Ryan McNeil
Over the next ten days, I will sit down in a theatre for the 100th time this year. I’m not sure whether I should be proud of that or ashamed.
This week got me back up to my usual pace, and brought a little bit of everything. I went back over familiar ground, I got a surprise or two, and got back to work on filling in my scary movie blind spot.
Here’s what was on tap…
Screenings
THE THREE MUSKETEERS – Pure pantaloon’d silliness, but points to the theatre for projecting the 3-D nice and bright!
YOUNG ADULT – This was a cool experience. Lindsay signed us up to go to a free screening at The Lightbox – one where we wouldn’t find out what we were going to watch until the last moment. Turned out to be an advance of the upcoming jason Reitman/Diablo Cody film. It’s far too early to write anything particularly detailed, but I will say that I enjoyed it.
Blu-Rays/DVD’s I’ve Never Seen
PULSE (2001) – Part of The Horror Syllabus. This one didn’t do as much for me as most of the rest of the watchlist I’ve been prescribed.
POLTERGEIST- This, on the other hand, was a howl. Some of the effects have gone “all 80’s”, but on the whole it’s still a treat. I’ve been declaring “This house is clear” all week.
Blu-Rays/DVD’s I’ve Watched Before
TREE OF LIFE – If possible, it looks even more beautiful on blu-ray. Finally getting a chance to revisit it confirms my notion that it’s one of the very best films I’ve seen this year.
EASY RIDER – Lindsay and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary this week, and as a gift she bought me the Criterion BBS blu-ray boxset. I decided to start with the film I’d already seen, and found that I liked it even more than i remember liking it. I’m sure some watching it for the first time wouldn’t get it, but there’s just so much to love about this generational classic.
Boxscore for The Year
205 First-Timers, 139 Re-Watched
344 Movies in Total
How’s about you – seen anything good?
Another solid week…
Monsoon Wedding: Strange, but good. Strange because the focus isn’t on who we think it will be, but really well made and beautiful.
Children of a Lesser God A glorified movie of the week.
Ace in the Hole Fantastic. The most cynical film I’ve ever seen.
Laura Not as good as I would have hoped.
Metropolis Still fantastic, and better with the restored footage.
She Done Him Wrong If this is the best of Mae West’s career, why do people still know about Mae West? It’s pretty bad.
Blood and Black Lace Half of the subject for the next Demented Podcast, so I remain silent.
Geez Steve, way to shame me. I’ve seen almost *none* of these films. Guess I’m not as literate as I want to be, eh?
Are any of us ever as literate as we want to be? I’ve only seen two (Poltergeist and Easy Rider) from your list this week.
Sure, but you aren’t any worse off for missing MUKETEERS. A few of yours make me wanna hang up my keyboard.
So I was on my way of repeating the 15 movies a week thing like last week, but I suddenly turned into a Who-vian out of nowhere. Bummer…well sort of. I love Doctor Who!!
Firsts: 1) Miller’s Crossing– You were right. Great film, definitely my favourite Coen Bros flick so far. I’ll hopefully watch No Country for Old Men today and make-up my mind about that once and for all.
2) Sex, Lies, and Videotape– Having said that about Miller’s Crossing, it wasn’t the smartest decision on my part to follow it with this absolute indie gem. This one just blew me away. Sooooo goooooood.
3) The Three Musketeers– You know I expected it to be as terrible as it was, so it didn’t disappoint me at all. I was sort of prepared for its awfulness, so the slightly funner parts made it somewhat bearable. Except Orlando Bloom ofcourse.
4) Paths of Glory– I had forgotten how much I loved Kubrick. This one reminded me.
5) Beginners– It was so sweet and touching. And the three leads were just spot on incredible.
Rewatched: 1) (500) Days of Summer– Adorable and ingenuous as ever.
2) The Boat That Rocked– I don’t care what people say. This film is an absolute favourite of mine.
Sweet Moses Nik, this seems like one absolute sublime week of watching! I need to rewatch SEX LIES one of these days – perhaps as part of a Soderbergh marathon.
…of course the amusing thing is that I say I need to rewatch it, even though I own it.
You should be proud of it. After all, you just love films.
The Three Musketeers was kind of okat at first but now I think it’s just bad. I can’t wait to re-visit The Tree of Life.
Notched number 99 today…we’ll see how I feel when I get to the century mark later this week.
Too bad you didn’t like “Pulse” (the original Japanese version to be clear) – since I thrust it upon you I feel slightly bad, but I’m glad you gave it a whirl. I did a Finite Focus post on one of the scenes from the film on RowThree that might articulate some of the reasons I love the film better than whatever I rambled the other night.
“Easy Rider” is now the only remaining film from the BBS box I haven’t watched yet…B-)
Oh, and you and Lindsay were right about that microwave scene – I have no idea how I transposed it to “Footloose”. In my defense, I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time…
I think you should be proud… I’d like to go to the cinema that often! But I’m only a poor teenage student… By the way, I’ve always wondered: are you a professional film critic? Just out of curiosity.
Poltergeist is great, right? I saw The Shining yesterday – classic.
Welcome back Mette! Haven’t heard from you in ages – congrats on your recent Blog-a-Versary.
The answer to your question is no, I am not a pro critic. The funny thing is that this brings bad news and good news.
The bad news of course is that I don’t get paid for writing my opinion and likewise what I watch must usually get paid for out of my own pocket.
The good news though is with that, I get to choose what I want to write about as opposed to being assigned dreadful films like THE ZOOKEEPER, TRANSFORMERS 3, and the like.
Don’t be a stranger, okay?
