Likewise, I didn't really like The Fountain. Can't say that I disliked it but the handling of symbolism was so increadibly cringeworthy and... profane that it seriously irked me. Sitting in a Yoga position does not make the character "enlightened", it's just lazy symbolism. When I see such uninspired, unoriginal symbolism, it does not make me think or feel - it takes me out of the movie. When Hugh Jackman "achieved Nirvana", I straight out laughed at his expression. That's the last thing you want to achieve in a movie like this.
If I were to delve into the analytical cesspool alongside you though... one of the themes I remember thinking about when watching it was the " Izzy = Tree" metaphor the film was rolling with. It was quite a while since I saw it though -- so you have to forgive me if my evaluation is a bit sketchy.
Queen Isabelle tells Spanish Jackman that they will live togheter when Jackman finds the tree and achieves enlightment. He goes to the Azteck world - finds the tree. Modern day Izzy becomes the tree upon death (it growing on her grave or something didn't it?). Future Van Helsing then ascends with the tree into the nebula. What happens when they connect? A glowing white light... and then Queen Isabelle appears.
What did Isabella say? We will live togheter when you achieve enlightment? However, it was Izzy herself who inspired Wolvorine and provided him with the seed for the tree that took him there.
Notice, for instance, that Thomas threats the tree similarly to how he threats Izzy. He strokes it's bark similarly how he strokes Izzy. A hint at the metaphor.
So by reaching the nebula, Thomas finally reunites with Queen Isabelle, and restors Izzy, and achieves enlightment. So, when Queen Isabella sends that guy from Swordfish to find the tree, she's actually sending him to find "herself". The quest for enlightment really is about making Jackman understand Izzy. Isabelle is always speaking about these existential things that befuddle Jackman, but he is always madly infatuated in her, so there is love between them but not understanding. The quest for the tree and enlightment was really about setting Jackman on a quest to understand Izzy... thus completing their love. The tree was merely a veicle for the completion of their personal relationship.
That's a good way of tying things together - I like it a lot. I thought there was supposed to be a cyclical aspect to the plot but I couldn't piece it together last night. Where I kept getting caught was with whether we're supposed to believe the Aztec timeline really happened or not.
What I initially believed was that the Aztec timeline was fictional, based on Izzie's book, and not a set of lives that was actually lived. However I recognized that was discontinuous with scientist Tom and and Enlightened Tommy who seemed to be on two ends of one, real life. I don't know if your solution actually solves that problem, because Aztec Tomas explicitly died and scientist Tom was somehow able to be born. Similarly, if Izzie was the tree that Aztec Tomas was sent to find, how was Queen Isabelle able to come about? It just doesn't flow right to me when immortality is the goal and yet lives are popping in and out of existence on their own.
I took the appearance of Queen Isabelle at the moment of the explosion to mean that Enlightened Tommy was finishing the story in his mind as he came to his own end - not to imply any reality of the Aztec timeline. But that is a boring interpretation, and I'd like to resolve into something more like yours.
Black Mass was good enough I guess. Kind of hyped Depp's performance out of the moon, but he was still good enough. The movie just feels like it's missing a better storyline after Jimmy's son dies. It becomes very formulaic and cliched then.
^ keeping with Depp, Transcendence was pretty dull. Even if it had been the first film to introduce me to the concepts of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology, I doubt I would have been interested. AI in particular was not examined at all, merely used as a plot device to keep Depp's flat character in a sort of suspended animation. After the cryptic quote about the uploaded monkey screaming, I thought we'd see more of an internal struggle as AI Will struggled to merge with human Will. Instead we got this halfway-there pseudo-omniscience that didn't seem to struggle with anything - except, of course, when he had only enough resources for a convenient dilemma to pop up at the end. It wasn't a terrible watch by any means, I just feel like we've had the existential threat of AI done better many times, and this one took the gravity of the concept for granted without surrounding it with anything more compelling (don't get me started on the love story...). It felt like Nolan in his worse moments, and I read later that he was the executive producer and the director was his cinematographer for all his bigger films. I thought there were a couple of nice shots but a couple of awkward ones as well, but would like to see him have another go at things with a more engaging script.
