Films Recently Watched

[Guest RadarJammer]

A Place Beyond The Pines didn't know anything about this movie and hadn't even seen a trailer before watching so about half way through I had to check the IMDB synopse to see what the heck it was even about and it never quite became about anything. the first half felt like a solid hollywood action type movie but the last third felt like a cheap indie movie. wouldn't watch again 5/10

[Guest Adjective]

The Catechism Cataclysm Steve Little doing his Steve Little character, it's cute but doesn't carry a film. There are some interesting surreal elements that snuck into this, I wish there had been more.

 

I don't regret watching it, but I wouldn't recommend it / 10

[Rubin Farr]

Pain & Gain - 7/10 actually entertaining and funny for a Bay film. The Rock stole the show and Marky Mark was terrible as usual.

[Blir]

House At The End of the Street (HATES)

 

One of the worst films I've ever seen.

[Guest RadarJammer]

Number Stations its as bad as everyone thinks it is but by far the worst thing about this movie was the flanged drum loop used in the soundtrack 4/10

[Guest Shit Attack]

iron man 3 - semi entertaining totally forgettable. funny how alex jones type terrorist conspiracy shit is fodder for mainstream hollywood action flicks nowadays. Also wish they would quit that putting real newsreaders to read fake news in movies bullshit. other than that what happened in this film again ?????? - 4 gweneth paltrows out of a possible 10

[Schlitze]

House At The End of the Street (HATES)

 

One of the worst films I've ever seen.

Twas indeed a one way descent into cliche, but if you want worse than that check out the directors previous film, the low budget brit flick 'Hush', it's a one way descent into cliche. He seems to be a guy who likes the slow build up and creating mystery, which kind of holds your attention for a bit, then flatlines, then the viewers attention span dies. It's his signature.

 

Watched Jack Reacher last night. Jesus. Theres a film that could have used a script editor and a casting director. Only saving grace was some of the fight scenes. I do not want fast editing in my fight scenes (ala Taken 2), I want to see whats actually happening. Reacher succeeded on the choreography mostly apart from the last scene which had the rain pouring down just for the hell of it (according to the DVD extra it was Cruise's idea to have the rainfall) but it reeked of Lethal Weapon's last scene with Gary Busey too much. As for the film itself, i have no idea what any of the characters motivations were, something to do with Werner Herzog trying to get into the construction business or something. wtf/10

[Guest Mirezzi]

Zero Dark Thirty - Strangely boring and unaffecting. I think Bigelow used Chastain as an avatar for her own triumphs. "We are women, hear us roar...(and watch us waterboard)." Meanwhile, it was such a heavily manicured platform for Chastain's vanity. I stopped counting the moments where the camera lingered on her making some modelesque gesture - she had several equivalents of Kristen Stewart's lip biting. Of course, the final shot of the film was totally cringeworthy. I completely understood what they were going for, but her tears didn't seem cathartic or borne from exhaustion. Rather, she seemed like a woman whose father succumbed to cancer or maybe she had just read a break-up email from back home. Okay, that was a weird digression.

Lots of Bigelow stuff going on, both with direction and with script. It was Zero Dark Point Break at times, like when she announces to the Seals team leader, "Bin Laden is hiding there. You're gonna go kill him for me." Without a shred of irony, the reverse shot then lingers on the guy staring at her like John Wayne. I started laughing.

The Boal/Bigelow duo had nowhere to hide regarding the portrait of torture. I kinda get that it was 'damed if they do, damned if they don't' in terms of its representation. If they had just avoided it altogether, they'd have been accused of sanitizing the detainee program. I thought of Michael Haneke's interview where he sort of indirectly accuses Spielberg of being pornographic with Schindler's List. The moment you portray something of this nature, you're taking a stance according to most readers. That might not be fair and there are countless moments in the film where Boal's script tries - almost desperately - to find middle ground.

E.g. The scene with Mark Strong and Stephen Dillane.

"We can no longer get actionable intelligence without the detainee program."

"The only thing you've got is 6 year-old intel acquired from detainees under duress."

I guess I had a semi-rigid Call of Duty boner for the raid, but even that was an underwhelming event - both in reality and as expressed in Zero Dark Thirty.

I think I had even bigger issues with The Hurt Locker but it was a much stronger film. There was just very little art in Zero. It was a kind of bland moral propaganda masquerading as document.

