Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Aug 15, 2023 16:16:29 GMT -5
I'll be sitting this one out. We're moving to Temecula after escrow closes, so busy month coming up.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 15, 2023 17:25:52 GMT -5
I'll be sitting this one out. We're moving to Temecula after escrow closes, so busy month coming up. Every few months I roll through there and grab food at Rosa's which is a taco place off the freeway. Maybe one day, some day our paths may intersect. |
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Aug 16, 2023 0:45:23 GMT -5
I'll be sitting this one out. We're moving to Temecula after escrow closes, so busy month coming up. Every few months I roll through there and grab food at Rosa's which is a taco place off the freeway. Maybe one day, some day our paths may intersect. Looking forward to that day. |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 17, 2023 14:29:54 GMT -5
I've got 3 (potentially 4 if I include myself) for next round. Any other takers?
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 20, 2023 9:38:53 GMT -5
IanTheCool you in for next round? I'll aim to get it up today.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Aug 20, 2023 11:21:56 GMT -5
I dunno man, my busy month is starting soon. Do you need me?
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 20, 2023 12:05:43 GMT -5
I dunno man, my busy month is starting soon. Do you need me? Nah it’s all good, I use myself to even out the odd numbers. I can throw you in when ready. |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 20, 2023 14:11:51 GMT -5
New round starts now. PK, the suspense is killing me, I must know how you liked Sherlock Jr. Round 232
Dracula - Doomsday PhantomKnight - PG Cooper Let's have Sunday September 24th be the due date or whenever all reviews are in. |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 20, 2023 14:19:38 GMT -5
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Aug 20, 2023 15:41:01 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 20, 2023 16:36:27 GMT -5
A Bright Summer Day has been a mountain I've been meaning to climb but have always kicked the can down the road, kinda like Human Condition. I might make it a project over a few days and knock it out.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Aug 20, 2023 19:21:12 GMT -5
Allow me to relieve you of that suspense, Doomsday... Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Silent-era movies can tend to be a tough sell in general if you're not a deep, devout cinephile. But if there's a type of them that have a better shot at that, it's comedies, because all you really need there are good physicality and stuntwork -- things that Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. has in spades. Both while watching it and in the time since, I've been asking myself, could Sherlock Jr. be my all-time favorite silent film thus far? And I think that the answer is a resounding yes. Never mind the nebulous running time of 45 minutes, which can raise the question of does this even qualify as a film or not -- the fact of the matter is that all of those 45 minutes are laser-focused on providing the best form of entertainment possible, and it's a feat that Buster Keaton pulls off in spades. Within that short time frame, not only does he create an endearing main character who's easy to root for, he also creates a number of pretty expertly-staged setpieces that build off of each other in terms of their comedic prowess. In particular, there's a chase scene (of sorts) that happens near the end, and the ways in which that keeps escalating in its absurdity and circumstances is honestly hilarious, and the way that Keaton both captures it as a director and performs it as an actor is nothing short of impressive. It really has all the energy of some of today's finest setpieces -- both action-based and comedic. And that ultimately says something about the effectiveness of a 99-year old movie (wow...), if it can match and maybe even top a lot of the modern entries in a particular genre. I loved this.
****/****
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 20, 2023 19:23:27 GMT -5
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Aug 20, 2023 20:33:43 GMT -5
Never mind the nebulous running time of 45 minutes, which can raise the question of does this even qualify as a film or not
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have declared that anything over 40 minutes counts as a feature film, that's usually the cutoff I roll with as far as letterboxd logging and whatnot (unless I make an exception, which is not uncommon) |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Aug 21, 2023 9:46:43 GMT -5
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Aug 22, 2023 12:38:28 GMT -5
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Aug 22, 2023 13:16:58 GMT -5
I think I'll do either Planet of the Apes and finally cross it off the list or finally go ahead and see what all your buzz for Days of Heaven is about. |
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Aug 22, 2023 13:19:42 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Aug 22, 2023 14:06:30 GMT -5
Yeah how did we let this happen?
