Good! These are the movies you actually should download and not pay for because they’re terrible and I wouldn’t want you to waste your money, so pieate away!

Also, once you’ve watched them again with an adult’s brain, come back and argue for Dafoe again. If you can bring yourself to say he’s better than Ledger and I’m convinced your not trolling, I’ll buy you some ducking Cheescakw Factory or some shit.

That’s a great reason for saying awful things are better than really, genuinely good things.

Also not sure what you’re making fun of, as Spider-Man and green goblin are the folks with superpowers and “magic tech” — but whatever man.

Dafoe’s terrible Green Goblin in the shit-eating sub-Phantom Menace-level, 30-year-olds-dressd-as-high-school-kids cartoon fuckoff movie is probably better than Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn as the Joker in the amazing Dark Knight because UGHHHHH IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUN WHICH CAN ONLY MEAN STUPID AS FUCK I GUESS OR WHATEVER!

Also, the Dark Knight is immeasurably more fun than that B-movie turd you’re championing for some reason.

Why? Because things so stupid they’re unbearable to watch can only be so “FUN LOLOL” while things that are well-made and smart are fun in multiple ways. Entertaining, exciting, yet somehow not fucking borderline-storyless flying cartoon nonsense like you goddamn know Spider-Man-Boy is.

But yeah probably only bad things can be fun, you’re right.

Also, honestly many Spider-Man comics in particular are far from child-friendly
I don’t like them because there’s too much suggested rape (yeah, rape) and pedophilia and weird messed up sexual situations involving borderline rapey scenarios.

And same is true of many Batman comics. Not by any measure of the imagination “children’s” stories. Y’know, they didn’t even start out as children’s stories, so that’s really a godawful argument from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Also it has nothing to do with the film adaptations, which are also clearly not marketed or intended only for children.

Fair enough but if it's been that long I'd definitely recommend you give it a second try. For me it's everything Bresson was about.

yeah i will look again

one of the beauties of streaming is that you can try something without great commitment (that is also a weakness because it’s easier to give up on something that does not readily please but deserves attention).

but yeah. criterion service launches “in the spring”, and whenever that is i’ll look for bresson.

im actually desperate for it... got a free month of netflix to try out and when it comes to movies it’s an endless procession of shit—hence my recent marvel adventures in mindnumbing trash.

except for ragnarok. which has actual jokes.

you liked mouchette too, right?

@sev: i am sorry dude but scarcity is a fact of life

so i have no more time for -mans today :D

Very much. I've not seen all of his films but I put everything I have seen firmly in the great + category. Bresson's up there among the very best of the best for me.

I like Raimi's Spider-Man films in spite of Dafoe. I watch them more as a love story and on that level they work fine for me (the 1st two, anyway). I'd actually forgotten Dafoe was even in them until you reminded me. The problem is if you find Heath Ledger's performance a bit annoying (which I must admit I do) there doesn't seem to be much else in The Dark Knight to really hold on to.

At least you acknowledge that Dafoe is shit in that movie, and seem to understand that the movie is shit too, just shit you like.

I think there’s plenty more in TDK to love. Cinematography, practical special effects, pacing, music (really great music), story, art and sound direction, acting ... but sure, Ledger’s the meat, so I guess if you don’t like Ledger (which I suppose is possible?) then maybe it’s not great.

If you don’t like Robert Deniro, Taxi Driver’s gonna suck too. For you. But it doesn’t suck. You just don’t like the right things. Same thing here.

But your admission of Dafoe’s ridoculousness puts you ahead of these fools in my book. Cheers.

I will co-sign. Bresson always floors me. That atmosphere he creates really draws you into its vacuum and then he startles you with moments of poetry and grace. The end of Pickpocket, when the music plays as they kiss after all that silence is almost unbearably beautiful. And Balthazar? I think about it almost every day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQPrlkUjKrw

At first, I did not like Country Priest or Mouchette as much as I loved Balthazar or Pickpocket. Mouchette especially feel at times like Balthazar 2. I need to rewatch that one soon. Fuck it, both of them are in the que now.

I highly recommend L'argent to anyone who's never seen it. It was made in, I think, '83 and it was his last film. It is a film with absolutely no fat at all and is suffocatingly bleak, but I think it is a great culmination of his body of work.

Also, Paul Schrader's recent film First Reformed is a bit of a Country Priest remake (although that's not exactly what it is). Maybe if one doesn't dig Bresson's Country Priest, try checking that out.

Oh man Bresson! I'm going to go watch Mouchette now.

Love is the Devil

I don't know if this is any good but its subject (Francis Bacon and the drinking/art scene around Soho) has fascinated me to the point of near obsession for as long as I can remember, so I'm inevitably gonna love it. The casting is as perfect as its ear for dialect and the (now lost) pub-culture atmosphere. And anyone in need of some fresh additions to their roster of witty insults need look no further.

ah so glad to see the thread return to... relevant matters lol

what queue is this? are you streaming? and if so, from where?

More of a figurative queue; I own the Criterions.

But the Schrader film is on Amazon Prime if you have it. If you get around to it, I'm curious in what you think of it.

The scene at the end of Balthazar, when the donkey lays down to die among the sheep is possibly the most hauntingly beautiful and genuinely profound things I've ever seen in any film, period.

More than aything I think he's a filmmaker of moments. Not saying his films don't hang together as a whole but, like the others, I find certain scenes in Country Priest ... not even scenes, but moments within scenes, like the priest's vague, almost imperceptible smile while riding on the motorcycle, another of those true hallelujah moments that Bresson alone seemed capable of.

