Eye in the Sky - 9/10 A Shot in the Dark - 8.5/10 The Return of the Pink Panther - 8/10 The Pink Panther Strikes Again - 8/10 Revenge of the Pink Panther 7/10 A Fistful of Dollars - 9/10 For a Few Dollars More - 9.5/10 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 10/10 Watchmen - 7/10 Mission: Impossible - 8/10 Not a single bad film this week and finally finished off a couple of series I started a while ago with the Pink Panther series (which with Sellers while he was alive being the strongest comedy series I have ever seen) and the Dollars Trilogy which I was surprised I hadn't seen all of since I thought I had at least seen the first and third film. Everything else was good to great with Eye in the Sky being a genuine surprise with a solid cast with one of the last performances by Alan Rickman who even at that stage in his life showed what a great actor he is.
The Untouchables was a tremendous chore to finish, as are several Brian De Palma films. Who knew that your lawyer could proclaim you guilty in court against your will? Of all the genre directors that people like to prop up to a higher echelon, De Palma is consistently one that does not really belong. It is always more interesting to read what people strain to pretend are in his films rather than actually watch them.
De Palma is to me, at his best, someone who makes thrilling movies. At his worst, he's overly indulgent and his movies drag on. Scarface was, imo, not very good.
I have only seen eight of his films, and the only one that was really great was Blow Out, which would obviously fit in the thriller category. Scarface was probably my favorite movie my sophomore year of high school.
When Myspace allowed embedding pictures, my page had: Dazed and Confused Reservoir Dogs Pulp Fiction SLC Punk Rules of Attraction American Psycho Can't Hardly Wait KIDS American History X
How many of his horror/thrillers have you seen? That's where he thrives, not with stuff like The Untouchables or Scarface. Body Double, Sisters, Raising Cain, The Fury, Femme Fatale and Dressed to Kill are him at his best. His Hitchcock worship placed on within the realm of modern genre work is something I find rather compelling. The guy has also developed some incredible set pieces. The vault scene in Mission Impossible is one of my favorite things ever. He has an incredible grasp on creating tension/
My taste was never that bad. In high school, my favorites would have been The Royal Tenenbaums, anything Tarantino, Lost in Translation, Children of Men, and Punch-Drunk Love. At the same time, I was a fan of The Matrix and Star Wars, so I still had a lot to learn.
Femme Fatale was okay. De Palma's career is perfectly comparable to Hitchcock; both are put on way too high of a pedestal.
I am also half an hour into the Rocky Horror Picture Show and am having a hard time going back to it. I have been trying to fill in a lot of blanks from the most popular movies of all time, and there is a reason I have never seen a lot of these before. Might have to switch to a new project.
I've seen a few Straub-Huillet films the last two days since their retrospective has just begun. No Reconciled has been my favorite so far. Couldn't help but think of the early Resnais films while watching it. The S-H films are complementing the Manoel de Oliveira films I've been watching this year rather well.
Haha haven't seen that one yet but it's screening in two weeks and I plan on going. Although I'm not surprised, they don't seem like something that would sit with your taste. I've seen The Chronical of Anna Magdelena Bach, Not Reconciled, and a pair of shorts so far. I thought they were all pretty fantastic and challenging works, which I found sometimes impenetrable. These also seem to lean a lot closer to "mainstream" film making than their later works will. What weren't you into with the film?
I don't feel like it's possible to spoil the film, so I won't worry about it. It was just so pointless and pretentious. I don't usually like to use the word pretentious about film, because I respect ambition and artistry, but they literally just read ubrelated shit to you while they show you random footage. And unlike something by say Chris marker, the visuals aren't interesting either. I want to say they just aim the camera at a Rotary for 20 minutes at one point. But that's all you can do. Give things a watch with an open mind and see if you like them.
Carrie, The Fury, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way and Mission: Impossible will always be some of my favorite films from DePalma and I have no shame in liking all of them.
Started Blue Velvet last night but fell asleep as I was pretty exhausted. Got dayum I love me some Lynch. It's honestly super hilarious, I'm very excited to finish it
If I had stumbled across your MySpace page back in the day, I would have looked up to you Such a great film. I need to watch more Lynch. I've only seen three of his movies, but they've all been incredible
X-men: Apocalypse Definitely deserved the bad to middling reviews it got. I kinda enjoyed it despite myself.