last movie watched.

Let's talk Aguachile Alley

Postby palmer eldritch » Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:06 pm

Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Smashing the 0-Line (Suzuki, 1960)

It wasn't that long ago that I had basically ran out of Seijun Suzuki movies to watch that had subtitles (except for his two last ones, I always drag my feet on this type of material, I haven't watched Oshima's Taboo either) but thanks to Arrow box sets and some misc. releases and the hard work of someone making custom subs on KG there's now something like 18 more for me to plow on through. I've only seen a few from his 50's period but I've gotten the impression that 1960 was his real turning point, which I suppose I can affirm or not when Passport to Darkness gets subs, but anyhow in 1960 he started off with the very solid noir flick Take Aim at the Police Van and later in the year made the excellent Everything Goes Wrong, a thoroughly new wave picture by my estimation. Between those, he made two other movies, one of which is this one, Smashing the 0-Line. The plot is just nonsense really, does it matter? Two journalists, one of them a goodie goodie and the other repugnantly amoral, try to crack a story about smuggling from Hong Kong, and really there's not much difference between them and detectives other than they show up at the newspaper office once in a while. But the core elements of later Suzuki are present: brilliant camera-eye, chaotic editing, and dark nihilism. I really had trouble keeping up with what's going on because he just moves as fast as possible at all times (can you believe some people think that's a bad thing?). There's one particular scene near the end that reminded me of the famous (is it famous? it is famous to me) smash-cut in Tokyo Drifter where a shootout between the protagonist and a pursuer suddenly cuts to another scene and you're left with no resolution, forced to fill in the gap yourself. Where it lacks in comparison to his later work is that well, the characters here aren't as interesting (and the dialog is perfunctory) and it doesn't have the scenes of expressionistic spectacle that elevated his best movies. Still, I'd have to give it a solid, hell yeah.
User avatar

palmer eldritch
 
Posts: 67481
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:41 pm

Postby palmer eldritch » Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:13 pm

Oh, and as far as new wave shit goes, I think you could make a good case for it. It's even got this really weird sequence where he cuts to the back of a guy's head for a few seconds, for no real reason (he's not even talking at the moment, he stops for the duration of the shot), that really amused me. And then it continues as he gives his monologue to cut to slightly different angles between sentences.

Image
Image
Image

montage
User avatar

palmer eldritch
 
Posts: 67481
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:41 pm

Postby pink snake » Tue Feb 12, 2019 8:40 pm

I just saw all of the Oscar nominated live action shorts. Every one was so dark!
User avatar

pink snake
 
Posts: 8677
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 3:10 pm
Location: Billyburg

Postby mondrary » Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:57 am

julien donkey-boy (1999, dir. harmony korine)
Image
i loved it! the photography was stunning throughout, werner herzog is absolutely hilarious, and the ending is shockingly moving and heartbreaking.

a star is born (2018, dir. bradley cooper)
Image
i thought it was good. a bit standard and the end is a little Too Much (although i like the last shot), but overall i liked the spin it put on this Age-Old Story and cooper's direction was surprisingly good. i found it hard to understand much of cooper and elliott's dialogue and was finding myself just sort of hoping i could infer what was happening. not my Favourite (Lmao...) of the best picture noms i've seen so far, but i think i've only seen three or four at this point.

fitzcarraldo (1982, dir. werner herzog)
Image
pretty good, although it definitely feels its length. the sheer determination of klaus kinski's character in this completely absurd scheme is enough to push the film through.

repulsion (1965, dir. roman polanski)
Image
took me a bit to fully embrace but by the end i was into it. some of the imagery, especially the hands coming out of the wall, was really striking and freaky.

maps to the stars (2014, dir. david cronenberg)
Image
damn, i loved this. immediately one of my favorite cronenbergs. such a compellingly bizarre movie.
TradePascalSiakam Free Kyrie Irving wrote:Hell I tell chicks my middle name
User avatar

mondrary
 
Posts: 7447
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2018 12:38 am

Postby furrowed brow » Wed Feb 13, 2019 3:39 am

The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo, 2018) - This one is wild. Felt way over its runtime in a good way. Maggie Gyllenhaal is great (what a talented pair of siblings huh). Umm, idk what to even say about this one, which is more or less to say that if I don't restrain myself I might write way too much about it, including a lot of criticisms. Anyway I pretty much love this movie. The tension in some of its scenes is really something. Idk, just see this thing, you might not like it and i'd even expect it to be divisive to some degree, but still it's worth watching, at least.
furrowed brow
 
Posts: 14169
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:45 pm

Postby mellowgold » Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:25 am

I really liked The Kindergarten Teacher it placed just outside my top 10 of 2018. Maggie Gyllenhaal is just so damn good in it! one of the best performances of the year. The last 15 min kinda sunk the movie for me a bit. ive had this pic saved on my phone for months now.

