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What Non-New Films Have You Seen? (2020 Edition)

Started by Small Man Big Horse, January 01, 2020, 05:03:07 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

greenman

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on November 25, 2020, 11:37:44 AM
Yeah, I think the much publicised stuff about Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos hating the experience and never wanting to work for the director again didn't help either. (Again, in contrast to Lady on Fire being made by a lesbian in pretty short time in what seems to be a very calm, controlled atmosphere.) Although he probably got the performances of their lives out of them.

I do think the politics probably played a part in the media looking to fish for conflict though which I seem to remember only came after Cannes, probably not helped by splitting the Palme d'or, arguably justified but not something that had ever been done before. It was actually Spielberg of all people who really pushed for it to win, I spose you could argue its "blockbuster arthouse" in that it offers a lot of catharsis rather than your more typical sidelong drama.

Small Man Big Horse

Sullivan's Travels (1941) - Two thirds a screwball comedy where a film director heads out in to the world with only ten cents to see what it's like to experience being poor, and one third an
Spoiler alert
oh fuck, this is bleak as he's mugged, everyone think he's dead, and he suffers greatly. This wasn't what I was expecting at all but it is a fascinating work, carefully never romanticising poverty,
[close]
while Veronica Lake makes for a great female foil to Joel McCrea's surly lead. 7.7/10

Blade Runner 2049 - I am neither a nerdboy nor a diehard fan of the original, and yet I just watched this and it is one of the best major Hollywood films that I've seen in, I don't know, a decade? Nobody told me? Phenomenal.

zomgmouse

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 25, 2020, 08:35:43 PM
Sullivan's Travels (1941) - Two thirds a screwball comedy where a film director heads out in to the world with only ten cents to see what it's like to experience being poor, and one third an
Spoiler alert
oh fuck, this is bleak as he's mugged, everyone think he's dead, and he suffers greatly. This wasn't what I was expecting at all but it is a fascinating work, carefully never romanticising poverty,
[close]
while Veronica Lake makes for a great female foil to Joel McCrea's surly lead. 7.7/10

Sturges seems to have a trend of making two films in one. Very interesting

SteveDave

My wife has downloaded some list of the best Film Noir films and we began our season with...

Sunset Boulevard

For some reason I thought this was a musical. It was a lot funnier than I thought it was going to be but didn't seem nasty enough to be a film noir.


frajer

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on November 25, 2020, 08:35:43 PM
Sullivan's Travels (1941) - Two thirds a screwball comedy where a film director heads out in to the world with only ten cents to see what it's like to experience being poor, and one third an
Spoiler alert
oh fuck, this is bleak as he's mugged, everyone think he's dead, and he suffers greatly. This wasn't what I was expecting at all but it is a fascinating work, carefully never romanticising poverty,
[close]
while Veronica Lake makes for a great female foil to Joel McCrea's surly lead. 7.7/10

I caught this a few years ago after picking it up in an Arrow Video/Academy sale and really liked it too. As you say it tackles the issues well in that it never romanticises the "other side of the tracks", but keeps an admirably light touch. I think what's great is that it feels genuinely hopeful about the human spirit without coming across as patronising and naive. I should really seek out more Sturges.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on November 26, 2020, 12:33:38 AM
Blade Runner 2049 - I am neither a nerdboy nor a diehard fan of the original, and yet I just watched this and it is one of the best major Hollywood films that I've seen in, I don't know, a decade? Nobody told me? Phenomenal.
Bah!

greenman

Liked it on release but I have warmed up to it more since then, still don't think its as good as the original and the script does feel a bit like two stories grafted onto each other but yeah one of the better big budget films of the last decade for me.

Quote from: greenman on November 26, 2020, 04:05:43 PM
Liked it on release but I have warmed up to it more since then, still don't think its as good as the original and the script does feel a bit like two stories grafted onto each other but yeah one of the better big budget films of the last decade for me.

Which two stories? There were scenes that, as I was watching the movie, I thought "why is this here?," but then in the end everything is brought together and makes sense where it is. I was most impressed by how well they pulled off the Ryan Gosling story arc,
Spoiler alert
from jaded replicant to possibly almost human to no just a replicant
[close]
. That's fairly simplistic when written out (and of course it's basically just telling the story from the point of view of
Spoiler alert
Rutger Hauer in the original film
[close]
) but very subtly done on screen. Not easy.

Also fairly impressive to maintain the aesthetic tone of the original movie without verging into a tedious CGI fest. Could have down with a bit fewer floaty things, but overall very well done.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: zomgmouse on November 26, 2020, 03:55:21 AM
Sturges seems to have a trend of making two films in one. Very interesting

I've only seen The Palm Beach Story but that's also quite episodic, though the tone is more consistent in it.

