flix we partook of over the hump

since flix are The artform of the last century, and since we do not live on sw alone (riiiight? :eek: ), this thread is a continuation of a long-term topic i started elsewhere. (due to a recent format switch which renders the above link illegible- and my no longer being able to trust the judgment of the moderator at that location- i am resuming this thred here :)) it is intended as a terse record of my film explorations, with (a personal emphasis of mine) occasional comment on the music therein. organic ("off-topic" ) crosstalk is encouraged; everyone is welcome to regard any subject raised herein as jumping-off points for whatever remarks you wish to add :) digressions happen; the Hump goes on :)
my comments on each mentioned film are designed for punchiness, speed of digestion and maximization of recognition (i.e. if you've seen a flik but aren't sure if you recall it, i'll describe it in such a way so as to increase the chance you'll remember it, so as to provoke discussion :) ). as such, they don't qualify as "critiques" or "reviews". on the other hand they're not quite "blurbs" either (e.g., "i Loved it!" sez gene shalit in a movie's newspaper ad, flecks of dried pastrami spitting out his big bushy mustache :p ) instead, i refer to them as "humps" or "humpins", after this thred title :sur: either way, y'all are also welcome to contribute "humps" of your own, and your "humps" may be as long or short, in-depth or glib as you wish to make them :)
i tend to avoid new releases; home video's my preference. that said, unless i cite a film's year of release it came out within the last decade or so. anyhoo, on to my now-traditional opening:
What hump? You know what hump :p because previous incarnations of this thred are all but obliterated (the net, after all, is such an ephemeral medium :dead: ), i wish to begin by recapping of some of my faves covered on previous Humps. though i'm tempted to include a few better-known ones such as Flirting With Disaster, Fight Club, Party Girl, Pi, Pierrot Le Fou, Being John Malkovich, Lock Stock & 2 Smokin Barrels etc, the idea here is to Provoke Fruitful Discussion. and mentioning flix already discussed to death ain't the way to get That ball rollin, so i'll skew a bit more esoteric & emphasize those i feel proud & lucky to have discovered; let's see if That rings any of yer bells :)
first, 4 i've already amazon-reviewed:
venice/venice- henry jaglom's incisive, escapist, subversive, sublime meditation on reality, movies & wuv :cool:
some prefer cake- low-budget, superfun, sanfran-style slacker-love hijinx :D
high art- complex, convincing professional & personal relationship between a heroin-addicted photographer (yummy ally sheedy :kiss: ) and a photomag editor :cool:
clockwatchers- lisa kudrow, toni collette & yummy parker posey (:kiss: ) navigate office politics as peon temps; subtle, poignant, superfun :)
also:
gummo (harmony korine dir.)- absorbing, visceral, 4-day-old-body-stench-soaked window unto brain-cell-killing white-trashdom :D
happiness (todd solondz dir.)- marvelous, wickedly funny, panoramic window unto middle-class alienation, shallowness and sexual self-loathing, jersey style :p perfectly-cast, nuanced turns by philip seymour hoffman, lara flynn boyle, jon lovitz, camryn mannheim, louise lasser, dylan baker (as the pederast who nonetheless maintains a surprisingly healthy & frank relationship with his pre-teen son) etc : ) soundtrack features increasingly stinky (this stuff does Not age well) 70s/80s cheese such as "mandy", "you light up my life" and air supply :p
daytrippers (parker posey, anne meara, greg mottola dir.)- superfun misadventures during a family-station-wagon trip into manhattan :) bossanova-tinged richard martinez score :)
blue in the face (wayne wang dir.)- superfun, cameo-crammed ensemble comedy about a brooklyn cigar store's oddball neighbors :)
the real blonde (matthew modine, kathleen turner, daryl hannah, tom dicillo dir.)- superfun, cameo-crammed ensemble comedy about careers, romances & milieux of several manhattan artiste-types :rolleyes: fun jim farmer score & yummy bridgette wilson :kiss:
career girls (mike leigh dir)- superfun, poignant london vignette about two college chums reuniting six years later :)
fallen angels (wong kar-wai dir.)- not as well-known as wong's Chungking Express, but a more stylin, cooler, noir/french-new-wave tale of a hongkong hitman, his ardent Gal Friday and an eccentric, enterprising mute who breaks into retailers' shops at 3am, reopens them and forces passersby to be his customers :crazed:
tieta do agreste (carlos diegues dir.)- gorgeous, breezy brazilian flick bout an urban madam (sonia braga) who returns to her small home village in style; features Excellent caetano veloso bossanova score :happy:
the mystery of rampo- poetic, involving japanese mindphuque about a novelist's femme protagonist seemingly coming to life :cool: excellent akira senju score.
book of life- hal hartley's stylin, supercool, introspective, compact (63 minutes), pomo-tech jesus-vs-satan armageddon faceoff set in turn-of-millenium nyc : )
pillow book (ewan macgrrrregarrrr, peter greenaway dir)- dense, stylin, supercool story of a japanese model compelled to combine carnality & calligraphy ;)
dream with the fishes (david arquette, cathy moriarty, kathryn erbe (:kiss: ) )- complex, superfun pact between a suicidal guy & terminally ill guy to help each other carry out their final wishes :)
relax it's just sex- superfun 16mm dramedy about a "gay man trapped in a straight woman's body" (hilarious jennifer tilly) and the luvlives amongst her mixed-persuasion posse, including convincing lori petty and radiant serena scott thomas :kiss:
a life less ordinary (macgrrregarrr, camdiaz, ian holm, danny boyle dir.)- superfun crime-spree romp about heaven's attempts to orchestrate love between a rich girl & a janitor :stupid:
splendor (gregg araki dir)- yummy kathleen "90210" robertson's the magnetic crux of this superfun, slick-hip romcom in which she works out a menage-a-troi living arrangement with 2 guys :cool: features fun kelly macdonald (who made her debut in danny boyle's Trainspotting) and a cool remix of everything but the girl's "before today" :)
do i think these are among the Best films made in the last decade? geez, how do i know. i don't concern myself here with posterity, only conveyance of personal taste & sensibility. all i know is i certainly found them among the best Fun :D
vt
np (now playing): leftfield's rendition of john barry's You Only Live Twice "space march"

