@“yeso”#p81283 I always feel like I should read the book before I watch the movie, but…well, I respect Big Daddy Krasz, but a lot of his stuff really drags me down when I try to read it.
@“rearnakedwindow”#p81287 I did the reverse and had a great time with both
We checked out Mad God this afternoon! All hail practical effects.
mad god rules dude
Inu-Oh rocked. Yuasa does it again. Very queer 14th century rock opera.
watched the alex garland men film, it was bad
I saw the documentary Fire of Love recently. Mirnada July gave somber and poetic narration over lots of breathtaking footage of volcanoes filmed by the featured couple themselves. It was pretty cool.
watched Last House on the Left which I hadn‘t seen before. Actually only half-watched the first 20 min bc it made me anxious and I wasn’t in the mood for that. There was a description of a character having “a history of peeping tom-ism” which is not an actual medical dx as far as I know
we tried to watch NOPE last week and i myself nope‘d out as i wasn’t feeling well and there was a problem with the projector, which was giving me nausea & headache
yesterday, we saw it in IMAX and i loved it.
I went to the town of my grandma and since I couldn‘t write and finish my script I decided to watch some movies. I haven’t watched as usual lately, but I got lucky with what I did and specially by watching Fort Apache, which I feel is going to become one of my favorite John Ford's movies. I know, the structure is the usual of his westerns in a way, but the way he deconstructs the cliches to make a heavy critique on how white people tried to opress Indians who were in a fucking bind is both dramatic and also very poetic and compelling (the idea of a bourgeois dude trying to scalate further is the perfect notch to a very poetic climax). I feel the ending was truly fine, and it paved into the endings he would do later. And this would make me say: if someone ever tells me Ford was very racist towards Indians, I would fucking shove this into their eyes. Also, I want to truly see The Iron Horse seeing what he did here in Fort Apache.
On the other side, the rest were... Well, El Dorado was really enjoyable (and now I get why Carpenter liked Hawks rather than Ford's filmography), Undine was kinda okay, although I'm not very fond of it, and Zero fucks given has a brilliant title, a really nice setting of ideas and contrasts but a very meh generational movie all along. A shame, truly: I love the idea of adopting the filters and the social media aesthetic into the film. Oh, and Zeros and ones is aesthetically brilliant, although I don't know what to extract from the film, since there are parts that I don't like.
while ford definitely made racist films, he was clearly smarter and likely less racist than john wayne. Maybe that's the best than can be said. I mean The Searchers is a racist film the way Heart of Darkness is a racist book in the Achebe valuation (which I think is ofc completely correct)
@“yeso”#p82163 something that blew my dang mind was reading King Leopold's Ghost, which is about the brutality and depravity of Congo under Belgian rule. King Leopold used what was at the time the language of social justice to paper over the fact he ruled over one of the most brutal forms of colonial extraction in history.
I mention this because it was the first I'd heard that Heart of Darkness was essentially a memoir of Conrad's experience in the Congo. It may be problematic with regard to how we view it now, but it was deliberately written to expose the heinous crimes of King Leopold to the world.
I wrote papers about Heart of Darkness in high school and college and never once did anyone put it in its historical context for me.
Caught Collateral last night. I‘ve been a fan of the rest of Mann’s work that I have seen (aside from L.A. Takedown and The Keep) and this feels like the greatest calcification of his overall style. There‘s the unrequited desire for connection ot Thief, the depth in camaraderie of Heat and the beautiful, stark digital photography of Miami Vice. It’s a great film to watch with others, as by all accounts it is a fairly traditional thriller, but we were vocalising at all moments. Excellent stuff all round. I just need to see Public Enemies and Blackhat and I will have completed Mann.