Image
wimbledon, strawberries, bubbles, please protect me. happy midsumma, hope you spend it in your heart, everyone is there. bitch.
User avatar

mellowgold
congrats on making 10,000 gay posts bb
 
Posts: 28819
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 4:25 pm
Location: 0 feet away

Postby landspeedrecord » Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:39 am

great post, palmer

I haven't seen nearly any of suzuki's work before 1960, I should check some of those. weirdly, I saw passport to darkness a few years ago as part of a suzuki retro that ran. classic premise, striking photography; frank depiction of sex, drugs & crime. the plot is garbage, but it's all about the style
rather be an idiot than a sheeple
User avatar

landspeedrecord
 
Posts: 18862
Joined: Sun Jan 03, 2010 8:06 am
Location: queens

Postby furrowed brow » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:05 am

mellowgold wrote:I really liked The Kindergarten Teacher it placed just outside my top 10 of 2018. Maggie Gyllenhaal is just so damn good in it! one of the best performances of the year. The last 15 min kinda sunk the movie for me a bit. ive had this pic saved on my phone for months now.

Image


lol, good pic. yeah the ending is a little on the nose maybe. a subtler direction may have been better. idk, i'm going to have to let this one sit with me (and maybe watch again) before I say much more.
furrowed brow
 
Posts: 14169
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:45 pm

Postby internetfriend » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:07 am

maps to the stars owns
iambic wrote:no don't make those posts

Zarathustra wrote:"I am a libertarian at the global level, conservative at country level, centrist at city level, socialist in my neighbourhood level, communist in my family"
User avatar

internetfriend
pubg survivalist
 
Posts: 29993
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 3:47 pm
Location: jikan desu!

Postby inmate » Wed Feb 13, 2019 1:12 pm

the kindergarten teacher made me profoundly uncomfortable in a way very few movies ever have. it was really good
User avatar

inmate
 
Posts: 3687
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 5:05 pm

Postby furrowed brow » Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:36 pm

I really wanna know what happens to Becca, and how Lisa getting her shitcanned from her nanny job will affect her career in, umm, acting.Toggle Spoiler
Last edited by furrowed brow on Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
furrowed brow
 
Posts: 14169
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:45 pm

Postby tricksforchips » Wed Feb 13, 2019 8:45 pm

Image
High Flying Bird, Soderbergh

Honestly it was a pretty riveting film due to the great script and cast but I just don't understand why he used the iPhone. The film looks like a student film with big named actors. Could have been improved dramatically and would have a lasting effect if it actually had decent cinematography. It didn't even do anything creatively with the technology -- just plopped it in front of actors with some of the worst framing I've seen in a long time.
User avatar

tricksforchips
 
Posts: 7575
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:21 pm

Postby Fr. Blanc » Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:06 pm

There was an interview posted today in the Soderbergh/high flying bird thread where he talks about the benefits of shooting that way - mainly logistics and opening up the possibility to happen upon new locations. Not to mention the fact the movie wouldn’t have gotten made if there was a large unwieldy crew
User avatar

Fr. Blanc
 
Posts: 15055
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:24 am

Postby tricksforchips » Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:46 pm

Franco wrote:There was an interview posted today in the Soderbergh/high flying bird thread where he talks about the benefits of shooting that way - mainly logistics and opening up the possibility to happen upon new locations. Not to mention the fact the movie wouldn’t have gotten made if there was a large unwieldy crew

Yeah, Soderbergh has long given interviews like this and talked about the democratization of cinema and that's why he uses the iPhone... also its ease of use. But it's not like digital cinema outside of the iPhone entirely requires massive crews. It's all so advanced. Anyone with basic camera knowledge can operate a RED or an Alexa Mini or even a Blackmagic camera. They all look infinitely better than an iPhone even in natural light.

