The Movie/Film Thread

[Cinders]

Just watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it was so amazing. Then I found out there were 2 sequels. :O So I watched the second one and it was really good, but not as great as the first one. I'm watching the third part tonight or tomorrow.

[SakeIt2Me]

The third one is out already? Did I mention I live under a rock, I only heard about the novels two months ago.

I watched 204sex I mean 2046, gorgeous film-making, I wanted to scream at that guy, "You Idiot!!" But that's the way it is in real-life...we only see our mistakes in past tense, and then we make excuses until they're no longer mistakes...ramble, ramble...

[golem09]

I've now seen Inception as well. When the screen went black at the end, the WHOLE audience shouted out and then instantly started with an applause. And I've never EVER seen an applause here in germany.
Just a brilliant movie. Nolan is still by FAR the best writer/director out there. Everything else is either too hollow, or too artsy, he manages to pull even simple things off like no one else. In addition to that he never does simple things but always has amazing premises.

[mizer_unmei]

Holy fuck Inception is the greatest movie ever.

[Ringo~Bingo]

^Yeah I saw it last night, it was epic! probably gonna go see it again which is rare for me to do.

[Ringo~Bingo]

Anybody else pick up the new Alien Blu-ray box? watched the three of them yesterday (the 4th doesn't exist in my world) and they are just amazing! the first film looked stunning, even more so than the second one which surprised me.

First time I watched the 3rd one in a long time and it's not as bad as I remember, though one of the versions on the disc changed the ending to a tamer ropier version which seemed pointless. :/

All in though it's pretty good stuff.

[TeslaGuy]

^ Well, the first one was directed by Ridley Scott, and had the best Sci Fi production design since Kubrick's 2001. Scott went on to direct Blade Runner, which had even more awesome design. Still the benchmark almost 30 years later.

[monad]

Finally got around to watching Koji Wakamatsu's United Red Army. Brutal hardly begins to describe it -- it's easily the single most difficult movie I've seen. Just terrible, unspeakable cruelty.

The first hour or so sort of drags, spraying out a confusing torrent of history about the emergence of the leftist movement in the 60s. And even with all the detail, it doesn't really go very far in explaining why certain factions of the movement became so radicalized.

And while the last part -- the siege at the Asama Mountain Lodge -- is reasonably exciting and interesting and a well-done portrayal of an important historical event (by the end of the siege, almost 90% of the country was watching the live coverage on TV, and it wound up being sort of a Kent State in reverse, permanently destroying public support and sympathy for the left), it's far longer than it needed to be. Worse, after all we'd seen prior that, it really came across as a distasteful and not very convincing attempt to humanize former friends and associates of the director (who had been a Japanese Red Army sympathizer back in the day, and knew several of the people involved in all of this).

But the middle section...just...damn. If you don't know the story, the URA, which was about 30 people, holed up in a series of remote mountain huts near Karuizawa for military training sessions in the winter of 71-72. Over the course of several weeks, they proceeded to self-immolate in endless group sessions of Cultural Revolution-inspired "self-criticism", a horrific collision of isolation, the Japanese culture of bullying, revolutionary fervor, cowardice, jealousy, and paranoia, punctuated by a slow dribble of murderous purges of members: 12 in total were beaten to death, or gutted, or tied to trees and left to die in the frigid cold, many for preposterously trivial offenses against the revolution for which they couldn't demonstrate a satisfactory degree of remorse -- not noticing scratches on a gun barrel when cleaning it, or wearing makeup, or taking a bath, or changing clothes too often. "Death by defeatism", the leaders called the supposed lack of sufficient self-criticism.

Maki Sakai's portrayal of the confusion and torment of Mieko Toyama (a friend of Wakamatsu, she worked with him on a classic propaganda film for the JRA and the PFLP in Palestine) is just gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. And the soundtrack (by Jim O'Rourke, long-time Sonic Youth collaborator) is superb, ending with a cover of Pictures of Adolf Again that works on about 20 layers of sincere meaning and irony and pain. It was all I could do to keep from breaking into sobs about halfway through the song as the weight of everything came crushing down.

http://soundcloud.com/leclisse1/08-p...of-adolf-again

[deadgrandma]

Movie above sounds interesting, I will check it out. I just hope it isn't as crappy as Go, Go Second Time Virgin

[Maou]

I watched Legend of Hell House last night. It was pretty good, but has a shitty ending. Older horror films do a much better job when it comes to violence. Subtlety and not showing everything adds to the tension. At least when it comes to violence. I will complain about the lack of sex though. The book had way more focus on sex. Losing the sexual context of the antagonist takes away from its fright and takes away from the motivation of the haunting.