As a film student and amateur film critic (as we all are) I have seen many, many movies and I can safely and officially put Gummo as THE WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME.

Gummo is what happens when self absorbed 14 year olds who think their style of film making is "shocking" when it's really just "pathetic" are handed $1 million and told to make an "art" film. This film sucks on ALL levels.


Thank you. You may now return to your regularly scheduled film discussion thread.

place for we who are too lazy to surf too much. ;)

Living in Opie-and-Andy-ville, the only one of your movies I've seen at our video store (yep, we have ONE) and/or the public library which also rents some videos, is High Art. Being a fairly typical male, I rented it in the hopes of seeing some hot girl/girl action :kiss: :kiss: but was also pleased to see it was a well acted story that really made me empathize with the characters. Ending was predictable but still powerful.

I think we may also have "A life less ordinary." I'll have to look. The others are gonna be pretty tough to see around these parts. If the lead character's back pocket doesn't have a worn circle showing through it from his can of Skoal, then the movie isn't gonna rent to the inbred, one-chromosome-too-many, ten-teeth-too-few masses I'm blessed to live among, and the local store isn't likely to buy it just so I can rent one time. But I'll give it a shot.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to watch either videos or movies as much as I'd've liked of late due to 'stuff' going on but here're some I have seen; Veetoire, please excuse the horror, I know you're no fan of that wide genre.

jeepers creepers more Loose Endz than the 1980s and rubbish after the second half. Okay so it's a harmless fun-shock-flick but X-files monsters aren't usually scarey, specially not ones that look like a cross between the Tall Man , Freddy K and The Walkin Dude . It's a shame that once they'd committed to the monster they were tied to it. Its 'mystery' had no room for weird otherworlds and so on, just plain ol monster that flew a bit. :frus: The hype that this film got seems to justify and perspective-ise :eek: the hype that Blair Witchery got - which I thoroughly enjoyed BTW. The kids.....did anyone feel any empathy or compassion for them? Arguing brats did nothing to endear themselves to the audience and I hate that films like Scream lampoon the fact that no-one should (for example) go down to the cellars etc and everyone is now aware of that truism but it still finds its way into films. Lazy screenplay and lazy script. I did not guess the ending but when it came, I didn't care.

AI more harrowing than the last scenes of Titanic. I was one of the few (bittered old hacks) that didn't cry but I nearly did when Jude Law came onscreen. I adore this actor greatly and enjoyed him in Talented Mr Ripley, Existenz and Wilde but his character changed the tone of the film too much for me. The cries against Jar Jar comedying up Ep1 could also be levelled against this character's inclusion. I thnk an intelligent audience can extrapolate the facts that if AI that can love is created, then there will be legion AIs already existing that can do other, more iniquitous things. To sex-up and comedy-up the film was a little unecessary for the thinking person. It was exquisite in it's image though and the ETIs that came at the end really added another depth that I was not expecting. (Hasbro, could you make an ET ship like the dissolving cube of AI, pz? ;))

The Dish missed this at the cinema and hired it yesterday. unable to watch it due to time constraints so I'm taking it back now :cry: Any posters here, please do not spoil the film for me, it's one of the films I've been most eagerly awaiting.

