Requiem for a Heavyweight - 1962

A gritty noir-type film about a washed up boxer. The kind of thing you would watch at two in the morning (like I just did)...



If interested, check out the opening sequence featuring Cassius Clay, who has just pounded "Mountain Rivera" (Anthony Quinn). Great POV style shooting..

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/2...p-Opening.html

Risky Business

so many great quotes and scenes.

Pain and Gain

I have a soft spot for Michael Bay films, but only when I'm not watching them. The one thing that gets left off most attacks on his films and which always strikes me about halfway into almost any of them is how boring they are. I'm excluding the Rock and Days of Thunder which are probably the reasons for my soft spot to begin with.



Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Not as good as the first one but OK.



White House Down

Really enjoyed it.

i rewatched la grande bellezza and then i watched the interviews with the director, the lead actor and the other screenwriter.

the other screenwriter (an older guy, i forget his name) was the more revealing in the connections with la dolce vita-- he compared it to the odyssey in that it's more than just a story, but a kind of ever-present referent for people who tell a certain kind of story (as the odyssey is to travel).

god damn i haven't gotten this much pleasure from a movie in ages

turns out the director wanted to be a writer. this is an instance in which this works really well. he really knows how to tell a story with lots and lots of nuance. no "goodies vs. baddies" here. not even a hint.

WOLF OF WALL STREET

it was okay.

yes yes sure, it's scorsese, the man is brilliant, but this was goodfellas all over again so it was quite predictable. also it went on too long. when dicrabio was making his hitleresque speeches about being rich he put a good performance but i was as bored as if i was watching the dull military parades in triumph of the will (because, admit it, triumph of the will may have made film history but it's just a bunch of military goose-stepping bullshit that puts one to sleep).

anyway, wolf was good movie and all, and great little performance by mcconaughey, but after having watched the great beauty twice in a row, and with it being so fresh in my mind, this really suffers by comparison. american movies have no heart--they're all about morality or something. "baddie gets comeuppance". zzzzzz.

earlier today also watched

fellini's INTERVISTA

definitely a minor fellini movie, a kind of reminiscence before death i suppose, and it's certainly no amarcord, but it was nice, and sweet, and a little bit sad, and nice to watch all over, and funny and clever, even though the transfer was quite crap (koch lorber really puts out crappy dvds). but shit, it had more heart and more human emotion than the wolf of wall street which was about… gold watches, or something? i don't know not a single likeable character that i can remember. 'MERICA! oh yes, another nice/smart thing about intervista is that it's one interview inside another inside trying to make franz kafka's amerika (which i should read) into a movie… really, a minor film, but if you're a fellini fan you'll love it anyway as well as many of its characters (and scorsese is a huge fellini fan, he bought and restored la dolce vita).

i enjoyed the hell out of Wolf of Wall Street. a little overbearing but that's what i expected.

Walt Disney's Cinderella (9/10)

Saw this with my girlfriend last night, I expected to enjoy it but was somewhat taken aback by how good it really was. Highly recommended (if it's playing near you)
8/10


Been going through this boxset. I'm 10 movies in and I'm I love.

I enjoyed the Campaign. It could have been a bit beefier, but it was comical.

The Godfather of Asian Action flicks. Just fucking excellent

 

So good!

Zulu Dawn - a really impressive epic film, depicts the utter massacre of british military in zululand in 1879 when a few thousand troops took on the 30 or 60K man Zulu army - the Brits attacked the Zulus who were only defending their territory. Later more brits came and eventually deposed the Zulu king and repressed the tribe. The movie must have been made with 10,000 extras, they didn't have CGI to fake the crowds like they do now.

the fucking english were the global plague of the XIX century

even worse than contemporary america, because in those days violence and militarism were more glorified and celebrated than today, and white supremacy was the politically correct rationalization at the time.

of course they didn't have daisy cutters. but if they did…!

Yeah, I wasn't expecting that much but it still felt like a bit of a missed opportunity in the end. A great idea that never really went anywhere.

Haha.

Zulu Dawn is good but the first one, Zulu, (Zulu Dawn is a prequel) is one of my all-time fave war film. It was actually quite progressive for its time and certainly wasn't the jingoistic 'Britain vs the savages' propaganda some now dismiss it as. The irony is that Zulu Dawn was apparently made to correct Zulu's supposed racism but what its producers didn't realise was that it wasn't a pro-British film at all so much as a kind of tribute to the idea of the soldier in both cultures. And still has perhaps the greatest final battle sequence ever filmed. Highly recommended.

i've watched zulu a couple of times, great war movie, i like it, starts alfie, whatsisname, michael something, but i liked the movie more the first time, so when i got it again, all excited, i realized the zulus were faceless creatures. literally, a mass of spear-wielding negros that chant and play drums in the distance, putting fear into the mind of whitey-- but no personalities that i recall. i think it's racist in that sense-- in that the zulus are subordinate and accessory to the british story. you could have replaced the zulu army with a plague of locust or a wildebeest stampede and it would have been the same-- english heroics vs. "an overpowering force of nature." so yes, the english are humans and the zulus are nature.

