The Film Lovers Thread!

[Fuuma]

BTW I noticed you saw The beat that my heart skipped, what did you think of it?

 

[northernsky]

Symphony of the city was an invigorating display of efficient montage and use of music. However I have issues with modernists and their idealized image of modern life and technological progress which was in full display in Ruttmann's film.

i couldn't really tell if the idealisation in the portraying of modern life was intentional, or if it looked that way to me because i got carried away by faux nostalghia again. out of curiosity i would like to see the berlin-symphony that some german tv film director made in 2002.

I saw the surrealists films at the Tate modern, which is IMHO the right context to see films like those that tend to explore visual arts possibilities through the medium of cinema instead of being "proper" films as we know them. I'd go with Visconti suggestions if I were you but do buy/rip/whatever the DVD to be able to see it in a couple of sittings.

now that you mention it, it's indeed very close to visual art (and you could probably think of more art forms like music, dance etc.), even closer to that than to narrative films. someone once told me that he always wondered why people would put paintings in their apartments like they had music play in the background, while he would prefer a framed screen constantly showing his favourite films scenes. i failed to ask what his favourite film scene would be, but i assumed it would be taken out of a narrative film and could hardly imagine that work, but if you think of those abstract films (like ruttmann's opus films or less extreme forms) it could even make sense. but not for me anyway, i'm not a fan of constantly displayed art in apartments as well as music playing in the background.. i think it would probably end as some kind of aquarium just without the fish. and you can't even feed it.

Free will: sounds like an interesting, although painful, watch.

that's why i put it off so many times. (my plan was to let acquaintances go first and have them tell me if it's bearable, but as it seems everybody had the same plan and nobody did go.)

it's probably weird , but i always take into consideration if i want to encourage or reward the film by paying for a ticket to see it, and this one looked not like a film dealing with a subject as out of bounds as this to draw attention on itself and make the audience talk about it but like a very brave approach that did not expect to do well at the box office.

BTW I noticed you saw The beat that my heart skipped, what did you think of it?

[everyone else. spoilers.]

when i first saw it in theatre i was overwhelmed. the main reason probably being the intense performance by romain duris, but i also thought that the relations in the film were portrayed very well and nuanced (for lack of a better word), most notably the relation between tom and his father, i almost got the impression i had never seen commonplace relationships portrayed like this. it avoided the cliché very well i found. that impression diminished when i saw it again but the film still managed to impress me. the friend i watched it in theatre with said she found it rather clichéd, it being the same old concept of someone having to decide between art and his immoral old lifestyle, or rather someone being saved by living for his art or falling in love and starting a new better life or.. i don't remember. you can probably reduce the film to one of those clichés (as you always can) but i think it brought some interesting twists to it. e.g. tom wasn't really an artist, you understand he had a sincere affection for music and some talent, but there was no future for him living on art (maybe because he had it not in it from the beginning or it was a missed chance because he chose the wrong lifestyle after his mother died and he started to work for his father, i don't know.), therefor it didn't overstrain that being saved by art from immorality-thing; his developing relation with miao-lin wasn't shown as in your face either (i liked that they had left those two years out of the film completely. you didn't really know what happened after he found his father dead.) and eventually, he wasn't 'saved' at the end. now i talked my head off. what did you think of it? i take it that you have seen it? do you happen to know the american original?

 

[northernsky]

^that's why i shouldn't post before breakfast. i remember you put in on your favourite film list.

(and i liked that badass business man look with suits and leather jacket, too.)

 

[PoppyAzura]

Saw the Black Dahlia yesterday. I'm still processing but it is such a disjointed movie. Two cops try to solve a murder case but become distracted by women along the way. It's a cop thriller, romance, and film noir who-dun-it all in one-- and that is the downfall of the movie. There was just too much going on. I think the romance with Scarlett's character was too long and quite stupid. Also I think the actors limited the movie- Hartnett is not the best actor and scarlett is too modern for period movies. Swank knocks it out the park. It was like she did research for an entirely different movie. A better movie. She tried to be the Bacall to hartnett's Bogie but it was too late- the movie was half over. The girl playing the Black Dahlia was also great. The ending was also very quick and dirty.

Depalma is still the master at visual treats. The scene where Mr. Fire's character "exits" is really great. A lil hint of hitchcock's vertigo. I love how he frames his shots.

Worth seeing if you love movies even though this is not the best Depalma.

 

[yogini108]

Saw American Beauty for the first time yesterday I now feel intimidated by the film masters in this thread so wont post my amateur thoughts but let me just tell you that I loved it Positively breathtaking and unexpected and moving

 

[visconti]

Northernsky- I haven't see Werckmeister Harmonies yet. There are 6 DVDs that I can rent, so I'm spacing them out. I commented on the first two in the other thread. I should get one or two by the weekend and the others within 2 weeks. Since they can be so heavy it works better to blend them with other stuff.