I promised a mega post but then got slammed with editing and grading shit. That just means the next mega post will be even more mega. Hopefully I'll be able to catch-up with you guys early next week.
For a quick update: I've officially started my Clint Eastwood marathon. I'm starting with the Dirty Harry movies. I've never really loved Dirty Harry, it's always felt really dated and it still feels that way. Magnum Force is still a bad ass movie, at the moment still my clear #1 (and co-written by Michael Cimino, which I didn't remember and which really threw me when I saw his name in the credits), but The Enforcer was surprisingly lame on the rewatch (especially that terrible fight scene where Clint throws what are quite possibly the ugliest kicks anyone has ever thrown onscreen ).
I started out pretty lukewarm towards Dirty Harry but I've grown to appreciate it more and more with each viewing. Scorpio is a ghastly, repulsive villian with all of his cowardness and low-cunning, while Eastwood brings his characteristic confidence to the role. It's funny reading recollections about people watching Dirty Harry in its initial run - how striking it was to them that Harry had such an air of irreverance towards policework and smirked as he shoot people. Shocking to them, but watching it after those days that's barely even noticably due to the untold milions that have aped that since then.
And yeah, the poliical angle that the first Unwashed Harry movie went with strenghtens it to me. The first movie is all about policemen being bigoted against by the system. It's they who are repressed by the law - not the criminals or outsiders. All the rules and civil rights prevent them from enacting justice. It has a very reactionary feel to it.
That Football Stadium scene is just great. The sheer craven patheticness in Scorpios voice as he screams for his rights. And then the camera epically flies away in a helicopter shoot. It practically makes the entire movie.
Also, doesn't Dirty Harry feel like a Noir prequel? A cop who learns that he has to play by his own rules to catch the criminals and likes the whole seedy underbelly of the city? That seems like a Sam Spade in the making to me.
As for the second film, I remember it being a tad overlong, but yeah it's pretty badass. It definitively has a more John Milius flavor than the first one. The scene in the parking-garage is really great, boiling-down the entire movie: Harry went vigillante in the first film, has he now lost all confidance in the institution of law and is ready to forsake it completely, joining the rouge-cops and their fascist sense of justice? (Also, I think it's pretty funny that the Tropa de Elite movies basically copied this formula)
It's been a decade since I saw The Enforcer. I just remember thinking it was... okay. The Harry and Harriett duo worked pretty well.
I promised a mega post but then got slammed with editing and grading shit. That just means the next mega post will be even more mega. Hopefully I'll be able to catch-up with you guys early next week.
For a quick update: I've officially started my Clint Eastwood marathon. I'm starting with the Dirty Harry movies. I've never really loved Dirty Harry, it's always felt really dated and it still feels that way. Magnum Force is still a bad ass movie, at the moment still my clear #1 (and co-written by Michael Cimino, which I didn't remember and which really threw me when I saw his name in the credits), but The Enforcer was surprisingly lame on the rewatch (especially that terrible fight scene where Clint throws what are quite possibly the ugliest kicks anyone has ever thrown onscreen ).
Exact reaction I had when I finished watching it Gonna re-watch it again soon, easily best film of the year imo.
No joke it is an instant classic in my mind, right up there with some of my favourite films. I am a big fan of things in this sort of vein anyway, Aguirre and Apocalypse Now are two of my favourite films (like a lot of peoples) and Heart of Darkness is one of my favourite books. It's just such a brilliant film in terms of the story, which obviously turns those sorts of representations of the jungle as a evil, where civilized man goes mad, on it's head (to some degree anyway). It's anti-colonialism in a much more personal way, which I thought was great. I really liked how you never even got to see many other Europeans as it's through the eyes of karimakate, even the likes of the rubber barons aren't shown, just the effect that they have on the indigenous peoples. Which was a very refreshing take on the subject I thought. In the same way I liked how it also avoided any kind of 'noble savage' representation, karamakate is clearly a human being with flaws...he gets angry, makes mistakes and is prejudiced against all white men in the beginning, but of course his perspective changes over time.
Not to mention the stunning cinematography, I loved the choice of black and white. 100% blu ray purchase for me.
Black Mass was good enough I guess. Kind of hyped Depp's performance out of the moon, but he was still good enough. The movie just feels like it's missing a better storyline after Jimmy's son dies. It becomes very formulaic and cliched then.
some solid scenes in there but just never really got as good as you hoped it would.