The film cost 5 million dollars to make, having 3 camera assistants wouldn't break the bank. If you're talking about the democratization of cinema, you should make a movie with an iPhone for 50$. As far as I'm concerned, if your budget is that high, you are using the iPhone as a gimmick and that's it -- even if you say otherwise. It's posturing.
User avatar

tricksforchips
 
Posts: 7575
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:21 pm

Postby Fr. Blanc » Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:57 pm

Outside of that (because I was more than fine with the look and feel) I think there’s also something to what he said about the effect it has on the performances. That a minimal set up has a way of inspiring something new in actors.
User avatar

Fr. Blanc
 
Posts: 15055
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:24 am

Postby creedence tapes » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:08 pm

Ok hold on the kindergarten teacher was trash, explain yourselves
creedence tapes
 
Posts: 4628
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:27 pm

Postby tricksforchips » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:12 pm

Franco wrote:Outside of that (because I was more than fine with the look and feel) I think there’s also something to what he said about the effect it has on the performances. That a minimal set up has a way of inspiring something new in actors.

But this isn't new or interesting, to me. And it's not like there isn't OTHER set up around. You have extras, tons of actors, set designers, PAs, etc. I guess I just don't buy it. Good actors can tune out a huge set, anyways. If you're talking about working with non-professionals who are not comfortable on a film set, then that's a different story. I think a film like Tangerine did way more interesting things with the iPhone than High Flying Bird did. Like clearly this was a way to showcase the capabilities of the actual device, but it still looked terrible lol.
User avatar

tricksforchips
 
Posts: 7575
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:21 pm

Postby Fr. Blanc » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:24 pm

I definitely agree re: Tangerine. I’ve had lesser but similar senses of immediacy and involvement from this and Unsane though. Definitely not looking for it to be an industry or SS standard but the bare bones vibe comes across and is interesting to me warts and all.
User avatar

Fr. Blanc
 
Posts: 15055
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:24 am

Postby groupb » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:27 pm

imagine daniel day lewis acting in front of an iphone, confused
User avatar

groupb
 
Posts: 77382
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 3:32 pm

Postby tricksforchips » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:27 pm

I guess I just feel like it's disingenuous for a director to call a 5 million dollar film "bare-bones" or whatever term he actually used for it.
User avatar

tricksforchips
 
Posts: 7575
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:21 pm

Postby Fr. Blanc » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:38 pm

Fair point. I don’t remember how he’s classifying it exactly off hand, more describing my experience.
User avatar

Fr. Blanc
 
Posts: 15055
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:24 am

Postby Fr. Blanc » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:39 pm

creedence tapes wrote:Ok hold on the kindergarten teacher was trash, explain yourselves


It’s a good low key horror movie actually. What is the problem
User avatar

Fr. Blanc
 
Posts: 15055
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:24 am

Postby furrowed brow » Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:42 pm

creedence tapes wrote:Ok hold on the kindergarten teacher was trash, explain yourselves


okay but you have to go first.
furrowed brow
 
Posts: 14169
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:45 pm

Postby neely o'hara » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:01 pm

tricksforchips wrote:
Franco wrote:There was an interview posted today in the Soderbergh/high flying bird thread where he talks about the benefits of shooting that way - mainly logistics and opening up the possibility to happen upon new locations. Not to mention the fact the movie wouldn’t have gotten made if there was a large unwieldy crew

Yeah, Soderbergh has long given interviews like this and talked about the democratization of cinema and that's why he uses the iPhone... also its ease of use. But it's not like digital cinema outside of the iPhone entirely requires massive crews. It's all so advanced. Anyone with basic camera knowledge can operate a RED or an Alexa Mini or even a Blackmagic camera. They all look infinitely better than an iPhone even in natural light.