I know what you mean about gorging yourself and wanting to see every film on a disc. Renting both of those experimental discs at once was an error on my part. I'd read somewhere that it was around three hours. As it turned out it was 3 hours per disc. My DVD rental program doesn't send new discs until I return the current ones, so I had to race through them to keep other things coming in.

I'll have to rent The Beat My Heart Skipped soon. I have no good reason for putting it off. It's been in my queue for a while.

 

[northernsky]

yogini108, can you believe i haven't seen american beauty yet? somehow it looks like a film i won't 'get' as i do not get most satires. scathing critizism and gags in one make me feel light in the head, and i usually need characters to relate to (if in a good or bad way doesn't matter.) but when you say it was moving nonetheless i'm tempted to give it a chance. i should see more modern films anyway, i think the 2000s aren't as bad as i'd like to think of them (actually, i think it's a good time for films.)

visconti, tell us what you thought of the beat that my heart skipped, i hope you won't be disappointed.

 

[bleuFunk]

I love American Beauty. There are definitely satirical moments, but i wouldn't call it satirical. I don't feel it was overhanded or overreaching or harsh in anyway. The story alone is creepy and engaging and it's beautifully filmed. Watch it! Kevin Spacey & Annette Benning are both great in it.

 

[northernsky]

i'm not sure if it's merely the satirical aspect that i meant by what puts me off, but it's hard to explain for me.

Watch it!

aye!

i think you convinced me. i won't get to the video store until friday but if they have it then i'll rent it. a friend re-enacted the job interview at this fast food restaurant once, and that was hilarious.

tomorrow i'll have to watch the perfume in theatre (because a neighbour doesn't want to go alone and found nobody else. - what's the problem with going alone anyway?) and i resolved to hate it. oh, my small-mindedness. sexy male lead? sellout!

but i'm looking forward to a visual feast on the big screen. i really like expensive-looking pictures.

btw. i never thought i would care about the quality of the copy of the film you watch but after i saw what crappy VHS-copy they lend at the film faculty here.. it really can take away from the film. mostly little things, how you get a little confused when you realize too late that a scene takes place on a plane because those hardly noticeable background noises that normally tell you things like that got lost completely. (although in some cases i like the look of grainy greenish-ness in some films even better than how it waas supposed to look.)

 

[yogini108]

After reading about it in this thread a few times..I finally saw Paris, Texas. After hearing here about how it had so much spaceand how it 'breathes' I wasn't sure if it would be too slow for me or not..lucky me it turned out I loved it (I even gave it five stars on netflix! )
The space was there, but there was something so thoroughly intriguing about the story and the relationships therein..i found it to be a beautiful film all around!

 

[bleuFunk]

^ Yay! Glad you liked it.

 

[northernsky]

random pointless story: i didn't see the perfume last week because my neighbour said she wanted to wait because in a newspaper she reads there was a lottery in which you could win tickets for the film. i thought it was pretty silly to postpone due to a chance to win the tickets, but i was ok with that because i wasn't really dying to see the film anyway. so tonight we are seeing it for free (the woman always wins something, it's not even funny anymore.) downside: my oculist told me today i had less than 50% optic.. uh.. whatever. and my new lenses will arrive not until friday. that means i won't be really able to tell you what the film looked like. that reminds me of the time when i watched pirates of the carribean (don't ask) when i had lost my glasses. i still wonder how the film looked like.. which again reminds me of how a friend once told me how she was watching poem in a very small theatre and there were two elderly women sitting behind her, one of which was blind and the other one was quietly telling her what was visible on screen. i found that so incredibly cute but at the same time it's quite sad. so that were actually four pointless stories, but oh well.

 

[yogini108]

im putting in the motorcycle diaries juat about now Ive never seen it before and im reallyreally excited

 

[northernsky]

^ahhh, i love this film, i have seen it three times, and always when i was away, or at least preparing for a trip, so it's my personal wanderlust film now.

 

[Goya]

I just did a search to see if there is somebody who loves ''amores perros'' too. Have seen so many movies in the past 6 months, that's the one I really enjoy. [SIZE=-1][/SIZE]''The Motorcycle Diaries'' is not bad too, love Gael Garcia Bernal's performance a lot. [SIZE=-1]''A clockwise orange'' and ''[/SIZE]Mystic River[SIZE=-1]'' are two I want to watch again. [/SIZE]

 

[yogini108]

Finally watched it. Such a beautiful film, one of those movies that makes your heart want to explode with emotions

 

[Whitelinen]

I want to make a confession; I have never understood Jim Jarmusch's films. What is wrong with me? Can someone explain what I'm missing? Because I cannot understand them, these (possibly) wonderful films turn a little bit boring to me.Then on the other hand I can fully understand and adore David Lynch, even though a lot of people find his films weird.

