I don’t participate in this thread much and I don’t know why. But I’m here to say that:
kyle maclachlan and christopher lambert are both actors who I like a lot, and if I see they’re in a movie I go “ooh!”
to me, christopher lambert elevates any movie he’s in that tries to do something, to the level of outsider art. At least a little bit. If he’s in a movie and it’s bad, at least lambert is a weird guy talking funny and running around in it.
maclachlan does not do that. if he’s in a bad movie it remains bad and I just feel bad for kyle maclachlan.
rutger hauer is somewhere in the middle. it can go either way, but more toward the maclachlan direction. I don’t say “ooh” though because I’ve seen too many bad movies with him in it.
I compare these guys because they have semi-similar careers, though maclachlan didn’t start in non-english films. But all three came up within 10 years of each other, had a few BIG movies, and then a whole lot of b-movies, some of which are real cool, most of which are only okay.
I think the reason for me that lambert elevates movies he’s in is because:
he’s just kind of an anomalous person. He has an odd face for a leading man, he started off in action and romance which means you can put him in all kinds of situations, and no matter what you do with him he’s gonna be talking in a way that’s odd to everyone (american, grew up in switzerland, speaks french, german, and that weird english that’s born of having a strange multi-country-originating accent that’s intelligible enough to not need to change).
Every christopher lambert movie I feel like he’s either playing a flavor of the highlander (beowulf, kickboxer, mortal kombat, etc), or a flavor of himself (nirvana, subway, tarzan).
he’s super low vision and can’t see the people he’s interacting with a lot of the time because he can’t wear contacts and directors don’t want him wearing glasses in an action movie. So he’s always a bit “off” from everyone else, and in the action scenes he’s just hoping for the best (there are a lot of injuries surrounding his sword fights!).
I think maclachlan’s experience playing a straight man in weird situations means the MOVIE has to be really good and/or weird for his bit to work (blue velvet, twin peaks, the hidden, dune), and if the movie isn’t good or weird he’s just a stand-up guy in a bad movie. he can’t BRING the weird, which lambert does just by existing.
I think Hauer simply didn’t care enough. He kept starring in action movies but did not keep himself in shape - that’s no shame on him, but he was enough of an actor to take different kinds of roles but he kept being the same kind of shooty man they wanted him to be in blade runner, rather than an action guy that fits a larger body (like sammo hung did). His great movies (blade runner, blood of heroes, sobibor, the hitcher etc) were all at the start of his career too, so maybe he had a drugs situation in there or some other stuff that led him astray, because he’s one of those actors where you still want him to do well but each successive movie is worse than the last.
so, that’s why I think christopher lambert was a more natural fit when he started getting back into art films alongside the weird b action movies that can accommodate an old man.
Maybe next time I’ll share my thoughts on why I don’t think anyone has ever done a career revival as well or as thoroughly as nicholas cage.
On my flight home for the holidays I watched The Last Days of Disco, thus completing Whit Stillman’s loose “doomed-bourgeois-in-love” trilogy (following Metropolitan (excellent!) and Barcelona (good)). The Last Days of Disco is great and maybe the best of the bunch
However, I am 100% serious when I say: after watching this movie I firmly believe that all men need to be eradicated from this earth. Women can stay but they are on thin ice
I watched My Young Auntie from one of the Arrow Shawscope collections a couple of days ago, and it is one goofy film. It’s about a young woman marrying the head of a household to prevent the family estate falling into the hands of the family thug.
I went in knowing that it was going to be a silly martial arts movie but not to the extent that it was; in particular, one particular scene set at a Western (as in generically from the West) themed costume party that escalates into one really, really long fight scene that has some dumb slapstick mixed in with some brilliant sword play.
The trailer doesn’t represent the action well enough - Kara Wai is fantastic in it, especially towards the end, but I’m sharing just to show how fun that long dance scene is.
Seems dumb as hell. I’m hyped.
Also, the more and more I see wuxia and martial arts, the more it seems like China and other Asian countries were inspired by western films (in a good way).
