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and all those movies criticizing materialism and greed were used by idiots to model their own search for material wealth and greed.
Those movies were a subtle cause of the massive investment bubbles of the past 20 years |
Those films may have criticised it morally but it was an era when the evil capitalists were suddenly getting the most appealing roles, with all the best lines. Gordon Gekko, J.R. Ewing. They were baddies only in the way that Dracula was a baddie, or Hannibal Lector, ie they were portrayed in a way that was a million times more appealing than their good-guy adversaries. It was a complete reversal of the logic that underpinned films like It's a Wonderful Life.
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if you want working class british films watch Selfish Giant. Brilliant film. |
I think the years are significant, and i suggest that after two terms of Reagan there was something of an appetite for questioning the dream that had been sold. Same time as Roseanne, in fact.
But I certainly take the point. Apparently it caused Oliver Stone some chagrin when yuppie scum saw Gordon Gekko as a hero. From what I remember, Stone made him unlikable enough. But yes, I doubt anyone goes up to Oliver Stone and quotes any of Martin Sheen's lines. |
 surprisingly i really enjoyed this flick.. it was a classic thriller with a dozen completely unpredictable turns i was hooked! Possibly im just biased as a devotee of Willam Dafoe |
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Politically, Mike Leigh's generally been more about poking fun at the lower middle class than anything to do with the working class. He's closer to someone like Alan Bennet in that sense. Ken Loach is probably the only overtly political (from a class perspective) filmmaker Britain has left. (If you'll pardon the pun.) |
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i'm sure you know him better than i do, and a film like life is sweet would fit that description (only in part, because after the comedy it gets really serious), but films like "vera drake" or "naked" are not about that nor funny at all. i suppose what i find praiseworthy in him is not some sort of political commitment (i am not really fond of overt ideologues), but his realism, in opposition to hollywood which is all about brainwashing through aspirational fantasies of impossible lives. speaking of realism-- that is a reason why the wire was so great. so things like that are possible, but they are extremely rare. |
Better Off Dead :D
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 Fallen also better than i remembered.. ending had the potential to have been epic good then turned out to be epic #fail for literally no reason |
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Haven't seen Vera Drake but you're right about Naked. But for me he really defined himself with his earlier tv dramas, which I imagine are harder to get hold of in the US. Stuff like Abigail's Party https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-hXUehyRlE |
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oh, i see. i only learned about him in the 90s via "secrets and lies." and more or less kept up since. i've been planning a retrospective of his movies via netflix, which has "hard labour" (1973), and i think maybe i'll start it sooner than planned. looking at the selection seems like he covers the whole social spectrum though, including an "affluent snobby couple" in "nuts in may" (1976), a postman, office workers, mortician's assistants, very poor people, etc. is he maybe your contemporary balzac? hmm.... |
He does cover the full range but his most fruitful/insightful area is definitely those petty cultural snobberies that so pre-occupy the upper working/lower middle classes. So Balzac maybe, I dunno, haven't read him, but probably more straight-forwardly comparable with the way Dickens dealt with those areas.
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Not sure abt Mr Turner, although I think Timothy Spall is pretty great in just about anything he does, I distrust the historical bio films in general....
Another year was fantastic, L Manville and Broadbent. Plus, my being a geologist also helped me like Broadbent's character. Happy Go Lucky had a stellar performance by Eddie Marsan, who I just about always see as "Scott" now. |
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. So good, imho.
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 i love it. It seems by coincidence ive been watching a bunch of movies with willem dafoe..i also watched Grand Budapest Hotel last night which had dafoe in it. Speaking of which recently i also watched the all time great To Live And Die In LA.  |
The One I Love
Contrary to the so-so reviews, I enjoyed it completely. |
I found the movie Ce Sior ou Jamais (Tonight or Never) on Youtube, with english subtitles, and watched that last night. An enjoyable film with the lovely Anna Karina not directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
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had a surprising revelation w/ a belgian film, from directors i had never heard about-- they're fantastic though
 THE KID WITH A BIKE (JP & Luc Dardenne, 2011) what can i say? everything that's written on that poster is true. watch it. came out in a nice criterion blu ray. |
 I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. I have never seen Danny McBride do anything that did not make me crack up, from his small role in Tropic Thunder to Pineapple Express ("I'm wearing a fucking kimono, man.") to the genius of Kenny Powers. |
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Jesus fuck that looks boring. Tell me the kid's bike blows up at the end at least. --- I have METROPOLITAN on in the background at the moment. Always liked it, better than I recalled. |
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 IT'S A GREAT MOVIE |
I'll go with great. I like the others but there's something special about this one.
