films you've seen recently and would NOT recommend

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i really liked kill list until the ending. when that happened, i got really annoyed and wondered why it had turned into an episode of inspector morse.

The fact that Brandon just had to be a loner - McQueen essentially saying to the audience "he may be better looking than you, but inside he's miserable and can't make friends", distancing the audience from the character by making him a social loser, in a certain way, rather than making the audience wonder whether he is in fact, them. .

i think he looked sufficiently unhappy/tortured most of the time for us to feel for him, even when out having celebratory work drinks, but yeah, hes not really a 'normal' guy, hes someone whos 'got it all'. i dont even know if hes a social loser (and maybe he is written that way cos we dont really see many non succesful people in mainstream hollywood films anymore) - he does well enough with the girl from the office and the girls in the bar that his boss tries to talk to. and even the scene where you could flinch from potentially bad porno sex talk (in the bar at the end), even that is a success as the girl still wants him! so hes actually pretty good socially, just not at relationships. but again, we never really saw how - theyd prob have to chart a full relationship for us to see that i suppose.

without wanting to be a sex addiction sceptic (i do believe it exists, but not sure the film really did enough to make us think about it properly - i think it just provided a good talking point/device to do another film about male loneliness), but the pain he had about needing to fuck something/someone all the time wasnt quite enough to really make you think maybe he hasnt got it all. even if he did have sex with sad facial expressions and fuck like an industrial drill against a window (i almost laughed a bit at this bit) to show just how unfeeling and mechanical the sex really was. maybe mcqueen has less of a clue about whats really going on w/r/t peoples attitudes to sex than hed like to. or - as i think - it the reality was too messy for his aesthetic. but hey, its good to see a filmmaker at least talk about it.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Kill List does sound amazing. An ending from Inspector Morse doesn't (usually - there have been some crackers).

Yeah, not a social loser in the dating sense but in the friendship sense. I agree as to his dating success, but then I do think on the other hand, that many people considered the most attractive across society are often pretty blank. but probably not Brandon's strain of blankness.

I didn't think the film ended up being about sex addiction, as you say/imply. That seemed to be just an expression of his lostness. He didn't ever seem to be 'degrading' himself through sex addiction - the scene where he hires the prostitute started off interesting, but didn't last long enough. Rather than him not being able to get it up for Marianne (sp?), a far more likely scenario would've been him starting to go out with her, and then 'relapsing' by cheating on her and feeling disgusted with himself, or something similar. That could've been interesting, the dynamic that ensued - would she have taken his 'addiction' seriously?

Yeah, wouldn't choose McQueen as a sex counsellor. The scene where he sees that couple fucking against the window is laugh out loud funny, and I'm not sure it's intentional.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
now i think about it, i do kind of like the narrative-through-sex technique (eg - hes drilling the woman because its not intimate, its robotic, just in case you hadnt figured it out). i think mcqueens next film should be nothing but sex-as-story and we can try to figure out what the character is going through from how theyre having sex. actually, has anyone ever done this? someone must have.

but more degradation is def what was needed rather than glimpses at self loathing.

though this would have been a diff film.

abel ferrara needs to do a sex addiction film.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
There were two scenes with people being fucked against a window weren't there? It was like he (the main character) took inspiration from seeing it done so did the same with the prostitute. Which one was funny?
The social loser aspect thing - I thought it was sort of interesting that at first he seemed more like a winner. The scene with his boss and everybody in the bar and they were acting like wankers and he wasn't part of it. At first you take that to show that he's able to remove himself from them because they're boorish twats - and this is emphasised by the fact that he ends up fucking the girl his boss was after. But in an opposite process to most films it kind of strips away the levels of cool to leave him looking like more and more of a failure as a human. He wasn't rising above the boorishness, he was just unable to connect.
There's something strange with the way this film has had (as far as I've seen) almost universal acclaim and yet I've spoken with (if you include dissensus) about twenty or so people I'd consider intelligent who've watched it and none of them have really rated it. Why such a big discrepancy there?
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i think its just a natural result of people reacting differently after a film has been hyped up so much. you cant watch it the same way you would a film with less of a buzz around it. i found drive much more underwhelming/engaging than shame as far as big, hyped event movies go. it had good things going for it, but i just didnt see how it deserved as much acclaim as it got.

He wasn't rising above the boorishness, he was just unable to connect.

true. i didnt dislike shame, i actually liked it a lot. its a weird film, i think ive thought about it more than any other film in a while, but i keep changing my mind about it.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
abel ferrara needs to do a sex addiction film.

