I just post a screencap (which i choose specially or find by accident) of a movie that i ever watched once or not once
I can add some commentary or not at all, it's random
You may or may not do the same, or totally opposite
If you don't see any pics, then wtf
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#001 - Hard Candy. Tricky girl does a revenge on a supposedly paedo.
#002 - Tokyo Gore Police. Brutal police girl fights for justice in gory Japan.
#003 - The Sun's Burial. Pretty rough movie about era that was post-ww2.
#004 - Escape from New York. From where Kojima stole Snake.
#005 - Legal Eagles.
#006 - Bichunmo. This korean movie i liked very much when i was kid. Not only it had "kewl" action scenes and sentimental soundtrack, also it was pretty tragic and moving. I think it's not considered good nowodays, lol, but for me it was one of the most precious ones, ~20 years ago. Best martial art / love story film combo.
#007 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Of course i was "teh hipster before hispters" and watched and loved it before all my classmated did, LOL. I remember it was very important for me when i was around 14-16 yo, but i've no idea what it was about nowodays. Should i refresh, or should i not.
#008 - Videodrome. Long live the new flesh!
#009 - Inland Empire. I never tried to "analyse" it or some shit. For me, Inland Empire was a thing you could only taste through your feelings, emotions, whatever. Then again, i've no idea what this film about is, canonically. HOWEVER. After i watched it, during that time, i came up with my own stuff that i nicknamed as "Inland Empire". Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with it, at all. Regardless. What i call as inland empire? I call such a state in your life when you don't really control yourself, when it happens that you continue to do this or that stuff yet it's like you look at yourself from afar, from a director's chair or from cameraman position, and it's like you are an actor, you play some role which is not written by you. Because what you do currently in your life, it feels so alien, so "this is not me, why am i doing this, unbelievable". This is what i call as Inland Empire. I felt this shit two or three times, it's some mechanism similar to Deja Vu, but different. Perhaps there is a proper term for that.
Possible Worlds. Interesting movie, that one. Somebody finds a brain of a man and looks inside it. End result, there are 4 different dimensions with that man where the woman he loves is a totally different person. Of course it's a metaphore for more important stuff than fake sci fi. Also, gorgeous landscapes.
tbc.
wow.. we're sky high.. that shark we just jumped over is tiny.. we're so high right now (c)
#007 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Of course i was "teh hipster before hispters" and watched and loved it before all my classmated did, LOL. I remember it was very important for me when i was around 14-16 yo, but i've no idea what it was about nowodays. Should i refresh, or should i not.
Everyone I know loves that movie. Even grown ass men in their 40s.
I think it's awful, lol. I always felt the over-dramatization of relationships, is partially what led us to a generation of men who act like little girls and advertise their "emotional" nature even though they're just being self centered.
I would actually be curious to hear what you think of the movie nowadays. I'm guessing the dialog doesen't sound as overemotional or stilted to you, since you're not a western man. (CLearly you understand the english language. But I don't know how acquainted you are with how western people speak and behave.)
The movie comes off as retarded to me, because you're seeing grown ass people act as if they were 14 or 15, in how emotionally stunted they are. In that way it comes off as pandering, in the sense that a bitchy teenager is seeing his beliefs and behaviours justified by having adult hollywood actors going through lines that sound exactly like an EMO myspace blog from the early 2000s. The movie is not saying anything except for "Breaking up is hard! But you gotta work through it, it's not the end of the world." which is astounding to me, anyone would waste two hours of their lives getting through information that should be obvious to you by the time you're twelve.
It actually reminds me of that guy that Rake brought up on the old forum, who would threaten suicide to his discord server every day or some shit lol.
#009 - Inland Empire. I never tried to "analyse" it or some shit. For me, Inland Empire was a thing you could only taste through your feelings, emotions, whatever. Then again, i've no idea what this film about is, canonically. HOWEVER. After i watched it, during that time, i came up with my own stuff that i nicknamed as "Inland Empire". Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with it, at all. Regardless. What i call as inland empire? I call such a state in your life when you don't really control yourself, when it happens that you continue to do this or that stuff yet it's like you look at yourself from afar, from a director's chair or from cameraman position, and it's like you are an actor, you play some role which is not written by you. Because what you do currently in your life, it feels so alien, so "this is not me, why am i doing this, unbelievable". This is what i call as Inland Empire. I felt this shit two or three times, it's some mechanism similar to Deja Vu, but different. Perhaps there is a proper term for that.
