Last Film You Saw And Rate It

boo boo · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:19 am

While I haven't seen the new Star Wars movie, even if hell freezes over and it actually exceeds my extremely low expectations, I still know you're dead fucking wrong if you think it's the best Star Wars movie, the first competently made Star Wars movie? Seriously? I know you hate Star Wars but... really? If you don't think Empire was competently made than I honestly don't know what to say to that.

I really don't think Lucas is as bad of a director as you make him out to be either, certainly not Joss Whedon bad, and I think he's a better director than Abrams too, if only because he makes way better fucking movies, maybe Abrams is more competent or whatever, but I hate his aethetics so fucking much I could care less, and I really love the aesthetics of the original Star Wars even if the cinematography and editing are imperfect. And as much as Lucas gets shit on for not putting enough focus into his direction, I still think he has an indentifiable visual style, well, at least his first 3 films did. I can't say the same about Whedon, his writing has a style, a really fucking horrible style, but his direction? Well he directs exactly like every TV show director does, and he loves gratuitous camera movement in every scene like every other hack Hollywood director, that's about it.

Also I never said Besson would be a good choice for Star Wars so I don't know why you mentioned him but seriously how in the fuck can anyone hate The Fifth Element?

Vil · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:48 am

Dreww, I hate to say it, but I'm doing it for your own well-being:

You're starting to become the new Jake Cole

Vil · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:50 am

btw, Wanta, you know CriterionForum is filled with nothing but OCD-ridden halfwits who complain about Blu-ray packaging all day, right? They're hardly a competent source for valid opinions on any sort of art. Plus, they kind of hate Star Wars, so they'll find any way to make it look inherently bad

Vil · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:51 am

Oh yeah, and The Force Awakens is great. Can't wait to see it again

boo boo · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 4:53 am

Vil wrote:

btw, Wanta, you know CriterionForum is filled with nothing but OCD-ridden halfwits who complain about Blu-ray packaging all day, right? They're hardly a competent source for valid opinions on any sort of art. Plus, they kind of hate Star Wars, so they'll find any way to make it look inherently bad

Sounds like the Electrical Audio of movie forums, oh what an insufferable faghole that place is.

Sodacake · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 8:29 am

Vil wrote:

Dreww, I hate to say it, but I'm doing it for your own well-being:

You're starting to become the new Jake Cole

at least dreww will explain why he feels a certain way instead of constructing his reviews so they're easily digestible and preferably tweet-friendly. jake cole can get fucked.

Led for your Head · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 11:06 am

One thing I've read that I found interesting was that TFA won't age very well given its derivative elements. It works today because the public is starved for non-prequel Star Wars. If I'm already disappointed in how derivative it is today, and I enjoyed the film, how will I feel in a few years when competent Star Wars films are the norm rather than the exception?

corrections · **Joined:** Thu Oct 07, 2010 9:11 pm **Posts:** 27988

boo boo wrote:

Forgotten Son wrote:

boo boo wrote:

I don't think Abrams even knows what inspired Star Wars honestly, that guy's pop culture vocabulary doesn't seem to go back any further than the 80s.

The decade in which 2/3rds of the original trilogy was released?

Yes but all of Star Wars's influences go back much earlier than that, if the makers of these new films fail to have a firm grasp of what fueled the imagination behind Star Wars in the first place and all they can reference is Star Wars itself then they will fail to go any deeper than DeviantArt fanfiction.

For me the perfect director for a Star Wars movie should understand all those influences and learn how to make them work in a more cohesive way than Lucas ever could, someone who shares Lucas's appreciation for old school genre fiction but is a much better director, which is why I think Raimi would be great.

He may not be the most consistant director out there but when he's on he's dead fucking on, people need to get the fuck over Spider-Man 3 already, Spider-Man 2 is the only genuinely great superhero movie from this century.

I think ironically Lucas sort of abandoned his own influences when he made the prequels in favor of EFFECTS!

PBR Streetgang · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 11:22 am

Don-Alexei wrote:

