Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 10:01:46 PM

Login with username, password and session length

The Lighthouse (2019)

Started by VelourSpirit, July 31, 2019, 02:34:33 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Custard

Just a heads up that this now on the shelves in the Available section

Head Gardener

ooh lovely, got it now thanks for the heads up

Custard

Wow, I thought this was bloody good

Pattinson and Defoe were great, the setting was very claustrophobic and unsettling. Loved the score, although it is pure Shining. Worked really well. There's some humour in there, and the last act is gripping stuff. The last image is fucking horrific, and won't be leaving me for a while

So much to take in and try to digest on a first viewing, but I really enjoyed this

Puce Moment

WHY IS NO CINEMA SHOWING THIS YET FFS!!!!!!!

Just seen this is available from those ruddy pirates. No way I'm not seeing this in the cinema.

Quote from: Puce Moment on December 21, 2019, 09:18:01 PM
WHY IS NO CINEMA SHOWING THIS YET FFS!!!!!!!

Just seen this is available from those ruddy pirates. No way I'm not seeing this in the cinema.

It's worth seeing in the cinema. (And as an unexpected bonus, when I saw it they opened with Jonathan Glazer's The Fall!)

Head Gardener

well, that was grim... but in a good way

Puce Moment

This will be previewed on Saturday at the ICA cinema in London, 8.05pm.

For those who want to see it on a big screen.

Worth seeing on a big screen. I think I'll be processing this for a little while.

Puce Moment

Yeah, this is a film to watch on a cinema screen for sure. I find that's the same with all 'boxy' framed films like Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights. Seems to be in fashion, although Eggers has a very good reason to make this film have a non-widescreen frame ratio.

Overall, this disarmed me more than I expected. I went to a packed screening on Saturday at the ICA and it got shitloads of laughs - and it is very funny. But overall, I adored the visceral qualities of this film - mud, rain, spit, blood, spunk. It's definitely somewhat ever so slightly influenced by Hard to be a God in that regard, but the story is something else entirely. It hasn't been released yet so I don't really want to say much more other than the fact that I really liked the final third of this film a huge amount. The same goes for The VVitch, which always reminds me that other filmmakers don't always know how to finish their stories.

Dafoe is fucking brilliant in this. It's incredibe that he can do The Florida Project and a film like this with such comparative ease.

Twit 2


Any film that has original dialogue of this quality is worth your time:

QuoteHark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til' ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!

The period dialogue in The Witch really struck me, too, and was one of the standout elements of that film. Dude is one talented chappy. The meticulous research coupled with genuine artistic flair is a winning combination. As a massive fan of intensely stylised films, the existence of this beauty has made me very happy indeed.

Puce Moment

I know this is available in 10GB glory, but I went to see this at the cinema again and enjoyed it even more. There is so much to like, and a huge amount of foreshadowing and referencing that I had not noticed before. The sound design is wonderful, and even though it is mono it really benefits from a cinema experience. I have so much admiration for Eggers for following The VVitch with something so clearly ill-designed for a mainstream audience. The last half hour of this, like his previous effort, show he is one of the very few directors who knows how to end a film.

Go and see it in das kino kids!

MiddleRabbit

Watched this last night - on telly, from the net and loved it.  Funny as hell, looked nice and enough oddness to hold my interest.  It took a while to tune my ear to Dafoe's old sea dog dialect, but thoroughly enjoyed it.  On a personal note, the Dafoe character appears to based on my friend Bren which, I'm sure, will be of great interest to all on here.

Love to see it at the pictures but I can see other viewers getting bored with it and being a pain in the arse, as was my experience at Midsommar.  Sadly, I prefer the home set up for slower films, but I like to immerse myself in films and find the public too irritating to do that around them.

Quote from: MiddleRabbit on February 01, 2020, 05:01:15 PM
On a personal note, the Dafoe character appears to based on my friend Bren which, I'm sure, will be of great interest to all on here.

Can you say more? It actually is of great interest to me if you are friends with a possibly supernatural nineteenth century wickie.

MiddleRabbit

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on February 01, 2020, 11:23:17 PM
Can you say more? It actually is of great interest to me if you are friends with a possibly supernatural nineteenth century wickie.

He's a shitty cook who thinks his dinners are fucking great.

Puce Moment

But you must like his lobster?

MiddleRabbit


sevendaughters

saw this last night. I think A24 are becoming the masters of distributing and producing films that are different and interesting and stylish (and I agree with whoever above that said the style is part of the point) but ultimately not really very deep. films that shoot for importance and fall a little short. there were some great moments in this but it went on a bit.

Twit 2



Twit 2

I haven't even seen the film yet but I've been watching and reading a lot about it as I just find the whole premise and execution brilliant. I'm so bored of mainstream film grammar and predictable plots and yearn for entertainment which is original and arresting. Off to see it on Friday, stoked.

Twit 2

Well that was great. Packed Odeon audience, everyone good as gold, no walk outs. What with Midsommar and Monos, the last year or so has been a belter for quasi-mainstream, massively entertaining films that have a proper dose of genuine off the wall weirdness.

mjwilson


Hand Solo

Quote from: mjwilson on February 09, 2020, 10:22:29 PM
Shit, they built their own lighthouse.

Literally. It was mostly styrofoam.

VelourSpirit

Finally saw it last week. Loved it, been waiting so long and it was worth it. I can't stop thinking about
Spoiler alert
Pattinson's distorted screaming at the end.
[close]

Custard

Just a quick bump to say this is currently on sale on Amazon Video for a fiver for the HD version, and is worth every penny

Glebe

Missed this in the cinema but finally got around to watching it on Netflix last night. It looks beautiful, there's a fantastic atmosphere of dread and Dafoe does seem fantastic mad speeches, but it kind doesn't really amount to all that much. Bit Lovecraftian, and there's a hint of The Shining. Pattison looks and sounds a bit Daniel Plainview.

Have you been to that point of isolation where your soul dislocates and reality becomes bent and sinister? Have you gladly drank kerosene and howled at the moon?
It's a rhetorical question. You're posting on cab. I'm guessing you have. Did you relate but still found it a bit thin and lacking?
It feels like more of a mood piece, something you fall into and plop out the other end with a smile on your face. I don't think it needs to amount to anything.

Glebe

Quote from: ImmaculateClump on November 10, 2021, 12:20:29 AMI don't think it needs to amount to anything.

Maybe not, but I kinda wanted a little bit more. I mean I liked The VVitch but I kinda felt a bit the same way about it. Maybe I'm just a difficult-to-please git.

Yeah, that's fair. If you're feeling short changed by both, you probably just don't connect with the director.
There's an intentional ambiguity there, but I think you're not really invited to fill in as many gaps yourself with the witch so if you felt a bit " .... and?" then it's probably just not the way you like stories told to you.

Noodle Lizard

I have a similar response to both films as Mr. Glebe does. I find them visually impressive, well-directed and engaging (moreso The Lighthouse), but ultimately come away from them feeling a bit empty. Since The Shining has been invoked earlier in the thread, and I suppose there are some comparisons to be made between them, I'd say that's an example of a film with similar levels of ambiguity whilst also feeling more ... "complete", for lack of a better term. Of course I don't think anyone's really holding The VVitch or The Lighthouse to the same standard, but if I were to analyse why I didn't especially connect with either of them, it might be something along those lines - there's "something" missing from them, and I'm not entirely sure what it is.

I'm interested to see what he does with his Viking and Rasputin projects - if there's one thing I'm confident about with Eggers it's his care for period detail, especially in dialogue.