>>the last movie you watched - Page 896

!@#$%! · 04.15.2014, 06:47 PM

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

demonrail666 · 04.16.2014, 01:54 AM

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Originally Posted by !@#$%!

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.

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.

SuchFriendsAreDangerous · 04.16.2014, 02:45 PM

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..

Beautiful Plateau · 04.18.2014, 06:53 PM

a tender masterpiece imo

!@#$%! · 04.20.2014, 09:05 PM

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.

an evening with viewtiful · 04.21.2014, 04:22 PM

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Originally Posted by !@#$%!

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.

demonrail666 · 04.21.2014, 04:33 PM

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Originally Posted by an evening with viewtiful

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.

Rob Instigator · 04.21.2014, 04:35 PM

pony · 04.22.2014, 04:28 AM

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

MellySingsDoom · 04.22.2014, 07:10 AM

"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.

!@#$%! · 04.22.2014, 11:18 AM

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Originally Posted by an evening with viewtiful

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.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by demonrail666

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.

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.

Rob Instigator · 04.22.2014, 11:29 AM

Casino sucks.

dead_battery · 04.22.2014, 12:52 PM

SNOWPIERCER - 9/10

everyone watch this.

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

SuchFriendsAreDangerous · 04.22.2014, 01:22 PM

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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

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

Rob Instigator · 04.22.2014, 01:25 PM

Love that flick.

evollove · 04.22.2014, 07:32 PM

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?

!@#$%! · 04.22.2014, 07:59 PM

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