NathanGordon

I just saw this for the first time on TCM a couple weeks ago. It was so good! I can't believe I'd never heard of it before.

It's weird when there's gratuitous underwear shots like that because she's supposed to be a mom to this small child, who isn't actually her kid and is probably thinking "holy fuck, this hot lady is touching me". The context makes me uncomfortable.

I think I hated that film. It was like watching a high end commercial that was selling nothing. Like when a car company goes nuts during the Superbowl and gets Scorsese to direct a minute long ad -- that's exactly what it felt like, but with no product. Refn has shown us before that he can make these incredibly striking images; okay, so what? There was nothing behind that. No characters, barely a plot, and ultimately saying nothing about anything. I mean, beyond the incredibly obvious. Everything was so literally literal. I think Refn is a super interesting director and talented, but he needs to work with a writer if he's going to keep pushing this style. His stuff has been getting abstract in a way that I find really distracting and irritating, because I don't feel like I have any ground underneath me when I watch something like Neon Demon. It's like this beautiful crystalline structure with no support. I know "style over substance" is a cliche criticism but I think it really applies to his last two films.

Don't let a few bad clowns control the narrative! The media only shows you clowns when they smell blood. Clowns are friends of children everywhere. Where would the horror movie industry be without them?

Amityville 2 is pretty nuts and has a really weird incest subplot. I didn't realize all the film's with "Amity" in the title were supposed to be in the same franchise; I just sort of assumed the name was in the public domain and getting slapped on budget straight to video junk.

This doesn't really look like it has a codpiece.

City of Lost Children has a similar journey through a dark fantasy world to save a young brother, along with some mild sexual tension. Both films are much darker than Labyrinth though, and definitely not for children.

Spirited Away, maybe? But like all of Miyazaki's films, it doesn't touch sexuality, which is an important color of Labryrinth.

I always get Greg Kinnear mixed up with Kevin Kline, it's like the Paxton/Pullman thing. I haven't seen Mystery Men in forever but I remember it being pretty fun? Back when you could see Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo in a cast and expect to be entertained.

Hunter? I barely know her! Congrats Cameron! I hope you love puke and hate sleeping. Your wife is a boss for doing that without the epidural.

Stand By Me is definitely better than Goonies. When I was a kid, I watched this some Sunday afternoon back when they still made absurd edits to films shown on TV for sensitive audiences ("Screw you, melon farmer!"). In the middle there's a story about a pie eating contest and a fat kid who bullies called "Lard Ass". At one point, the whole crowd is watching him eat pies, all of them shouting "Lard Ass! Lard Ass!". This whole part of the movie was edited to avoid saying "ass", and so there was a solid 20 seconds of this crowd, their chanting hastily clipped and rendered weirdly rhythmic and hypnotic -- "LA LA LARD LAR LAR LARD LARD LA LA". It was the funniest thing ever, and it still gives me a laugh even though I haven't seen this movie in almost 30 years.

This poster is hilarious -- "Oh, I gotta see that, I loved the little girl from E.T.!"

It's being reported that Gene Wilder died today, at 83 years old. In pace requiescat. Hope he's having a laugh with Gilda somewhere.