It was kind of like American Gangster in that respect- felt like it was at times on the verge of being something better than it was.
Though I liked American Gangster better than it.
Depp was quite good. He needs more roles like that and not the weird for the sake of weird stuff he's gotten trapped into lately.
Still think one of Depp's best performances ever was Sleepy Hollow. Really had some great comedic elements to that performance without going over the top or outright silly.
Hey, @The Hug Dog, you ever get around to watching The Dark Knight Rises? Or are you still recovering from your Bisping reverie?
I'm happy that I finally have some time for a mega post (although I'm bummed that the reason is because I'm sick as fuck and barely even have the energy to hold onto my laptop ) which I'll start by discussing the progress of my Clint Eastwood marathon. Over the course of this last week, I've been thinking that it was a mistake to do this marathon, and the reason is because I've realized something that I doubt many people have said before but that I can't pretend isn't the case: Clint Eastwood is quite possibly the lamest action hero ever.
That's going to take some time to process, I know. It was a shock to me, too, but it's just so painfully obvious. He's a skinny and gangling dork whose level of cool is a variant of "Dad Cool" at best, like the dorky dad who looks cool to his kid for the window of time he's under 10 years old after which he's recognized for the dork that he is (Exhibit A: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...n-thought-big-dork-despite-iconic-status.html). Adding to the problem is that Clint is just so out-of-place in contemporary action movies. In Westerns, his cowboy thing works, but in modern times, he's just not at the top of the food chain. He can't even convincingly fake fight. Not to mention he was going gray by the time of the first Dirty Harry movie, after which he's not just a skinny and gangling dork but a skinny and gangling dorky old man (don't even get me started on Gran Torino). To think that he was still making Dirty Harry movies while Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Seagal were coming up is just sad.
Anyway, for the individual play-by-play: The Enforcer didn't suck, but it wasn't very good. The "humor" was lame and the action wasn't much better. Sudden Impact did suck, and I was surprised at just how much it sucked considering it was the only film of the series that Clint directed himself. It's one of the worst scripts ever filmed, the plot is a complete disaster, and outside of the shot of Clint silhouetted with his gun, there's literally nothing redeeming about the film. The Dead Pool got my hopes up, but the ending sucked, and it sucks even more since, aside from the "twist" being stupid, the end of the film also stands as the last chapter of the Dirty Harry saga, yet the wrap-up is so abrupt and perfunctory. I did at least get a kick out of Liam Neeson and "James" Carrey
Once I finished with the Dirty Harry movies, I went back to Coogan's Bluff. Wow. I don't even really know what to say. Forget about how dated it is. It was like watching Clint Eastwood trying to be Paul Newman. And Paul Newman isn't even very good as Paul Newman. But Clint doing it? Ugh. I love Lee J. Cobb, so that was a bright spot, but that's about it. The Eiger Sanction was even worse, though. I start out watching a movie about a hit man, and not even halfway in, all of a sudden I'm watching a movie about mountain climbing. It was like a neutered Cliffhanger. And everything I said about Clint not being a convincing bad ass, if you don't believe me, this is the movie where I rest my case. That fight with the bodyguard. . .
I'm not much for quitting, so I'm going to keep plugging away. I've got The Gauntlet (sans Charlie Sheen) cued up for tonight and then it's on to Tightrope. I'm expecting the former to be just as dated as everything else of Clint's I've seen from that era, but if Tightrope disappoints with a plot like that, I might just watch The Rookie (with Charlie Sheen) just to get that monkey off my back and then throw in the towel.
In other news, I've also been using my newfound free time to catch-up on my late night staples, including my recent find last year (what I consider my initiation into UK culture), The Graham Norton Show. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen every episode to fix that immediately, but at the very least, just watch these. First, Loki doing the diner scene from Heat in his Pacino and De Niro voices - while De Niro is right there - is too many kinds of awesome to adequately encapsulate in words (although I am disappoint that he didn't get it verbatim, but I'll cut him some slack since I'm not even sure I could do it verbatim with De Niro two feet away ):
And then I can count on one hand the number of stories that have been told on a talk show that have made me laugh harder than this (and I'm sure Ryan Gosling is now saying the same thing ):
This is only true for the ones that are actually people. It doesn't work as a comprehensive interpretive grid. Unless I missed some comic book subtlety and Thor is a human. But even if that's the case, that new Vision thing isn't a person, right?
