While Ran was probably his most “wholesome” film, I was blown away by High and Low. It’s a thriller with social commentary underpinning it. Kurosawa does a masterly job keeping the pace going. I was pleasantly surprised to see such a film from him.
Poor, poor, you! 
To those who mentioned “Magnolia” above…I could not agree more.
A good friend made me sit through that horror. Needless to say, it made me wonder about that friendship. It overreached so hard it tore itself asunder. I felt, through nearly ever minute of it, that I was witnessing an excruciating trainwreck, unfolding before my eyes in torturous slow motion. Boringly painful and painfully boring all at once. And the way it wastes talent! From Aimee Mann to Jason Robards, none are spared the degradation of giving 110% for the opportunity to flail madly in a sea of fecal quicksand (this happens most egregiously to Julianne Moore). The frogs. The braces. The idiot cop and his junky crush. Tom Cruise’s dick. Listening to a (truly) dying Robards say “cocksucker” too many times. The fucking god-awful sing along. Putting Macy and Hoffman in the same goddamn movie…
There need to be laws and fines to address such malignant creations, or warning labels at the very least.
Oh, you’re so right that Magnolia was “felony grade shite” - but I rented it from the video store, not only because there were so many good actors in it, but because it had got rave reviews in those movie magazines.
This begs the question - do the reviewers even watch the movies - or do they take payoffs from studios and write what they’re told??? While they’re not responsible for the making of these awful movies, I doubt if so many would be made if reviewers actually told the truth - I’ve never seen a review that said - 'This movie is a great cure for insomnia" or “Watching this movie is like getting teeth pulled”. Quite a few movies mentioned in this thread have been nominated for Oscars - or have even won them!!
So, if we can’t trust reviewers to write the warning labels for these “malignant creations” - who would be honest enough to write them??
I found it more puzzling in its presentation than pretentious. It seemed to have been written as a comedy, yet acted in as though it were a somber drama. That was rather disconcerting. I’d almost like to see what a comedic version of it would be like.
I first encountered sexy female computers through my favorite artform, hentai. In films like “Custom Slave” and “Fragile Hearts” we had androids built to look exactly like hot babes, for one purpose, and they fulfilled that purpose in many ways, the end.
But there seems to be non-adult anime and anime that are on the fringes of being adult that feature sexy females who happen to be computers. Buttobi CPU (which I haven’t seen yet, only read about) would be one that apparently has a female computer that does some raunchy things, but it’s not really a hentai in the sense that there seems to be a lot of plot relating to the protagonist’s development as a person as well. (Japanese ratings of “adultness” re: sexuality don’t really reflect American values in this regard, so it’s hard to get a grasp).
I’ve also read about a popular series called Chobits that’s the equivalent of G-rated that also features very attractive female computers. That is, they ARE computers as I understand it. I haven’t seen “Chobits” either (it’s hard to get to the kid stuff when there’s so much good adult stuff crying out for attention ) but as I understand it, there’s no sex beyond maybe some smooching, mostly the robot just relates to the main character.
So, do the Japanese fetishize their computers that much? At least in the hentai, the androids are described as androids and not as “computers.” Is it the dream of a lot of Japanese guys that they’ll some day look at porn on the Web via naked woman? (OK, sounds like fun, but still weird.) Are Japanese guys having that much trouble relating to real women that they have a strong fantasy of having a totally compliant CPU in womanly form around? (OK, I have my moments in this respect, too, I suspect every guy does, but they’re just moments, they’re not enough to lead to a string of programs about totally compliant CPUs in womanly form).
In the U.S. there was a TV series that would have fit comfortably in this category called “My Living Doll” in which Julie Newmar played a sexy android and Bob Cummings was supposed to, oh, fuck her or something to convince her she’s human. But there weren’t whole rafts of series like it, that I know of, which I think would be the equivalent to all the robot CPU anime in Japan.
So, does anybody have any guesses about what’s going on over there? And what’s the deal with Chobits? Why a sexy female computer aimed for a market in which it can’t be all that sexy?
Sorry, guys, I meant to start a new thread with the preceding post. It is, of course, completely off topic. Please disregard it.
You ought to check out a Roger Ebert book called I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. It’s an anthology of 30 years’ worth of reviews of movies he absolutely despised. A lot of movies are bad, but very few merit real vitriol, a la “This film should be cut up to make free ukelele picks for the poor.”
I tend not to pick apart films. There are plenty of films that I’ve seen where the layers and subtext aren’t so hidden from me, generally because I’ve thought about the issues before and so I don’t have to puzzle through what is going on or rewatching the film. These are the kind of thinking films I like, because I don’t spend time picking apart films. I like purely entertaining films more. The reason is that I don’t have the money to spend on rewatching and purchasing movies. Books are cheaper, and I enjoy long clever sentences, so my intellectual entertainment of choice is written not filmed.
That said there have been movies I’ve seen that I got and thought didn’t understand the material they were interested in or had less substance beneath the surface than would have been indicated. Because of the cost of seeing a movie I rarely dislike movies I see (making cognitive dissoance work for you) if only because one or two interesting things can be focused on and hashed out into a more interesting idea (“So did the cops know internal affairs was setting them up the whole time?” “There was nothing like that in this movie!”).
I liked Memento but felt that it lacked depth and understanding of the issues it was bringing in to make an interesting story. That’s fine, it is true of most stories and I was willing to accept the unreality of the situation because I liked a lot of what was going on.