I used the power of the PlayStation 5 to watch a dvd of the film GODZILLA FINAL WARS tonight and man that shit was wild. It’s not at all what I like about Godzilla but as an early 2000s Matrix chasing fun crap fest it was alright. It also introduced me to something which I will preface by requesting you watch this scene first:
https://youtu.be/zPxhdo4HDgg
Yes, this is an actual scene from the movie and that is the actual song that plays. It led me to looking up what the fuck happened here and according to some of the [info here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilla_(Godzilla)) this is supposed to be the 1998 American Godzilla getting absolutely fucked up by Toho Godzilla as an elaborate joke shitting on that movie. I guess when this movie came out Toho renamed this incarnation to just “Zilla” and it’s the only fully CG monster in the movie, again seemingly a huge jab at that movie not using costumes. The pettiness here is **crazy** and I love it.
Strange Days (1995) is so fucking good and ahead of its time. Thrilling noirish and prescient cyberpunk drama from start to finish, although the climax was a little drawn out. Less than half the budget of True Lies and the only one of the two that can be called “good.”
Starring Ralph Fiennes doing that "English actor playing an American" accent, Tom Sizemore as Tom Sleazemore, and Angela Bassett as the film's moral anchor. Also Juliette Lewis as a failed PJ Harvey, Michael Wincott cast as type and Vincent D'Onofrio! Remember Vincent D'Onofrio? (I guess he's still in things.) This is also the second movie with William Fichtner in it I've watched this month.*
Bassett as Mace is great, also just the antidote I needed to the millennial moping about being old and middle aged!!
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/cmd23zC.jpeg]
Least surprising reveal: >!that Max was wearing a wig.!<
Least believable plot point: >!that an old white LAPD deputy commissioner would stroll in at the last minute to save the day.!<
Goddamn. Since it came out until recently I've only ever heard people be blase about this film. Strong recommendation, although it also has to go on my list of Good Movies That Come With a Content Warning for Rape so bear that in mind. At least the director's a woman this time.
*[size=11]the other one being *Go* whose characters, incidentally, are all so toxic that it kept me from liking the movie itself much (except for Timothy Olyphant as the drug dealer, strangely)[/size]
@“sabertoothalex”#p82441 I need to watch this movie again. When it was coming out they made a big deal about how it was The Last Godzilla Movie and then the series went on a hiatus that lasted until Gareth Edwards‘ Godzilla ten years later. Back then I just thought it was such a disappointing note to go out on. It was the most expensive Godzilla film ever made in Japan at that time and even compared to stuff they’d made in the previous handful of years like Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (which cost like half as much) you‘d never know it. As a goofy little oddity from the mid-2000s I’m sure I can love it.
>
@“connrrr”#p82484 Angela Bassett
Been waiting around for the perfect moment to describe something as "a lightning bolt from GOD" but nothing ever seems quite important enough
He‘s Watching is a real good first 35 minutes or so minutes, then it sucks for another hour and feels like watching someone’s family vacation movies, which it kind of is. It reminds me of One Cut of the Dead in that it‘s mostly bad but is still charming because of the circumstances and what it’s going for. First 35 minutes highly recommended
Tonight’s FORT90 FILM CLUB wraps up my month-long tour of Japan, with the stop stop being the islands of Okinawa, one of the most beautiful places on earth, as well as one of the most surreal, as well as one of the most complicated. First, get ready for the ultimate slow burn (which then becomes unexpectedly explosive)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irgnvG1UQCA
Second is quite simply, IMHO, Beat Takeshi’s crowning achievement (WARNING: the following trailer is flashy)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFKaftsfDgk
Third is a pioneering work of Okinawan cinema, one that has been rarely seen & also totally sublime (all Yellow Magic Orchestra stans are welcome)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv7BNjApOww
Last but not least is something that contains elements from pretty much all the previous three movies, it’s another hard boiled action romp, another tale of a stranger in a strange land, and another obscure gem…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sSydTcj4PE
Stream starts at the usual time, 8PM EST, and at the usual destination…
https://www.twitch.tv/wondervillenyc
MoviePass returns with a new model and without the iconic red card, via Polygon.
I'll save you the suspense--there doesn't yet seem to be super concrete details on what the "model" is, but it does not seem to be a model in which one can see an unlimited number of movies for, like, roughly the price of one single movie per month.