I generally agree. It's a shame that Lynch movies are part of "pop culture", and as such they are analyzed in a very autistic way.
I understand that with Kubrick movies, because they're very emotionally distant both in acting and direction; Lynch movies however are not just intellectual puzzles, they operate on dream logic so there's many scenes that are only there to provoke an emotional response in the audience.
Every analysis of Inland Empire I've ever seen is just focused on explaining the "plot", without ever attempting to see if the movie is actually trying to say something. I complained about the same exact thing happening to Twin Peaks S3, on the old forum.
Funnily enough, both Inland Empire and TP3 include a rendition of some separate short movies Lynch made but those aspects are selectively ignored lol.
Rabbits:
Dream number 7:
(This one was actually re-shot for TP3)
Most Lynch movies actually have straightforward narratives that employ symbolism to depict complex emotions or thought. The only exceptions are Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire where the narrative is fractured specifically because it's depicting a fractured mind. In Lost Highway, it's a murderer who has concocted a fake reality in his mind to escape his feelings of guilt. In Mulholland Drive, you're actually watching through a dream that Diane/Betty (which might also be an allegory of the hollywood dream) in which her psychological traumas are subverted and made away with. In Inland Empire, you're either watching an actress lose herself in playing the role of a traumatised person, or a traumatised person reimagining herself as an actress. Or both.
Twin Peaks (mostly FWWM and Season 3) are the only Lynch works that are actually supernatural, or at least appear to be but I am assuming the supernatural aspects are there as allegories for other things.
It's funny how "lynch fans" ignore the rest of his filmography completely lol. Here's some interesting thoughts about elephant man.
Last edited by CENSORED on Sun Jul 05, 2020 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
melonbread wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:18 pm
Dang, guess no one here likes movies.
Oh you wish. I'm just very busy recently because I have to send a pitch for some comicbook for submentals and I am already late. But once you get me talking about movies I'm just gonna post entire encyclopedias worth of text
Your thread name is actually apt because I'm gonna go on an endless rant that is finally gonna out me as the insufferable artfag that I am. I was a boring motherfucker all along, the mask is finally coming off as I jerk off (with consent!) in front of your faces with my opinions on cinema.
The reason why I have a hard time talking about movies (compared to, say, running a Suda51 fansite) despite them being my main hobby is because I tend to veer off into a billion different conversations.
It's easy to enumerate one's favourite movies and can even be a worthwhile conversation onto itself considering it can expose one to movies he never heard of before. I will freely admit some of the movies in your list, I've never actually seen. Good taste overall though, a lot of my personal favourites are in there as well. Why is Babe Pig in the City in there? LOL! I've only ever seen it as a small kid so I don't remember anything about it. Is it there as a practical joke, or is it actually a good example of a kid's movie? While I am going to come off as a pretentious fag with my head up my ass for the rest of the thread, I'm not in any way aversed to watching kid's movies. (I think Wall-e was my favourite movie the year it came out, though I can't remember off the top of my head.)
I was also surprised to see some Sorrentino movies in there. I had no idea his italian stuff actually got distributed abroad, I thought he was only known for the young pope.
Either way, my problem is that I tend to spin off into ten different conversations while talking about a single movie, because I see most movies as being part of a larger conversation. I also tend to have very broad tastes which usually makes me hated by specific fanbases. In the sense that I like both bombastic pop entertainment movies and slow ass art movies.
I was actually having a conversation with Jack in a separate thread about why I don't come off as the typical film student (I'm not a film student at all.)
Suda's KTP stuff would seriously appeal more to arthouse film nerds, which kinda explains Xed, coz he's one of those film student fags. It's amazing to me that he isn't as retarded as most film students that I've met though.
I usually run circles around them, but I generally agree with the stuff he says.
I didn't go to film school, I went to film! LOL
I'm not an actual "film student", I just like to research film privately. I can't stand film students because it seems to me that their tastes (in most cases) were drilled into their brains by their teachers, to the point where they only seem to be interested in avant garde arthouse stuff. I like that as well because I'm a pretentious fuck, but my favourite movie is probably conan the barbarian or phantom of paradise. I'm not roger ebert. Hell in my opinion the sopranos is likely the greatest filmed media ever produced in the history of mankind.
