The PG Cooper List Thread: Gamer Days

I bought Nice Guys on blu-ray, but haven't gotten around to watch it. I guess I'm leaning towards Dory as the best movie of the summer. The way it explores disabilities is very commendable. But if we're focusing on live-action, The Nice Guys is the best. And that's just built on the strength of the three main actors whom I think still deserve to be nominated during awards season. If they're lucky, they'll get Golden Globe nominations, but they deserve to go all the way to the Oscars. If they can't do all three, at least do Ryan Gosling. Although they'll pussy out and nominate him for La La Land instead.

Top Five Movies About Surveillance

5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier


Alright, there are certainly better movies I could have put in this slot, but I think it’s important to have at least one movie made and released in a post-Snowden NSA leak world. In the film, it is revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D (the fictional government organisation of the Marvel Universe) is secretly controlled by an evil organization which is consistently spying on American citizens for nefarious purposes under the guise of such efforts being for security. The film unambiguously portrays such actions and villainous, Captain America’s own disillusionment with government reflects the growing mistrust of government and surveillance practices many North American citizens have come to feel.

4. Modern Times


Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times is one of the definitive texts on class exploitation. This is perhaps most clear in the film’s first act, which sees Chaplin’s Little Tramp as an overworked employee on a factory assembly line. The film depicts his bosses using video surveillance (which didn’t actually exist at the time) to keep employees in-line, figuratively and literally. Another scene introduces a device called the “Billows Feeding Machine”, a device workers would be strapped into and fed during their lunch hour, effectively earning another hour of work from them while also ensuring the remain monitored and controlled throughout the day. It’s really amazing Chaplin finds such gut-busting hilarity in these bits, because at their core these are some very dark ideas about how surveillance is used to exploit the less powerful and the increasing dehumanization in surveillance technology.

3. Rear Window


Most films about surveillance deal with issues of government or class, but Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is decidedly more small and personal. The story of a man trapped in his apartment who begins spying on his neighbors and suspects he sees a murder, this is really a story that addresses our personal fascination, and even obsession, with watching others. L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) is spying long before he starts to suspect a murder occurred and while others mock him for his seemingly strange hobby, they too feel compelled to look. While a lot of people fear surveillance, Rear Window argues that deep down we all get a perverse thrill from watching others. This sort of voyeurism is at the heart of many Hitchcock films, but none more so than Rear Window.

2. The Lives of Others


The fact that this film is actually based on real history certainly ends a lot of gravitas and legitimacy to its depiction of surveillance. The film explores the monitoring of East Berlin residents by the Stasi during the Cold War, and specifically focuses Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a captain tasked with spying on a subversive playwright. The playwright’s apartment is bugged but Wiesler begins to suspect the motives of his superiors while gradually feeling a connection to those he is spying on. The film is a biting indictment of those who control and abuse surveillance systems, but there’s also something hopeful in the way Wiesler is able to look past the dehumanization of surveillance and see his subjects as people.

1. Minority Report


Say what you will about the fantastical future presented in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, it’s amazing how perceptive and prophetic the film is. Released just a year after the Patriot Act was passed, the film explores the notion of sacrificing freedoms and privacy in favour of safety by presenting a future wherein would be murderers can be stopped and arrested before they commit a crime. However as the plot unfolds we learn the system may not be as full proof as it appears. Just that synopses raises questions regarding what freedoms we are willing to sacrifice for our safety, particularly a safety which is itself compromised and flawed. There are little details about the world building here too, like the way citizens are entirely accepting of the surveillance practices they are subjected too in spite of being very obtrusive to their day to day life. Given how we as a society increasingly accept more and more invasions to a privacy every day seemingly without a second thought, this is a frighteningly accurate portrait of our world. Also, while the focus here is on how governments use surveillance system to monitor citizens, attention is also given to data being used by corporations to advertise to individuals with more precision. Minority Report is a film that explores the consequences of surveillance while asking what we wish to accomplish with it in the first place.

Never seen it.

Doomsday can fix that at the Film Club.

Enemy of the State
The Conversation with Gene Hackman
The Anderson Tapes with Sean Connery
Sliver with Sharon Stone

There's some good stuff out there.

I've seen The Conversation (which I love) and The Anderson Tapes (which I think is okay).

Top Five Remakes Worth Watching

5. True Grit (2010)


One of the best ways to go about remaking something is to pick a film wherein the original is nothing special and do a better version and that’s basically what the Coen Brothers did with their remake of True Grit. While John Wayne’s Oscar win might suggest the original is something exceptional, that isn’t really the case. In fact the original film is a dated movie which was tired even when released and Wayne’s Oscar was clearly more for his collective body of work. The film has its moments but there isn’t much to say about it. The Coen Brothers remake on the other hand is bursting with style, superbly crafted, and features some great performances from Hailee Steinfeld and Jeff Bridges. The film is also shot beautifully, has some great old-school action, and the Coens underlying humour. The third act also reveals to be surprisingly poignant. It’s a film that serves as a way more fun romp than the original and a deeper work too.

4. Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht


Unlike True Grit, not only is the original Nosferatu a great film, it’s a straight-up masterpiece and one of the greatest films of all time. Remaking such a work would seem a fool’s errand, but Werner Herzog is able to escape the shadow of F.W. Murnau by employing a radically different style. Obviously, the fact that this version is a sound film certainly changes the dynamic, but Herzog also isn’t interested in recreating the German expressionist visuals that define the original movie. Herzog instead employs a sort of poetic realism that somehow feels both restrained and heightened and Klaus Kinski’s performance as Dracula is amazing. Of course this all begs the question; why remake Nosferatu at all? Why not just do another adaptation of Dracula? Well, two reasons. First, to draw a link between the German expressionists like Murnau and G.W. Pabst with the New German Cinema and filmmakers like Herzog. Second, doing a remake allowed Herzog to employ the same make-up for Dracula as Nosferatu. This is not some sexy creature of the night, but a horrific and disturbing creature who just wants to die. This Dracula is in many ways pathetic, but that shouldn’t suggest he is any less frightening.

3. His Girl Friday


This is a classic screwball comedy that a lot of people probably don’t know is a remake, but technically is. The film is based on a play called “The Front Page”, about a reporter who tries to leave the newspaper business and get married only to be roped in again by his editor, which was first adapted into a 1931 film of the same name. The film actually got a Best Picture nomination but has since been mostly forgotten and for good reason too because it’s pretty lousy. It isn’t funny, the characters are lame, and it’s struck the stiffness that pervades a lot of early sound cinema. His Girl Friday took the intriguing plot and injected it with life with some ground-breaking rapid fire dialogue, a great sense of humour, and a pair of awesome performances from Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. Russell in particular delivers one of the era’s most iconic performances. Howard Hawks also made the brilliant decision of switching the reporter protagonist to a woman and making her the former wife of her editor. This brings a whole new depth to their relationship and it also adds an underlying feminist streak to the work. This is a 1940 film about a woman choosing between having a career or being a housewife and the fact that the film clearly favors her continuing to work at the top of her field rather than in domestic servitude is pretty damn cool.

2. Scarface (1983)


Comparing plots, the 1932 and 1983 version of Scarface read as very similar. Both films depict immigrant gangsters in America who succumb to their own greed and hubris, continually taking more as they move up the criminal underworld before ultimately being brought down after pushing things too far. Despite these similarities though, these two films feel very different. Oliver Stone’s screenplay moves the action from Chicago to Florida and makes Tony a Cuban immigrant rather than Italian. Being made in the 1980s also meant there would be far less restrictions. This of course meant more violence and profanity, but it also meant Stone and Brian De Palma did not need to add didactic moralizing. While Howard Hawks’ original Scarface was exceptionally violent in 1932, it still ended with Tony begging forgiveness for his sins before being shot down. No such moment is found in the 1983 version. Tony’s excess and lifestyle may destroy him, but not before going out in a blaze of glory. This Tony Montana is brash and vulgar, someone who has got by more on bravado than intelligence, and he isn’t the type to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness. Beyond that, De Palma’s style really elevates this thing, perfectly reflecting Tony and his excessive lifestyle. The visuals are dazzling, the editing intense, the dialogue has punch, and the set-pieces are masterful. Tony’s last stand in particular is among the greatest shootouts in cinematic history. At the center of it all is Al Pacino, who makes Tony Montana one of the most iconic of all film characters.

1. The Fly (1986)


As far as B-movies go, the 1958 version of The Fly isn’t half bad, but it does remain a silly movie wherein a scientist accidentally turns himself into a fly-monster. I suppose that same curt plot description could be applied to the remake, but there’s nothing silly about David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Both films involve a scientist who invents a teleporter and has his DNA fused with a fly’s after an ill-advised test. However the similarities more or less end there. Rather than immediately turning into a half-fly-half-man monster, Cronenberg’s protagonist Seth Brundle undergoes a slower metamorphosis. He begins with a high degree of energy, but over time his body begins to deteriorate and take on the characteristics of an insect while his mind also becomes more animalistic. This slow process really changes the material, elevating a simple monster story into a high tragedy about the fear of dying. Many have seen Brundle’s transformation as a metaphor for AIDS, others as a metaphor for the physical and mental degradation which comes with ageing, but in the broadest sense the whole film works as a great meditation on death and the effects of it. It’s not just Seth that has to deal with this, but also his girlfriend, Veronica.

Another change the film makes from the original is changing the central couple from being already married to a budding romance that we see all the steps of. This makes the tragedy at the center of the film all the more impactful. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis both give amazing performances and the dialogue their given is very thoughtful. The make-up effects have been widely praised and they are indeed brilliant, but it is the humanity imbued in the story and characters that allow an audience to really empathize with Brundle and Veronica’s plight. Cronenberg focuses intimately on his central characters and he furthers the tragedy with a moving score from frequent collaborator Howard Shore.

David Cronenberg’s The Fly is a perfect remake. It takes another film with an interesting premise and expands upon it, probing deeper and exploring new directions from the same starting point.

Honestly after watching Civil War again on Blu-ray it's a good movie. But Winter Soldier was still a better film.

As for Enemy of the State or Miniority Report... I'll have to go with Enemy of the State... That movie literally came true.

I think you'll enjoy Herzog's version.



I agree completely.



Minority Report may not have literally come true, what with it being a sci-fi film set in 2050, but accurately touches on a lot of aspects of modern surveillance in terms of the reasoning behind them and the attitudes with which they are viewed by the general public.

Why are a lot of people talking about Tim Burton right now?

Oh, I didnt realize he was behind that most obvious of Harry Potter rip-offs.

Are the Coen Bros idiots too? They also got attacked earlier this year for Hail Ceasar. At least Miss Peregrine has Samuel L. Jackson.