I was leaning yes before the episode, then went with a soft no after listening, and am coming back around to a yes after the consideration here in the forum. While nostalgia is undoubtedly a powerful factor in this film's endurance, I still think that the world it creates is so unique and compelling, and stands alone among Arthurian and Tolkien-inspired fantasy. It successfully mixes new romantic 80s fashion with the grotty low fantasy of Henson's non-Muppets creations -- I feel like, especially in the wake of his death, his legacy is being reduced to only the puppet comedy he's most known for but his imagination drew from more complicated, shaded places (check out his 1969 film The Cube). The elements of Labyrinth that are responsible for the positive impression it's left today are still interesting and worth examining, despite the tendencies of modern nerd culture to regurgitate it in banal ways. Other commenter have said it better than I could, so I'll just echo the sentiment: Labyrinth is one of the very few films for children and young adults that has an empowering arc for a female protagonist. The moral of the story is realistic without being cynical and resonates even more now in the nostalgia tunnel vision of ComicCon and Tumblr reposts. Sarah confronts her own confusing and powerful sexuality in Bowie's Goblin King, recognizes the lame responsibility and small joy of her family, and ends up a more fully realized adult with agency. Again, there were so few of these stories -- this can't be underlined enough. The only other one I can remember from my childhood is The Last Unicorn. Other fantasy films I loved represent women only as minor princesses to be saved. As much as I love (LOVE) The Neverending Story, it's a much weaker movie that's simply a power fantasy (saving a cute girl, beating up bullies, imagination is the most important thing ever); Legend gives us a typical princess to be saved (and no pants for Tom Cruise); The Princess Bride gives us two male lead characters and a woman who exists to be passed around; Dragonslayer, Krull, you can go on and on through a vast sea of Campbell hero journeys in cinema that are about dudes and the ladies they save on their way to being a more important man. For that reason, but also for Labyrinth's pervasive influence two decades later, I have to say this belongs in the canon. Bowie's crotch having its own zip code is obviously a major factor as well.

Any of them past the first one are pretty whackadoo. The eighth one (I think) that takes place at a rave/sex party is hilariously terrible, and clearly started from a non-Hellraiser script. It's too bad Clive Barker didn't care enough to oversee any of these, because it's a premise and mythology that is fascinating and has tons of potential for a truly horrific and interesting film. The closest thing would maybe be something like Martyrs, as far as exploring a similar mix of religious ecstasy and suffering.

Jerry, I don't know if you missed it, but Paul said Showgirls is happening after the break. It might be their first one when they get back. It was a few episodes ago, I can't remember if it was a mini or not. I am super excited for it!

Others: Sally Potter -- Orlando Julie Taymor -- Titus, Frida Liliana Cavani -- The Night Porter Allison Anders -- Things Behind The Sun, Grace of My Heart, and Gas, Food, Lodging Tamara Jenkins -- Savages, Slums of Beverly Hills Lone Scherfig -- An Education, Italian for Beginners Randa Haines -- Children of a Lesser God Susanne Bier -- After the Wedding, Brothers, Things We Lost in the Fire Doris Wishman -- influential and prolific sexploitation director, invented the "nudie cutie" genre, had to use a man's name or give credit to men on her early films to get distribution. I realize this is a stretch -- Nude on the Moon is not high art -- but I still think she's important. Virginie Despentes -- Baise Moi (okay, this one is a joke)

Cronopio -- those are terrific picks. All of them. I like three in particular. Catherine Breillat is usually described/dismissed as "controversial" or "divisive", in the same manner Lars Von Trier is. Like her artistic contemporary, Breillat's concern is sexuality, especially femininity; but where Von Trier sees the second sex as incomprehensible, even monstrous, Breillat explores the discovery of sex, self, and gender in a way that is visceral and vulnerable. It's a female perspective that feels grounded in lived-in experience, for all the honest ugliness and beauty, in a way that is almost completely absent in modern film. Fat Girl is a wonderful film; her early work A Very Young Girl is worth considering, too. I listed Beau Travail as my pick in the indulgence thread. Claire Denis is a fascinating and inventive filmmaker, one of my favorites. Any single work of hers would be worth considering but Beau Travail is maybe one of her less "difficult" films and features Denis Levant, whom Americans have finally come around to via Leos Carax. I don't think she's made a bad film, and nearly all of them are great: White Material, 35 Shots of Rum (on many critics top ten in that BBC Culture list), I Can't Sleep, and I even think Trouble Every Day is a misunderstood masterpiece. She is a genius artist. Maya Deren's entire body of work is notable and important, not just as a woman but for being an experimenter in the medium who was and is a seminal influence on surrealists then and filmmakers today. This is someone who should have a Criterion release, who should be seen by every serious lover of film -- should definitely be in the canon. Deren is an interesting figure also for being (at the time) in the shadow of her second husband, Alex Hammid, a filmmaker and collaborator who won an Oscar in 1964. There's interesting parallels with Kathryn Bigelow there.

