FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: films of a certain quality

[DrEvil]

I haven't seen the movie, but that scene alone made me run, not walk, to my torrent site of choice.

Pulp fiction is also a Disney movie. I wonder if it will be on Disney Plus.

[Jerky]

At least we agree NIXON! It's a misunderstood and underseen classic. One of Stone's best films, filled with gutsy, balls-out performances by all the performers.

I still liked VICE a lot, though.

Jerky

I can point you to Oliver Stone's Nixon, though it's 24 years old now. Underrated masterpiece and genuinely audacious in form. Budget probably way larger than Vice's, adjusted for inflation. Also a tremendous flop financially.

I don't need "groundbreaking", but arthritic, forced attempts at some sort of pomo sensibility are worse than just saying something straight and sincerely, even if in a little boring way. Stone goes all-out in Nixon, no half measures there. I recommend the "Election Year Edition" Blu-Ray.

I'm not saying it was a groundbreaking work of experimental cinema. Nor should it be. McKay isn't Maya Deren FFS. But for the kind of movie it is, it certainly has the kind of gutsy, bravura, unexpected flourishes that one wishes one would see more of in contemporary cinema.

Context is everything, RocketMan. Can you point out a big budget political biopic from the last two decades that is MORE "experimental" in its formal presentation than this one is?

I liked it, and I am difficult to please. I see everything - including the farthest of the far out experimental/transgressive stuff - and it surprised me.

More like VICE, please, and less of The King's Speech Impediment, or those awful, syrupy movies about Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking.

YOPJ

Nah, the stylistic "experimentations" would have been kind of old in the 90s and it did not present any fresh point of view on the basic banality of evil premise.

[Cordelia]

I watched Nixon when it was first released as a dvd; recall not being very impressed, but don’t remember why. I need to re-watch it when/if I re-subscribe to Netflix..

Along with “I’m not a crook”, Nixon’s famous--and often ridiculed--line “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.........” followed him for decades. But since that was before old news archives became accessible through the internet & Youtube, I wondered if/how it was treated in the film, and found a clip. His actual speech at the press conference, including his delivery of that line, is more dignified (and insightful of the press) than portrayed in the film. I realize that by isolating a scene, one can’t view it in context w/the rest of the film.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ0wfzQ9DE0


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA1edgj1U5E

I’m not being an apologist for Nixon; he had a lot of blood on his hands. But keeping in mind presidents and other officials in public ‘service’ in more recent years.......


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5tgrssDn1w

[DrEvil]

Couldn't resist.

[Wombaticus Rex]

[Jerky]

Well... THAT sure looks good!

Thanks again, Wombat! Always great suggestions you make. Braids was great, and Mega Time Squad? *chef's finger kiss*

Jerky

[Wombaticus Rex]

Well... THAT sure looks good!

Thanks again, Wombat! Always great suggestions you make. Braids was great, and Mega Time Squad? *chef's finger kiss*

Jerky

Been on a genre tear as of late, a regular patron of the arts. In peripheral stuff, the new Puppetmaster -- "The Littlest Reich" -- was profanely entertaining gore comedy. I laughed a lot (Reno 911 deadpan master Thomas Lennon is the lead) and looked up the writer: it was S. Craig Zahler! Dude is busy. Also, dude apparently works for Fangoria now, which is making a comeback.

Korean martial arts swordfight palace intrigue zombie epidemic flick "Rampant" was very choice...costumes, sets, effects, makeup, and especially choreography for both fights and living dead claustrophobia.

That "Housewife" flick turned out to be excellent and potent. The director has an eye for framing and unsettling audiences without jump shots. It was certainly far tamer than "Baskin," but still sharp and shocking.

I gotta say, more than any other indie weirdo flick in recent months, it's "Possum." That was a devastating story and almost every aspect of it sticks with you. Finding out it was a real life Garth Marenghi movie adaptation fairly blew my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Holness

[DrEvil]

^^Rampant looks very similar to the Netflix series Kingdom, which is excellent.