Quote from: frajer on November 26, 2020, 08:54:31 AM
I caught this a few years ago after picking it up in an Arrow Video/Academy sale and really liked it too. As you say it tackles the issues well in that it never romanticises the "other side of the tracks", but keeps an admirably light touch. I think what's great is that it feels genuinely hopeful about the human spirit without coming across as patronising and naive. I should really seek out more Sturges.

I'm starting to work my way through his films this year, as mentioned above I've so far only seen this and TPBS, the latter of which I quite liked but didn't love, oddly enough because Joel McCrea annoyed me in it whereas he's great in Sullivan's Travels.

It's A Gift (1934) - My first viewing of a W.C. Fields film as an adult, and it's something of a mixed bag. There are parts which are gloriously absurd and daft (the shop sequence, lunch in the park) and other bits which seem a bit bland (the sequence with him trying to have a nap outside of his house is very poor and goes on an age), I enjoyed it overall but can't say I'm in love with it. 7.1/10

dissolute ocelot

Phoenix (2014) Tricksy drama set in post-WW2 Germany about a Jewish woman who's had facial reconstructive surgery and returns to her home, to find her husband doesn't recognise her, and maybe someone betrayed her, and she's caught up in a dodgy scheme, and echoes of Hitchcock's Vertigo. it's from Christian Petzold the director of the more recent Transit, and like that, it's more admirable for moral and aesthetic reasons than it is satisfying or enjoyable as a narrative.

Phoenix has some very good scenes, but has many of the classic problems of a film adapted from a book - a lot of it feels like it would mean much more if you read the book, and there are little plot things that don't amount to much. Maybe it's just that in that situation, any personal, emotional narrative seems unimportant, and the tricky plot isn't commeasurate to the realities of the Holocaust (as with Life Is Beautiful, in a way). Characters seem to change their minds a lot. It's certainly very interesting, and its portrayal of what it was like as a Jew in Europe after World War Two manages to side-step cliches while feeling very authentic. But it's no The Third Man, which obviously doesn't focus directly on the war but is more effective for that. I definitely admired it a lot more than I enjoyed it.

Transit, which I saw a couple of months ago, is also well made, and in many ways original and challenging (it is set in the early days of World War Two but shot as if it was contemporary), but the characters felt very schematic and some of the scenes seemed like I'd seen them before. Phoenix is certainly better in the depth of characterisation, although Transit has more emotional involvement despite/because of the cliches. Maybe just a director I'm not on the same wavelength as.

Re Blue is the Warmest Colour
Quote from: greenman on November 25, 2020, 08:57:24 AM
I'm not sure I really see the divide between the closeups and the sex though, I think the former in the first half especially are shot to be strongly physical rather than purely emotional. Not sure it would work without the sex either as the point to me seemed to be people who don't really connect on a cultural/interlectual level but do on a physical/empathic one.
I absolutely agree; I thought it was really great as a portrait of a relationship that didn't work out, really managing to cover it at all levels from lust to snobbery. It's a shame the director is a shit. His later films such as the horrendously-titled Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo sound so bad I feel I should at least watch to sneer.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: SteveDave on November 26, 2020, 08:44:56 AM
My wife has downloaded some list of the best Film Noir films and we began our season with...

Sunset Boulevard

For some reason I thought this was a musical. It was a lot funnier than I thought it was going to be but didn't seem nasty enough to be a film noir.

It's a cracking film and is more than just a noir a I reckon, lots of gothic stuff in there too.

Double Indemnity was another collab between the same director and cinematographer (Wilder/Seitz) which is much more of a true noir and one of my favourites. Barbera Stanwyck is excellent in it as well. Suggest you watch it next.

The third in the Wilder/Seitz collab was The Lost Weekend which I haven't actually seen but is highly regarded, I 'enjoyed' the book though, so am really only doing myself a disservice by not getting round to watching it.

amputeeporn

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 26, 2020, 11:08:16 PM
It's a cracking film and is more than just a noir a I reckon, lots of gothic stuff in there too.

Double Indemnity was another collab between the same director and cinematographer (Wilder/Seitz) which is much more of a true noir and one of my favourites. Barbera Stanwyck is excellent in it as well. Suggest you watch it next.

The third in the Wilder/Seitz collab was The Lost Weekend which I haven't actually seen but is highly regarded, I 'enjoyed' the book though, so am really only doing myself a disservice by not getting round to watching it.

Had no idea that these three quite different films were the result of the same collaboration. Funny, in that I came to them all separately and for different reasons. The Lost Weekend is a perhaps slightly too sentimental version of the much harder book, which I also 'enjoyed'. I did like the film adaptation though.