Is this the one that starts with the military blowing him the fuck up? I actually like that concept -- of Jason being an monster so powerful that even an army has trouble stopping him. It'd be cool to see a film where a slasher villain is carving his way through hundreds of people, where's he's a real menace to humanity instead of just stalking teenagers. That's what Jason Takes Manhattan should have been.

JFK is garbage tho.

The trailer for Snowden looked terrible -- the visualizations of data and screen overlays made it feel like old paranoid digital thrillers like The Net. I fear that we'll get a lot of Gordon-Levitt staring at computer monitors and seeing them reflected in his glasses. Oliver Stone has never been a nuanced filmmaker and I think what Snowden really needs is a didactic approach like The Big Short -- digital law and information rights are slippery and poorly understood by a majority of people directly affected by them. I'm sure that Stone feels a certain responsibility to be a truthteller, but his films rarely clarify their subjects (war, presidential politics, media circuses, 9/11). Stone is at his best when he's exploring a sort of hypermasculine Hemingway space -- of man (and it's definitely MAN) struggling against man -- especially in his earlier films focused on war. I think that's where he's most succeeded, because that is a subject suited to his big, loud, hamfisted approach to material. War is fucking insane, and Stone is really good at communicating the incomprehensibility and existential angst of humans killing each other. Again, nuance isn't his strong suit; he's not capable of something like Paths of Glory or Bridge on the River Kwai. But Platoon and Salvador both capture an American confusion at the horror and meaninglessness of war, coming out of the country's disillusionment following their Vietnam involvement and the then-ongoing Cold War, as well as multiple conflicts in South America and the Middle East. The US was suddenly beset by unseen enemies on all sides, and people were experiencing this fear through their televisions. Oliver Stone nails this mood during that era. He lost his way in the 1990s and is close to irrelevance today (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is hilariously off the mark). I haven't bothered with most of his work in the 2000s and while I'll reserve judgement for Snowden, it doesn't look to be the work of a director who's found his way again. I had no intention of writing a long post on a filmmaker I don't even really like, but I think that shows how influential and major a figure Oliver Stone has been. I'd love to hear a discussion on Natural Born Killers instead of a slam dunk like Platoon. Killers is a hot fucking mess but I think it's kinda zeitgeisty and of its time. It was one of the last films of his that wasn't just reactive after the fact (Money Never Sleeps, World Trade Center, the Bush film). It could be interesting.

I like it but not as much as But I'm A Cheerleader!, which seems to be an underrated film. Both are written and directed by women.

Enjoyment of art is subjective and no one gets to decide what is or isn't valid criteria for criticism, analysis, or simple pleasure. I voted for Boyz In The Hood because it's a black filmmaker, full stop. Plenty of people said that's not a good reason and it was a bad movie, but hey, that's their opinion. I voted yes on Pennies From Heaven purely because I think Dennis Potter should be represented, and because I unabashedly love Bernadette Peters regardless of the film she is in. But yeah, we should all take this a little less seriously

Let's make one! "Creepy movies we saw in class or on tv once and haunted us forever until the invention of the internet" The Witcher in the Woods (one of those weird late 70s/early 80s Disney live action movies, terrifying ghost story about a girl who disappeared during a spooky seánce in an abandoned church) Child of Glass (Disney live action filmed in New Orleans, a kid is haunted by the friendly ghost of a Creole girl) The Electric Grandmother (Ray Bradbury story about a matronly automaton and the small child who resents her) The Adventures of Mark Twain (this scene, specifically) ^^ I remember this playing all the time on HBO and this is the only part anyone remembers. When the Wind Blows (charming cartoon about an elderly British couple who slowly die from radiation poisoning following a nuclear war) All Summer In A Day (another Bradbury adaptation, about mean children who lock a girl in a closet on the planet Venus, during the ONE sunshiney day after a seven-year rainstorm) Night Crossing (Disney movie about escaping from East Germany in a hot air balloon)

It has an insane premise/twist but is otherwise well executed, for the kind of film it is.