I can give you Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine but when was the last time you watched Being John Malkovich? This thing is bad.

i edited my post because i didn't realize you already replied. i haven't watched BJM in a while. i really just love Adaptation. i have mixed feelings towards Synecdoche, which i had the strongest initial reaction too but the also the strongest re-evaluation the other direction and i no longer am sure i consider it a personal favorite.

also i think maybe the reason i enjoy him (and this is also partly why i enjoy Eminem so much), is the very act of pouring himself into his work draws me to him, even if he doesn't have much insight that is helpful. i'm drawn to the willingness to be vulnerable (although Eminem to me doesn't romanticize his flaws/doubts the way Kaufman does, and also doesn't wallow as much in them). if the vulnerability feels contrived to you, then certainly i would understand disliking his movies.

idk, Kaufman is someone who i defend and yet i'm perfectly willing to accept the criticisms about him, because i often agree with the interpretations of what he does. i'm just drawn to the way he expresses his ideas because he falls into the same traps that i do (both in terms of how he senses the world and in how he expresses it). that sort of muddy, over-simplified yet somehow convoluted mess of confusion of self and place. <---- i think i'm putting words together in a way that doesn't quite make sense again lol.

John Cassavetes - Shadows

Everyone attempts to control everyone else. So many shots see one of the siblings (and not just them) backed into a corner, or pushed backward, or forced out of frame by a domineering other. Everything is tight and uncomfortable. Even Lelia, the one character more concerned with controlling herself (recall the somewhat amusing scene where she is told she can't control herself), reacts to losing her virginity by prankishly and immaturely making the nightclub singer wait for hours. And speaking of him, how does he attempt to make conversation? By telling Hugh he is singing a song incorrectly—another attempt at control. Benny does this less (but not never) only because he seems constantly pressed, pushed against, without the force to resist, let alone push back. His stilted gait is quite appropriate.

Interactions are impositions. Take the two uncomfortable doorbell shots. They do not depict a person bringing the potential for honest interactions. They show only intrusion, rudeness, disturbance of the peace. They are most unwelcome.

Contrast these features with the scene where Lelia dances with the nightclub singer. It is dark, and the music is different from anywhere else in the film. There is no restless discomfort, only graceful movement. Because of the background being mostly black, there is little reference for their movement and no sense that either is pushing the other. It is give-and-take, it is a dance. In other shots people are pushed against things, objects; here those objects drop away. It is one of the few honest interactions in the film.

The acting style unsettled me on first watching the film (Monday evening), but I appreciate it more the second time around. It is interesting that the improvised dialogue so often feels scripted—but this is just how real interactions (which are of course improvised) are so often strained. They feel as if selected from a limited set of rote responses.

I forgot: When thinking about the point of the first paragraph, compare the radical shift in tone from the spontaneity of Lelia running in the park with Tom, that deep sense of freedom, to the constraint in Tom's apartment. Immediately he imposes on that freedom, and she is pushed back.

Midnight Express
8.5/10

The Killing Fields
8.3/10

Punch-Drunk Love

This is my favorite PTA I'm sure and ranks with my favorite Romantic Comedies (Trouble in Paradise, The Apartment, etc). Please make smaller movies or dip into more genre like this PTA! Not every movie needs to be a masterpiece and this one in collaboration with Sandler's performance of a lifetime (and one of the great performances ever), is much more poignant and focused than his "big" films.

Looper - 9/10 Far and away the best film i've seen all year (from the few movies i've actually seen). It's intellectually captivating and has great emotional depth for such a generally stone cold genre. I thought JLG did a brilliant performance (though can anyone tell me why he looks more like Bond-era Sean Connery than his actual self??) and i also thought the film did a brilliant job to pull the story off. Brilliant directing, had potential to be really lame. Bruce Willis was just so fun to watch, Emily Blunt was also terrific, and such a babe as always. I already have a craving to see this again

Hotel Rwanda
9/10

How can the first film you direct be as perfect as 12 Angry Men?

I know, right? How does that happen?

Taken 2 - steaming pile of shit!

Ask Mike Nichols

Dawn of the Dead?

I agree with this, I adored Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine, I liked Being John Malkovich but not as much, I found it to be the most difficult of the three because the characters were so blatantly unlikable, though I realize they weren't supposed to, by no means is it a bad film.

Dreww's taste in film is so completely opposed to my own it's amazing, he hates narrative tricks, deconstructions and symbolism, which are the very things that attracted me to film in the first place, while he's appalled by how manipulative films can be I'm attracted to that aspect.

I am so disinterested in the mundane world that films that merely exist to portray real life behavior and interactions just come off as extremely pointless to me. I think of films as taking place in a different world from our own, somewhat similar but by no means an accurate reflection, and they are that way by design.

Trying to make the kinda films Dreww is asking for is to me like making photorealistic paintings, an epic waste of skill and effort if you have a fucking camera in hand.