I still haven't seen Captain America, so I can neither agree nor disagree with this assessment. I will say, however, that this criticism sounds very familiar. . .
I didn't feel shit because no actual work was put into those characters. They were just plopped down into the movie by the director akin to a kid setting up his GI Joe's. He doesn't actually give a shit about each individual toy, just the carnage he can make when he smashes them together.
Underpowered villains are not the nuts and bolts issue. In the two consensus "great" superhero films pre-MCU, The Dark Knight and Spider-Man 2, we rolled with villains, which allowed for the hero's inner conflict to be challenged against a known aggressor, as opposed to a faceless one (Zemo) or one created whole in seconds (Ultron). The trials leg of the monomyth is the nexus of choice and consequence. How can we enjoy the latter without appreciating the gravity of the former?
Oh, there's a treat in store for you. Between The One-Armed Swordsman and The Assassin, as far as Cheh's entire career is concerned, their relationship is that of the Fedor/Nog relationship. If it weren't for The One-Armed Swordsman, The Assassin would undoubtedly be Cheh's greatest. It's not good enough to dethrone The One-Armed Swordsman, but other than that film, even an excellent film like Golden Swallow looks like garbage by comparison. The Assassin is absolutely one of Cheh's best, one of the best of all of the swordplay films, and just one of the best of all the Shaw Brothers films IMO.
I hope you do. Definitively an early Jackie Chan great. It has a heartfelt quality to it that and its amusing as hell. So he just sees a cats claw and develops an fighting style from it? I also remember laughing hard during the opening exposition scene.
The early Jackie shit I've seen is too constricting. It's all too formulaic, it's just Jackie plopped down into a preexisting pattern. I like it much better when Jackie is free to do his own thing.
I should also mention that I absolutely, positively, categorically loathe all drunken boxing shit as well as all "old man beats up everybody" shit, and that one has both in spades.
I liked Fury Road, didn't love it though. Great concept, but felt weirdly empty. Hardy was damn near inaudible through out. People complain about Bane's voice, but I legitimately couldnt make out his dialogue here at times. Even then his character was fine, but Furiosa was bland. I get why she's doing everything, but there wasnt any threat, and any attempt to flesh her out was trite. Imortan Joe was weak, and they didn't show them doing anything worthwhile of being a villain, and like Bane but getting a pass for it, he goes out in the lamest fashion.
I loved the vehicle designs, but the chases themselves were just okay to me. Nothing wowed me. Kind of baffled by the over praise honestly. I guess the feminist angle worked over people.
I was actually thinking of the feminist angle more in the sense of a pendulum of harmful over-reactions swinging back and forth. Amy is treated poorly, as are many other women, she responds by setting Nick up to get killed, the way some expressions of feminism today are very anti-men. Nick responds by trying to strike back at her full-force, MRA-style, but she's already moved on to a world where his value to her doesn't require his personhood, and where she's played the system properly to her own advantage (maybe a warning?).
So glad you liked Fury. I saw that so long ago that it was a time before I was actively seeking out Spencer Tracy movies. I only watched it because Lang directed it. I think the only other Tracy movie I'd even seen at that point was Boys Town, and Tracy is. . .a bit different in Fury. In any event, I was so taken with that movie. I actually prefer it to M and rank it right up there with Lang's best.
However, I'm disappointed you didn't dig The Woman in the Window more. The last time I had a Lang marathon, I rewatched The Woman in the Window for the second or third time, and while I'd liked it well enough before, my most recent rewatch was when it really hit me just how fantastic that movie is.
The Woman in the Window is amazing, one of the best early films noir and probably one of Lang's top 3 or 5 Hollywood efforts. Edward G. Robinson is perfect in every scene, the film is ingeniously plotted, and Lang does a fantastic job managing tone and milking suspense. The premise alone is incredible, and the lurch in tone when the shit hits the fan is expertly handled. It does lose a little steam once Eddy G. gets sidelined and it turns to Joan Bennett and the blackmailer, but Lang brings it home nicely with such a brilliant and perversely hilarious ending. A lot of people knock it, but I think that's one of the best endings from any film noir out there, 100% on the money thematically and Eddy G. sells it wonderfully.
