Last Film You Saw Thread

[james&nicole 2]

"Sweet Land". 2005, Independent film, beautifully shot, touching, heartfelt and real. Saw it today on tv. Relevant to all VJ folks. Deals with the evolution of love and commitment many of us are going through. Apart yet together, together yet apart. Eurocentric in plot, but global in feeling. Not a shoot em

up. May seem slow to develop but worth checking out. A well crafted film based on immigration to America. Story and character based, stick with it and it may reward you.

[Pooky 3,825]

Casino Royale

Rather good

[mounir412 101]

Rookie Of The year

[웃 910]

All written by faust-yusov - The creator of this thread...

'Tokyo Story'

As intimated in my previous post, critical reception of 'Still Walking' nudged me in the direction of Ozu's classic 'Tokyo Story', which I watched yesterday. It was indeed quite wonderful, fully deserving of all the accolades and plaudits, and much of what I said about 'Still Walking' applies - acutely observed, conveying of simmering emotion within the vérité constraints of inexorably polite discourse, and in its hints of tacit, personal tragedy, a moving humanistic picture.

Stylistically it is also an excellent example of early Japanese cinema traditions - notably the "face on" photography employed during conversation, a thoroughly apposite tack for such tersely drawn character interaction and drama.

There Will Be Blood' (Anderson, 2007)

A disquisition on enterprise and ambition to rival Welles' 'Kane' and Herzog's 'Aguirre', and shone through a quintessentially American lens: the inexorable thrall of capitalism tussling with the opiate of organised religion. It's also absolutely wonderful cinema - from Elswit's cinematography to Greenwood's score, an immersive aesthetic triumph.

David Lynch's 'INLAND EMPIRE'.

A wonderful accomplishment, shot entirely on digital video, with a quite excellent lead performance from Laura Dern.

As far as one can objectively discern footholds in Lynchian narrative, it seems to further explore several tenets present in previous work - the demonic embodiment of sexual jealously, as seen in 'Lost Highway'; metafictitious elements sketched out from the pretext of a Hollywood production, cf. 'Mulholland Dr.'; a woman lost in a nightmarish labyrinthe of multiple consciousnesses and characters (again, 'Mulholland Dr.').

I must say - the more I see of his work, the more I am compelled to believe that Lynch is quite the master of oneiric surrealism. One of the greatest American filmmakers of his generation, no doubt.

'Still Walking', 2008, dir: Hirokazu Koreeda

A family reunites on a peaceful summer's day to mark the anniversary of its eldest son's death. It's a really lovely, tranquil film, with a wonderful, shrewdly observed minimalism to it – the drama scrupulously framed by those idiosyncratic, long-established boundaries of communication so characteristic of family. Its teasing out of deep-seated, simmering frictions from within those confines effects an enthralling laconicism and surmises a beautiful and accurate portrait.

'Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [The Wrath of God]'

Herzog's world is full of portent, foreboding, inevitability, as the charismatic, self-aggrandising enigma, Aguirre, leads his band of Spanish rebels to expiration or murder in his futile and rabidly ambitious quest to find and conquer El Dorado.

Really captivating stuff - a treatise on the sacrifice of enterprise, with that air of fable and myth characteristic of the likes of Bergman and Tarkovsky.

Offret', 1986, dir: Andrei Tarkovsky

(Spurred by watching 'Yumurta' a few weeks ago.)

Alexander, a troubled academic, commemorates his birthday with a gathering of family and friends at his home. Festivities of typical Tarkovskian portent ensue. Characters interact as if disparate entities in separate dreams. A metaphysical disquisition (an advocacy of the natural/spiritual over the material/empirical) is broadly outlined.

Dusk thereafter dulls the expansive and ornate wood-floored reception room to a thick murk more befitting its inhabitants' brood and quandaries. The monochrome flicker of a faltering television broadcast imparts the news that WW3 has been declared; that the Soviets are at war with America. So is sketched the familiar backdrop of impending nuclear holocaust; of thick, broiling apocalypse, so present and so well captured in so much of his work ('Ivan's Childhood', 'Stalker', 'Andrei Rublev').

A really wonderful film, and gorgeously photographed by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's long time collaborator. A point on the ending, however: for a piece mostly consumed in a sort of groggy, meandering, oneiric existentialism, touching on the burdensome limitations of human intellect (a la 'Solaris'), its final climax did feel rather jarringly straight-forward... difficult to say whether this works to its favor or detriment after just one viewing.

Edited March 5, 2012 by ☠

[X Factor 1,112]

Arpan

[spookyturtle 9,466]

The Hound of the Baskervilles.

[X Factor 1,112]

The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The book was pretty good. I have to see the movie. Sherlock Holmes is truly classical.

[brian_n_phuong 193]

Stupid Thread Topics Uncut III

[mounir412 101]

click

[TheFantastics09 19]

The Lovely Bones.

[Amby 490]

I watched The Lincoln Lawyer earlier. What a snoozefest for me.

[X Factor 1,112]

Multiplicity

[TheFantastics09 19]

Multiplicity

Loved this movie!

[sachinky 465]

Wet Hot American Summer.

7/10

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Behind the Green Door