Knocking out a bunch of movie seeing before going home to somewhere with less releases.
Queer if you have seen the Naked Lunch movie, run don’t walk. Luca doing Burroughs via Lynch, kind of a lesser Burroughs work, but the movie largely works to look at, maybe a bit too long, but I wouldn’t change how it ends to get there.
Christmas Eve In Millers Point is really really nice to look at. Tyler Taormina clearly saw Nashville and was like, we can do less, but it is largely successful of evoking a feeling. Whether you would rather feel something from a Rothko in five minutes, or an hour and a half long movie is up to you.
Chime king Kiyoshi returns, pirate this movie. Dismaying to watch my overlord make an NFT movie.
Y2k no thanks!
Gladiator 2 perhaps the single most miserable movie experience I’ve had in a long time. Daddy son date where they are on their phones the whole time and then the kid spits slurpee on me. I know Ridley Scott does not seem to even care history exists, but why were some inscriptions in latin and some in english.
Nickel Boys felt major. Weirdly, I know I talked about Lynch above and promise I have seen more than one movie, there is a lot of Lynchian dream imagery that you can pore over in this thing, despite the plot being relatively straightforward. Real coming out party for RaMell Ross, hand of the director felt here in a very very good way. Stunning cinematography and edit work.
I also caught rep screenings of The Deer HunterBlack Christmas and Cafe Lumiere All of which rocked. Young Meryl Streep could have been used as artillery.
More of a TV special than a movie but I’m still sharing this:
Watching this now, and it’s definitely better than the low-quality VHS rip I saw years ago. It’s cool that people found one of the original production tapes!
I saw 2046 in the theater, which is a Christmas Eve movie even though it isn’t about Santa Claus or Rudolph or the Lord.
Because I saw it where I’m living right now, there is a point in the movie when Japanese actor/video game character Takuya Kimura is trying to speak Mandarin and to pronounce the Mandarin transliteration of the English “Granville Road” subtitled in French. I feel like there might’ve been a fifth language in there but I forget.
I really enjoyed it as someone who read Dracula and watched the original film + the 1979 remake. The recreation of the iconic scenes were done beautifully imo and left a big impression. A couple of important additions/deviations from the original felt well-thought out and set it apart from the ones that came before. This one edges closer to the book in key ways that make for a richer story and conflict (primarily the focus on Ellen and her friend, Anna) in contrast with the skeletal plot/structure of the original/Herzog versions (which are special in their own way). There are certain things I could have done without, but overall thoroughly enjoyed this movie.
Thumbs up from me!
Spoiler-heavy thoughts:
I understood why they did this, but I think the look of Nosferatu in this one pales in comparison with the original depictions. For this reason, I prefer the earlier, weirder Nosferatus (Nosferatii?)
The above also goes for Knock, unfortunately.
Though the sexual/desire themes were latent in the original book and subsequent films, this one leans heavily into it. Personally, I could have done without the moaning. The Nosferatu lore is pretty open to interpretations that highlight sexual themes, this version gave us a lot of that explicitly, which felt like someone thoroughly explaining the punchline of a joke.
Lily-Rose Depp was phenomenal as Ellen, as was Dafoe as Dr. von Franz, standout performances for me
This is the first time Ellen gets center stage in these films which is a very welcome change given how central she is in the book, but I still feel like we could have been given more. In the book at least, the character of Ellen is unambiguously heroic which I would have liked to see. However, I admit that this new take on her works within the themes of the movie.
Speaking of the above, it felt like this version had to account for “plot holes” of previous versions, like finding the book on Nosferatu, or the treatment of Nosferatu and Ellen’s embrace as some sort of prophecy. I overall liked this angle, and it is a very significant artistic choice which gives the whole story a distinct flavor. Hence now we have a Nosferatu that is explicitly about repressed desire and forbidden love, all in the context of the return of an ancient horror.
The book has strong mystery elements to it as they try to figure out how to combat Nosferatu and find his whereabouts, I would have loved a movie with that angle but that may be just me and I could easily just read the book again if I wanted that.