Does anybody else find Mark Boal's dialog to be pretty awful? I just don't think he's a very good screenwriter in general. He seems to be in competition with, say, Stephen Gaghan, and while Gaghan can be a bit opaque and verbose, he's far more dexterous and provocative with language-driven movies than Boal.

I'd rather not watch any more Bigelow/Boal joints, although I'm sure they're going to bring us The Brothers Tsarnaev within the next two years.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Mirezzi

[Guest zaphod]

i liked bigelow when she was making mindless genre pieces like near dark and point break. her transition into "serious filmmaker" reminds me a lot of spielberg's in the 90s.

[Guest Mirezzi]

i liked bigelow when she was making mindless genre pieces like near dark and point break. her transition into "serious filmmaker" reminds me a lot of spielberg's in the 90s.

For sure, which is another reason why the comparison to Schindler's List works.

[Guest zaphod]

yeah, it does. dramatizing the hunt for bin laden is kind of a no win scenario, but i found that zero dark thirty took the least responsible route. and the writing was pisspoor. having maya just happen to be friends with someone who gets blown up, just happen to be at a hotel that gets blown up. you could see the seams of the writing and it was kind of disgusting to watch. hurt locker is definitely a better film, although the ending of that film provides a lol not found anywhere in zero dark thirty.

[Guest Mirezzi]

yeah, it does. dramatizing the hunt for bin laden is kind of a no win scenario, but i found that zero dark thirty took the least responsible route. and the writing was pisspoor. having maya just happen to be friends with someone who gets blown up, just happen to be at a hotel that gets blown up. you could see the seams of the writing and it was kind of disgusting to watch. hurt locker is definitely a better film, although the ending of that film provides a lol not found anywhere in zero dark thirty.

 

Yes, lol...it provides an ending very similar to the ending of The Insider - a slow motion shot of Al Pacino walking out of a corporate skyscraper in downtown NYC and flipping the collar up on his full length leather jacket while buttrock fills the soundtrack.

 

Anyway, it's funny that there's a thread about Zizek. I just found this passage on Wikipedia and it more or less dovetails with Haneke on this topic:

 

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in an article for The Guardian, criticized what he perceived a "normalization" of torture in the film, arguing that the mere neutrality on an issue many see as revolting is already a type of endorsement per se. Žižek proposed that if a similar film was made about a brutal rape or the Holocaust, such a movie would "embody a deeply immoral fascination with its topic, or it would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to engender dismay and horror in spectators." Žižek further panned Bigelow's stance of coldly presenting the issue in a rational manner, instead of being dogmatically rejected as a repulsive, unethical proposition.[71]

Edited May 5, 2013 by Mirezzi

[Guest Atom Dowry Firth]

Zero Dark Thirty

 

...bland moral propaganda masquerading as document.

 

Yeah, I really don't know why this film was so well received. It was shit

[Guest Mirezzi]

It's also worth noting that I watched Kick Ass for the first time last night and I definitely can't wait for Americans to get over their intense, orgasmic and tiresome preoccupation with torture.

 

Kick Ass and Zero Dark Thirty are really the same movie.

[Guest Mirezzi]

"Bin Laden wasn’t defeated by superheroes zooming down from the sky; he was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines..."

Found the above quote from Bigelow. I just don't think her brain works very well. With quotes like these, it's hard to poke holes in the Leni Riefenstahl comparisons.

[eugene]

well, we've had this talk with lumps already and i still believe she's more of a louis ck (duckling episode, tour in us bases in the middle east) than a straight propagandist. i don't think she's unaware of the problematic-ness of it all but at the same time she can identify with her subjects.

http://www.nathancolquhoun.com/2013/02/15/louis-ck-and-soldiers-on-planes

Edited May 5, 2013 by eugene

[Guest Mirezzi]

I don't think she's 30% as intelligent or thoughtful or human as CK.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Mirezzi

[eugene]

well alright, but you can still probably see what i mean..unless you also consider ck's sentiment towards soldiers (like in the beginning of that bit i linked) as some kind of chest thumping "support our troops" thing ?

[Guest Mirezzi]

I honestly don't find the comparison that useful. Even my tongue in-cheek comparison to Kick-Ass warrants more discussion than that Louie episode. CK was making a simple self-reflexive personal essay out of being a comedian whose career finds him traveling to the middle east in order to make soldiers laugh. Fuck me, he even attempted something artful with the duckling - however clumsy and heavy-handed the metaphor may have been.