Now that's a movie that I loved the first time I watched it and love even more on every rewatch. If I had to make a list of the three or five best acting showcases, movies that are just fucking masterclasses in acting, Inherit the Wind would be one of the first movies I'd put on the list. And while I'm not the world's biggest Frederic March fan, he was so perfect matched up with Tracy and watching them go at it is such a treat. And Gene Kelly being in the mix, too? Such an awesome movie.
If my Classic Film 101 threads didn't get lost in the migration ( ) I'd pull up the breakdown I did of that amazing sequence when Kramer frames Gene Kelly in the foreground sardonically narrating the proceedings, March in the middleground staring daggers at him, and Tracy in the background amused by the whole spectacle. Stanley Kramer isn't the type of director that gets mentioned among the GOATs, but he certainly stepped his shit up for that one.
That was the last ill-fated attempt on Cagney's part at independent filmmaking. It tanked at the box-office, pretty much destroyed what was left of Cagney Productions, and ultimately sent him back to Warners Brothers (where he'd make White Heat as his first film back, so hurray for The Time of Your Life bombing!).
I've always loved and respected Cagney, but he didn't go into independent filmmaking with a real vision of who he wanted to be or what he wanted to do. He was just trying to guess if maybe audiences would like it if he tried this, or that, and none of the films he did were especially great (though I'll always have a soft spot for the Judo tour-de-force Blood on the Sun). The Time of Your Life was like a last-ditch effort to try to actually craft a screen identity, and one very different from his gangster persona, but the behind-the-scenes goings-on were too messy and chaotic, plus there wasn't a strong director at the helm, so while it's fun watching Cagney, it's far from one of his best outings.
Ugh. Bonnie and Clyde isn't "superbly" anything. I hated it the first time I saw it, and over the years, whenever I try to give it another chance to see if I missed something, I hate it more and more. Forget about being overrated. That's just a bad movie.
Okay, so in my previous mega-post I was going to have written about that wacky Kung Fu movie Bullitt mentioned, Kung Fu vs Yoga [...] the movie was gobsmackingly hilarious!
Spastic, nonsensical, energetic Hong Kong humor at its funniest. That final 15 minutes where they fight the Yogi was just so thoroughly inane I laughed right through it, yet it was simultaniously really impressive too with how nible the guy was. This -- alongside The One-Armed Boxer (another spastic gem) -- has to be the funniest Kung Fu flicks I've seen. Thanks for pointing it out, Bullitt!
Humor in Wuxia flicks are always weird. Especially with how increadibly cringeworthy it can be at times (Excecutioners from Shaolin, for example). But there is definitively this subset of humor where Kung Fu vs Yoga end up in that is absolutely hilarious. There was this one film -- whose title I can't recall, where the three villians where practicing the "rat style", which entailed them standing one one leg, using the other to mimic the waggling of a tail, and fighting with their fingers in the snake style, hopping forward as they fight. These guys are presented as the most brutal badasses in all of China. People just jolt with fear whenever they see them rise to one leg. Snake in the Eagles Shadow also probably deserves a mention with how whackily funny it is.
Glad you liked this one. And, just as with your take on Gone Girl, I like the way you interpreted the film. However, I'm surprised you didn't mention that extraordinary scene where he visits the guy in jail. That's one of the most hauntingly brilliant sequences in a movie I've seen in recent memory. Any movie, any subject matter, that's just a flawless sequence. And when you tie it in with everything you're talking about with how/where religion fits, whether individually or institutionally, in contemporary society, even in my atheism I want to hug that mini-Hannibal and tell him God will make it all better
The Guard is one of those weird ones where, for some reason, I feel like I've seen it, but I can't recall anything about it. Maybe I checked it out from the library once back in the day but never got around to watching it, or maybe I watched a little of it on TV at some point and filed it away for later. In any event, I don't know if I've seen it, but I've been interested in seeing it for a while. Honestly, though, I have a hard time imagining it being better than Calvary. Granted, Calvary surprised me with how good it was, so I'm not saying I'm unsurprisable, but still. Calvary was legit fantastic.