Bridget Jones' Diary Suffering the same fate as jeepers creepers it was very funny up until the halfway -timetogetromantic- mark. In addition, I know this is an indefensible comment but it's my opinion so take it for what it is; I really cannot abide that tosser Hugh Grant, so that didn't help. A film cannot be judged solely on whether it was funny or not (again, my opinion) and with that sentiment in mind, I label this film a deplorable, nay, lamentable waste of reel. If you want to see how These Types Of Films should be done, watch Ally McBeal; more panache and style and a helluva lot more special guests...not to mention the delectable Lisa Nicole Carson :p

Dungeons and Dragons Did I just watch Ep1?

jeddah

as feared, VT, I checked the local rental store & library yesterday, and none of the other titles including "A Life Less Ordinary" were to be found. Two things will need to happed for me to see any of these:

1) Goddamned piece of **** mother ****ing **** sucking ***-hole ATT@Home Cable Internet better get my service restored for my internet and email so I can be online at a decent speed (I'm counting heavily here on the auto-censor feature, lest I get banned off this site forever!). Today, my local news said it might still be a MONTH before we get our service back!!!

- and -

2) One or more of your films get shown on an online broadcast site like the one that shows so many of the Vidmark titles online.

[edited note to moderators: adding "ing" to the "F-word" causes it to NOT be censored - as in 'mother f-ing'. No worries - I did the edit myself ;) ]

:eek: oops! That's one word they forgot on the auto-censor!!

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

Hey Swaffster, I ain't never seen you so riled! Made me chuckle and a nice tonic from seeing my Godchillun in the School nativity (Luke was a shepherd and Becca was in the choir - I'd hoped one of them would've been Herod Agrippa but no luck) ;)

Check out Man bites dog if you can; a nice Belgish flick with the most romantic language of all - French :D however, remember in Belgium, they say "nuenante" for ninety instead of "quatre-vingt-dix" and "septante" for seventy instead of "soixante-dix"

:)

jeddah

a couple of darren aronofsky flix

pi - ooooie! the secret to peace and serenity in ones life is a black and decker with a 3/8's bit :eek: starkly done in b/w. of course the connection of a mathmatical equation being both the divine source of jewish cabala as well as the stock market is a tad bit anti-semtic (jews, money, blah blah blah), the movie however is riviting, disturbing, and well worth the two bucks to rent.

requiem for a dream - bigger budget, just as gritty. anyone who thinks heroin is chic, needs to see this incredibly well done look into the lives of coney island addicts. ellen burstyn (who has always been one of my faves), gives the performance of a life time. horrowing, harrowing, and well worth the time.

this boy may be my fave film maker fer the moment.

:frus:

sorry. this just sux! this afternoon it has taken me over an hour to browse just the last day's MM forum posts and this thread.

I have RESUMES out all over the USA with my @home email address, and I have no idea whether or not I'm getting any bites from them! I hope those folks would phone me, but then again, they may think that if I'm too incompetent to return their email, then to hell with me. (no offense, Baal)

I'll have to add yours and GSJ's recommended flix to my "to watch" list, and hope I can locate them locally. :rolleyes:

The only recent movies I've seen which I think are worth mentioning are:
The Yards. A medium-budget film with what were, in my opinion, some really excellent performances by (God help us!) Marky-Mark, Joaquin Phoenix (who I thought deserved "best supporting" for Gladiator), C. Theron, E. Burstyn and J. Caan.

Tigerland. Nothing award-winning, but a FullMetalJacket-ish story with decent performances by the lead actor and the actor playing his chief antagonist.

(PS. does anyone other than ME wish that Owen Wilson would perish painfully in a horrible VicMorrow/TwilightZoneMovie-esque disaster? Yeccchhh!! And, are he and Luke Wilson brothers or something?)

Quote:

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PS. does anyone other than ME wish that Owen Wilson would perish painfully in a horrible VicMorrow/TwilightZoneMovie-esque disaster? Yeccchhh!! And, are he and Luke Wilson brothers or something?PS. does anyone other than ME wish that Owen Wilson would perish painfully in a horrible VicMorrow/TwilightZoneMovie-esque disaster? Yeccchhh!! And, are he and Luke Wilson brothers or something?PS. does anyone other than ME wish that Owen Wilson would perish painfully in a horrible VicMorrow/TwilightZoneMovie-esque disaster? Yeccchhh!! And, are he and Luke Wilson brothers or something?PS. does anyone other than ME wish that Owen Wilson would perish painfully in a horrible VicMorrow/TwilightZoneMovie-esque disaster? Yeccchhh!! And, are he and Luke Wilson brothers or something?

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Who?

jeddah :)