The Official Movie Thread

Yeah man. Dumb throwback fun, thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

What the fuck did I miss?

 

Finally got around to watching Friedkin's Sorcerer. Far better than its reputation suggests but still inferior to Clouzot's Wages of Fear imo. Character development and background is severely underdone by Friedkin (despite still taking 45 plus minutes to set the scene) and this really undermines our investment in the events that follow. Still it has its positives. Cinematography is great and that suspension bridge scene is pure bravado.

 

Watching this one:

 

Watching

Spoiler

 

What the fuck, was that Yasuaki Kurata as the sensei? He fights Bolo!? That looks sweet.

 

Yes to all of the above

 

@CiG Herzog is one of my favourites because he is such a nutter. Love reading the anecdotes about how his films were made.

 

More on the Herzog cactus story here:

 

Apparently he got the idea for the car driving itself in circles from a real life incident when he was working for Oktoberfest his job was to make sure nobody drove away while drunk, and one guy tried so he stuck the steering and started his car and let the drunk passed out guy drive in circles until the car ran out of gas lmfao.

 

Np

Spoiler

 

Finally caught Sea Fever. Pretty solid sci-fi/eco-horror, with strong Lovecraftian overtones. It devolved a bit into your generic "who's infected?" narrative, a la The Thing (not a negative, necessarily); but didn't rely too heavily on it. I wish it had explored its imagined ecosystem in more detail, but the suggestiveness of it was effective.

 

RIP linda manz

 

Terrible news. I knew she had lung cancer and all but damn. Will have to watch some of her films again very soon.

Finally watching this one that Rad recommended ages ago:

 

Let me know what you think

 

Watched these two over the weekend. They're both fantastic in their own ways, but I think I prefer the Friedkin slightly. Though I'd recommend watching the Clouzot film first, because it's much more tense and significantly more concerned with the methodology of transporting nitroglycerine without safety equipment.

I agree with what seems to be the consensus on The Wages of Fear, which is that the first hour of setup is unnecessarily long. It doesn't even build character that much - the blonde guy is still a total cipher by the time they set off on the mission. Some of the characterization is outright negative, as the main character is so firmly established as a misogynist that I was kind of rooting for the nitroglycerine. But they do a good job establishing a rapport within the main quartet that really pays off when the tension ratchets up. The tension-building is fantastic, and this is where Sorcerer pales in comparison.Wages is meticulous in describing in detail every obstacle that comes up, and conveying all this detail impresses the scale of the danger onto the viewer. It makes you acutely aware of the countless things that could go wrong.

Friedkin's movie is extravagant where Clouzot's is understated. Bold colors and blood and thunder and Tangerine Dream. It's so wonderfully 70s. I liked Friedkin's first half better than Clouzot's. The main characters are introduced in four manic, violent vignettes all taking place in different parts of the world. You don't really get to know them, though. They're masculine ciphers, more important for their role in the story than for their personality traits. Once the actual mission starts, the tension building is lacking. As mentioned before, threats are glossed over rather than explained in detail, and some scenes that could have been tense have all tension sapped out of them by being paced too fast and set to synth arpeggios. But while they aren't tense, they are often awesome, in the literal sense of the word. The suspension bridge scene is obviously a highlight, but the whole film is a joy to look at. The characters being flat doesn't hurt the film that much. They're ants, insignificant against the forces of Nature and Fate. It's kind of Herzogian in a sense.

Rounded out tonight's movie night with this:



What the everloving fuck is this shit. Absolutely unwatchable, tapped out with ~15 minutes left of the film. This is the last time I trust your judgment, @no country for old wainds

 

@RadicalThrasher yeah dude this film absolutely rules. I love it when a director just throws you into their creation with no remorse or no explanation. No long rambling set-up so we all understand what's going on blah blah blah. It is also really good at building tension and atmosphere similar to maybe The Evil Dead but stripped of all comedy. I also read that the film's budget was roughly 30k? Man I can't wait to see what this director does next if he can make this with that kind of chump change.

 

Yeah I liked this movie a lot. Read that Tales from the Crypt series was an influence and after it watching it, it definitely shows. I thought it did a great job of building a sense of dread and tons atmosphere, what they leave up to the imagination is scarier than most of the stuff they showed on screen. The director did a Critters fan film a while back that was floating around youtube. I think he was trying to get funding to make it a feature length movie, it showed a lot of promise.

 

Yeah I read that also. X Files and Eggers' The VVitch were also cited as influences. I wish there were more fucked up medieval horror films out there like this. Good rec dude, cheers.

Edit: This one for tonight...

 

thanks, you made my kumpel ratings absolutely perfect