ALL ANAL TEEN ORGY 7

I know, I know. "Watch them in order." Everyone says that.

But this is all the video store had available, and I figured something was better than nothing.

Pretty good. I was a little lost at first, not having seen the previous six, but Hillary Wank gives such a moving performance in the opening scene that I was immediately drawn into her plight, which is that she needs all her holes stuffed. See, she's just turned eighteen. So, of course, she wants to celebrate.

But the plot isn't the main point of the film. Character is. The way the actors move from wound up and horny to orgasmed-out and satiated is quite believable. The acting is best described as "minimalist," reminding me a bit of Bresson's work. The dialogue is deliciously subtle and complex. "Fuck me, baby. Fuck my ass wide open. Goddamn," says Ally McFeel while getting DPed by Bohah Hill and James Wanko, which of course echoes the famous scene from Richard III, while borrowing a little from Friedrich von Schiller's later work. Clever! The color palate is a tad boring, but the direction is unfussy and the editing tight. The set designs are excellent. It really looks like a cheap motel room!

All in all I found this a well-made, if not entirely original, piece of work. I'm certainly going to go back and watch earlier volumes.

lol

^^ i gave him rep for that fine piece of film criticism. everyone else should.

You must spread more rep, etc...

Yeah, it's definitely guilty of presenting the Zulus as a faceless mass. I suppose in many ways it's a British Western, with the depleted 'cavalry' defending a 'ranch' against wave after wave of 'injuns', etc. It's progressive in terms of the tradition of British war films dealing with Empire by showing no triumphalism in victory and by presenting the Zulus as noble, intelligent warriors - much as Westerns started to do around the same time in their treatment of, say, the Apaches. But again you're right; even Westerns usually gave the Indians a figurehead (like Geronimo) which Zulu never does. So yeah, they're ultimately presented more as a force of nature against an army of individuals.

I suppose in that sense Zulu was modestly progressive only in terms of the tradition of Empire-set war/adventure movies that preceded it.

Dark City
I LOVE this film, probably too much..

Its not really as great as I think it is, its really an almost lame
"film noir" revision with a predictable plot twist BUT I still love it.
I love the premise, I love the sets/costumes. I love the visual imagery. I love early CGI (back when movies used it as a tool but didn't overly rely on it).. However I think the "directors' cut" actually
ruined it a bit.. There were a few scenes that were rightfully omitted from the original release, probably because they sort of give the plot away. In the director's cut there are a few scenes that more or less give away who the villains are, whereas the original doesn't let us know who they are until about 2/3 of the way through..

a tender masterpiece imo

AMERICAN HUSTLE



mang, that was a good, fun movie. it had everything.

with a roughly similar theme (conman vs. the feds) and a much higher budget, wolf of wall street looks like shit compared to this. and this one didn't even have to show nipples.

david o. russell fucking rules.

Did we watch the same movie??
I felt like all the ingredients for a classic were there, but it just didn't all come together in any way that felt all that exceptional. Wolf of Wallstreet was incredible.

Completely with you on both counts. AH was a great cast, concept, everything, but a totally flat script. WoWS felt like the best thing Scorsese's done since Casino.

not going to uni today cause I'll go to the cinema for the nymphomaniac double feature :cool: :cool: :fuckyou:

"Guru, The Mad Monk" (dir. Andy Milligan, 1970) - truly awe-boggling stuff from the Staten Island supremo. In fact, here's me review of it here:

An entry into the "Witchfinder General"/"Mark Of The Devil" stakes by everyone's favourite Staten Island-based director, and it sure is a "unique" item indeed. This one concerns Father Guru (Neil Flanagan) - who actually is really a bishop, not a monk! - whose day-to-day activities involves rounding up various unfortunates, absolving them of their supposed "sins" (one gets absolved for the "sin" of peeping!), then performs various unpleasantries on them in the name of Christ. He's aided and abetted in all this by his right-hand foil Olga (Jacqueline Webb), who provides "glamour" and sleaze in equal measure, and Igor (Jack Spencer), a leprous hunchback, who seems to be loyal to Father Guru. Various victims come and go, and Father Guru (a dead ringer at times for UK actor Rodney Bewes) chews the scenery about sin, redemption and teaching them damn villagers a thing or two about the Good Lord. Ultimately, the victims wreak their revenge on the good Guru, and he ends up meeting a truly ridiculous demise at the hands of Igor. At this point the film crashes to a sudden halt and ends.

This film bears many of the hallmarks of an Andy Milligan effort - choppy, sometimes incoherent editing, some rather wobbly camera work, a script (put together by Milligan himself) full of ripe and ludicrous emoting and dialogue, and a large amount of random stock library music. The violence/gore scenes are truly inept - I can't believe that Milligan spent more than $10 on the special effects work - and the performances (by a group of unknowns, as per usual) range from the bored/confused to the rather deranged. At 57 minutes, the film oddly enough feels about the right length; any longer, and it really would have begun to drag out considerably.