The film cost 5 million dollars to make, having 3 camera assistants wouldn't break the bank. If you're talking about the democratization of cinema, you should make a movie with an iPhone for 50$. As far as I'm concerned, if your budget is that high, you are using the iPhone as a gimmick and that's it -- even if you say otherwise. It's posturing.

even the most basic camera package can become unwieldy and expensive, and more so when you add in grip equipment, dollies, cranes. DPs love to add in as much expensive/bulky equipment as they possibly can - i don't blame them, but they can easily sink a budget and eat up time on set.

i don't love soderbergh's iphone cinematography (haven't seen high flying bird, thought unsane looked OK), but he clearly knows the exact money value of paying a 1st AC to pull focus vs. poking a screen and instantly doing it. and i think someone working at soderbergh's level (vs. gritty non-union indie filmmaking) has to make very bold decisions if they want to not get bogged down by the built-in costs of using experienced labor.
User avatar

neely o'hara
 
Posts: 2014
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:26 pm

Postby creedence tapes » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:24 pm

Fair enough. I watched it with someone who works with children who are often developmentally disabled, emotionally challenged or have very insecure home lives. They pointed out that the movie sets up a lot of very convenient ways to avoid showing what would realistically happen were that kid to be displaying some of the tendencies they had. Obviously, yea, this could happen, and does, kids don’t get the help they need all the time. But the movie wants to tell a very specific version of that story that foregrounds a supremely self-involved character whose pretentious ass midlife crisis eclipses any other point the movie was trying to make. Like it took a completely silent teachers aid character, a clueless babysitter, a confusingly portrayed single dad, and at least one supremely dumb parent of a classmate to allow this plot to happen. To me, that says the movie was way more concerned with emperors new clothes literary world jabs, turn your stomach but ultimately toothless pedophilia baiting (which is supposed to be the low key horror you’re referring to?), and maybe a bit of private school send-up then engaging with the Macguffin of a child they wrote. Fuck all this, what’s the point.

Maggie G is fine in it, but the wardrobe and the Subaru she drives are more cliche then the rich details the movie thinks they are. The whole thing felt very impressed with itself for setting up a a taut slow-burner but really the strings being pulled are way too visible.
creedence tapes
 
Posts: 4628
Joined: Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:27 pm

Postby furrowed brow » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:50 pm

lol, good post. Yeah, I was going to pass over the central premise entirely because I'm not on the spectrum and I don't know anything about it, but yeah, the plot is very regressive in that way. The "low key horror movie" comment I assume refers to how this is a movie about someone who is batshit insane. The film plays with our expectations of Hollywood films; it sets us up for a supremely unrealistic savior story, dripping with emotional manipulation and self-impressed controversy-baiting pontifications and then it pulls the rug out from under us and exposes the perverse core of its character/itself. The amount of self-awareness this movies has is key in whether or not it is a triumph or a disaster; you decide how generous you'll be with the filmmakers.
Last edited by furrowed brow on Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
furrowed brow
 
Posts: 14169
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:45 pm

Postby furrowed brow » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:55 pm

You're right about a lot of things lining up to make the ending possible but I think her aid and Becca are realistically characterized and believable.
furrowed brow
 
Posts: 14169
Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:45 pm

Postby naturemorte » Thu Feb 14, 2019 4:59 am

About to fly out of Berlin after my first Berlinale. I ended up sticking almost entirely to the Retrospective, Forum and Forum Expanded programs which was probably a mistake--I'm getting super tired of bog-standard "experimental" films and toothless political documentaries. The dominant modes are just SO dominant--revisiting earlier political histories through unusual archives, landscapes with voiceovers, "spontaneous" 16mm footage of beautiful people, and drones, so many fucking drones...Feel like I did a lot of running to stand still overall--hitting five or six programs per day, of which maybe one or two didn't feel like mistakes. I wish I was a little more adventurous when it comes to going blind into the Panorama section stuff, but bland arthouse shit drives me up the wall too.

Anyway, the Schanelec is the only thing I saw that felt like a masterpiece, and I was very cool on The Dreamed Path. Heimat Is A Space In Time, a 4-hour essay film that rehearses the last century of East/German history (through landscape shots and personal archives!) is pretty good, but the visual motifs (crowds! trains! ruins! more trains, and more still!) are more than exhausted by the end. Bait was good, but is smashing the novelty buttons (it's shot with black-and-white 16mm, hand-processed, and edited like a Pudovkin film or something) really hard for what is narratively a die-stamped British Class Politics movie. "Just Don't Think I'll Scream" is an interesting found-footage film made mostly out of insert shots from obscure films--the only thing I consciously recognized was "Funeral Parade of Roses". I most hipinion members would, like me, identify deeply with the film's subject, about the difficulty of excavating oneself from out of the self-constructed caves of media, weed and despair we constuct to shield ourselves from the shittiness of the current moment, but that's what makes it kind of uninteresting as found footage. Every shot relates primarily to the narration and to the emotional identification of the narrator with that image, and so thee images rarely interact with one another in meaningful or challenging ways. Of the new films I saw, only Ute Aurand's "Rushing Green with Horses" really made me think in any exciting way--i think I need to write something about it. If the older films I saw, Marta Meszaros' "Adoption" was the only knockout for me.
chad wrote:"How can I make this about me and also congratulate myself in some way" - basically every hipinion bro
User avatar

naturemorte
 
Posts: 7428
Joined: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:57 pm
Location: maxine's parlour

