Recommend a movie

10 posts

Trajan

I guarantee you it happened, and several of my friends confirmed similar experiences. A quick google search also reveals that I'm not alone (e.g. http://thesmatter.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/review-of-the-audience-of-midnight-in-paris/ ). It shouldn't be surprising that the audience reacted that way, because the film was intentionally directed as an exercise in SWPL ingratiation -- the historical characters are winking cameos with no discernible purpose except to prompt viewers to pat themselves on the back for their literacy, while the conflict between Wilson and his fiancee is set up in order to vilify bourgeois materialism, a favorite target of trendy liberals (who ironically are bourgeois materialists themselves). What I experienced is every bit as believable as blacks chimping out during a Wayans bros film.

Ash
Did you turn around to note the kind of t-shirt the screecher two rows behind you was wearing?

On second thought, I believe you. Americans don't know how to behave at the cinema. There are always several laughing excessively loudly to prove they got the joke.

Anyway, what did you expect? You went to see a Woody Allen film.
Trajan

Yes, I did. I like to people-watch in theaters, especially if I'm not particularly interested in the movie. And while Woody Allen has a reputation for pretentiousness, I'm not sure it's entirely deserved -- his earlier films (mid-70s to early 80s) are touching and humanistic in a way that most pretentious films aren't.

O'Zebedee

I have a copy of Midnight in Paris on my hard drive but am afraid to watch it lest I am castigated by Salo. Instead, I'm going to watch Phantasm 4 again.

popfop
I watched this the other night after seeing it got the Salo Seal of Approval™. I agree that it is a good comedy, though I don't think I laughed once. Rather, the strength of the movie lies in the way it skewers it's characters. Jodie Foster is best as the disingenuous white liberal who cares so very, very much but also wants to legislate everything to hell. The way in which Christoph Waltz' character, an attorney, shoots down her phony use of legal terms is highly amusing. John C. Reilly plays Foster's better half (they make up the Longstreets), the same suburban regular guy hump you've seen him do dozens of times. The only difference is here he isn't do this bit for the laughs of the backwards hat crowd and thus the banality and cowed demeanor of this character and social type is revealed.

Kate Winslet and Waltz, a stock broker and an attorney, make up the Cowans (Masonic reference), the more professional and well off of the two families. Waltz is really the only likable character as he makes it explicitly clear from the beginning that he clearly doesn't give a shit about the subject at hand: a minor after school fight between the two families' sons. Refreshingly, the movie doesn't really play up minor class differences or conservative vs. liberal nonsense. Instead it focuses more the differences between the sexes. While Reilly and Waltz bond over of the silliness of the situation and share scotch, the women go from passive aggressive forced politeness to screeching unreason about the failure of their marriages to the sad state of the world outside.

In the end, the movie mostly serves as a warning about caring too much, or at least pretending to care so much about things which should be left to themselves, whether they be a schoolyard fight between adolescent boys or events in Darfur.
Trajan
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I saw Werckmeister Harmonies tonight.

My impression about 30 minutes in -- after a lengthy 11-minute, one-take sequence involving a re-enactment of an eclipse staged with drunks who turn in circles 'orbiting' each other -- was that this was an experiment in cinematic indulgence, and nothing else. I later discovered that Werckmeister was director Bela Tarr's most accessible film to date. His previous work, 1994's Satantango , made Andrei Rublev seem mainstream: a seven-hour black and white epic focusing on the squalid intrigues surrounding the closing of a communist-era collective farm. Like that film, Werckmeister is shot in monochrome, with languid takes which stretch on so monotonously that they seem to erode the viewer's sense of time. In spite -- or perhaps because -- of all this, I was progressively beguiled by the film's brooding atmosphere. The film's absurd premise is undercut by the convincing acting and dialogue, which lends it the requisite verisimilitude to come off as disturbing instead of just plain weird.

The plot, insofar as there is a plot, goes something like this: in a small Hungarian town, posters appear advertising a strange circus. Crowds gather silently as a gargantuan truck arrives at the town square, bearing the corpse of a whale, various jarred curiosities, and a mysterious 'prince' who is rumored to have strange powers (to say nothing of his supposed three eyes). Janos, our scruffy young protagonist, is among the first visitors to the surreal exhibition, where he becomes entranced by the size of the enormous stuffed whale. The townsfolk, however, are here to see the prince, who has yet to show himself. A tense atmosphere descends as faceless crowds huddle in anticipation. They begin to act irrationally. The crowds disturb Janos's aunt Tünde, who mobilizes him and her estranged husband to rouse support for her 'Clean Town Movement', an organization which intends to restore order among the crowd and calm the restlessness stirred up by the circus's appearance.