You'd think that, going by the above, "Guru...." is a laughable, incompetent, grade-Z exploitation mess that deserves to be forgotten about, and indeed, 98% of film fans would agree with you. But Milligan's work has always held a fascination for me - his themes of repression, desire, conflict and ever-present violence run throughout his films, and whilst I'm never going to buy into the (utterly ridiculous) claims that Milligan was some type of zero-budget "auteur", he has shown thematic consistency throughout his career. In addition, Milligan's homosexuality (which he chose not to be open about, and he was also a frequenter of the NYC S&M scene) feeds into his work too - the sense of repressed guilt is present in this at times, and whilst he's no George Kuchar (and indeed, who is?), the gay angle of his film-making should be acknowledged. Tragically, Milligan passed away from AIDS in 1991, and spent the last couple of years of his life in considerable ill-health and poverty.

I've waited nearly 20 years to see "Guru, The Mad Monk", and was not disappointed. Milligan's films were nigh-on impossible to find in the UK for many, many years - the only one being distributed (by video) being "The Ghastly Ones" (under the re-titling of "Blood Rites") in the early 1980's, which itself ended up being clobbered under the Obscene Publications Act (for gore scenes reasons). It was only with the BFI Flipside DVD release of "The Body Beneath" a couple of years ago, that Milligan's work finally was available in general to a UK audience.

"Guru, The Mad Monk" most certainly is an acquired taste, to say the very least, but comes recommended to those interested in low-budget horror/exploitation cinema.

well of course we didn't, since we're both different and bring different things to the experience. more on that in my response to demonrail.

i really had fun watching american hustle, whereas wolf of wallstreet ended up being homework, and i wanted it to end already. american hustle was funny and lighthearted, a bit of a farce, wolf was seeeeeerious fucking business, and very cynical, and ultimately a huge downer.


i didn't really like casino. goodfellas is probably my all time favorite by him, or maybe it's raging bull. i guess my problem is that scorsese tends to repeat himself a lot, well, actually everyone does, but having watched nearly everything he's done many times over, i end up feeling like this is nothing new-- an "i've seen this movie already" kind of thing. this was like a goodfellas/casino combo or something. and maybe if i knew nothing about scorsese i would have been blown away, but feels like more of the same. and heeeavy, fucking shit.

wows was superb on the spectacle end of things: shipwrecks, helicopters, superhuman nudity, cocaine blown into assholes, tremendous camerawork… in terms of craft sure nothing can touch it, it's a tremendous piece of work, but it was filled with despicable characters behaving like jackasses, and we had to sit with them for 3 fucking hours, hating them and waiting for them to go the fuck away from our lives. then the real fucker even has a cameo in it.

american hustle was none of those things. it wasn't perfect, it wasn't spectacular, compared to wows it seems low rent, but it actually had a human soul. and the performances were pretty great-- jennifer lawrence in particular had me cackling. and sure, the guy ripped off a bit of scorsese, but he did it for his own ends which were more comedic and less oh-so-fucking-taxi-driver-heavy. like i said, i had fun watching it, and i'd watch it again.

Casino sucks.

SNOWPIERCER - 9/10

everyone watch this.

hunger games only instead of just marx its marx AND hobbes. also way better.

Glad I inspired you, I was waiting for like two weeks for the netflix disc arrive to watch this one again.. I also did NOT realize it was by the director of The Crow (another favorite of mine) but it totally makes sense on reflection

Love that flick.

scorsese: I think Aviator is really underrated. And I try to watch last Temptation of Christ every two years or so. The Departed moves at such a breakneck speed, it's still sort of a wonder to behold. Raging Bull gets more interesting and intense each time I see it, like Citizen Kane. A wee bit too long, but otherwise virtually flawless. Every technical department knocks it out of the park, and obviously it's DeNiro's finest hour. If Martin had only made that, he'd still be counted one of the greats.

But really, isn't film is just literature for people too lazy to read?

me too! i expected shit but got GOLD.


i don't, but i did like it a lot


i hated the departed. it didn't do anything for me. not sure why. i think i remember i found it too predictable, storywise.


that movie is just fucking amazing


YES. but i began to read when i was 3 and ended after a BA in english plus 5 years of grad school in literature. i have earned the fucking right not to see another printed page ever again. however i still do, on occasion. but for everyday characters and stories, i think TV takes the cake these days. just finished season 1 of house of cards, and WOW.

yesterday i spent my day in the cinema with this (and snacks)

so??? how was it?


So, I read this yesterday, and went to check it, and Netflix has it! Should I…? The thing predicts I'll give 3 stars… The reviews other people have given are quite scathing… which means I probably should take a look ha ha ha.

Yeah, great show. But it's just Shakespeare isn't it? Richard III specifically.