Conan is a great movie, coz despite what Conan the Cimmerian fans may say, Conan The Barbarian remains true to Conan the Cimmerian's ideals. Conan the Barbarian is about a man, rising up against a corrupt government, and does so through his raw masculinity which overcame the establishments hold over civilization. In the actual novels, Conan's main conflict is always about how big government tries to restrain him, and prevent his rightful claim to all that is his, that which he has earned through his own might.
I relate with that, coz that's exactly how I view modern day governments. I view it as a bunch of nerds lording control over me coz they can't beat me in a fair fight.
My fave movies were like Alien, Robocop, Terminator 1 & 2, Predator, Ninja Scroll, Golgo 13, & Conan but I would also add that entire sword & sorcery genre all together since I saw plenty of those movies as a kid. It's weird how they were filled with so much nudity (even bush.) while only being PG. That sure couldn't happen now, coz men aren't allowed to be attracted to women, unless you're a tranny. Then it's ok to be attracted to women, lol.
I also really liked Heavy Metal, the cartoon that everyone these days pretends is horrible now (coz they're girly faggots who can't handle having a opinion of their own that isn't approved by Reddit or 4chan.), when it's actually fucking badass & it's still fucking metal.
I completely forgot to respond to him but I might as well do it here. I agree with his position on Conan the Barbarian, in that while different in characterization compared to the original short stories it's still built upon the same themes and values. It's also a fantastic movie in its own right that conveys profound ideas purely through its visuals and camera placement.
I guess that's as good a springboard as any to start talking about the things that I care about, which are layers of communication in visual media & the language of cinema, which is some very basic knowledge that has lost entirely, because for some reason people have been taught to ignore what they see with their own fucking eyes in favour of written text, be it for the structure of public education which exclusively relies on written texts (as if we don't experience reality with five fucking senses) or because of the advent of social media dumbing down everyone's cognition.
The dictatorships of WW2 had a vested interest in studying the language of cinema, because they saw it as a universal language that could help spread their ideals beyond language. It could be seen more obviously in soviet era cinema, where the state actually would invest money into film schools that propped up auteurs like Tarkovsky (I noticed that Solaris is in your list of favourite movies so you'd be aware of who he is.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerasimov ... matography
George Lucas even commented on the fact that during his formative years as a director, Soviet filmmakers actually had more freedom to explore the medium than he did, because all they had to watch out for was avoiding criticism thowards the government. In the capitalist system, movies are only allowed to exist if they pander to enough audience demographics to assuage investors, LOL!
The nazis also produced several movies aimed at spreading their own propaganda through Goebbel's production, and it's curious that George Lucas actually repurposed some shots from Triumph of the Will for fucking Star Wars of all things specifically because the nazis were experimenting with how camera placements would influence how the public percieved a specific event beint portrayed (Triumph of the Will is ostensively a documentary film)
The point I am making here is that dictatorships would invest into researching film theory, specifically because they saw it as a conduit for universal communication. In the sense that visual storytelling was considered to be easier to understand, for the average retard. Fast forward less than one century, the average audience member is too stupid to even decode what the fuck they're seeing with their own eyes in reality, let alone in movies.
You know what else referenced Triumph of the Will? Rocky Horror Picture Show. Yeah the tim curry transvestite movie. After Doctor Frank n Furter (in itself both a reference to Doctor Frankenstein and to the city of Frankfurt) creates an aryan ubermensch for his own sexual satisfaction, Magenta suddenly develops a german accent and describes the creature as "A triumph of [his] Will". What? Is that a theme? What? Could it be that Rocky Horror Picture Show is actually a deep movie that is actually about a long series of influences including puritan morality, national socialism, 50s rockabilly, science fiction B-movies and so on and so forth that led to the then current pop rock zeitgeist of intersex alien looking performers, much like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars? What is that I hear? David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust) commented decades later on how the cultural zeitgeist at the time pressured him into identifying as a queer despite being a "closeted heterosexual" in a piece of news that has now been erased from the internet? What?