Postby Fr. Blanc » Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:52 am

Re: Kindergarten Teacher. I used “horror” as a reference to Lisa’s increasingly blinding quest to chase this one thing, no matter the consequences or criminality. This is a dangerous place to be as a viewer when expected actions and circumstances start to not line up and the nature of her obsession is not fully revealed.

I also, admittedly, used “horror” as a lazy shorthand way of saying “I forgive the movie’s imperfections because once they present Lisa’s ride, that’s where I am, so let’s see where they want to land this plane.”

There was enough to Lisa and why she may have been that way that to me graduated out of a simple midlife crisis. But to creedence’s point, i could see those details lacking and the systemic depiction too unrealistic if you were thinking about them more than I was. Or more than the movie was, perhaps to its detriment.
User avatar

Fr. Blanc
 
Posts: 15055
Joined: Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:24 am

Postby tricksforchips » Thu Feb 14, 2019 7:00 am

neely o'hara wrote:
tricksforchips wrote:
Franco wrote:There was an interview posted today in the Soderbergh/high flying bird thread where he talks about the benefits of shooting that way - mainly logistics and opening up the possibility to happen upon new locations. Not to mention the fact the movie wouldn’t have gotten made if there was a large unwieldy crew

Yeah, Soderbergh has long given interviews like this and talked about the democratization of cinema and that's why he uses the iPhone... also its ease of use. But it's not like digital cinema outside of the iPhone entirely requires massive crews. It's all so advanced. Anyone with basic camera knowledge can operate a RED or an Alexa Mini or even a Blackmagic camera. They all look infinitely better than an iPhone even in natural light.

The film cost 5 million dollars to make, having 3 camera assistants wouldn't break the bank. If you're talking about the democratization of cinema, you should make a movie with an iPhone for 50$. As far as I'm concerned, if your budget is that high, you are using the iPhone as a gimmick and that's it -- even if you say otherwise. It's posturing.

even the most basic camera package can become unwieldy and expensive, and more so when you add in grip equipment, dollies, cranes. DPs love to add in as much expensive/bulky equipment as they possibly can - i don't blame them, but they can easily sink a budget and eat up time on set.

i don't love soderbergh's iphone cinematography (haven't seen high flying bird, thought unsane looked OK), but he clearly knows the exact money value of paying a 1st AC to pull focus vs. poking a screen and instantly doing it. and i think someone working at soderbergh's level (vs. gritty non-union indie filmmaking) has to make very bold decisions if they want to not get bogged down by the built-in costs of using experienced labor.

Soderbergh already shoots all of his stuff himself, regardless of whether it's an iPhone or not. In recent years he IS the camera crew. He IS the DP. When you're working with a 5 million dollar budget, the cost/benefit does not really matter for the types of films Soderbergh is making.

I disagree that the most basic camera package can become unwieldy. Sure, if you go all out you will need assistants. And I'm sure Soderbergh even had one for the iPhone (making sure the app is working right, cleaning the lens, etc). It's easy to leave that out of the narrative. But the RED is a very easy to use camera. For reference, I'm shooting my new documentary on a RED weapon. We're a three person crew. Soderbergh shot RED on Side Effects and was DP and cam-op.

If he just said "I like the images that the iPhone makes" I wouldn't have so much of an issue with his use of the iPhone. Instead he uses it as a platform to talk about the democratization of cinema and that is not what he's doing with his films as the budget he's working with is completely inaccessible to most up-and-coming filmmakers.
User avatar

tricksforchips
 
Posts: 7575
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 1:21 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Aguachile Alley

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: A-Ok, apostrophe, Architecture, Brother Kenny, buttre, dr. dark, dragon jeans, Eyeball Kid, Google [Bot], mariko-juku, mynameisdan, papi chulo, Parson Floogle, Poptone, ruiner, trampoline, worrywort and 104 guests