Quote from: amputeeporn on November 27, 2020, 12:11:29 AM
Had no idea that these three quite different films were the result of the same collaboration. Funny, in that I came to them all separately and for different reasons. The Lost Weekend is a perhaps slightly too sentimental version of the much harder book, which I also 'enjoyed'. I did like the film adaptation though.

Haven't read the book but it must be dark indeed as there isn't much sentimental about that movie. Particularly by 1940s standards.

Blumf

Deja Vu (2006)
Tony Scott directs Denzel Washington through a nonsensical but gripping thriller. Somebody blew up a car ferry, and for some reason ATF agent Denzel is all over it, instead of the FBI. Anyway, things get more involved, in ways that raise some pretty damn big questions, but ultimately don't matter because it's a great ride with Washington doing his thing and Scott sliding the camera about. If you enjoyed Man on Fire (2004) or Inside Man (2006) you'll like this. You may figure out the twists quickly, but still, go in spoiler free, you'll have a good time.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: amputeeporn on November 27, 2020, 12:11:29 AM
Had no idea that these three quite different films were the result of the same collaboration. Funny, in that I came to them all separately and for different reasons. The Lost Weekend is a perhaps slightly too sentimental version of the much harder book, which I also 'enjoyed'. I did like the film adaptation though.

They were a result of the same collaboration, but I appear to have misrepresented them completely as a trilogy and in the wrong order, sorry.

Although a cursory glance suggests John F. Seitz has done way more than a thought he had as well.

SteveDave

Quote from: Blumf on November 27, 2020, 01:07:30 AM
Deja Vu (2006)
Tony Scott directs Denzel Washington through a nonsensical but gripping thriller. Somebody blew up a car ferry, and for some reason ATF agent Denzel is all over it, instead of the FBI. Anyway, things get more involved, in ways that raise some pretty damn big questions, but ultimately don't matter because it's a great ride with Washington doing his thing and Scott sliding the camera about. If you enjoyed Man on Fire (2004) or Inside Man (2006) you'll like this. You may figure out the twists quickly, but still, go in spoiler free, you'll have a good time.

I watched this after someone recommended it on the "Tenet" thread. Loved it.

SteveDave

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 26, 2020, 11:08:16 PM
Double Indemnity was another collab between the same director and cinematographer (Wilder/Seitz) which is much more of a true noir and one of my favourites. Barbera Stanwyck is excellent in it as well. Suggest you watch it next.

The third in the Wilder/Seitz collab was The Lost Weekend which I haven't actually seen but is highly regarded, I 'enjoyed' the book though, so am really only doing myself a disservice by not getting round to watching it.

I saw "Double Indemnity" in my A Level Film Studies class 700 years ago but haven't seen "The Lost Weekend" so I'll track that down from somewhere.

El Unicornio, mang

Watched a couple of Adèle Haenel films after being impressed with her performance in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. And also I'm watching as many French films as I can to help me with my language learning.

Deerskin/Le Daim (2019) - Strange film about a man (Jean Dujardin of The Artist fame), possessed by a deerskin jacket he purchases, who is on a mission to stop everyone else in the world wearing jackets, filming his exploits as he goes and roping Haenel in to do the editing for him. Turns from quirky comedic indie to slasher horror. Not bad, an interesting commentary on toxic masculinity and loneliness.

The Unknown Girl/La Fille inconnue (2016) - Drama about a doctor trying to find the name of a girl who dies outside her practice. Pretty mundane, with brief riveting moments, but elevated by Haenel's performance, she brings an incredible warmth to the glum surroundings.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: SteveDave on November 27, 2020, 08:41:13 AM
I watched [Deja Vu] after someone recommended it on the "Tenet" thread. Loved it.
I think that was me and I don't think it was much of a recommendation. I really can't remember much about it other than the car chase, but that was a decent scene - with the film's central gimmick being used to its full potential, making for a tense action set piece, unlike Tenet. Ironically, given the title, it was something I hadn't seen before.

greenman

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on November 26, 2020, 05:16:46 PM
Which two stories? There were scenes that, as I was watching the movie, I thought "why is this here?," but then in the end everything is brought together and makes sense where it is. I was most impressed by how well they pulled off the Ryan Gosling story arc,
Spoiler alert
from jaded replicant to possibly almost human to no just a replicant
[close]
. That's fairly simplistic when written out (and of course it's basically just telling the story from the point of view of
Spoiler alert
Rutger Hauer in the original film
[close]
) but very subtly done on screen. Not easy.

Also fairly impressive to maintain the aesthetic tone of the original movie without verging into a tedious CGI fest. Could have down with a bit fewer floaty things, but overall very well done.