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Aug 22, 2023 14:24:02 GMT -5
Yes, that's what I said.  |
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Aug 22, 2023 16:04:49 GMT -5
Yeah how did we let this happen? Yes, that's what I said. I went through the original Apes series some months ago and I must have subconsciously registered that I never read your thoughts on the old movies. Glad that instinct paid off. I'd probably nudge you towards Apes in this case. Days of Heaven is my favourite Malick but I suspect Planet of the Apes will be closer to your sensibilities. |
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Aug 22, 2023 16:40:06 GMT -5
Yeah how did we let this happen? Yes, that's what I said. I went through the original Apes series some months ago and I must have subconsciously registered that I never read your thoughts on the old movies. Glad that instinct paid off. I'd probably nudge you towards Apes in this case. Days of Heaven is my favourite Malick but I suspect Planet of the Apes will be closer to your sensibilities. I suspect so, too. |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Sept 1, 2023 0:50:35 GMT -5
Hiroshima mon Amour
I couldn't help but think while watching Hiroshima mon Amour that it was probably a nice little influence on Richard Linklater and his Before trilogy. It's a film about two people who meet in a specific location, in this case post-war Hiroshima, as they discuss life, relationships and a potential life-altering future together. It features a local Japanese man and a French actress who engage in a whirlwind affair before delving into each others' psyche, something that often seems intriguing but equally regretful. For a movie that's over sixty years old is feels very ahead of its time and is a slow burn that's also captivating in some contradictory way.
The film starts off at a rather interesting point for a romance film. It opens with the woman thinking of specific events of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing with the man reminding her that she doesn't actually remember these events first hand. What I found interesting was that the man and woman are already in bed, the deed is done, the deal has been sealed. We're starting the movie at the point where most romance movies climax (no pun). When we cut to the next morning we discover it was only a small, immediate affair and the two know next to nothing about each other. Then the film begins to unwind itself, almost going backwards from seeing the high point of the evening then moving forward to learn who these two people really are. We find out that each one of them has a life outside of this brief fling and that logically they should never see each other again. The man is an architect with a wife who's out in the country, the woman is an actress who has children presumably in France. While the man is interested in keeping this affair going the woman thinks that it should end. IIt doesn't and we follow them as they delve more into their past.
The most significant part of the film is a nearly twenty minute scene where the woman recounts her first and most passionate affair; being a young woman in her late teens who was born and raised in the Nazi occupied town of Nevers, France. During the occupation she falls in love with a German soldier and they have their affair in secret. Just before Nevers is liberated the German soldier is killed and the woman is locked in her house, first in her upstairs bedroom and then banished to the cold, dark cellar. She is humiliated and ostracized by her small community then leaves her town in the night. She looks back longingly on her upbringing, her past life and her first love. This heartbreak would explain why she doesn't seek to carry on the affair despite the persistence of the man.
It took a little bit for Hiroshima mon Amour to hook me but once it did I felt very invested in the characters. The tea room scene listening to the account of the German lover is as gripping as it is sad and you feel both for the woman as well as the man who's listening and absorbing this terrible story from the woman he's beginning to love. I'll admit the ending was quite vague compared to how I was expecting it to end and I imagine there are various interpretations as to what it might mean but it's still an engaging if tragic tale of love between strangers.
A- so says Doomsday
And I'm going to try to get through Brighter Summer Day this round as well. All four hours of it.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Sept 10, 2023 22:59:26 GMT -5
River’s Edge (1987)
River’s Edge is a movie that was heavily inspired by (though not officially based on) the murder of Marcy Renee Conrad, which is not necessarily the most remembered of true crime narratives but which did get a lot of press at the time. Conrad had been a young teenager who was murdered by another teenager in her school and had her body dumped out in the middle of nowhere, and the killer then brought a bunch of friends and acquaintances out to see the body, none of whom went to report this to the police. When all this finally came to light it became something of a widely debated case, not only for the senselessness of the murder but also because of the callousness of the people who knew about it but didn’t report it, a bit like the debates around the Kitty Genovese murder case. I think audiences going to see this movie would have had this case in their recent memory but I was not really familiar with it beyond the vaguest of memories however and that made this whole film seem a bit odd given that this is a case that’s pretty defined by strange behavior by all involved and that makes things seem weirdly motivationless when it all plays out on screen. The movie does seem interested in setting up the sociological circumstances involved; this all seems to be happening in some kind of rural white trash community (the kind you’d associate with meth today) and many of the people involved are drug addicts with backgrounds of abuse, but the movies still never really feels like a true “issue movie.” Further, whatever focus on socioeconomic reality is kind of undermined by the fact that the movie has this has a rather star studded cast including Crispin Glover and Dennis Hopper and most distractingly Keanu Reeves. To be fair, this was very early in Reeves career and there’s a good chance that he would not have stood out as much to me were it not for his later stardom, but the dude look almost identical to how he does in Bill and Ted, and that’s pretty distracting. Beyond that I’m not sure director Tim Hunter really had the chops to pull off the kind of dark bordering on nihilistic observational crime movie like this and it just kind of isn’t commited to being either an indie art film or being a Hollywood take on this story and it just kind of never picks a lane. Still, there are some memorable images and moments here and the case at the center is interesting enough that there’s some value here and it’s a movie worth considering.