"It seems to me that [Bresson] is the only director in the world that has achieved absolute simplicity in cinema. As it was achieved in music by Bach, art by Leonardo. Tolstoy achieved it as a writer." - Andrei Tarkovsky

Yes! Totally agree. Bresson makes you lean forward so much into his vacuum and you feel so cold and then those 'hallelujah' moments make you feel redeemed in a certain way. And he can do it with just a shot of someone's hands, a doorway or a piece of music.

Is that quote from Sculpting in Time? I love that book. I'm not too well versed on 'film theory', but it seems to me that he had a unique and profound opinion on what cinema is and really wanted to separate it from all other art forms.

mmmm Tarkovsky and Bresson, my two favorites!

i hear you guys on the moments business but a man escaped i remember as such a relentless non-stop suspense it’s like hitchcock. maybe i’m embellishing it in memory but i feel it as an uninterrupted sequence. like rope.

same with pickpocket. it’s a “quiet” movie but it has the non-stop quality of zero waste to it.

the final scene of balthasar of course thinking about it twists up my guts inside.

ah maaaaan. i used to own dvds.

i might need to rent again from “netflix ground” to tie me over.

and no love for lancelot du lac? it is so fucking bizarre and hilarious. it’s almost like buñuel made it.

LOLOLOLO derp hahaha driving sev crazy for funniesyup!

I watched the beginning of “HEREDITARY” the other day and I got the distinct impression that it was going to be the kind of horror movie that sticks with you and seeps into your fucking soul, so I stopped.

Like... like “Anti-Christ” (speaking of Willem Dafoe) ... YAH I don’t need to be that disturbed just now thanks so much

Can anyone speak to the fuckedupedness of “Hereditary”?

I haven't watched him in years, but stuff like the above is making me want to re-watch it all. Now I can watch with some media player that can smoothly bump up the speed a tad on some of them.


I can't remember anything about the movie except being unable to figure out if the inept violence was inept on purpose or not.


I saw that on the big screen. Yes, I'm bragging.

---

Watched MacGruber today. Classic.

the way i read it back then (eh, it’s been ages) was like “this is what the middle ages were really like”, and reducing the stuff of myth to dumb human foibles.

now that i think about it... “monty python and hte holy grail”, while a different kind of beast, might owe it some inspiration

the final scene in the forest lololololololololo

“thonk” “clank” “clank” “thonk”

hahahahahahahaha

I saw a youtube review recently where someone had in their all-time top ten horror films. I've never seen it but really want to.

It could be, I have it home somewhere, but I just copied and pasted the quote from a google search: "Tarkovsky on Bresson"

Hereditary will fuck up your soul and make u wanna take a shower halfway through

That was the vibe I picked up, for sure.

Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Panther getting nominated for best picture shows how ridiculous the whole thing is. Next they'll be giving a token award to somebody for being in a comic book film...oh wait...

Is Hereditary on the same level of fucked up as Martyrs? I'm not sure I'm ready for another experience like that right now.

i just read the synopsis cuz i don't care (lol) and i don't think so at all.

not thematically anyway

if you can handle your average deaths and decapitations you should be alright with it :D

Deaths and decapitations I can handle. Mental torture on the other hand ...

Meanwhile ...



The Long Riders

Absolutely top notch Western and definitely my fave film about the James-Younger gang. It seems to have fallen through the cracks somewhat these days, between those of the classic era, the Spaghettis and the Revisionists, which is a real shame. And what a great idea to cast actual brothers (David, Keith and Robert Carradine, Stacy and James Keach, Randy and Dennis Quaid and Christopher and Nicholas Guest) for the different families.

Great, great film.

Agreed.

Fucking Black Panther was a big deal culturally, but that doesn’t make it a great movie.

And no superhero-based comic book film has ever been nominated for best picture before, so that’s SUPER FUCKED UP considering the aforementioned Dark Knight being snubbed.

Black Panther was FINE, but that’s it.

DIE fucking dark night, DIE IN A FUCKING FIRE

ok sev your weird fetish is dead, let's move on from this subject now

Few movies r more fucked up than Martyrs. I always forget that one

For now. For now.

I remember freaking fools out with Man Bites Dog back in the early 90's. That one and Bad Lieutenant always did the trick.

It were a simpler time back then, ey? :D

all this hype about the oscars reminded me i gotta watch roma before i cancel netflix

-

also don’t forget pink flamingos. guaranteed results

My Darling Clementine

Still my all-time favourite film

dammit! i still have not managed to watch that!

must add to the lists... actually no longer have a list. maybe i start one with this.

--

oh it's included with starz subscription on amazon. maybe i'll bundle a bunch of things to watch and do a month.

And Anti-Christ.

I actually don’t think I’ve seen Martyrs, but I’ve talked about it with people here, and my impression is that, yes, hella fucked up.

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie as upsetting as Anti-Christ, especially since I watched it with my girlfriend during a casual horror movie binge, and it turned into a really fucking sick, horrid, dream-haunting experience neither of us will ever forget.

For some reason I thought you'd seen it. All I can say is keep an open mind. Like all of Ford Westerns, it's an origin story, but not about iconic figures (Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday) or events (the gunfight at the O.K Corral) but for an idea of America. So the underlying politics inevitably rub some the wrong way (I'm sure every NRA member has this on their shelf) but a more open mind will hopefully see beyond all that. For me it's the film where Ford proved that a lowly genre film could be the platform for a kind of cinema every bit as intelligent and visually beautiful as anything that was coming out of Europe.

no, we talked about it before when i panned some of the political subtext in the searchers, or maybe it was even way before that talking about stagecoach.

wait, no, i saw it! yes! the whole “undiscovered country” business ha ha ha

i remember nothing of it but that bit

maybe it was on a shitty disc from the library or something. vague recollections now.

hmmm... fuck the “undiscovered” part lol. i live with the injuns.