FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby justdrew » Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:11 am

82_28 wrote:Sorry.


well you know who started (more or less) that whole overt pro-empire thing? michael aquino
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:24 am

82_28 wrote:Now, I have overtaken this thread about movies with Star Wars talk. Sorry.

You should be spanked, darling.

But I will agree that Star Wars was a hell of a breakthrough. The first movie truly did change one's perception of movies, at least the perception of those of a certain age who watched it again and again in the theaters...although this might have been the product of theaters back in the 70's... I grew up in a small midwest town where we had two single screen theaters plus a drive in and abosolutely nothing to do almost 100% of the time. Star Wars was a wecome diversion, no wonder we all saw it fifteen or fifty times. Thank the gods I finally got old enough to graduate to drinking cheap wine at the drive in (Where I saw Bladerunner twice...along with a shitload of really stupid X-rated cartoons).
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Jeff » Fri Oct 15, 2010 9:47 am

Here's a small one I'd like to throw out there, for all you language is a virus fans:



“Pontypool,” a small Canadian horror film that makes the most of its minuscule budget, is set almost entirely in the confines of a tiny radio station that operates from a church basement in rural Ontario. (The film’s title is also the name of the village that is home to the station, CLSY Radio.) Here, Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a growling talk-show cowboy who suggests a bottom-drawer Don Imus, holds forth each morning while swigging heavily spiked coffee. By his side are his producer, Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle), with whom he continually bickers, and Laurel Ann Drummond (Georgina Reilly), a resourceful technician who recently returned from serving in Afghanistan.

Directed by Bruce McDonald (“The Tracey Fragments”) from Tony Burgess’s screen adaptation of his novel “Pontypool Changes Everything,” the film captures the monotonous daily rituals of broadcasting from inside a studio that feels so sealed off from the outside world that nothing beyond the sound booth seems real. On this snowy Valentine’s Day morning, phoned-in reports of grisly events in the town seem as bogus as the Sunshine Chopper, a fictional traffic helicopter that is actually a truck parked on a hill.

The traffic reporter, Ken Loney (Rick Roberts), gives increasingly agitated eyewitness accounts of a mob surrounding the house of a local doctor, on top of another report of demented ice fishermen cannibalizing policemen. Because he is just a voice and never seen, they sound like an elaborate prank.

...

“Pontypool” eventually makes a giant satiric leap into intellectual pretension, transforming William S. Burroughs’s notion that language is a virus into flesh-eating reality. The virus is not just any language, but English, the contagion spread through terms of endearment. To survive, Grant is forced to speak in broken French.

“Pontypool” barely develops a premise that has all kinds of implications about the mass media (talk radio in particular) and the degradation of language in a culture overrun with hyperbole, jargon, disinformation and contrived drama. But when one infected character is reduced to spouting gibberish as she suicidally hurls herself at the glass booth that has become a fortress against the zombie terror, the notion that we are all being driven mad by an incessant verbal deluge makes nasty comic sense.


Though McDonald says the infected are not zombies. He calls them "conversationalists":

There are three stages to this virus. The first stage is you might begin to repeat a word. Something gets stuck. And usually it's words that are terms of endearment like sweetheart or honey. The second stage is your language becomes scrambled and you can't express yourself properly. The third stage you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person


And spoiler:

.
.
.
.
.

The infection is cured by rendering the words unintelligible.

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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby barracuda » Fri Oct 15, 2010 10:29 am

That opening clip from Pontypool is terrifying in it's own special way. Spoiler:I realized later on (my opinion) that the DJ started the local epidemic by passing on the announcement about Mrs. French's cat, Honey. And I wondered if Mrs. French herself, by walking around the neighborhood posting leaflets, didn't originate the disease. I mean she must have been calling out the cat's name with concern in just the wrong tone and state of mind and meaning, And though the film is sort of stuck in the conventions of a stage-play by the confines of the broadcasting studio, Stephen McHattie makes the smallest gestures and utterances hilarious and horrible, and is perfect when the entire film descends into madness. Also - great ending.
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Fri Oct 15, 2010 10:31 am

Interesting film with very little dialog. I found it to be more about transformation than survival. Have not read the novella.

Passion in the Desert
1997PG-1391 minutes
Based on the controversial novella by Honoré de Balzac, this thought-provoking drama explores the connection between man and beast -- and how cooperation between the species can lead to survival. Abandoned in the Sahara with no hope of staying alive, French army officer Augustin Robert (Ben Daniels) discovers an unexpected oasis, where the wild leopard he encounters there could be the key to saving his life.


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And at the same time,
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:14 pm

Well, I saw The White Ribbon last night and it really is great and disturbing, a marvel of storytelling and sociology.
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Nordic » Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:18 pm

Adventureland was suprisingly good. Saw it with my stepdaughter one night when we couldn't find anything else. And the guy who plays Zuckerberg in The Social Network is the lead in it, the guy's a real good actor.

Another one, that was even better IMO:

Charlie Bartlett

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423977/
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Montag » Fri Oct 15, 2010 12:48 pm

Here's some great movies, no qualification, just great movies:

The Matrix
Boys Don't Cry
Wall Street
Platoon
Star Wars (Episodes IV, V, and VI)
Apocalypse Now
Fargo
Igby Goes Down
Trainspotting
A Fish Called Wanda
Blade Runner
Rushmore
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby ninakat » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:13 pm

I liked The American. Refreshingly slow-paced. The trailer doesn't do it justice -- the film has none of that kind of pacing..... much slower and definitely "boring" by modern film standards. Recommended.

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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby streeb » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:20 pm

I've mentioned it elsewhere but really can't recommend Werewolves on Wheels too highly. There is no other movie on earth that has flaming werewolves on stunt bikes, in the desert, in the 70s, and none of that kitschy fake midnight pre-fab cult movie shit -- it's for fucking real, man. And I don't even like werewolves.

Last edited by streeb on Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:21 pm

Personal faves, aside from no-brainer classics like Bergman and Kubrick (both of whose repertoire I almost universally like), I'd recommend for RI:
Sunshine
Enter the Void
Irreversible
The Piano Teacher
Trouble Every Day
Let the Right One In
Bully
Wendigo
Moon
Idiocracy

I'll try to remember more later. I saw almost every independent movie that came out between '97-'02 and many of them would be relevant here.
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby ninakat » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:31 pm

Heaven -- here's a scene:

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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby streeb » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:33 pm

Messiah of Evil is a pretty cool little movie. You can watch the whole thing online, although it's worth it to kick down for the letterboxed version.

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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby Nordic » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:42 pm

There is no other movie on earth that has flaming werewolves on stunt bikes, in the desert, in the 70s


This thread is worth reading for that quote alone.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

Postby streeb » Fri Oct 15, 2010 2:46 pm

Mike Leigh's incomparable Nuts in May

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