FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

[KUAN]

.

To me the first version was a delicious enigma from start to finish, the second brought it down to earth with a thump.
I was very young when I read it mind you.
I enjoyed catch 22 as an 18 year old but on rereading it seems rather juvenile

[Wombaticus Rex]

"Black Mountain Side" -- not the Led Zeppelin guitar arrangement Jimmy Page stole from Bert Jansch, but a recent, authentically Lovecraftian horror film that really exemplifies "of a certain quality." Definitely a movie for grown-ups. It does a very admirable of maximizing a low budget; some very ambitious camera work in close quarters, and the outdoor shots are so gorgeous one almost hesitates to praise it too much -- perhaps they just deserve credit for Not Fucking It Up.

It is hard to enjoy the film without being reminded of the fact that At the Mountains of Madness was killed indefinitely by, let's face it, a vastly inferior mythos courtesy of Ridley Scott and Damon "No Endings" Lindelof.

"The studio is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it's impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe." - Del Toro

The past few years has been an embarrassment of riches for a genre that has always been pretty great, but it's all been small films except for the World War Z. Horror could use more scope.

[Harvey]

To fall in love is to forget for a while that we are largely fictions, that we are perhaps writing each other, writing ourselves and being written. But the weight of that knowledge is to become a conscious 'artist' with all of it's attendant responsibilities from moment to moment. [shudders] There really is no script unless you wish it. The pleasure of reading from a script is the pleasure of the automata, merely springs and coils set in motion to recite it's authors mind. Perhaps The Best Offer begins precisely where it ends.

Anyone seen I am Cuba by Mikhail Kalatozov? Beautiful, confused, a product of it's time and yet refreshingly other.

[lucky]

Best Offer..what a movie, cant really compare it to anything - but you get the feeling that the story continues to his advantage. Good ol Putlocker

[KUAN]

^^^ seconded - although I wasn't going to admit it

[chump]

https://youtu.be/GSsfP8nRvYg

I sat down for a quick lunch today, and flipped on the TV to Take the Lead, and really didn't expect this obscure ten year old goofy movie featuring (at his freakin' best) Antonio Banderas as a ballroom dance teacher who volunteers to teach some inner city school kids how to dance - during detention; and while it was the corniest movie I've ever watched, the music was great and the dancing fun - reminding me of Dick Chaplin's Dancing School - in Dallas Texas as a teen. Many of the scenes were so cute I cried. Sh!t! I watched the whole fuggin movie!! Wasted my day, but liked it a lot, so I guess it was worth it.

(netflix)

[DrEvil]

"Black Mountain Side" -- not the Led Zeppelin guitar arrangement Jimmy Page stole from Bert Jansch, but a recent, authentically Lovecraftian horror film that really exemplifies "of a certain quality." Definitely a movie for grown-ups. It does a very admirable of maximizing a low budget; some very ambitious camera work in close quarters, and the outdoor shots are so gorgeous one almost hesitates to praise it too much -- perhaps they just deserve credit for Not Fucking It Up.

It is hard to enjoy the film without being reminded of the fact that At the Mountains of Madness was killed indefinitely by, let's face it, a vastly inferior mythos courtesy of Ridley Scott and Damon "No Endings" Lindelof.

"The studio is very nervous about the cost and it not having a love story or a happy ending, but it's impossible to do either in the Lovecraft universe." - Del Toro

The past few years has been an embarrassment of riches for a genre that has always been pretty great, but it's all been small films except for the World War Z. Horror could use more scope.

Just watched Black Mountain Side and really liked it. Like watching a Laird Barron story come to life.

Another movie that has a similar feel is 'The Last Winter' (minus some brief but cheesy CGI), directed by Larry Fessenden.

[Nordic]

Read an interview on Deadline with the director of "The Revenant" (I'd rather not try typing his name) and he told a story about meeting Scorsese, and Scorsese gave him two movies to watch. One of them I'd never heard of, so I looked it up. Am I ever glad I did.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzc6pu ... 1_creation

"The Cranes Are Flying"

Epic. Breathtaking. Sad. Astounding. Some of the shots in this movie will blow your mind. I'm not even sure how they did some of them.

You just gotta see it if you care about cinema.

[semper occultus]

...really grokked this one recently for its retro 1970's paranoia vibe - the sort of film James Coburn used to be in - and nicely plotted story centring on a massive AI system. These sorts of films used to be on tv every weekend, really miss them

[Harvey]

"The Cranes Are Flying"

If you like Kalatozov, try his film Soy Cuba mentioned above. Stunning.

Some recent films of note (for me):

La Grande Bellezza

Humane, complex, beautiful, revelatory.



Aguirre, Wrath of God

Well, it's Herzog. The raft scenes are a potent antidote to the tinny messaging most modern CGI flicks can muster.

.

The Lives of Others

Desperately relevant.

[zangtang]

Good Lord ! - I have those last 2 recorded from the telly & ready to go - the reason i've held off Aguirre....couple of months ago i re-watched Fitzcarraldo from start to finish
and cinematic majesty or dogged indomitability (sheer bloody minded) aside.....its really hard work. (there may be a semi-4th wall kind of joke there, sitting on my couch
complaining about watching people haul a ship over a mud mountain so a madman can play some opera somewhere else but fuuuuuck me.

Saw Colossus as a young teenager - it captures the dread in a way 'the demon seed' (?) never did.
- I've never seen it since, because i've never seen it listed on the telly again, not once.........................................hmmmn, almost reason enough to hunt it out for a revisit.

It could prolly stand a re-make, preferably name-checking all our favorite tech giants

[lunarmoth]

One of the few great Canadian dramatic feature films:


reviewed by Roger Ebert: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great ... toine-1971

Its director Claude Jutra threw himself off a bridge in 1986. Now he's been accused of being a paederast, and post-humously stripped of honours, including a film award named after him.

Is this what should happen to great artists .. ?.

[Luther Blissett]

I don't know why I had thought this — I must have just inflated Collapse in my memory — but I had never seen Apocalypse Man before. I am currently on part three, but this is sad and intense.

[brekin]

Really wanted to like this...



And then leaving the theatre I realized Deadpool could have even been better than the hour and half I spent in a historical recreation of the artisanal version of Sleepy Hollow.

[Nordic]

I've been seriously let down by some vaunted Indie films lately. For example the other night I decided to watch "Dope" only to realize I had already watched it, and forgotten that I had. (I must have been very tired the first time). That was a first.

However the other day I watched "The Overnight" and found it a great funny ride. Really well directed and acted. And wonderfully outrageous.