films you've seen recently and would NOT recommend

[IdleRich]

Badlands is great, I guess Thin Red Line is ok.... for some reason I'm still strangely excited about Tree of Life. Brad Pitt is a good actor I reckon.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

well I guess I'll defend Terrence Malick if no one else will. I like all his films, some more than others, my favorites being Badlands and Thin Red Line, tho I haven't yet seen Tree of Life. I won't deny that his films are usually hard to watch but that's true of many films that are great. late-period Kurosawa comes to mind (Ran feels like it's about 47 hours long when you're watching it) and so does pretty any much anything by Tarkovsky, a guy who could be compared to Malick in more than a couple ways. honestly I think it's one of those things where you just have to accept his style for what is is and go with it. true he often approaches, or depending on your pov crosses over into, self-parody (I remember joking his acting notes to Farrell for The New World were just "look pensive") but I even like that, I mean it takes guts to really go for it like that + not a hell of a lot of directors do...his mystique is whatever, I mean you can just do like I do and ignore it and watch the films for themselves. so if you don't like his films fair play but I think it's pretty ridiculous to dismiss them all as empty middlebrow guff devoid of worth, a dismissal which kinda comes off like smug condescension but hey...but people really should just watch the films + decide for themselves.

Badlands is a must as everyone's said, Days of Heaven is pretty frustrating but probably still worth watching, Thin Red Line is great (I read the novel - also great - first and I have family history on Guadalcanal, maybe that makes a difference) I always saw it as kind of the anti-Saving Private Ryan, The New World is very silly but I still mostly liked it + it's still about 7 million times better than Dances With Wolves

 

[Corpsey]

Quite like the idea of a thread in which people attack a film/piece of music and then others attempt to defend it. I find that kind of thing interesting, opens up new personal perspectives on things sometimes.

 

[IdleRich]

I won't deny that his films are usually hard to watch but that's true of many films that are great. late-period Kurosawa comes to mind (Ran feels like it's about 47 hours long when you're watching it) and so does pretty any much anything by Tarkovsky, a guy who could be compared to Malick in more than a couple ways. honestly I think it's one of those things where you just have to accept his style for what is is and go with it.

But with the Brave News of the World (sorry cheapshot) that wasn't what it was at all, there was no accepting his style and going along with it, he didn't even deliver on his own terms. It was a shitty pseudo artfilm that you could only defend by pretending it was in Malick's style when it actually wasn't. What it really was was a really bad take on (good choice) Dances With Wolves but by virtue of being by Malick it pretended it was something more when really it was much less. Sorry, I sound angry about this and it's because I'm drunk but there is always something annoying about someone hiding behind their reputation to pretend something is different from how it is. I've repeated myself too much - enough. I think I'll stand by that when I'm sober though.

 

[IdleRich]

And it's nothing like Tarkovsky.

 

[mistersloane]

Isn't the point of Tree of Life the Trumbull effects sequence though, and the fact that he gave/got Trumbull enough money to potter around for years making it? I think you can safely edit out the rest.

Respect to the guy for that. I love Doug Trumbull. I want to be him when I get reincarnated.

 

[luka]

theres times when condecension is the appropriate response i think. malicks films are as vapid as any pirelli calender, which would be fine if not for the risible furrowed brow pantomine grasping at profundity. thin red line is unacceptable. pochahontas is unacceptable and i dont need to watch tree of life to tell you, catagorically that it is entirely absolutly unacceptable. there are certain strain of idiot americanism. not everything american is odiotic but somee things are idioitc in a specifically american way. cormac mccrathy. terrence malick. others. unacceptable.

 

[Gregor XIII]

I've been catching up a bit on Malick due to Tree of Life. I really liked Thin Red Line. It was ridiculous, but war is ridiculous anyway. All the voiceover was just pseudophilosophical platitudes, but again, I thought it fit the theme with average American boys getting in way over their heads, not being able to actually say something profound about it. Probably wasn't supposed to though...

Pocahontas, though, didn't really do anything for me. Another annoying thing: Making a film in 2005 about 1607, and then choosing Wagner to soundtrack it. That is just giving up on being either historically correct or current. That's one thing Tarkovsky and Malick have in common: They both seem to regard European Romantic culture as almost universally true/good.