I must be retarded, because Rocky Horror Picture Show is a movie that is "so bad that is good", that became a "cult classic" because Tim Curry plays a transvestite and therefore it is "progressive". That's what I've been told and I have no reason to actually look into what else its writer has worked on, and how he may have put in recurring themes in his movies. Could it be that the movie Shock Treatment has a painting that also appeared in Rocky Horror, that the pose from that painting was reprised twice by different characters (but same actors) in the same movie, and that when that same painting reappears in Shock Treatment those same two actors are on screen, singing about Ego and Id? Where's my crack pipe?
There's a reason why I went on this seemingly schizoid rant about unrelated things in the last few paragraphs, and that's to exemplify how I am incapable of keeping focus when discussing movies. I can't help but jump from one subject to the next, because a specific aspect of a specific movie has been reworked and reimagined so many times that it has gained more and more meaning through usage over the course of a century to the point where a single shot is now able to communicate more than certain novels.
That's what's referred to as the language of cinema. Most movie critics are actually cinematic illiterate to the point that the only thing they're ever discussing is plot, you can easily see it in youtube "reviewers" which exclusively summarize movie plots with interspersed clips, but it goes further back with that with television critics like Siskel and Ebert or even newspaper reviewers that criticised Conan the Barbarian for being a "fascist" movie. Criticism is meant to be something deeper than an opinion piece, that is to say, that a critic is meant to evaluate the objective qualities of an artpiece rather than just summarizing it and saying if he liked it or not. Objective criticism of an art piece has nothing to do with one's personal opinion on it, and has a lot to do with the technique used in creating it and wether or not they were applied with any cognition. In music, objective criticism has reached a point where certain musicologists are wondering wether or not it's even possible to create an original composition anymore because the emotional responses of audiences to specific tunes have been studied to such a degree.
Objective criticism of cinema has been largely abandoned to the point where nowadays, even complete submental retards like Mauler can claim to be "objective" critics simply because he releases fifteen hours long videos discussing inane shit to arrive at the conclusion that yes, indeed, the new star wars movies are dogshit.
Not only would I argue that's not a conversation worth having for fifteen hours (how constructive is it to occupy several terabytes of hosting space discussing movies that anyone who is of sound mind agrees are garbage?), his verbage actually does not educate anyone because he's only talking about surface level shit that anyone with half a brain would be aware of. Even discussing how the editing in these movies is godawful specifically to pander to idiots who are used to youtube dialectics and to cover up the inexperience of the director and actors alike would be more constructive.
I don't claim to be a movie critic, or even a film student but I am at least aware of the basics. Self appointed "critics" don't even know what the fuck they're watching besides some vague sense that what they're watching makes them feel "good" or "bad". Keep in mind this is perfectly fine for casual conversation; it becomes a problem when nowadays those dogshit marvel movies are considered a high standard of moviemaking that every production company should follow (which led to literal actual billions of dollars being wasted on failed attempts at "cinematic universes" that were dropped after one or two movies) just because review aggregators like metacritic or rotten tomatoes make them appear as timeless masterpieces on par with lawrence of arabia by taking into account the opinions of people who know fuck all about movies without providing any context. Modern popcorn movies aren't even on par with 90s popcorn movies, lol. Those were at least fun and colorful and creative and most importantly shot by people who knew how to frame images that looked good. Most popcorn movies nowadays are shot by telenovela directors who are hired by corporations that already scripted the entire movie based on chinese legislations and twitter polls.
Since critics never actually gave audiences the tools of art literacy they themselves never possessed (again, even well respected tv critics like siskel and ebert were completely cinematically illiterate and their reviews amounted to "I liked it" or "I didn't", to the point that movies with displeasing subject matters were ranked lower on principle LOL!) audiences tend to resonate with the most superficial aspects of a certain property, to the point where sequels are more often than not built around the most superficial aspects of the original property.
But to pose an example that was already mentioned by Jack, this happened way back in the 80s with Robocop, which is a masterpiece of satire that properly framed the militarization of the police as a marketing issue where violent crime is used as an advertisement prop to attract investors and in fact both sides, law enforcement and crime, are just part of a conversation that is controlled by high level capitalists. The point is brought home with all the advertisements and dumbed down tv shows that are actually hidden advertisements that you see on television screens through the movie and the dehumanizing nature of high level capitalism is exemplified by Murphy being turned into a living billboard. The purpose of Robocop is not to "protect and serve", it's to advertise a new model of automation that corporations want to sell to the state in order to get access to state funds.