 

So no, I don't see what you mean. Bigelow has always been prone (with plenty of data to support the argument) to accusations of fascistic jingoism. She's maybe not as overt as, say, Michael Bay, but I don't get the CK comparison at all.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Mirezzi

[perunamuusi]

downloaded all the harry potter films having never seen them before. spent the last few weeks watching them all. complete waste of time IMO

 

 

 

lol

[eugene]

I honestly don't find the comparison that useful. Even my tongue in-cheek comparison to Kick-Ass warrants more discussion than that Louie episode. CK was making a simple self-reflexive personal essay out of being a comedian whose career finds him traveling to the middle east in order to make soldiers laugh. Fuck me, he even attempted something artful with the duckling - however clumsy and heavy-handed the metaphor may have been.

 

So no, I don't see what you mean. Bigelow has always been prone (with plenty of data to support the argument) to accusations of fascistic jingoism. She's maybe not as overt as, say, Michael Bay, but I don't get the CK comparison at all.

i was having this (http://www.nathancolquhoun.com/2013/02/15/louis-ck-and-soldiers-on-planes) bit in particular in mind, it deals with the issue more directly than that duckling episode. the gist is that he has no problem considering the soldiers as brave and heroic and stuff while at the same time bluntly hinting that this war is a farce. i think that sentiment is similar to bigelow's.

Edited May 5, 2013 by eugene

[Guest zaphod]

I honestly don't find the comparison that useful. Even my tongue in-cheek comparison to Kick-Ass warrants more discussion than that Louie episode. CK was making a simple self-reflexive personal essay out of being a comedian whose career finds him traveling to the middle east in order to make soldiers laugh. Fuck me, he even attempted something artful with the duckling - however clumsy and heavy-handed the metaphor may have been.

 

So no, I don't see what you mean. Bigelow has always been prone (with plenty of data to support the argument) to accusations of fascistic jingoism. She's maybe not as overt as, say, Michael Bay, but I don't get the CK comparison at all.

 

i honestly find michael bay a lot more tolerable. there's a definite self awareness to his films and their patriotic qualities. i feel that he's creating some kind of subversive performance art because of just how well his films engender all of the cliches of consumer american life. i'm aware this probably isn't the case, but it's how i justify watching things like pain and gain. whereas bigelow is out to win awards. i was also just sickened by the causal chain in the narrative of zero dark thirty. it's a supremely irresponsible film. the louis ck comparison makes no sense at all. sounds like eugene has a separate issue with him and wants to find a way to support his argument.

Edited May 5, 2013 by zaphod

[eugene]

well i dunno anymore, i don't know why it's so difficult to look at that film as she clearly intended (namely: "I'm proud of the movie, and I stand behind it completely. I think that it's a deeply moral movie that questions the use of force. It questions what was done in the name of finding bin Laden.") and instead project/forcefully look for evidence that this is actually a propaganda film.

[Guest zaphod]

but that isn't true. if that's what she intended, why create a character that didn't exist around a causal chain of events that didn't happen in order to manipulate an audience into believing that there was some kind of righteous fire driving american operations to find bin laden? why create such a nebulous film that purports to be factual and even opens with an extremely distasteful recording from 9/11? i don't know why it's so difficult for you or anyone else to understand why that's deeply irresponsible and sort of abhorrent.

[Guest Mirezzi]

but that isn't true. if that's what she intended, why create a character that didn't exist around a causal chain of events that didn't happen in order to manipulate an audience into believing that there was some kind of righteous fire driving american operations to find bin laden? why create such a nebulous film that purports to be factual and even opens with an extremely distasteful recording from 9/11? i don't know why it's so difficult for you or anyone else to understand why that's deeply irresponsible and sort of abhorrent.

 

I wanted to turn it off in the opening few minutes; that's how conniving and manipulative I found the use of those 9/11 recordings.

 

One can fully understand why Betty Ong's family were incensed and disgusted. I think they should have sued the fuck out of the studios involved.

 

eugene seems like he's hit his head on something really hard, maybe concrete or something, so I'm just gonna move on for now and hope he recovers.

 

P.S. History is filled with filmmakers/authors wanting to change the conversation about their texts once they leave their hands. It's too late. It's in the hands of its readers now and no way in hell do I think Bigelow made the film she claims to have made.