The Addiction is very good, though about vampires rather than sex addiction (but i guess there are links?)

the discrepancy in opinion definitely stems from the over-hyping in part. But I can't also help thinking that McQueen was playing to a certain sense of what an 'intelligent' film should be, without much of the substance. It's almost a surprise he's not French.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Kill List - goodness. Could've been truly great; as it was it was good but flawed. The characters had real draw - I think Fiona needed to be developed a little bit more though, and I think half an hour extra wouldn't have gone amiss, which I very rarely say...
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
KILL LIST SPOILERS BELOW














Yeah I loved the first half of Kill List, liked most of the second half until (surprise surprise) the ending. I dunno, the only way it works for me is to see it as all going on inside his head somehow. Hence the obvious metaphor of him murdering his family.

The best bit (or at least the bit I remember most) is when that woman draws the symbol on the back of the mirror. That juxtaposition of skilfully drawn 'real life' with the cliches of gothic/satanic horror worked up to a point...
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yeah I loved the first half of Kill List, liked most of the second half until (surprise surprise) the ending. I dunno, the only way it works for me is to see it as all going on inside his head somehow. Hence the obvious metaphor of him murdering his family.

The best bit (or at least the bit I remember most) is when that woman draws the symbol on the back of the mirror. That juxtaposition of skilfully drawn 'real life' with the cliches of gothic/satanic horror worked up to a point...

Wasn't the ending about PTSD (so yes, def going on inside his head)? Bore a v close resemblance to A Serbian Film's ending, not sure what that was about, given that it's the grimmest thing ever in both cases.

Agreed completely - that bit sent shivers down my spine. Love the way her expressions change, though I'm sure that bit occurs in another film, where the slightly bland character turns out to be anything but (also sort of reminismcent of Paranornal Activity in a weird way).
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'm pretty sure that Kill List isn't supposed to be read as all happening in his head. I'm sure I saw the director explaining the whole film and that wasn't it at all. Bit disappointing when that happens in a way I'd say...

Someone mentioned The Addiction by Ferrara - that would definitely come in my NOT recomemend thread, it's terrible.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
the ending of kill list made me want my money back.

i felt cheated.

so much promise, but it completely lost it.

oh i saw martha marcy marcy marlene. its a film i wished hadnt been hyped up so much, cos its a decent first film, but its really much 'smaller' than all the reviews make out. really understated, sparse, pretty cold/distant minimal character study of a girl escaped from a cult, and brings up some interesting stuff about conditioning and societal pressures, but it could have done so much more with those things - didnt really add up to all that much to think about when it ended. it has a slightly eerie atmosphere running though it, but again, not really as strong or sinister as some of the reviews made out. not a film id say was 'powerful', not like melancholia (which did mental illness better imo) or margaret (which did anguished teens better) anyway. the main actress is good though.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
dune. argh, its pretty terrible. should have had more sting in it!

No way, I love that film! But then, I love the book (which I read first). You're right, it should have more Sting in it (in his sci-fi Y-fronts). 'Sgot Patrick Stewart in it, too. And the Gom Jabar, badass half-bald witches, the appallingly hot Jessica Atreides, freakin' giant sandworms, crazy drugs that turn your eyes completely blue, heart plugs...pretty quality all round, I'd say.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
^100% w/tea but we're both hopeless Dune fanatics (right tea?). which I will now prove by showing I know far too much about Dune film adaptations

Dune was originally (in the early 70s) to be directed by Jodorowsky (of Holy Mountain fame), with sets designed by Moebius, and Salvador Dali (!) playing the Padishah Emperor. that would have been a true mindfuck of film (oh did I mention it was also going to be 10 hours long?) but of course no one was willing to fund such lunacy so it fell through. apparently Lynch's version was originally much longer too but for obvious commercial reasons was severely cut down, leaving this garbled, incoherent mess. at least the sets + costumes (both holdovers from the Jodorowsky version) are cool. and, Patrick freaking Stewart. there's also a Sci-Fi channel miniseries version. the production values are lower but it's more faithful to the book (it covers the first 3 actually) + better in a lot of ways. the great William Hurt plays Duke Leto.

the Sting/Muad'Dib knife fight set to some killer electro
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
one more thing that's always bugged me about the fremen (even more than the ridiculous stillsuits. no hoods? wtf). spice-blue eyes aside, they're not white. they're based on a combo of the tuareg + the bedouins. they speak freaking arabic. yet every dune film has a bunch of pasty white fremen.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Weird how Sting is really good in Dune but so laughable in Quadrophenia.

On a sting theme i recently watched Radio On by Chris Petit it having been bigged up by Iain Sinclair and it's pretty boring. Indulgent. Sting has this cameo as a petrol station attendant.
 
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