@JSN used to pimp this one like there was no tomorrow. I remember giving it a try a long ass time ago and I didn't even make it ten minutes before I turned it off. That one's just not for me.
Whoa. A new addition to the SMD. What brings you to these parts?
I love Christopher Nolan, and while I didn't love Interstellar as much as I wanted to (still only saw it the one time in theaters, so the door is still open for rewatches elevating the film), it was too good and Matt Damon was too good in it for me to understand what The Martian could possibly contribute. It sounds like you were in the same boat. And since I'm not a big Ridley fan, I just can't work myself up to care about that movie.
I started out pretty lukewarm towards Dirty Harry but I've grown to appreciate it more and more with each viewing. Scorpio is a ghastly, repulsive villian with all of his cowardness and low-cunning, while Eastwood brings his characteristic confidence to the role. It's funny reading recollections about people watching Dirty Harry in its initial run - how striking it was to them that Harry had such an air of irreverance towards policework and smirked as he shoot people. Shocking to them, but watching it after those days that's barely even noticably due to the untold milions that have aped that since then.
Not saying any of this is wrong. It's part of historical record. Even so, I'm still shocked by it. Even back then, when you've got Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson out there, forget about Clint Eastwood. And in terms of the present-day, anybody on this planet can watch Bullitt and it's really not dated. It's just a cool movie. How cool a person thinks it is might vary, and maybe not everybody is going to prefer Bullitt to Fast Five, but it's just a different movie experience than watching Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry is like a time capsule, it's so of-its-time that it's almost too of-its-time. Bullitt has a distinct '60s vibe, but its coolness transcends the time it was made. Dirty Harry doesn't. It also doesn't have as profound a meditation on policework as Bullitt IMO. It's louder and more in-your-face, but Dirty Harry is like a slap in the face whereas Bullitt is a painful gut punch.
That scene where Jacqueline Bissett is asking him if anything can reach him, that look on McQueen-the-greatest-nonverbal-actor-ever's face. Dirty Harry is a passing headline-grabber. Bullitt is an enduring meditation.
Also, doesn't Dirty Harry feel like a Noir prequel? A cop who learns that he has to play by his own rules to catch the criminals and likes the whole seedy underbelly of the city? That seems like a Sam Spade in the making to me.
I'm not sure how you're using the word "prequel." Do you mean that, despite being made in the 1970s, Dirty Harry feels of a piece with the 1940s films? Or do you mean that, as one of the first big 1970s movies, it's what kicked off the renewed cycle of noir films like Chinatown?
Either way, I would hesitate to use the word noir when it comes to Dirty Harry. It's actually closer IMO to the '80s and '90s action movies with Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Seagal, and Bruce Willis. A guy named Neal King wrote this amazing book called Heroes in Hard Times: Cop Action Movies in the U.S. and it's the most insightful analysis of action movies I've ever read, and the underlying idea is that of "losing ground," how (white male) characters in contemporary (action) movies were being depicted with increasing frequency from the '70s on as disillusioned, disenfranchised, and generally disavowed, as if the world was changing beneath their feet and there just wasn't a place for them anymore, yet at the same time, that change was never going to come off without their help, which, because of their commitment to whatever warped sense of duty allows them to function at all, they can't help but (even if begrudgingly) provide their assistance, even if it comes at great risk, injury, or even death.
That's how I understand Dirty Harry, and for any and all criticisms I may have, that's the enduring legacy it has in my book. Bullitt is the cop action movie in my book, that's where it all really starts (with other heraldic shit in the past like 'G' Men and Bullets or Ballots providing important precedents), but while Bullitt planted that seed, Dirty Harry was the first time people took notice of what was growing in the American cinema seedbed.
As for the second film, I remember it being a tad overlong, but yeah it's pretty badass. It definitively has a more John Milius flavor than the first one. The scene in the parking-garage is really great, boiling-down the entire movie: Harry went vigillante in the first film, has he now lost all confidance in the institution of law and is ready to forsake it completely, joining the rouge-cops and their fascist sense of justice?
