Films you've seen recently and would unreservedly recommend:

[Immryr]

i'm still trying to get over how beautiful Juliette Binoche is in Mauvais Sang.

 

[slim jenkins]

Tried watching Lang's 'Woman In The Moon' but gave up...it's as long as the real 'voyage', almost. Hilarious in parts, though, especially the flight and how they're strapped onto bunk beds for the take off. Halfway through Tati's 'My Uncle' at the moment - has great moments and a quirky atmosphere. Great use of contrast between the ultra-modernist house and the shabby old streets. Critique of modernism? Or the modern as simple comic device? Both, probably. Not seen a 'classic' for ages, though.

 

[vimothy]

Eastern Promises

 

[luka]

you seen that time of the wolf or whatever? i liked it a lot better than hidden.

i watched duck soup last night. its the best film ever made really. astonishing.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Belleville Rendez-vous is clearly brilliant: has anyone here seen anything else by the same director/animator?

 

[crackerjack]

Eastern Promises

I watched this at last and couldn't see what the fuss was about, either for or against. Vigo was cool, Naomi Watts wasn't (sure she's better than that, but seemed really wooden here). Whole thing seemed like semi-noirish thriller from the 80s or 90s (aparrt from the actual Russians in London content).

i watched duck soup last night. its the best film ever made really. astonishing.

It just is, isn't it.

My husband is dead.
- I'll bet he's just using that as an excuse.
I was with him to the end.
- No wonder he passed away.
I held him in my arms and kissed him.
- So it was murder!

Belleville Rendez-vous is clearly brilliant: has anyone here seen anything else by the same director/animator?

Nope, thanks for the reminder to go see Persepolis. *lumps all adult cartoons together*

 

[Mr. Tea]

Nope, thanks for the reminder to go see Persepolis. *lumps all adult cartoons together*

KANEDAAA!!!!
TETSUOOO!!!!

Yeah, Persepolis looks great. There was a piece about it (more about the woman who created it, actually) in teh Grauniad magazine a few weeks back, really got me interested.

 

[IdleRich]

"you seen that time of the wolf or whatever? i liked it a lot better than hidden."

Yeah, I thought it started really good but got a bit boring. Just had an argument with one of my friends about it though and he strongly disagreed on that.

"I watched this at last and couldn't see what the fuss was about, either for or against. Vigo was cool, Naomi Watts wasn't (sure she's better than that, but seemed really wooden here). Whole thing seemed like semi-noirish thriller from the 80s or 90s (aparrt from the actual Russians in London content)."

Yeah, me neither. Said all this already but for me the most interesting things were the scenes that took place on the road I live on.

I watched The Piano Tuner or Earthquakes on Saturday. It's a stylised Quay Brothers film about an opera singer who dies in performance and whose body is spirited away by this weird evil doctor character. The focus of the story then moves to this piano tuner who is summoned to the island where the dr lives and is then asked to apply his expertise to seven automata that the dr has built and which he requires to be fixed before some specific date. The piano tuner who bears a weird resemblance to the dead opera singer's fiancee does his best to mend the machines but becomes obsessed with this singing he hears at night and which turns out to come from the dead opera singer whom the doctor seems to have re-animated for another performance.
I enjoyed the film although at times it's frustrating in a typical Quay Brothers kind of way and it has lots of over-acting and stuff that makes it seem very dreamlike - as I'm sure they intended - but also at times rather annoying. The ending (and other parts) reminded me of the story from The Invention of Morel (which is also the basis for Last Year At Marienbad) and I googled to see if there was any link and it seems that the film is indeed inspired by the book, and also by another book called Locus Solus, anyone read that or know anything about it?

 

[UFO over easy]

saw happy go lucky yesterday and it was fucking weird

 

[crackerjack]

saw happy go lucky yesterday and it was fucking weird

How so? in a 'for fuck's sake woman, stop smiling' kinda way?

 

[UFO over easy]

I'm not sure really, it just baffled me. No idea if I liked it or not.

I couldn't really figure out if mike leigh had any kind of agenda with it - or whether you were supposed to love or despise his lead character. It couldn't really be anything inbetween those two things. It felt to me like quite a bitter film, but then I'm reading all these reviews where people are just saying it's a loveable romp about happy people. It was very hard to sit through, I felt massively tense almost from the outset and the scenes where she's with her driving instructor were very difficult to watch.

That probably says a lot about the way I watch films, that I felt the need to pick a side. Bit shit that. But I think you're kind of tricked into it through the use of a lot of cinematic clichés.. I was slightly wrongfooted.

Good performances though, sally hawkins doesn't let up for a minute and the driving instructor, I forget his name, was also impressive.

 

[ether]

Eastern Promises

I really didn't enjoy this, I really can't get on with david cronenberg movies though,
people seem to behave in a cringe worthy ways, minor things are always way over the top, the characters always seem poorley developed unrealistic and hard to emphathise with.

 

[ether]

All the talk of Funny Games (which didn't really interest me at all) has led me to Hidden, which i absolutely loved. Brilliant acting (Binoche especially, ages since I'd seen her in anything) and so many memorable scenes, esp. the one where he first meets Majid in adulthood, and he's so calm. I liked how so many things were left unexplained - at least I did once I'd watched the interview afterwards and being reassured i hadn't just missed half the story.

So anyway, anyone seen Funny Games, new or original and would recommend? I know the new one's been mostly panned...

hidden was dreadful i thought, not just because the bourgeois characters seemed either bland or dislikable but most of all becuase the story wasn't resolved.

Director: Look how I can use the mechanism of a thriller to drive this story forward, wait the characters are so uninteresting the audience wont care what really happens to them, ah but critics will love me for this triksy movie which ends without resolving the narrative and anyone who doesnt enjoy it, well, just isn't clever enough.

 

[tryptych]

Saw Aguirre, Wrath of God the other week. That fairly blew my mind.

 

[UFO over easy]

^ The herzog box set is worth getting. Aside from the incredible films it's a nice object.

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

Deep End (1971)

Set in a besmirched late 60s London, this has naive John Moulder-Brown (whom Hammerheads will know from Vampire Circus) and sexually precocious Jane Asher as bored teenage attendants in a crumbling, echoing public baths. Can (billed as "The Can") and Cat Stevens on the soundtrack, jawdropping cameo from Diana Dors. Honestly i can't recommend this highly enough. Truly affecting coming of age narrative with touches of the dark and surreal, something of a lost minor classic. Not on DVD or video, but does the rounds if you know where to look. Best film I've seen in some time.

 

[craner]

That sounds really good.

 

[Pestario]

Big Trouble in Little China

Being a child of the 90s I missed out on a lot B-movie schlock but I watched BTLC the other day and honestly thought it was one of the best movies ever made. I haven't laughed like that for a while. It treads the fine line between irony and earnestness with comic book dialogue and cheapo effects. I highly recommend it!

 

[UFO over easy]

www.imdb.com/title/tt0092795/ - lifechanging

 

[Mr. Tea]

Big Trouble in Little China

Fucking YES.