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^Rampant looks very similar to the Netflix series Kingdom, which is excellent.

It's the same story, only six hours shorter, and not on Netflix. To me those are big advantages.

[Jerky]

Wait, hold up... Craig "Bone Tomahawk" Zahler is writing for the Fangoria reboot?!

What the hell, man?! Culturally speaking, Fangoria has always had a VERY minor footprint. I remember when it was mentioned on The Simpsons, I literally gasped in shock before laughing so hard I nearly broke ribs. (The mention involved Otto snapping a picture of gum stuck in Lisa's hair, saying he was going to sell it to "Fangoria magazine").

I started reading Fangoria in 1979 - the issue with C3P0 and R2D2 on the cover flanked by some dude with an arrow through his bloody eye from Friday the 13th, a cartoon Count Fango, and something else I can't recall at the moment. I bought it from a magazine rack at a gas station near Baie Comeau, Quebec, back when such strange miracles were still possible. I had already been reading Famous Monsters for over a year by that point, and I kept reading both until eventually Fangoria won me over.

Unfortunately, the covers were always so gruesome, my parents thought I was going to end up a serial killer or some shit, so I had to hide my Fangorias down in the basement (deep in a cobwebby void in the ceiling, right under the floor of the hallway running from the living room to the kitchen, above) alongside the handful of pornographic magazines I'd managed to pilfer from various tween'aged chums.

There is definitely an ongoing genre resurgence, with some of the finest (and funnest!) horror films ever made coming out in recent years. So maybe there's a market for a Fangoria revival. God knows the writing in Rue Morgue never lived up to that magazine's covers. But Fango's website has always been crap, and what chance does ANY print magazine have in this day and age? Will they be paying their writers now? Because for the last few years of their existence, they relied pretty much entirely on volunteers.

So, Wombat... what's your Fangoria history? It sounds like you've got one, as do I. And I gotta say, it feels like we're a small tribe and a dying breed. I'm always chuffed to find out someone I know is (was) a fellow Fangoria reader. Remember how political they got, with their anti-censorship crusades? Truth be told, Fangoria may very well have been responsible for the first of my many political awakenings! Believe me... that's not an easy confession for someone like me to make on a public forum!

I guess what I'm asking is... will you be picking up this new iteration of Fangoria? Or do you think it's going to be nothing but payola-stoked, politically correct content, typed by millennial hipster hacks for a too-small-to-matter-anymore audience of mid-life crisis suffering nostalgia hobbyists?

Your friend,
Jerky

PS - By "a real life Garth Merenghi movie adaptation", are you simply referring to the fact that Possum was written and directed by the man himself, Matt Holness?

[liminalOyster]

I saw US on opening weekend after loving the idea of Get Out but having it leave me a bit cold for being too clever and stylized. I'm going to go with a well hyperbolic - fuck yes, US. CHUD fans with a special interest in Althusser, this film is for you.

[streeb]

I was very fortunate to see a preview. Run don't walk. And catch it on a big screen, if you can.

Amazing really that Mike Leigh develops such an intense commitment to aesthetics this late in his career, but the rage still boils over. Peterloo has been criticized for making grotesques of the magistrates, politicians, and royals who commended themselves on this massacre and renewed their devotion to inflicting misery on the peasants. I think it requires a special kind of blindness to not see them this way.

Also slammed for being "talky"... Talky! The love of language is palpable, coming from either side of the class divide. It's a joy. And the speeches (there are many) are stirring.

Leigh has mentioned in many interviews that Peterloo is not on the UK school curriculum.

[RocketMan]

I will check out Peterloo ASAP. Thanks for the reminder.

[JackRiddler]

Peterloo has been criticized for making grotesques of the magistrates, politicians, and royals

You are really selling it!

Amazing really that Mike Leigh develops such an intense commitment to aesthetics this late in his career

He's earned it, I figure.

[streeb]

Being compared a lot to The Witch, but much better I think