And this is why I like Magnum Force more: Because they were smart enough to make explicit what was left hanging in Dirty Harry, which is exactly what you identified about where Harry stands as far as the very idea of law and order is concerned. And, to go back to what I was saying about why I'd hesitate to use the term noir to elucidate the Dirty Harry films, it's the fact that Harry does have hope, does have some sense of law and order and honor and duty and justice, that I don't think it quite fits. Sam Spade just doesn't care, and so much of what he does is arbitrary and self-sabotaging. Harry can't help but care, and that's what pisses him off the most, and that's what's more in keeping with the later action movie cycle.
Bruce Willis is IMO the closest to his noir antecedents, with The Last Boy Scout being probably the closest action movie to any kind of noir heritage, but once again, what distinguishes "cop action" from noir is that undying optimism, that resolute commitment to duty and doing the right thing. And that's why I find those movies to be so profoundly awesome. They don't turn away from the shittiness, the disillusionment, the pessimism. They don't pretend it's not there. But, unlike noir, they don't acquiesce to it. They stare it right in the face and then kick its ass
The Martian was a lot better than i thought it was going to be.
Going into it i was wondering how it would keep me interested in the Castaway plot...and i liked how the NASA PR subplot pitched in.
There was an interesting enough tug of war between the emotional and more objective/logistic nature of the rescue. It wasn't brilliant or anything...but it kept me interested despite sensing what happened was going to happen all along.
As far as the Castaway plot...i thought it was more fun watching Damon survive given his advanced skillset.
This is only true for the ones that are actually people. It doesn't work as a comprehensive interpretive grid. Unless I missed some comic book subtlety and Thor is a human. But even if that's the case, that new Vision thing isn't a person, right?
Next: I don't even know where to start with this hair-splitting nonsense. But as ALWAYS, I'll try. For you, only for you.
And Flem, maybe, though he may be more stubborn than you.
Definitely Caveat and Hunter.
Oh and fo sho this guy:
Anyway.
Thor's arc through Phase 1 until The Avengers is the journey to the realisation of his needs (to quit the god shit) by overcoming the shallowness of his wants (to kick ass because he's good at the god shit). He makes tragic mistakes along this path. This fallibility births his empathy for the very delicateness of humanity he once thought personified weakness.
Mistake (action), loss (consequence), realisation (revelation), catharsis (resurrection). Classic.
It's not about humanness or mortality, but fallibility as a creature with the ability to succeed, err, love or hate in equal measure. That's why he's made to run the full spectrum of emotion - love for his father, adoration for his mother, concern for his brother, and love with a cotdamn human.
It's why I like Phase 1. Yes, it's campy, and it's shot shitty, and it's smug and messy but it never forgets the good story shit. Sure I have to deal with logical leaps and Kat fucking Dennings, but at least it's working hard, making me care before threatening my allegiances.
Phase 2 disregards all this good story shit. The point of my post was: Civil War wants to get to the catharsis by implying the good stuff without doing the hard yards. Cap saving Bucky? Because friendship. Spidey saves the day (and the movie)? Because billionaire needs help.
And no, it's nothing like your Fury Road nonsense. But I've just sacrificed 10 minutes of academic writing doing this, so can't waste time on that elaboration.
But I will, you sonofabitch, I will.
(I'll hold back on the Vision stuff because it relates to a pivotal event in the film that probes the presence/absense and nature of his personhood.)
Whoa. A new addition to the SMD. What brings you to these parts?
I love Christopher Nolan, and while I didn't love Interstellar as much as I wanted to (still only saw it the one time in theaters, so the door is still open for rewatches elevating the film), it was too good and Matt Damon was too good in it for me to understand what The Martian could possibly contribute. It sounds like you were in the same boat. And since I'm not a big Ridley fan, I just can't work myself up to care about that movie.
Off the top of my head: ill update when i think of more.
Jacobs Ladder
Fallen Angels (Hong Kong)
The Seventh Seal (Sweden)
The Devils
Deer Hunter
Taxi Driver
Once upon a time in America
Frozen (China)
Pretty Village,Pretty Flame (Serbia)
Man Bites Dog (Belgium)
Germinal (France)
The Great Escape
The Bridge on River Kwai
Lawerence of Arabia
Bandit Queen (India)
The Exorcist
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