I'll probably watch Badlands and Days of Heaven anyway. One of these days.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

@Rich

that you can't separate a director's work from his reputation is your problem, not his. or mine. I can defend the New World, or anything else, on it's own merits + flaws. the irony is that you're the one imposing that tenuous grasp at some kind of sweeping larger meaning, rather than just taking it for what it is. anyway, it is a seriously flawed film. I like it anyway.

as far saying it's nothing like Tarkovksy...sure, they have nothing in common. not aesthetically, not in grappling (successfully or not) with impossibly big metaphysical themes, not in most always waffling right on the edge of sinking right into pseudomystical bullshit...honestly the real difference is that Tarkovsky is a dead Russian guy + more obscure + hence cooler for film nerds.

@ Luka

I could talk about richness of someone who I'm almost certain has spent no appreciable of time (please, correct me if I'm wrong) in the United States describing a particular "idiot Americanism", but whatever. Europeans have been doing that kind of condescending shit for hundreds of years. not that I am the rah-rah America guy by any stretch of the imagination, but jesus if something ever makes you want to roll you eyes...I like Cormac McCarthy too. it's not like either of those dudes are artistic gods. they both produce interesting, occasionally great work that is often flawed + sometimes the more interesting for it. whatever, I have plenty of respect for your aesthetic opinions but we'll just have to agree to differ here I think.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I've been catching up a bit on Malick due to Tree of Life. I really liked Thin Red Line. It was ridiculous, but war is ridiculous anyway. All the voiceover was just pseudophilosophical platitudes, but again, I thought it fit the theme with average American boys getting in way over their heads, not being able to actually say something profound about it. Probably wasn't supposed to though...

Pocahontas, though, didn't really do anything for me. Another annoying thing: Making a film in 2005 about 1607, and then choosing Wagner to soundtrack it. That is just giving up on being either historically correct or current. That's one thing Tarkovsky and Malick have in common: They both seem to regard European Romantic culture as almost universally true/good.

I recommend that you (everyone) just read Thin Red Line. or don't, but understand that it provides much of the context for the film, which while definitely not a straight adaptation is adamantly truthful to the source material in a spiritual + aesthetic sense, albeit dreamier + more meditative where the novel is more bluntly cynical + bitter.

I don't really know where you get that either of those guys regards the whole sweep of "European Romantic culture" as true + good. that seems like an awful lot to extrapolate from relatively little. as far as the soundtrack of New World, I'm not sure when a law was passed that filmmakers had to be either historically correct or current...it just seems like a strange criticism...either way there is a whole other discussion to be had about the various pitfalls of non-indigenous directors portraying indigenous peoples in films but I'll just say I thought the New World was at least conscious of that issue. I'd agree with anyone (well, everyone) who thought it was a mistake to use the highly dubious Captain Smith version of the Pocahontas story w/all it's white guy rediscovers himself w/the noble savages cliches...I suspect it was done deliberately to make use of all those tropes in American mythology and what they signify, successfully or not. James Jones (author of TRL) discusses in the intro to his book why he did the same thing with Guadalcanal, instead of setting it on some fictional island, b/c he wanted to make use of all that Guadalcanal (where he himself fought) stood for at that point in time in the American mindset...

 

[IdleRich]

"that you can't separate a director's work from his reputation is your problem, not his. or mine. I can defend the New World, or anything else, on it's own merits + flaws. the irony is that you're the one imposing that tenuous grasp at some kind of sweeping larger meaning, rather than just taking it for what it is. anyway, it is a seriously flawed film. I like it anyway."

My point is that when you separate it from his reputation you're left with an empty, at times pretty, film. Separation is what I am doing and is the right thing to do, if you fail to manage that you might somehow end up thinking it's good or something. His reputation tricks people into thinking that there must be more to it than there is - on its merits it's just... nothing.

"as far saying it's nothing like Tarkovksy...sure, they have nothing in common. not aesthetically, not in grappling (successfully or not) with impossibly big metaphysical themes, not in most always waffling right on the edge of sinking right into pseudomystical bullshit...honestly the real difference is that Tarkovsky is a dead Russian guy + more obscure + hence cooler for film nerds."

