CS Film Club II

Die Nibelungen (1924)
I’m a pretty big fan of German Expressionism but there are blind spots I have when it comes of early Fritz Lang and his take on Die Nibelungen was certainly one of the bigger ones given that it’s sort of the OG fantasy movie. The film is an adaptation of an ancient German epic poem of the same name which was also (sort of) a source for parts of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas. In fact I long mistook this for being a direct adaptation of that opera… and a silent movie adaptation of an opera seemed like a strange concept which is part of why I didn’t check this thing out years ago, but it’s actually an original adaptation unto itself. The film is split between two parts; “Siegfried,” which was significantly more popular with audiences of the time, and “Kriemhild's Revenge” which is darker and more chaotic. The film starts out feeling like high fantasy of the Conan the Barbarian variety and early on we get the famous battle with a dragon, which… well they tried their best with the special effects on that but man does that dragon’s face not look very ferocious. But there’s a charm to that and the film has this mythic quality along the way. In the second half the film starts to feel less like Lord of the Rings though and it all starts to feel more like Game of Thrones, complete with a focus on court machinations and cycles of revenge. That carries forward to the second film which kind of feels like a nasty war movie and the final revenge feeling kind of empty… it’s not surprising to me that audiences weren’t nearly as interested in that part but I sort of respect it.

The films took a bit of a hit to their reputation in part because, well, this wasn’t intentional on Lang’s part but when the Nazis took over they really liked the movie and used clips from the movie in their propaganda because it was a depiction of ancient German folklore starring this blond dude who likely fit the Aryan ideal. I’m not a fan of the “From Calagari to Hitler” theory but this kind of seems to fit that sort of interpretation more than other German Expressionist examples. I can’t hold that against the movie too much though and there’s a lot to recommend about the whole thing. The sweep and the production values are extremely impressive for 1924 and some of the costumes and character designs (for lack of a better term) feel downright iconic in a way. I don’t know that this really needed to be over four and a half hours long and that second movie especially starts to get a little repetitive at a certain point and it also had a bunch of characters called “huns” which sort of look like orientalist stereotypes, which is kind of uncomfortable. That second half also pretty much stops being high fantasy at all and really just kind of starts feeling like a medieval battle movie to some extent which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but does kind of feel like a bit of a comedown from the first hour of the first movie. All in all though this is a cool set of movies and I’m glad I finally caught up with them.
**** out of Five

Cool.  I haven't actually watched that since college and don't remember it that well, but it is an important canonical bit of French cinema worth watching.

In. I'll try to watch Children of Paradise soon.

I'm in

Children of Paradise

Given its reputation as "the French Gone with the Wind", I was expecting Children of Paradise to be some sort of historical epic, but that isn't really the case. The film is set in 1830s Paris, but rather specifically in the world of theater, telling the story of a beautiful woman named Garance, loved by an actor, a criminal, an aristocrat, and most touchingly, a mime named Baptiste. The big appeal of the film is the multi-faceted characters and their ever-evolving relationships. The romantic drama involving Baptiste, who loves Garance at the expense of Nathalie, the woman who loves him, is the most affecting, in large part due to the excellent performances from Jean-Louis Barrault and María Casares as Baptiste and Nathalie, respectively. The film is also shot with a luminous beauty and director Marcel Carné balances a sprawling love affair full of tragedy with a lot of sly humour too.

It's a hard movie to argue with all told. That said, I'm not sure I quite see the unassailable masterpiece that so many critics and filmmakers seem to see in Children of Paradise. The movie hits nary a false note, and flies by despite its immense runtime, but it also didn't quite fill me with the excitement of a great cinematic achievement. It is, nonetheless, a very well-made movie and the ending is fantastic.

A-

I'm all caught up.

Fast Five (2011)... do I need to bother coming up with three other movies?

Goddammit I forgot again.

PG Cooper

The Court Jester
Strange Days
Love On Delivery
When We Were Kings

Fast Five

*I'm typing this paragraph as I'm watching so I don't forget.  I'm laughing out loud in my seat at the opening 60 seconds where the gang rescues Dominic from his prison transport.  Not only does this bus loaded with federal prisoners have no police escort of any kind, they make the bus crash and flip over several times which would have killed most if not all on board.  What a way to start the movie.  

Alright from here on my thoughts are all post-movie watch and not real time.  We did it, we got to the fifth movie in the seemingly unending Fast and Furious franchise, the movie that from what I understand is the start of where the franchise would eventually go. The introduction of The Rock as Hobbs who seems to almost take over the franchise down the road.  Dom and Brian are at it again now that they're on the lam from pretty much every law enforcement entity in the US.  They wind up in Brazil and team up with Vince from the first movie (I'm amazed with myself that I recognized the guy).  I don't quite remember how things ended with Vince at the end of Fast and Furious #1 but he has set up shop in Rio and coming face to face with the old team he asks 'How does it feel to be on the other side of a wanted poster?'  A normal person would just ask him what it feels like to be ON a wanted poster but whatever, this is Fast Five we're talking about.  Anyways, they plan a heist, they're double crossed and find themselves in the crosshairs of not only Rio's top criminal Reyes but also Luke Hobbs, a hard hitting, hard talking agent who tries to find Dom and Brian by any means necessary.  Rather than fleeing the country like any smart person would, Dom and Brian instead plan a massive heist to steal all of Reyes' money even though there's not really much of a reason.  I mean, revenge I guess?  But he didn't really do anything that dastardly to them.  No matter, they call some people from earlier movies, set up an Ocean's Eleven type score and leave a path of pure destruction in their wake.

When my eyes first passed by 'Fast Five' as my recommendation for this round I tried to quickly think back to the other movies from the franchise that I've watched previously and quickly realized how much I've already forgotten.  They all seemed to blend in after a little while and at the time I was only 4 movies deep.  I was hoping Fast Five would do something to stand out a bit and I suppose in a way it does.  Not only was it a more heist-centric movie but it also seemed to poke fun at itself.  I enjoyed the bit where Brian and Dom show up to the street racing scene with the stock booty shorts and sports cars.  Initially I rolled my eyes thinking that this movie was going to shoehorn in another one of these but then it hard cuts to Brian driving the car they won into their garage, no race necessary.  They also made this movie much, much more violent and action-centric compared to the other films.  This one is replete with people getting machine gunned down or blown up and the ending heist is filled with pure chaos leaving a ton of money on screen.  I can't imagine how many millions of dollars and and the number of cars they must have gone through to shoot that scene but Fast Five feels like it's trying to up the ante in terms of action.  Not to say that it's necessarily better because it's still a very silly movie.  If you weren't thinking that it was super silly for the first 80% of the movie then the point would really be driven home when Dom and Brian drag an entire vault all around the streets of Rio using it to cut cars, trees, concrete barriers and entire buildings in half.  Even when the movie is trying to make the franchise more dark and serious it feels like it's winking at you at the same time.  The fact that Vin Diesel has some strange smirk when he delivers every single line is reason enough that we still aren't taking things that seriously.  That said though, this is without a doubt the best of the first five movies.  There's at least some effort here and it's night and day different compared to the movies in the franchise that came out just a few years prior.

Alright Drac, we're good until 2024.  And color me relieved to know that nobody died in the opening prison transport crash.  All meticulously planned, I'm sure.

B so says Doomsday

Ohhh that's right. I remember him asking Mia to the 'Cha Cha Cha' restaurant which is apparently a real place but couldn't remember where he wound up.