Can some help me with this? What do you like in Jarmusch's films?

 

[Fuuma]

I want to make a confession; I have never understood Jim Jarmusch's films. What is wrong with me? Can someone explain what I'm missing? Because I cannot understand them, these (possibly) wonderful films turn a little bit boring to me.Then on the other hand I can fully understand and adore David Lynch, even though a lot of people find his films weird.

Can some help me with this? What do you like in Jarmusch's films?

I can't stand Lynch, whom I find obtuse and overly weird for the sake of being weird, but I do appreciate Jarmusch. I find that their approches are totaly different. Lynch seems to think about a concept he wants to treat than dip it in his brand of symbolism while Jarmusch just looks at life and situations from a slightly removed and totaly different angle then infuses his stories with a sort of offbeat, 60s jazz rythm that speaks to my new wave fan sensibilities.

 

[Fuuma]

i couldn't really tell if the idealisation in the portraying of modern life was intentional, or if it looked that way to me because i got carried away by faux nostalghia again. out of curiosity i would like to see the berlin-symphony that some german tv film director made in 2002.

I’d also be interested in that new film. As for the “city symphony” type films they were an offshoot of the futurist movement and were clearly aimed at exalting modern cities and the new exciting possibilities they offered.

now that you mention it, it's indeed very close to visual art (and you could probably think of more art forms like music, dance etc.), even closer to that than to narrative films. someone once told me that he always wondered why people would put paintings in their apartments like they had music play in the background, while he would prefer a framed screen constantly showing his favourite films scenes. i failed to ask what his favourite film scene would be, but i assumed it would be taken out of a narrative film and could hardly imagine that work, but if you think of those abstract films (like ruttmann's opus films or less extreme forms) it could even make sense. but not for me anyway, i'm not a fan of constantly displayed art in apartments as well as music playing in the background.. i think it would probably end as some kind of aquarium just without the fish. and you can't even feed it.

Art is nothing in itself if not via its relationship with the viewer, cinema, by it’s very nature, is not something that you can put on a wall without transforming it into something else. Not that there’s anything innately wrong with it…as for fishes I’m at the stage where I can keep plants alive, maybe I should move to fishes and eventually have a cat or something J

that's why i put it off so many times. (my plan was to let acquaintances go first and have them tell me if it's bearable, but as it seems everybody had the same plan and nobody did go.)

it's probably weird , but i always take into consideration if i want to encourage or reward the film by paying for a ticket to see it, and this one looked not like a film dealing with a subject as out of bounds as this to draw attention on itself and make the audience talk about it but like a very brave approach that did not expect to do well at the box office.

So, did you enjoy seing it and would you recommend the film?

[everyone else. spoilers.]

when i first saw it in theatre i was overwhelmed. the main reason probably being the intense performance by romain duris, but i also thought that the relations in the film were portrayed very well and nuanced (for lack of a better word), most notably the relation between tom and his father, i almost got the impression i had never seen commonplace relationships portrayed like this. it avoided the cliché very well i found. that impression diminished when i saw it again but the film still managed to impress me. the friend i watched it in theatre with said she found it rather clichéd, it being the same old concept of someone having to decide between art and his immoral old lifestyle, or rather someone being saved by living for his art or falling in love and starting a new better life or.. i don't remember. you can probably reduce the film to one of those clichés (as you always can) but i think it brought some interesting twists to it. e.g. tom wasn't really an artist, you understand he had a sincere affection for music and some talent, but there was no future for him living on art (maybe because he had it not in it from the beginning or it was a missed chance because he chose the wrong lifestyle after his mother died and he started to work for his father, i don't know.), therefor it didn't overstrain that being saved by art from immorality-thing; his developing relation with miao-lin wasn't shown as in your face either (i liked that they had left those two years out of the film completely. you didn't really know what happened after he found his father dead.) and eventually, he wasn't 'saved' at the end. now i talked my head off. what did you think of it? i take it that you have seen it? do you happen to know the american original?

SPOILER ALERT- UNDERLINE TO READ

I’ve never seen the Toback film however I’ve heard it is quite a different animal, quite over the top and emphatic.

I disagree that Tom (?) must choose between art and an immoral lifestyle, especially if you’ve noticed how non-judgmental/non-aligned the filmmaker is toward the main character. I’d say it is more about him being torn between two authority figures he wants to please and finding no fulfillment in that situation. I also concur that the ending is non-conclusive, just like his relationship with his father that gets cut short by exterior events.

 

[Fuuma]

Did this thread die while I was away? *bump*