You're right about it's innocence. How many other films end with two guys trying to save a woman's honor? What happened to the cast? They were all good but only one or two ever popped up in anything else. |
i was answering you about "the kid with a bike" by way of quoting metropolitan-- remember the ginger's prejudices against austen (unintended pun) due to reading some critic. you go by a poster. check out the kid with a bike, dammit. great little story. don't prejudge.
but yes you're right about metropolitan. from the cast, i know carolyn farina was a perfume counter girl in a department store before this movie, then she had a cameo in last days of disco, and that was that. chris eig-- something--mann was in all his other movies and he's had parts in law & order, etc.-- same as teh friend w/ the glasses i think i saw him in law and order once. the girl and whose house they hanged out (sally?) also worked a bit... i'm saying all this from memory. |
I was mostly joking. I'm sure it's a good film, and earlier I missed the tagline, "Growing up is not a choice," which is intriguing. But admit it: if The Simpsons wanted to satirize the typical art-house foreign film, they would call it something like THE KID WITH A BIKE.
--- Hype is such a turnoff, but BIRDMAN really is an astonishing piece of work. |
Oh I see. Haven't watched the Simpsons since the last century. But get it! I think it won at Cannes. Belgian film is on a roll lately. Ps- don't read any reviews which might spoil surprises, just trust me on this one.
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just finished watching catch-22. it was good. at the same time funny, anxious, and depressing. the best thing about it was alan arkin. i agree with whoever said nichols was best at getting the best performances for his actors. well shot too, etc. but for me yossarian's performance stands out. good job piecing together the structure too. not the best movie ever, but i really liked it.
also tried to watch, for several days, godard's "pierrot le fou". fucking boring! it's like a little boy trying to show you how he's so clever. in the end i didn't finish the movie. anna karina is lovely to behold but all the bullshit scenes are too much. godard here did exactly the opposite of what sam fuller said cinema was (nice sam fuller cameo). later i went to read to help me comprehend what my poor uneducated intellect had just missed and the wikipedia article said there was no script until a day before shooting, much was improvised, etc. OF COURSE! fucker... like a very expensive student film with good actors. i think it's a huge flop. no matter, he made alphaville too and that justifies him. |
 SCHULTZE GETS THE BLUES (Michael Schorr, 2003). Amazing! If you like quiet, subtle, deadpan comedies with a semi documentary flavor and very little dialogue like the stuff Kaurismaki or Jim Jarmusch like to make (okay, Jarmusch is more "talky", but still), or maybe something by Ozu, this is fantastic and superfunny. A lot of dolts commenting on the internet have found it "boring," because it's "slow" and "nothing happens" (lies, i say, a lot happens if you pay attention) so dolts be warned. But great movie. |
been watching alot, but more importantly, finalized my faves of the year: 155 films later, these 20 are king:
(ranked from 20 to 11) Life Itself, Foxcatcher, Whiplash, The Internet's Own Boy Aaron Swartz, Starry Eyes, Skeleton Twins, Starred Up, The Rover, Wild, Chef, (top 10 down to number 1) Grand Budapest Hotel, In Bloom, Boyhood, Snowpiercer, Under the Skin, Burning Bush, The Immigrant, Interstellar, Inherent Vice, Birdman |
LIFE ITSELF is so good, I'll say anyone who doesn't like it is an asshole.
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you watched 155 NEW movies this past year? luckee... i watched this very old thing last night and it was fantastic:  PORT OF SHADOWS (Marcel Carné, 1938). Great little French noir. Don't have a lot to say right now because I haven't had my stimulants yet. But really great. |
Marcel Carne' did my favorite movie, Les Enfants du Paradis
The wife and I went to a late screening of this movie on Sunday night.  we had seen good reviews and I dig on Joaquin Phoenix, but HOLY FUCK was this just a pointless waste of EVERYTHING. we walked out 1 hour into it, no laughs at all from the crowd, and we were WASTED in preparation. This was as stupidly pointless as a movie can get. fuck Pynchon. His books suck ass, and so do movies based on his suck ass books. Thank Mario we went with a gift card, because I would have killed someone had I to pay $11 of my own money to see this doo doo. Plus hearing Joanna Newsome narrating it made me want to stab my own ears. Watched this at home yesterday.  Of course not as good as Pitch Black, but far far better than the second Riddick movie with it's ponderous bullshit necromongers... I enjoyed it a lot. good middle of day violence while wasted on the stankiest skunk to come accross H town in months and months. |
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hell yes! i watched that not long ago. with effort, because it is a long movie and we had to spread it over 2 nights, but very rewarding. reads like a novel. before this i had only known jacques prévert as a surrealist poet, but as a screenwriter he was awesome. |
GONE GIRL - Could've been a much needed exploration of contemporary gender roles. But Fincher made a stupid thriller instead. Huge waste, although "well made." Dude can really light a scene.
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 Great Gatsby.. when i first watched it i found as terrible as the book.. then i saw it a second time and liked it a bit.. now having watched it a third time i dare say it was a great flick. But i tend to be biased towards Leo DiCaprio movies |
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
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 Loved it. Fucking loved it. But denzel is a bad mofo and marky mark ain't so soft himself |
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-- anyway i saw  THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (Fassbinder, 1972). So fucking great. Yes it's a filmed play. Everything happens in one room. And it looks fantastic-- the room, the camera moves, the costumes, the mask-like faces, everything. Also great dialogue. i wonder if it was autobiographical. |
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the atmospheric entry in Pitch Black was great! |
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