Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
I think i'll watch (or try to watch) L'avenntura tonight

Winter really is the season for working my way through the arthouse canon
Malick ostensibly draws from Antonioni pretty heavily, with the existential meandering characters, often involving the men playfully pursuing the women. I recall L'avenntura being pretty good, for a movie about nothing.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Just watched Fincher's "The Killer" and loved it. Had its corny moments for sure and its the usual shallow, nihilistic view of the world that Fincher deals in (managing to make living in a Dominican Republic paradise look depressing) buuuut

Leaving aside how tight and technically brilliant it's great to see a Jason Bourne film starring what a Jason Bourne type guy probably would be like IRL. (Or James Bond without any charm.) Also seems like a satire on the self-help/masculine motto memorisation culture, the obsession (that works perfectly as a theme for Fincher, and helps make it a genuinely thrilling actionthriller) with efficiency, detail, etc.

Best Fincher since "Gone Girl".
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Fincher really renders certain aspects of reality more vividly than anyone else. The gadgets, the objects, the vehicles, the anonymous city.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
In a sense the problems I had with it were when it wasn't boring enough. The larger than life elements (Tilda Swinton the arch assassin) felt like a wrong turn after the gripping banality of the opening, sniper in the wework.

It reminded me of "possessor", another film I really loved (and I wonder how powerful an influence on this my own sense of loneliness is). The hollowness of the assassin's life, despite the thrill of the action of it. A cliche, I suppose.

And as always (it seems to me) Fincher doesn't show us an alternative to this alienation, this shallowness. (As with Possessor, really.) But that's perhaps like complaining that we don't get a vision of the virtuous life in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Influenced by reading Roger Fry, I suppose that it's not showing you the whole of life, but it's isolating some of its more depressing elements so we can feel them more intensely.

But I feel like the depressing things it highlights are true to life, to my life, anyway. And to many people's I suspect.

Anyway this is an argument conducted with myself at 12.40am.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was also seduced by the procedural fetishism of the killer, I paused it about halfway through to cook dinner and I was rearranging my cupboards to be more efficient, so if another assassin broke in I'd be able to reach the frying pan in seconds.

And you notice, thinking like that, that your problems outside of the sequence to be completed fade away. (But not really.) It's like playing video games. Simplifying everything. It shuts some of the sadness out but also ofc shuts it in.

Remake the film as "the gamer" imo
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I watched this last night on BFI player, first proper film i've watched for a long time.


I'm vaguely aware of Antonioni but never seen anything by him, the reviews suggested this was much more accessible than his later films and indeed it is. But it's really fucking good, too.

Tightly plotted, brilliantly directed, peppered with moments of authentic existential despair (with a bleak bleak ending), starring one of the most beautiful actresses I've ever seen wearing (and I'm not the sort to notice this) some INCREDIBLE dresses.

Not sure how @craner will feel about this one. It's Italian for sure but it has a sort of intellectual, frenchified feel to it that might make his fulsome aristocratic lip curl

Excellent choice. Although Antonioni is all Italian, I don’t see a lot of French in him. It was Bertolucci who made the unforgivable error of trying to be like Godard.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
starring one of the most beautiful actresses I've ever seen wearing (and I'm not the sort to notice this) some INCREDIBLE dresses.

Ferdinando Sarmi, who designed the amazing gowns that Lucia Bosè wears, is actually in the film. He plays the cuckold husband.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member

this was pretty incredible.
i didnt know what procedures they were doing half the time but it was fascinating, gruesome, but also just aesthetically amazing.
its from the directors who did leviathan.
a shame this wasnt released in cinemas, it could be a weird cult item.
 

maxi

Well-known member
Leaving aside how tight and technically brilliant it's great to see a Jason Bourne film starring what a Jason Bourne type guy probably would be like IRL. (Or James Bond without any charm.) Also seems like a satire on the self-help/masculine motto memorisation culture, the obsession (that works perfectly as a theme for Fincher, and helps make it a genuinely thrilling actionthriller) with efficiency, detail, etc.
and it's hilarious cos he's constantly fucking up and breaking all his own carefully disciplined rules
 

luka

Well-known member
Caught Jackie Chans forbidden kingdom on telly the other say and thought it was absolutely superb
 

luka

Well-known member
Also watched face off which had a slightly overripe quality which put me off. Almost good though.
 
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