Recommend a movie

My rep still > your rep FAGGOTS

Yes, I see what you mean. I happen to be in a similar situation. I do all kinds of fucked up shit despite the whole meaningless mess my life has become, not out of love or some fag shit.

I started watching the made for TV mini-series "Ivanhoe", from 1997 last night. It's not the best production ever, but it is very watchable. I would recommend it to anyone who has interest in historical non-fiction, or historical epic adventure type films.

Interestingly, the prevailing antisemitism in England during the time period this takes place in is a major sub-theme of the movie, so this should also appeal to any intellectual antisemites.

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118354/

Torrent: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4211924/Ivanhoe_Complete_TV_Series_(1997_BBC_6_parts)SEEEEED__Sir_Walter

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I am hoping hyperion will watch and write a review for us of the upcoming film "Shame" (2011).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1723811/

Critics are comparing it to American Psycho, and I have a feeling it will be right up hyperions alley, based on his reviews of some other recent films (Drive, for one).

I am looking forward to this film, and even more so to hyperion's review of it.

I don't know if this movie has already been mentioned in this thread, but if Iabsolutely had to recommend a movie, I would recommend Akira Kurosawa's Ran , one of the greatest Japanese films of all time. It happens to be based on Shakespeare's King Lear. Here's the battle scene, arguably one of the greatest bits of Japanese cinematography ever made:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/0qZfpKQ-1fg

Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988)

Watched this again tonight. After a second viewing, this might actually topple Videodrome from first in my personal ranking of Cronenberg's oeuvre. As a fan of his trademark organic aesthetic, Videodrome was a twisted sort of eye candy, with bizarre effects from start to finish. This is a movie where James Woods shoots a fat executive with a literal 'handgun', who in his death throes erupts convulsively in a tumorous, glutinous mass, looking not dissimilar to someone who had far too many lumpy grits for breakfast. It's a scene that would make Rob Bottin (effects designer for The Thing ) proud.

However, in Dead Ringers this aesthetic becomes muted, almost to the point to where you could forget it was a Cronenberg film -- that is, until a certain dream sequence which I won't spoil here. Still, the usual Cronenberg preoccupations are present, with the theme of anxiety over the psychosomatic, existential horrors hiding under our skin perhaps explored with more coherence and subtlety than any of the director's prior films. Jeremy Irons plays identical twin brothers, both respected gynecologists; one is neurotic and introverted, the other outgoing and charismatic, but they so much resemble perfect copies of the other that patient and main love interest Claire (Geneviève Bujold) hasn't a clue that she's being ping-ponged between them both like a game of sexual hot potato. That is, until a friend reveals the ruse during a dinner, leading to an awkward confrontation with the two brothers. In the ensuing fallout, she decides to go for sensitive Beverly over jerky Elliot and naively draws him into prescription drug abuse, sending him spiraling into delusional mania. At the risk of spoiling the ending, the film is very loosely based on a Kafkaesque true account of identical twin brother gynecologists who were both found dead of drug withdrawal in their shared Manhattan apartment.

There are so many directions you could take the analysis of this movie -- sexual paranoia, the dread of separation and loneliness, the aforementioned 'body horror' aspect, fracturing of personal identity -- that it's hard to begin. You could probably explore them all at once and still leave plenty of avenues untaken. And what's better, unlike many of Cronenberg's films these themes don't require a lot of 'unpacking'; the structure is simple and the plot, though absurd at times, is at least not smeared with a haze of alienating surrealism ala Videodrome or Naked Lunch (though I suppose he has a valid excuse for the latter). Of course, all-out weirdness has its charms as well, but it tends to result in sacrificing coherency for visual novelty. Dead Ringers is bleak, cold, and nihilistic, but never merely weird.

Ebert criticized Dead Ringers for being 'exploitative'. I don't really know what Dead Ringers is exploiting here, or who this exploitation is supposed to appeal to. My hunch is that the stark subject matter activated Ebert's moral reflexes and 'exploitative' was the best excuse he could give as to why he found it so disturbing. It is disturbing, but that's the point. Audiences have become so blase, their emotional chitin hardened by the abundance of realistic gore and violence in modern cinema, that 'disturbing' ought to be an adjective of high praise. Anything that shakes us up and gets our attention, or even better, reprograms our culture- and media-bred optimism and restores our humanity in all its melancholy fullness (even if only by increments) is an absolutely terrific accomplishment. That accomplishment is one that Dead Ringers can share in.