Phantasm 2 was ok, preferred the first one. There’s a surprising amount of directionless travelling sequences overlaid by voiceovers (from three different characters!) which gives kind of the feeling of having been edited together from like, a longrunning but sadly nonexistent tv show about these two doofuses roaming the country to fight balls in small towns. Increasingly distracted by how much Reggie resembles Chris Crawford. There are some good parts, I enjoyed the part where they’re talking about something while having a piss by the side of the road and the whole conversation is set to these loud continuous pissing sfx. All the focus on practical traps is kind of endearing as well. It makes sense that they leave a bunch of guns behind and load up on hammers from a supply store instead since it’s pretty consistently implied that hammers and power tools are the coolest things in the world.
After Last Season is great because it’s like set in a world where the concept of “decoration” was never invented. The closest anyone came was stapling blank pieces of printer paper onto the walls at random, or possibly leaving large undecorated cardboard boxes around for no reason. It’s sort of like the perverse doppelganger of a modernist art aesthetic except instead of a pristine white cube you get the whole universe being the basement of an office depot. And instead of being cryptic and allusive all the dialogue is like, the impressively inane and completely joyless smalltalk you find in language textbooks (and real life!!). It’s so funny that even when they start the thought-visualisation experiment, human consciousness is portrayed as… untextured 3d cubes spinning around a void!! The music is also very inspiring.
i like how the Safdie Bros really nail specific New York archetypes. in Good Time, they have a great study of your typical Queens/Long Island dirtbag; a type i went to high school with (they even shoot on location at my local childhood amusement park).
in this, even though i don’t really hang out with Howie types irl, i’ve been to houses like his on Long Island. i’ve been to dumb midtown clubs because someone put me on list for some secret show i don’t remember anymore. the rush and tension that exists when you’re dealing with shady people and money is involved. they really capture it all so well.
overall, pretty good movie! i had a fun time and it wasn’t as stressful as i thought it might be. also, they really fooled me at the end; i thought Howie was gonna make it out. poor guy.
also lol, wow, 0PN really did just rip off the Akira soundtrack for that one song.
yeah i mean i like 0PN a lot and it doesn’t bother me, but in the movie, at least, it sounds almost indistinguishable from the original (the vocals aren’t saying character names at least, although it WOULD be really funny if it were all just Uncut Gems character names being chanted)
yeah when we saw it i was thinking like “lmao this is literally just music from Akira” and then the song got weirder and I was like hell yeah okay I’m into this
Hanagatami is probably my favorite movie of the 2010’s. Check it out if you want to see Obayashi using all his psychotronic mania and visual flair in an arty, tragic mode.
The story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan’s feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.
rewatching shin godzilla today, i am pretty surprised that i seem to like it more and more each time i’ve been watching it.
I kinda wish that there’ll be a movie doing the same thing with what’s going on atm, and how most countries fxxked it up, i. e. reacting properly/in time. Also, didn’t know that it supposedly managed to clinch #1 of all japanese gojira movies to date, which is… not bad, considering the 28 predecessors.
Guns of the Navarone is trying to be an early “team movie”. It has some philosophic dialogs that kind of don’t go anywhere because in the end half the cast dies for seemingly no reason. It felt like things happen because of the machinations of the plot where the first half is more about “what am I going to do about MY PROBLEMS” which is what I want in a team/heist movie.
so then seeing Anthony Quinn in Lawrence of Arabia was a surprise! Hey AQ. Finally sitting down to see one of the big ones. The breathe and scope of a lot of the shots made me want to vomit. How the hell do you even do that. Lawrence is…not as compelling as I would have hoped. He is so…middle distance pensive. Also Obi-Wan Kenobi in brown face! I sure did like looking at all that desert and seeing a shot of 300 extras and going “costumes.” Strangely in comparison to say 1917 I was more enamored with the filmmaking (on a hilltop a mile away watching a charge and there is ONLY men on horse back in the 10 miles wide shot), than the story.
I know part of it is building and deconstructing a myth but for being with him the whole movie I was so distant from Lawrence. Like clearly an inspiration and you know 50 years after Alexander I felt like I got an understanding of the character and wanted to see it again. Maybe I just don’t like characters that are consumed with self-loathing!
There’s Rudie’s hot take: Alexander better than Lawrence of Arabia!
I watched Wild Goose Lake and it ruled. I’m very pleased that, between Jia Zhangke, Bi Gan, and this, south-central/southwest China is getting great representation. I was talking about this with my partner, openly wondering why so many films have been set around this region. Two things came to mind: the scenery and the unique class conflicts that occur. Compared to the relatively wealthy coastline, the situation in the interior is more uncertain and precarious.
I can feel the muggy slime caking the edges where the walls meet the ground, smell the peppery haze that rolls through the streets, hear the toads croaking. It’s a mystical atmosphere at times. The plants seem to be at war with the city and it’s not clear which side is winning. I’m not joking when I say I wish I was back in Chongqing right now. I digress.
The conditions in these areas aren’t stable. As much as the central government tries to organize the region, informal economies thrive at the periphery. It’s exactly this conflict that Wild Goose Lake focuses on. There is an “Olympics of Theft,” where gangsters compete over who can steal the most bikes. “Bathing beauties” make up a sizable portion of a lake’s economy. Despite the high risks involved, people are struggling to eke out a living.
The way the movie films crowds is remarkable. Each extra is choreographed wonderfully and the film runs through a series of classic noir locations: a zoo, circus, market, pier, nearly everything is covered.
I saw it through “virtual cinema” Film Movement. Maybe you should too!
I watched CATS. It was a musical with kinda bad songs and singing and long stretches of boring dancing, i liked it
It’s weirdly one of the most body positive movies i’ve ever seen, factoring in that everyone is a cat person in cgi cat latex doing fucking bizarre cat person shit