Fight Club was mildly interesting but I think it works mostly when looking at the change from bored average guys seeking a thrill to sociopath army. The entire Tyler/Narrator thing is ill conceived, implemented poorly and produces an ending that is unsatisfying to me because it pulls away from the most interesting things the movie was doing previously. I suspect people who loved the Tyler/Narrator relationship and spent time thinking about the movie from that point of view liked the ending, and movie, a lot more than I did.
The only movie I truly hate and that I would call pretentious without qualifying things is Waking Life. I found no redeeming qualities in this movie. The philosophy spouted is the “Summaraize the cliff notes!” version of interesting questions and ideas in philosophy. It is delivered in lines that are straight forward and are more like an essay than dialogue. Clever turns of phrases and interesting phrasings of stripped down philosophy could have convinced me to watch the movie all the way through. As it was I had to stop around the guy in jail. The movie gave the impression of listening to failed philosophy majors with no conversational skills.
I’m surprised that with all the times a Greenway film has come up in this thread (and I don’t think ever in a positive light) that no one mentioned Eight and a Half Women. I’m not saying I’d nominate it, as I can’t at all claim to get it, but it is Peter Greenway, and he’s so blatantly referencing Fellini that I’d expect someone to.
I’ll second erislover on Memento, though. Enjoyable, yes, but IMHO, more gimmick than real depth.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Proof that interior decorators should not be allowed to make movies.
Rushmore, Rushmore, Rushmore… oh and one more for Rushmore. Aaaaaaargh! My friends who watched with me put me on “Video Probation” for 2 months after I rented this one.
Well, after my successful entry, City of Angels, (thanks to those who correctly IDed the film), I present another called Fire, which fits right into the “I am making a profound movie that breaks down barriers by dealing with social taboos” genre of pretentious film-making.
While the concept was interesting, the one-dimensional characters (especially the men), the contrived plot, the exaggerated drama (almost satiric) and the meaningless and inconsistent allusions to mythology all play a key part in rendering this flick ultra-pretentious.
I have no idea why there is this fascination with anarchist film-making. Just because a film does something not done before (an Indian lesbian story, for example), it doesn’t necessarily make it a good film. Hollywood does this repeatedly where they make their own rules, (as in create their own taboos), and then in a climate when the rules don’t mean much, some film will break it, and everyone will applaud!
Re: Woody Allen: while his films are pretentious in some aspects, the quality of humor redeems most of them.
Haw. I LOVE Zabriskie Point. And Solyaris, so you’re half right.
Happiness. Yes, I get that the movie is called Happiness and everyone in it is miserable. It still made me physically ill, and I think the writer or director or whoever got so wrapped up in the shock factor that they ended up just making a horrible, horrible, HOR-RI-BLE movie. It was a long time before I could enjoy William H. Macy in anything again. What was even worse was the friend who rented it did so because she said she thought I, of all people, would love it. What the hell does that say about me???
Wow, that IS a violent reaction. Macy wasn’t even in that movie . . .
For what it’s worth, that movie is a comedy.
Would Ilsa, or someone else talking about movies’ “subtext” care to list a few movies they think have it, and what the subtext (briefly) is? I was thinking of about this last night when I couldn’t sleep and I came to two conclusions. Either a. I can’t honestly think of any movies that have subtext Or b. I’m not sure what people in this thread mean by “subtext.”
Do you mean something along the lines of " While the plot of movie A is about X,Y and Z, it’s also a metaphor for/statement about W?" or something completely different? If this is what you mean, than I stick with A. I can easily think of poems that fit this bill (ex. Her Kind by Anne Sexton is on the surface about a woman who is accused of witchery, but also a statement about society’s fear of strong outspoken individuals, especially women, and the need to crush them) but not too many movies that are more than their surfaces. That could just be cynicism and lack of sleep though, and I may well agree with movies people list as example.
Hmm. Howbout, first example that occurs to me, The Crucible, ostensibly about the Salem Witch Trials; subtext: the McCarthy hearings. Or, more open to debate but just as an illustration, The Birds, ostensibly about, well, birds; subtext: the terror of female sexuality. Or howbout The Godfather, with its intertwined subtexts regarding Family and Business?
Okay, I’m completely confused. I swore that he was the pedophile father, I can see him in my mind as clear as day, but I checked the cast and you’re right, he’s not in it. I only saw it once, and that was more than enough for me. Well, at any rate, I still hate it. And if you think it’s a comedy well…I guess, more power to you. I, myself, crack up when I watch Bloodsucking Freaks, so I’m not one to talk. Personally, pedophilia doesn’t tickle my funny bone, but whatever.
Johnny Guitar. Ostensibly about a gunslinger and a saloon keeper in the West; subtext: McCarthyism.
Definitely not a movie aimed at the wider market. My take on it was not that it was making light of pedophilia, but more like it was kind of pointing out the oddness of what attracts and/or repels us, and the odd way we react to those things. Way vague, I know; but I didn’t see the movie as being about those *particular people * in those particular situations; more about all of us generally, and how difficult it is to understand each other, and the odd and often dark humor that can arise out of those kinds of miscommunications and misunderstandings. More vague? About the ridiculousness of being human; about how ridiculous an overwhelmingly serious situation can be, and vice versa.