Janos sneaks into the exhibition truck and is soon witness to a conversation between two men and the 'prince', shown only by a suggestive silhouette, who shares with them his nihilistic philosophy -- 'there is construction in the ruins', he barks in a menacing staccato. Janos realizes the town is doomed and flees in the night, watching as flames devour the town square, seemingly heeding the prince's pronouncements to reap chaos and ruin. This leads into what is perhaps the most moving scene of the movie, where a mob raids a nursing home, overturning beds and beating their helpless (and toothless) occupants. None of the violence seems to have any purpose, and it isn't even clear that the prince provoked it. In fact, much of the foregoing is speculation. The most we know is that some unknown force has gripped the town in a sort of violent delirium -- the causes are vague. The last shot of the movie features the whale resting on its former confines, a heap of corrugated metal.

This is a film which rewards patience. Not only because of the pacing, with takes that often drag on for over five minutes, but also because the nature of the film demands that you surrender your reason and get absorbed in its dreamy, haunting atmosphere, taking in the procession of imagery and sound without passing judgment on whether it all makes perfect sense. As the director himself has stated: I despise stories, as they mislead people into believing that something has happened. In fact, nothing really happens as we flee from one condition to another. My advice is to watch the first half hour. If you can get past that, you'll love this movie. If not, I dunno, go rent Snow Dogs or something.
Klaatu
Super Size Me (2004)

Morgan Spurlock makes much ado about America's "obesity epidemic," which he attributes to fast food consumption. To test his hypothesis, he constructs a meaningless experiment: eat nothing but McDonald's food for a month. Apparently, Spurlock thinks that if he gains enough weight, it will establish a correlation between America's rising obesity population and fast food-only diets. This experiment is so absurd that I have to assume he has some other motive for doing it.

Naturally, he gains weight. Does this prove that obesity rates have risen because people are eating nothing but McDonald's food? It demonstrates nothing of the sort. McDonald's, in fact, may have very little to do with obesity rates. The growth of certain ethnic populations (Hispanics, for example) may have contributed to the increase in aggregate obesity rates (it would have been informative if he had broken obesity rates down by ethnicity). Also, obesity is measured by the BMI, which doesn't account for muscle and bone mass, making things look worse than they really are. None of this figures into his analysis of obesity. He just assumes the cause of America's "obesity epidemic" is fast food, and designs an absurd experiment to prove it.

All one can conclude from his documentary is that he or his financial backers do not like McDonald's. The documentary is just an attack on the company. He wants people to think that McDonald's food is unhealthy because he ate it and became unhealthy. Never mind eating there in moderation and exercising.

The documentary also has two scenes that should have been left out. One features Spurlock's girlfriend making a gratuitous comment about their sex life. Another scene shows him puking. The audience did not need to see this.
Cornelio
Some movies I have watched lately:

Ghandi (R. Attenborough): :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: Well done movie. Ghandi was the first hipster.

The Darjeeling Limited (W. Anderson): :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: Entertaining and well done little movie. Anderson is starting to repeat himself, but I'm a sucker for stories about disfunctional families, coming from one myself.

High Fidelity (S. Frears): :thumbsup: As Klaatu would put it: The audience did not need to see this. Stupid rendition of a decent book. John Cusack is so miscast it hurts. In addition, it doesn't help that he's the worst actor ever.

The Company Men (J. Wells): :thumbsup: :thumbsup: Not a bad movie about what happens when high executives are fired and their lives turn to shit. The underlying message is that companies are heartless for firing people during recessions -- I disagree here: companies should be able to fire any employee at any time, literally, I mean setting him on fire and kill him. Suggesting otherwise is un-american interventionism. Also, Ben Affleck needs to be kicked in the cunt, but that's old news.
Ash
Cornelio
Cannot watch Hulu in Spain, but the clip you posted is enough (if its figures are accurate, and they seem to be) to at least raise some doubts, as Klaatu said, about the real motives behind the Supersize Me movie. Also, what the author says at the end is correct: ending the super big menus and portions is not going to stop widespread obesity, that's simply a baseless, ludicrous assumption.