Bridge of Spies
Okay film overall but a number of things bugged me: Tom Hanks' character is so flawless (brave and good and clever and even humourous when he needs to be) that it's boring. I get the impression films like these, putting the one exceptional individual against the masses and the government, are there to appease a country's guilt feelings, in this case American guilt towards McCarthyism. This type of film is not specific to the US of course and the opposite self-whipping stance isn't much better, but do they really have to be made with such smoothness? (an odd choice of words perhaps but I can't find a better one to express the impression I got in this film that there was nothing remotely ambiguous or challenging or complex, especially when one considers the extraordinary subject matter, and I wasn't even asking for much because I wasn't expecting a some deep political thriller either).
The plane sequence, as impressive as it is, felt padded in, there for the sake of having an action sequence, and the American pilot's storyline in general was filler to me. Coen bros. humour and Spielberg's sleek direction didn't seem to click well either.
The worst thing about the film was the music though, horribly bland and overbearing. I can't believe a director with that kind of experience and stature would choose such an easy and awful way to make the audience feel moved. The whole ending [SPOILERS] him coming back just when the TV says he's been a big hero, how convenient, his wife walking upstairs and watching him sleep I MEAN COME ON[/SPOILERS].
Actually the only good things I tried to find in this mildly exciting and occasionally funny film were there because it's Spielberg and I respect him. If it wasn't I would probably have dismissed it completely. I hope that maybe all of this was done on purpose as a kind of ironically caricatural take on history and I didn't get it.

Dreww already said most of it, especially regarding Spielberg's sentimental take on things, the humanist Capra influence and it being a standout in Spielberg's output of late. Only thing I can add to this is how Bridge of Spies had the finest mise-en-scene I've seen in a very long time. Throughout all the ups and downs in his filmography, Spielberg's staging has remained remarkably calm and restrained. Even now, in an age where most directors - even many good ones - have lost the ability to use staging as a storytelling device within a take rather than cutting it up and letting the stroboscopic effect do the work for them*, Spielberg really thinks very hard about what the purpose of every shot is: does it contain important narrative/thematic information? should it contain humour or tragedy? are there things we need to withhold from the viewer? etc. More than many of his colleagues, he really thinks hard about what to show in a shot, in which order to reveal the elements in them, and how to best move the camera to get the maximum effect out of it all. Many of my favourite shots of the year come from Bridge of Spies, and I think it might also feature my favourite opening shot since Gravity.

* Not necessarily a bad thing: late Mann uses this kind of editing really well in Public Enemies and Blackhat. Also interested to watch some more Paul Greengrass and Peter Berg, two filmmakers whom I suspect to work this way also. Also, yesterday I watched and loved Domino, which has some of the most interesting use of the stroboscopic editing and colour grading I have ever seen. Need to dig more into Tony Scott, as I discovered that this man was actually very talented.
I guess that saying shit like this makes me kind of a vulgar auteurist, but so be it. Loved the shit out of Blackhat, Domino, Sucker Punch, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Suck it, haters, whoever you are.

Don-Alexei wrote:

I agree about Italian overdubbing, it can be very off-putting, especially when there are non-Italian actors. Senso with Farley Granger was particularly annoying. I would actually prefer it if they had all actors speaking their original language (and subtitle when needed), than having great actors dubbed in Italian. When I watched Rocco and his Brothers I switched between the French when there was Alain Delon and Annie Girardot (sound seemed to have been taken live, oddly enough, or else the dubbing was very well-done) and Italian for the rest.

It must have been very strange on set.

Ugh, Senso... Really hated that film. I usually kind of like Visconti, but this was a misfire on so many fronts. Give me Ossessione, give me The Leopard.
And I don't have big problems with the Italian tradition of dubbing everything. Too big a fan of Italian genre films (Leone, Bava, Argento, Fulci etc) to let that bother me and by now it has kind of created its own charm. The cinema of Italy is so intrinsically linked with that looping tradition that I can't imagine a film from pre-90s Italy with clean production audio and only Italian actors. That would be horrible, no?

Anpass wrote:

apparently, we all need to see Carol ... anyone seen it yet?

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/no ... odd-haynes
http://filmmakermagazine.com/96594-why- ... ol-in-16mm

“the actual physical grain of film adds another expressive layer that is impacting the surface of the characters’ emotional being. It has to do with how film captures movement and exposure in the frame — finer grain for highlights and larger grain for lower light areas — that gives a certain emotionality to the image that feels more human.” -- Lachman

Also, https://vimeo.com/148026900 David Ehrlich's year-end countdown

Carol is beautiful. Rarely have I enjoyed watching people falling in love as much as in this gem. Todd Haynes is back. I hear he's making another one soon after this. Can't wait.

Still waiting for DDD to wake up and realise there's this guy called Terence Davies out there, an Englishman who consistently makes great films and has done so since his painfully beautiful Distant Voices, Still Lives (his short films before this were also very good)
And 2015 is no exception. Sunset Song is one of the very best films I've seen this year. For my money, it's up there with Mad Max: Fury Road as the best of 2015 (rolling with IMDb dates here)

1/2. Mad Max: Fury Road
1/2. Sunset Song
3. Arabian Nights
4. Carol
5. The Assassin
6. Son of Saul
7. Taxi
8. Victoria
9. Blackhat
10. Love

Vil · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 11:24 am

Sodacake wrote:

Vil wrote:

Dreww, I hate to say it, but I'm doing it for your own well-being:

You're starting to become the new Jake Cole

easily digestible and preferably tweet-friendly

Is this referring to Cole? If so, he's the total opposite of those. I swear he has a thesaurus by his side to make his writing more dense than it has to be to where you can't even tell if a tweet is a positive or negative take

Sodacake · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 11:33 am

i meant in terms of length rather than content.

