them sensually embrace, and the ending is equally cathartic for all three of them.

Yeah but it really wasn't enough for me, and I feel that if the story had just been told linearly then a lot of people would have made the same complaint.
 

kid charlemagne

Well-known member
watched apocalypse now tonight.... that shit really fuckin shook me. crazy how the first half is that upscaled vietnam war movie, but it just continues to morph into a journey into a hellscape shaped out of war and human savagery. truly as good as advertised. kurtz is a legend.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
You're actually young enough to have never seen Apocalypse Now

This is enough to drive me into the jungle, there to slather myself in thick grey mud and murmur scraps of nick land to myself
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Actually, though, I should rewatch ANow cos it's becoming one of those films that I assume aren't actually that great, but that a young Corpsey ate up like the 'novels' of Jack Kerouac
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I watched 'The Passenger' on BFI player last night

I thought it was really good on the whole, despite having scenes in it which seemed almost parodic of the notion of european art films

Some amazing shots though, 'PURE CINEMA' shit
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Actually, though, I should rewatch ANow cos it's becoming one of those films that I assume aren't actually that great, but that a young Corpsey ate up like the 'novels' of Jack Kerouac
I am once again asking you to make a Letterboxd account and share these insights with the world.
 
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