I just saw “The Art Life”, the recent documentary about David Lynch. It did precisely 100% of the stylistic cliches that have come to define the “generic documentary about a subject people care about” formula in 2017. At one point the camera literally hovers over Lynch’s shoulder as he thumbs through old photographs and reminisces about his childhood. Right before the credits, there’s a cheesy Aftereffects animation of one of his poems.
I understand why filmmakers use this formula - with this kind of documentary, you want the subject to be the star of the show, not the filmmaker. You don’t want to distract the viewer with anything too original or showy. I get it but I don’t agree, I’d pretty much always rather see something original in form, and it’s possible to innovate without distracting if you do so in a way that’s faithful to what makes your subject special.
All that aside, the film was a lot of fun to watch because David Lynch is always incredibly funny and charismatic on screen. You even see him cursing up a storm at one point. It startled me a lot, since part of his mystique is his unexpected wholesomeness.
Hmmm. I think if you look at who I’ve followed in chronological order the first bunch are SB people: https://letterboxd.com/rjt/following/page/2/ (and some others on the first page).
SICARIO is v good, struck by the visual language of surveillance, v hito steyerl, but also how it structurally carries the sicario within itself, as the cia op does
I feel ambivalent about Ingrid Goes West. It’s roughly the same premise as Welcome to Me but it shows its main character in a less sympathetic light while also playing up the mental illness. It does have a gag left out of the trailers that made me laugh out loud every time: O’Shea Jackson Jr.'s character is really into Schumacher-era Batman and does Batman sex role play .
Probably worth a watch if severe mental illness isn’t a content issue for you.
just wanted to complain about the god awful headline of this review in case anyone sees it and gets the wrong idea. pilgrimage is a valhalla rising style movie with jon bernthal instead of mads mikkelsen as a mute and monks instead of vikings and not as good.
Do the extra 50 minutes or so of footage in the redux version of Apocalypse Now make it worth watching over the original theatrical cut? It occurs to me I’ve never seen this movie from start to finish and I was wondering which version to watch.
I mean I’m glad I saw REDUX on the BIG SCREEN back when it was first released but I’d recommend the original over the revision. Hit redux up some time down the road if it turns out you’re a real hungry apocahead jonesing to see even more footage of Martin Sheen’s glassy stare.
There’s a scene in redux where fuel is traded for sex with a couple of the playboy bunnies which is stunning in its’ misogyny and made me furious when i first saw it. That’s the worst example but really every redux ‘addition’ diminishes the film considerably.
The redux was the version I saw first, and I think that probably had a negative affect on my opinion of it at the time. Wasn’t until years later when I watched the original version that I could see why people loved it so much
the original the blob ends with them dropping it in the arctic all “that takes care of that, as long as the arctic stays cold” THE END? so what a boneheaded move to do a remake instead of a sequel
