I watch this movie several times a year, usually when I’m feeling down. It always manages to cheer me up and remind me why I do what I do. Each time I watch it, it makes me more and more emotional, to the point where there are now several scenes during which I can’t help but just burst into tears.
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I watched the film Suture(1993) directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel somewhat recently and I think it’s one of the better things I’ve seen this year.
Clay Arlignton (Dennis Haysbert, who you might remember as President Allstate on 24) flies into Phoenix, AZ to be picekd up by his brother Vincent Towers (Michael Harris) and their conversation is about how despite never meeting before their fathers funeral how they look almost exactly the same as each other. Considering the actors are a black and white man who look nothing like each other. Pretty quickly Vincent sets up Clay to take over his identity in a car bombing that he was supposed to die in, but Clay instead wakes in the hosptial with an eye removal and amnesia. The rest of the movie are the various medical professionals and the people from Vincent’s life trying to get Clay to remember being Vincent.
It’s a very strange, beautiful-looking movie about identity, all the more strange by how often it’s reinforced that these two actors who look nothing alike are identical. The eventual ending is eerie and has stuck with me since seeing it. For a fun time, look at the amazon reviews of the blu-ray to see people who just can’t wrap their head around the central conceit.
Also the entire movie feels like it’s shot in a place that is completely unreal. Phoenix doesnt feel like a real place (I do not mean that as an insult to any Phoenicians reading this). The main house seems more like a weird municipal building from the 60s than an actual house. I tried to figure it out where that location was, but it wasn’t listed on IMDB and google “Suture film house” leads to results that are entirely unusable.
Anyway, high recommendation. I watched on the Arrow Streaming service, but I think it’s on Tubi as well. It’s added to my list of two Arizona films along with White of the Eye.
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Just found out Jan Svankmajer’s Alice is in YouTube inin its entirety. It’s alive in wonderland told largely in stop motion taxidermy. It’s in in Czech but it’s primarily a visual movie. Really one of my favorites.
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this looks awesome but gives me the same shudder the quay brothers films give me. masterful and beautiful, but not something i particularly enjoy.
now movies like this, on the other hand, i am a complete sucker for
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Yeah the quay brothers were influenced by Švankmajer for sure. You have to be delighted by a kind of gross macabre to enjoy it
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I just saw this last night. It is more or less exactly what it is marketed as.
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Five years ago, to the very date, marks the very first time I showed movies on the behalf of a bar. So seems only appropriate to mark the occasion by showing a bunch of movies that involve drinking. And the cocktail party kicks off with…
Come for what I believe to be Jackie Chan’s best pure martial arts flick, stay to hear me bitch about the abysmal state for film perservation when it comes to Hong Kong cinema…
Third up is “that one film about drunk clowns starring Bobcat Goldthwait”…
Fourth is objectively in the top three when it comes to actually good movies to hail from Cannon…
And there is a secret fifth film that will be revealed when the stream starts, which BTW/FYI is happening at Wonderville’s Twitch account proper, so no FORT90 FILM CLUB IN EXILE for tonight at least; start time is the same as usual, 8PM EST…
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your picks are always so good!
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Drunken Master II GOAT!!!
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Quick update for the…
Gaagaagiins Work Watch Movie Review Revue
…because someone put on…
Jurassic Park (1993)
Yup. Still a banger. That T. Rex scene in particular still looks and is blocked phenomenally 30 years later.
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i’ve been slowly watching the first equalizer movie staring denzel over the last few days and it’s really strange. it’s like john wick directed by someone who had a brain injury. the first post-stylized action movie. i kinda dig it tho and will be finishing the film.
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this has sat with me and i think it’s because i have this niggling sensation that a lot of indie stuff (particularly horror) feels bloated because someone had a short, a 40-60min one shot/anthology episode that got Too Expensive and then MUST become a 100+ minute feature. but specifically re:In a Violent Nature i enjoyed the drawn-out inaction sequences because the sound design is so good. probably not as effective at home/on mobile. it’s a cool film that upon reflection i can only find enjoyment in.
Just watched Blow Out. I think this probably suffered from the box kind of lying about what this movie is? I was expecting a thriller - which I shouldn’t have with Antonioni, but I was. Instead I feel it’s an even more contemplative and slow burning movie for him. I think I get what he was getting at? Vapid yuppie nothingness? That said I didn’t love the actual experience of watching it, even if I see how it’s smart.
Feels like La Dolce Vita gets at the same themes in a much more compelling way.
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Got into a mood for a rewatch and ended up throwing down the first two movies
from the Three Colours trilogy, which I haven’t seen in a hell of a long time. On the whole, I liked Blue a little less and White a little more than I did when I first saw them.
Blue is still great and an absolute looker, but it ended up feeling a little bit like a depressive’s fantasy in a way - ah, I tried self-negation through isolation but my solipsistic veil was pierced by the love that everyone is due! Also it is objectively a very weird move to buy the discarded mattress that you had a one-night stand on and I will die on this hill.
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last night i watched without name (2016), an irish nature-horror sort of thing. it had a seed (heh) of a good idea in there - a land surveyor goes to a spooky woods and spooky things happen, and the woods themselves are really beautiful and sinister and surreal. but it mostly just suggests creepiness instead of actually… being creepy. the plot itself is very boring and never feels like it intersects with the visuals and setting in a compelling way, and the characters are very thinly drawn… which i wouldn’t mind if there was more psychedelic freakout stuff and less dialogue. it felt like it was trying to do an ‘elevated horror’ thing of making the woods a metaphor for the guy’s feelings towards his life, but i think it would’ve been stronger if it had taken the scary woods at face value.
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Saw the Borderlands movie. It’s as bad as you think it is.
As bad as the writing in the games often is, the movie is much worse. At least the writers at Gearbox seem to care about what they’re doing.
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So two weeks ago I played Drunken Master 2, which is one of my fave examples of a sequel that is superior to the original, and this week I’m doing it again, with four different flicks. Including something I’ve already played, once upon a time, hence why this will be its second showing, technically…
Second up is also the second time I’ve featured a Star Trek flick, one that all Trekkies agree is the best of the dozen or so big screen adventures…
Next is T2, but not just a regular old Blu-ray rip but instead an originally produced 35mm scan that’s been making the rounds (which I know is size-prohibitive for many to download)…
And last but not least, for the late nite film freaks, we have…
The FORT90 FILM CLUB goes back into exile, which means the stream will start around 8PM-ish EST over at…
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Just caught a rep screening of goodbye dragon inn. Hilarious amount of people walked out. How do you end up at a Tsai Ming Liang Screening at 10pm on a weeknight and not know what you’re in for?
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Oh my
I loved that film.
Indeed, how does one end up at that screening without knowing what was coming?
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