Vil · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 11:48 am

Ah, okay

Don-Alexei · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 12:04 pm

I have only a mild interest in Star Wars but I thought that was a very interesting review by dreww and I don't really understand Vil's Jake Cole comparison.

PBR Streetgang wrote:

Dreww already said most of it, especially regarding Spielberg's sentimental take on things, the humanist Capra influence and it being a standout in Spielberg's output of late.

Things is even while I was watching it I was tellling myself come on it's an allegory, it's all part of the film, Spielberg is not pretending that that character is in any way real. But even then I still thought it was rather ridiculous. So let's say I understand your argument on an intellectual level. However, unless I misunderstood the "standout in Spielberg's output of late" I do get the impression you are also regarding it quite highly because it's better than what he has been doing during the last several years.

Speaking of Spielberg, I just watched Duel and loved it.
And speaking of sentimentality, I just watched The Big Parade and liked that a lot too.

Anpass · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 12:27 pm

pgm wrote:

Sicario.

Dude. Damn. Dark. /10

(DDD, btw)

Stuff not directly related to the movie (which I loved).

1) Getting into an unmarked Uber (no sticker) after leaving the theater kind of freaked me out.
2) I hear Juarez is a lot better now. It's peak of violence was 2010. They're even trying to attract tourists.
3) Aren't those SUVs in the Mexican raid armored? Why didn't they have some kind of bulletproof/ballistic glass?

I like that the film didn't try to hide anything from you. Everything that could be considered a twist was hinted at. The revenge angle was hinted at. The fact that he's connected to Colombian cartels was frequently told. The Mexican cop being involved in the cartel was pretty obvious. The FBI agent "doing it by the book." I don't think I saw anything in the film where the groundwork wasn't previously laid. Oh, and it's beautifully shot. Every frame feels like it has a purpose (this may be an exaggeration). The Mexican border sign that says No More Weapons (which is being taken down, btw) is real, but it was also clearly intentionally shown. I'm not sure if there is significance to repeatedly showing the signs on the mountain that say "City Juarez, the Bible is the truth" and "50 years of his apostolate S.J.F." other than as establishing shots, but that didn't stop me from reading into it (especially the Bible one).

It just clicked who the Sicario is.

eh? It just clicked? Well, this is way better than star wars. It was beautifully shot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii

PBR Streetgang · **Posted:** Sat Dec 19, 2015 12:34 pm

Don-Alexei wrote:

PBR Streetgang wrote:

Dreww already said most of it, especially regarding Spielberg's sentimental take on things, the humanist Capra influence and it being a standout in Spielberg's output of late.

Things is even while I was watching it I was telling myself come on it's an allegory, it's all part of the film, Spielberg is not pretending that that character is in any way real. But even then I still thought it was rather ridiculous. So let's say I understand your argument on an intellectual level. However, unless I misunderstood the "standout in Spielberg's output of late" I do get the impression you are also regarding it quite highly because it's better than what he has been doing during the last several years.

Indeed I am. Bridge of Spies on the whole is not good enough to end up on any favourite lists of mine. In my last post I din't include it in my Top 10 of 2015 and according to ICM I've only seen 32 films that were released this year. Any kind of math would indicate that I do not hold this film in exceptionally high regard. It's just a solid, good film imo and even though it has its flaws, I really, really enjoyed it. Which is something I can't say about any other film he made since Munich. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a string of dumb jokes and uninteresting thrill rides. I kinda liked Tintin as an adventure picture and an experiment in animation - a style to which I hope Spielberg will return before long - but it wasn't anything worth remembering. War Horse was pure nostalgia for Spielberg, very classical and the most overt tribute to John Ford as you'll ever see (which, for me, made this film much better than the terrible reputation it has). Lincoln was another misfire for me. I generally don't like biopics and this was no exception. Add to that my dislike for Sally Field and a tedious subplot about his kid who wants to join the army and there's another misser right there. The only constant high throughout this string of lows is, like I said, his keen eye for mise-en-scene, which I admire greatly.

Don-Alexei wrote:

Speaking of Spielberg, I just watched Duel and loved it.

Yeah, I really like Duel too.

Last Film You Saw And Rate It

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