I dunno, I don't think they have much in common aesthetically. OK, they might both risk the pseudomystical thing but not at all in the same way. The points of similarity you're identifying are general enough that you could apply them to almost anyone who wasn't Michael Bay.

 

[Gregor XIII]

@ padraig: Yeah, it's perhaps a strange little thing to criticize his use of Wagner, but it was also a strange little thing to do, when you think about it. It's more like, what's the artist trying to say? What's he making a statement on? The 1600s or today? And using Wagner, it just seems as if he's more interested in the 19th century, which is just weird. I just read an article on The New World - which I'll recommend to everyone, even the people who hated the film, as it begins by going through several defences of the film, and tearing them apart - which luckily for my argument ends up saying of the film: On the one hand, the film immerses us, with careful verisimilitude, in the imagined experience of the historical encounter between colonists and natives. On the other, it immerses us within a mythic rendering of this event, within the ahistorical space of myth. But the 'mythic' aspects of the film is not 'ahistorical'. The myth of Pocahontas and John Smith was created, has a background. The use of Wagner plays into that as well, in some weird way. That's kinda what I'm trying to get at.

Anyways, the reason I began writing another post in this discussion: I saw Badlands yesterday. Liked it. Could have been a lot more daring, but not bad for a debut feature. Definitely not bad. Liked the use of Orff and Satie. Less so the use of Nat King Cole.

 

[Corpsey]

I liked 'Tree of Life' on the whole. The section dealing with the family was excellent. The origins of life montage and the paradisaical beach ending bored and irritated me but I really loved the depiction of childhood and the family. There was ambiguity there, whereas the more grandiose sections just felt a little vague, wishy washy, grandstanding...

 

[BareBones]

well put oliver craner. i forgot about the judges and the pirahnas. wow.

fuck yeah i forgot about them too, one big creepy revolving many-faced head, that thing seriously gave me the willies at the time.

"GUILTY OR INNOCENT?"
"INNOCENT!"
<plunges defendant into death-pool>

 

[empty mirror]

I am surprised that Tree of Life is getting such a flogging.
Maybe* it is because I am idiotic in that uniquely American way but I enjoyed it quite a lot. I think it is fair to compare this film to Tarkovsky, The Mirror in particular. The languid pace. The theme of memory, childhood, and cosmic/transcendent shit. My wife said there was bits of 2001: ASO, and I'll be darned if she was right, what with that Turnbull business.

Yeah, really loved ToL. Nice not to be the sceptical one once in a while.









*or maybe because it is the first film I've gone out to this year. Just nice to be out, you know!

 

[gumdrops]

beginners, with ewan mcgregor. hated it. really shit mix of the heartbreaking and 'comedy' with awfully twee results of insipid comedy and maudlin sadness that just when its getting perhaps too sad, you get some shit scene where the dog starts talking in an attempt to make it lighter. a very muddled, inconsistent film. mcgregors american accent is quite lame too.

 

[slim jenkins]

Gainsbourg - what a mess. I kept expecting it to come together but all it did was disintegrate more. Little or no explanation of who was who or how he got into various phases...dwelling on the shagtastic (!) women (cheap, easy thrill), and as far as I recall (although I might have been asleep, making a cuppa, or washing my hair) no mention of what's regarded by most as his greatest album. Whilst I was baffled, even knowing something about him, anyone looking to learn about his life must have been left completely bewildered and none the wiser regarding the key characters and musical/sexual partners.

 

[Damien]

I find all of Terrence Malick's films to be deeply flawed yet I love them all

I enjoyed Tree of Life immensely though I could do without Sean Penn in any film thanks and the ending didn't sit well with me

 

[Trillhouse]

I watched Super last night. Well to be honest I finished watching it last night, as I gave up half way through the first sitting. Such an odd film.

I was expecting Kick-Ass, staring Dwight Schrute, but this film is just wrong. so wrong.

 

[STN]

The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael. I don't know how it ended up on my Lovefilm list but it is MASSIVELY crap.