This gets even more interesting when you realize most verhoeven movies follow a similar structure of being exaggerated, satyrical takes on forms of communication. While Robocop is about corporate advertisements, starship troopers is about political propaganda, total recall is about a power fantasy you can actually implant in your brain (for which the movie acts as an allegory in and of itself), one might even stretch this and say that one of his earlier movies, Flesh + Blood (which was one of the inspirations for Berserk too I believe) does have a theme about myths and religion being used to justify the actions of leaders; The alleged killer in Basic Instinct is a wealthy novelist, Showgirls is lampooning the LA dance performance scene (though it was lost on the critics I guess who just thought it was a sleazy movie where you look at tits) and so on and so forth; there's a thoroughline in most of his movies about narratives and other forms of communications are used for the benefit of few, be it to sell a product, rally troops in order to create a status quo of eternal war, or just to get cheap thrills and sexual trists in the case of basic instinct and showgirls.
Obviously, in the light of all of that, average audience members only really latched on to the fact that Robocop looked badass. WHich of course I can't argue with because it's a fucking badass movie LOL! But it led to an endless cavalcade of sequels, remakes, tv shows and I think even some cartoon show that are all nigh unwatchable, and most importantly have absolutely nothing to do with the original point of the movie.
I think the same happened with Starship Troopers, but I am actually not sure because I've never seen any of the sequels so I might be mistaken. (I know I sound like an asshole but I actually keep an open mind)
This whole mentality is also what leads to legitimate masterpieces like Phantom of Paradise (which also happens to be my dad's favourite movie lol, I noticed it's in your list as well unless I'm misremembering) or Zardoz to be remembered as "so bad it's good" funny cult movies because of this baffling assumption that every movie is attempting a realistic "believable" narrative and anything making use of allegory or goes over the top with its visual style is "bad". Which is why all these "masterpiece" dogshit superhero movies are bland as shit I guess, and why they rush to explain every single whimsical aspect of the setting with some bullshit pseudo science as if it added anything to the actual narrative.
Anyway now that you opened pandora's box I might actually talk about some actual fucking movies in my next posts, I just had some things I wanted to get off my chest first lol. Here's a list of some of my favourite directors: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls022618451/
It's not complete and it's not in order and some of these directors I only like a few movies from, I'm not really into ranking things, I just use this as a quick reference list when I'm collecting movies or I'd manage to forget what I even like because I have a terrible memory, so take it for what it is but I thought you might find it interesting
Just to name something to avoid making my post completely pointless, I watched Lazzaro Felice the other day and it's one of the best italian movies I've seen in the last decade and it's a shame I had to hear about it from an english person. Because it wasn't advertised in my country at all.
Amazing artistic achievement, that movie. Are you not into George Miller? Guy's a genius at visual storytelling.
Case in point:
As for Phantom of the Paradise, it's my favorite movie musical and Paul Williams was a huge influence on my own music. I despise people who view movies as "so bad they're good" when they're in fact just plain good it's just that those people are embarrassed to admit that escapist campiness appeals to them because it's been nailed into people's heads that such shlock and "B Movies" aren't art. Sure, the movie Dollman isn't 8 and a Half. But what it IS is fucking Dollman. A scifi sleaze masterpiece.
I wade into sleaze and lowbrow stuff as well as the highbrow Criterion shit. My main response to your post would be no need to even be so self-conscious about whether you are a typical "film student" or a "Movie critic" etc. This thread is just about recommending movies you dug. All are on equal playing fields despite different histories and m,ove watching experiences.
And as for Sorrentino not making it abroad...what? He made multiple English language films with Sean Penn and Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel etc. and The Great Beauty won the Oscar for Best Foreign FIlm. Youth is my favorite of his but The Family Friend rules as well. The dude is the modern Fellini, no doubt. He and Alex De La Iglesia are my favorite contemporary foreign filmmakers, though the list is long.
Right now I've been on a hardboiled 70s machismo crime/neo-noir/subversive film kick. Peckinpah, Friedkin, Lumet etc. Also acid westerns like The Shooting I recommend. (speaking of acid westerns I'm sure you can name the movie my signature is from. I chose it specifically due to its Suda connection ;) ) And as for 80s neon drenched neo noir I recommend To Live and Die In LA.