New on DVD: “The Man From Nowhere” – I’ve been dabbling in Korean cinema lately and this is one of the winners
Ooh Helen, Korean cinema may be the most fun rabbit hole to disappear in currently. I’m sure you’ve watched or are at least aware of Bong Joon-ho and Chan Wook-park, but I’d also recommend Lee Chang-dong’s utterly wrenching work and I even need to familiarize myself with with Hong Sang-soo. I’d also recommend the original 1960 version of The Housemaid, which treads similar stylistic waters as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion but beat that movie by 5 years.
Thanks for the recommendations! My very unscientific sampling so far includes Bong’s “The Host” and Chan’s “Oldboy” and “Lady Vengeance” but I still have a lot of watching to do. Two of the Korean films I’ve especially liked were “The President’s Last Bang” and “The Good, the Bad, The Weird”.
Sounds interesting. What’s it about?
Pawnshop owner with a mysterious past takes on drug gang after the young girl who lives next door is kidnapped because her mother stole a shipment. It reminded me of Hong Kong cinema in a good way, mixing thriller, action and drama story elements and going all out with each. The soundtrack is particularly good.
Glad you enjoyed Young Adult. I’m skeptical despite the fact that I have no reason to be.
Not very many movies watched for me this week:
Captain America
Paranormal Activity 3
Your comment intrigues me – what is stoking your skepticism?
Did a bunch of work this week, then binged on ARKHAM CITY so didn’t watch much.
First watches:
LE HAVRE- An absolute marvel. A film of unrelenting optimism that feels not like blindness to reality but a challenge to the audience to live up to its standard. Kaurismäki makes my kind of humor: so dry that even when you get the joke you don’t laugh for a minute until suddenly you can’t stop.
THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST- Another small but great work by Kaurismäki. He’s too focused to make something grand enough to be a masterpiece but the consistency and flawlessness of his vision may well see him rocket up my list of faves
COLD FISH- I LOVED Sono’s LOVE EXPOSURE (it will be on a revised list of my picks for best of the last decade) but this was lacking. It had a lot of the same mad quality, but its clearly satiric aims weren’t reflected in the execution, which ended up woefully misogynistic.
Rewatch:
THE TREE OF LIFE: Continues to be far and away the best film of the year, perhaps of all time and, more importantly, a singular experience. The closest the cinema has ever come to Joyce. Embodies so many splits that it should collapse like a dying sun but manages to be it all. Religious but way secular (its idea of god is merely life itself), coherent but abstract, elated but capable of piercing agony. Ugh, I shook as much the second time as I did the first.
Sounds like a great week of watching buddy. Your experience with PAST gave me a grin since it takes me back to my first year doing TIFF full-out. ‘Twas one of the films that got me going on foreign cinema.
Hi Jake,
I can’t say I would agree about the misogynist comment in regards to “Cold Fish”. It’s definitely a very violent, bloody film that doesn’t shy away from characters (even some younger ones) from meeting really awful, grisly fates, but I see the violence as pushing the satirical commentary forward. How can a society allow a man like the serial killer to continue and become as powerful as he is? Yes, the female characters aren’t exactly sympathetic and certainly cause a great deal of misery to the meek fish store owner, but I see this as an outgrowth of a still patriarchal society which typically doesn’t allow a great of warmth and emotion within it. It’s not a film for everyone for sure and I’ve debated myself how I feel about it sometimes, but in the end I feel it’s kind of brilliant. Sono is one of the more fearless filmmakers out there right now.
I do agree about “Love Exposure” – wowza.
I liked “Le Havre”, but it didn’t completely wrap me up in its standard Kaurismaki universe the way “Man Without A Past” or his proletariat trilogy did. I am glad he’s getting a lot of press lately though…
In my full review, Bob, I do address many of these same issues, but I feel that had Sono stopped at the two-hour mark (when a [redacted] climax happens that seemingly brings the action to a conclusion) he could have made a better impact by suggesting the perpetuation of a cycle rather than spinning off his axis into incoherence. Love Exposure is certainly out-there, but it’s surprisingly cogent and even sweet in its blistering satire. But the whole last half-hour of Cold Fish just falls apart for me, which is a shame because I was really into it up to that point.
Well, Sono certainly hasn’t met a movie he couldn’t stretch out a little further. I’d love to see a tight 80 minute thriller from him…
I understand your point and I guess I find it hard to disagree, but that final act was still pretty gutsy (in more ways than one…). At that stage, i don’t think he’s concerned about the point of his film anymore – he’s made it and now he’s diving head first into the sludge to wallow around. I don’t know if it would have been better without that last section, but my jaw certainly got a workout from dropping so much during it…
I saw only two movies this past week:
– Scream 4: Entertaining enough and kept me guessing until the end. Good enough for a watch
– Max Manus: A World War II movie chronicling the heroics of Norwegian resistance fighter Max Manus. Solid flick although the ending could have been chopped off without much loss.
Only two? You working on a big report at work or something?
No, just been busy on weekdays and feeling like doing nothing on Saturday, which is usually the day I watch movies. Don’t worry, I’m going all out this week and will try to see three movies!!!
Three?! Damn man – pace yourself!!
I enjoyed Scream 4 but it had a ton more potential to it if done right.
I’ve been wondering whether TOL works in the home theatre. I mean, I usually watch all of my films on my laptop .. it is HD, but it’s not the biggest screen and I think Tree needs a large canvas.
It worked for me on my 40″ TV, but I did notice that I couldn’t zero in and focus the same way I did in the darkened theatre. That said, those visuals still pop on the TV the same way they did in the theatre.
There’s even a cheeky title card that comes up before the feature that says something to the effect of “For best results, the filmmaker of this film suggests turning the volume of this film up as loud as possible”