*** out of Five
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Sept 12, 2023 0:51:51 GMT -5
A Brighter Summer Day
Chicks, man.
Even though I already watched my movie for this round I wanted to take the opportunity to watch A Brighter Summer Day. I've only heard of this movie in passing, I've never seen another movie by Edward Yang and I knew nothing of the plot. All I knew was that it was a) very highly regarded and b) four effing hours long. I also knew that in my current lifestyle situation it would be impossible for me to watch it in one sitting so I broke it up into 'episodes' and watched it over three evenings. From a film fan perspective it probably wasn't the ideal viewing experience but you gotta roll with what you've got. On the whole though it felt like this was a movie that was okay to split up as the movie seemed to progress and doesn't strictly adhere to the three act structure or place emphasis solely on specific characters. It's a very unique experience that I certainly wasn't expecting but I think subverting my expectations help engage me that much more.
A Brighter Summer Day starts off with a young student S'ir being told he has to start attending night school due to his low performance. This is generally frowned upon as this is where the ne'er do wells tend to wind up. It also introduces S'ir to the Little Park Boys gang and their rival gang, the 217s. This is the point where the characters first start and the movie slowly evolves from there. I use the word evolve because I think it's a pretty apt description. The movie doesn't really have a natural end point that you can see from a distance but at the same time it's not exactly a 'day in the life' kind of film either. We watch not only S'ir as he observes the neighborhood gangs with his friends, we watch his family, his peers, the girls he becomes involved with, we really go deep with each character in ways that almost feel like complete non-sequiturs. In another movie they very well may be but the fact that we're able to get extremely detailed insight into these side characters makes the world that S'ir inhabits that much more personal. Normally in my film club reviews I leave the second or third paragraph to speak about the general plot of the film but there are a lot of pages to cover in A Brighter Summer Day. One chapter closes and another opens before the ending that hits you like a train. Chicks man, who needs 'em right?
As stated, the version I watched on Criterion Channel was the four hour cut. After doing a bit of reading on the production and release it sounds like there were a few different cuts of the film altogether and I'm unclear which one was featured in the initial release. It's an obvious statement that a shorter version of any movie would be a different experience than a longer one but it makes me wonder what kind of experience this would have been had I watched a tighter cut. I would expect that there would have been a lot of the supporting character backgrounds omitted and I'm curious what the end result would be. The four hour cut certainly gives a viewer a lot to digest and as cliche as it sounds it keeps a viewer more focused on the journey than the destination. Not only do the characters change, the focus of the movie changes and repeatedly. The structure of the movie is something that I've been thinking of almost more than the movie itself as it makes it feel like a film unto its own. There's a heck of a lot to absorb with A Brighter Summer Day and it definitely feels like a movie that will have something different to offer with each viewing. Not that I'm planning on penciling in a 4 hour rewatch anytime in the near future but I would be interested in comparing these different cuts of the film. While I didn't come away thinking of it as one of the all-time greats it's definitely one that I appreciate. I find myself saying that about a lot of well regarded movies, that I admire them more than I enjoy them, but there are plenty of movies I enjoy that I'll never watch again. Movies I admire though, I always keep the door open to revisit as those are the ones that usually offer more than you might have picked up the first time.
A- so says Doomsday
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