The K story and the Deckard story, the latter I believe was partly taken from an older attempted sequel script. I wouldn't say its massively clunky or anything but I it does perhaps feel a bit like the story builds up K's relationship to Joi and his superior and then cuts them off rather in favour of the Deckard plot.

Quote from: greenman on November 27, 2020, 07:13:01 PM
The K story and the Deckard story, the latter I believe was partly taken from an older attempted sequel script. I wouldn't say its massively clunky or anything but I it does perhaps feel a bit like the story builds up K's relationship to Joi and his superior and then cuts them off rather in favour of the Deckard plot.

I didn't really get that. Deckard is barely in the movie and probably should have been in the movie even less except for the unavoidable necessity of some Harrison Ford fan service. Strictly speaking it would have worked even better if that was just a bit role and we (the audience) had no knowledge of the events of the first film or the not-very-convincing Harrison Ford/Sean Young romance.

The last act of the movie is all just a continuation of the Ryan Gosling story arc, including the lynchpin scene of the movie (in my opinion) which is
Spoiler alert
K on the bridge with the holographic advertisement realizing his entire relationship with Joi was just manufactured too
[close]
.

itsfredtitmus

Quote from: Blumf on November 27, 2020, 01:07:30 AM
Deja Vu (2006)
Tony Scott directs Denzel Washington through a nonsensical but gripping thriller. Somebody blew up a car ferry, and for some reason ATF agent Denzel is all over it, instead of the FBI. Anyway, things get more involved, in ways that raise some pretty damn big questions, but ultimately don't matter because it's a great ride with Washington doing his thing and Scott sliding the camera about. If you enjoyed Man on Fire (2004) or Inside Man (2006) you'll like this. You may figure out the twists quickly, but still, go in spoiler free, you'll have a good time.
Bought this on DVD whilst pissed once and it was a great time

Famous Mortimer

MC5: A True Testimonial

I love "Kick Out The Jams", but it turns out I don't really like much of their other stuff, and of the remaining members of the band, Wayne Kramer was the only one I was interested in listening to. At 2 hours, it was too long (but then the only people watching this are going to be fans of the band, so I suppose the length of it doesn't really matter). The stuff about Detroit in the late 60s was incredibly interesting, the rest of it a bit less so.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on November 23, 2020, 05:08:33 PM
[

The Girl Chewing Gum
Piece of art, weird ten-minute joke, oddball short film.

I loved that despite not seeing it[nb]the gum[/nb] going in

zomgmouse

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on November 27, 2020, 01:18:20 PM
Deerskin/Le Daim (2019) - Strange film about a man (Jean Dujardin of The Artist fame), possessed by a deerskin jacket he purchases, who is on a mission to stop everyone else in the world wearing jackets, filming his exploits as he goes and roping Haenel in to do the editing for him. Turns from quirky comedic indie to slasher horror. Not bad, an interesting commentary on toxic masculinity and loneliness.

Have you seen any other Quentin Dupieux films? I highly highly recommend them all.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: zomgmouse on November 28, 2020, 08:06:34 AM
Have you seen any other Quentin Dupieux films? I highly highly recommend them all.

I haven't yet, but I will. The only other thing I know him for is his Mr. Oizo stuff.

I did watch another French film, Les Combattants (2014), which had an eerily prescient scene


chveik

ha. I think I've seen this one but I don't remember that exchange

Small Man Big Horse

Strange Brew (1983) - Starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie, two characters originally created for the SCTV Canadian sketch show, this is very, very vaguely based on Hamlet some of the time, though in a very silly manner indeed. It starts off strongly but then has a really weak 25 minutes or so, before becoming good again, and the ending is a lot of fun, so it's a shame that for about a quarter of the film it's a flawed affair, otherwise it'd be something I loved, but as it is it's just something I quite like. 6.8/10

Famous Mortimer

Tremors: Cold Day In Hell

Boring. I feel like an HD re-release of the first movie would have been cheaper and made more profit, so I don't know why they bothered creating a new movie for the delight of no-one, not fun, not exciting, not anything at all other than a vaguely annoying waste of 90 minutes. Director Don Michael "Too Many First Names" Paul used to be an actor, in stuff like "Alien From LA" and "Robot Wars" (the Robot Jox sort of sequel). Now he's sequel-director-man - he's done direct-to-video or TV-movie additions to the Lake Placid, Taken, Jarhead, Kindergarten Cop, Sniper, Death Race, Scorpion King and Bulletproof franchises. Nice work if you can get it.

Shaolin Dolemite

If you have a soul, you should love the early movies of Rudy Ray Moore (plus, Eddie Murphy's "My Name Is Dolemite" is fucking great). But by 1999, when someone filmed him swearing in his garden for ten minutes then inserted that footage into a justly forgotten mid-80s kung-fu flick, you're probably okay giving his work a wide berth.