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bleary

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Posts posted by bleary

  2. Posted

    11 hours ago, grudlian. said:

    Amy and Paul say a few times that Fellowship is representative of the entire trilogy, but I'm not sure I agree. I genuinely think Fellowship is more enjoyable than the others. If I were making a list, I wouldn't even consider the others.

    I don't really have a defense since these are effectively one movie and definitely one production. There is just an intangible element that elevates this one over the others for me. 

     

    9 hours ago, Ludofl3x said:

    I think this one is the best of the three movies by a long way, in part because the entire crew is together for the bulk of the story. That makes this an easier movie to make, where the others have to split the group into separate quests. THat said, I love this movie. The Mines of Moria sequence alone is enough to get it on this list, the wights chasing Arwen on horseback that ends with the river stampede, that's outstanding stuff. This really was an achievement in filmmaking. I always liked that it was being called "The New Star Wars!" when in fact there were still new Star Wars movies coming out contemporaneously. THis sort of demonstrated that practical effects and miniatures still have a leg up on the bland CG that was all the rage at the time.  

     

    11 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    Yea definitely.  I love them all, and they'd each probably be in my personal top-100, but the first is the one that stands out -- it has such a sense of wonder, it's more fun, and is so inviting.  

    I really want to hear more about why you prefer the first over the later installments, since I can't understand this.  I should start by saying that I do love the trilogy as a whole, but I think the first film is by far the least interesting (I know, three straight episodes in which I've disagreed with Amy, and I suspect Psycho will make it four in a row).

    When Ludofl3x says that the entire crew is together for the bulk of the story, I assume you mean the fellowship.  But I really feel like the first film is a little worse because the entire cast of characters is NOT there.  I love Theoden, Eowyn, Eomer, Treebeard, Denethor, and I even have occasional fondness for Faramir.  While these are some of the most interesting characters in the story, what's even more egregious is that Fellowship features maybe five seconds of the single most interesting, iconic character and iconic achievement of the series: Gollum.  (Well, maybe Tom Bombadil is more interesting.  That dude is a fucking legend.)

    I give Fellowship credit for showing how viable the series could be, and I could list dozens of things in it that I love, but I find Return of the King to have a more satisfying story, the completion of character arcs, better CGI, and better action sequences.

  3. Posted

    35 minutes ago, taylorannephoto said:

    Considering the shit we went through with all of the other films I consider flying dementors accurate now lol!

    I'm actually in the minority that I really enjoy 1 & 2 as movies. 5 is absolutely the worst of them though, not only in the complete ruin of important plot points, but the editing and flow of the movie is horrendous.

    I agree that 5 is the worst, in the sense that it has the largest gap between quality of the book and quality of the movie.  I find 1 tough to watch because all of the kids are still pretty terrible at acting, and I'm not a fan of 2 because I think it's the worst of the books.

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    8 hours ago, taylorannephoto said:

    Prisoner of Azkaban. No doubt. Not only is it still extremely accurate to the book

    Except for the flying dementors.

    But regardless, Prisoner of Azkaban is the film that showed what the franchise could be, after the two largely insipid Chris Columbus installments.  I might prefer 7.1 and 7.2 as films, but 3 is the one that would most belong on the list.

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    42 minutes ago, WatchOutForSnakes said:

    I do not see AN as a "Vietnam movie."

    Bingo.  Comparing Apocalypse Now to Platoon because they are both set in Vietnam at roughly the same time is like comparing Citizen Kane to All the President's Men because both are about newspapers.  It's technically true, but it's missing a lot of what makes each special.

    As I said in my big earlier post, I don't much care for the traditional beats of war movies, which Platoon doesn't stray too far from.  Platoon is going to end up pretty low on my list (probably bottom 25), while Apocalypse Now is going to end up quite high on my list (I currently have it only behind 2001 and Citizen Kane).

  11. Posted

    5 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

    What I appreciate about AN is its commitment to surrealism. It’s like a Salvador Dali painting. It’s interesting to look at, but like Dali, the absurdity can seem at times to be almost too calculated. For me, this results in a kind of emotional detachment. So while I can marvel at the technical ability, I don’t feel particularly drawn to either AN or Dali.

    This is a really interesting comparison.  In my case, I love Dali, and I love Apocalypse Now.  

    In last week's episode, guest Henry Parke called High Noon a western for people who aren't really into westerns.  Similarly, Apocalypse Now is a war movie for people who aren't really into war movies.  I am one of those people who does not particularly enjoy war movies, so when I first watched Apocalypse Now a decade or so ago, I expected to hate it.  Instead of getting some pro-war gung-ho bullshit, or some anti-war cloying morality tale, we just get insanity.  In the psyche of the main characters, in the events, in the design, it's all carefully crafted insanity, and even the craft went insane at times too.  As sycasey points out, the film and the book are about a descent into madness, and I agree with him that very few films pull it off as well as Apocalypse Now.  As I wrote in my Letterboxd review, it's only tangentially a Vietnam War movie.  It's mostly a psychological thriller with spots of 1960s European surrealism, and a dark comedy that is often a horror film.  My favorite sequence is the one where a cow is being airlifted by helicopter over a Catholic mass whose participants are unflinchingly immune to the bombs exploding directly behind them.  It feels like something out of 8 1/2 inserted into this film which is ostensibly about the Vietnam War.  As pointed out in the podcast, Robert Duvall's Kilgore feels like he was ripped out of Catch-22, and I see that as a feature, not a bug.  From the drug-laced soundtrack to the near catatonic states that Lieutenant Colby and Lance end up in, the film seems to run the gamut on depictions of insanity.  The Winnie the Pooh clip I posted was made as a joke (30 years ago, too!), but there's an interesting parallel I believe.  I'm a fan of the theory that the characters in the Winnie the Pooh stories all represent a different flavor of mental illness or psychological disorder.  I feel like Apocalypse Now works in a similar way, inundating the viewer in insanity from all angles, until you realize that the most insane character of all is Willard for being completely immune to all of it.

    A word about Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness":  Far be it from me to whitesplain colonialism to the brilliant Chinua Achebe, but I've always seen "Heart of Darkness" as more of a critique of colonialism than a glorification of it, and it always seemed like a companion to Achebe's work, including "Things Fall Apart."  Though I agree that there will always be issues with groups in power getting to tell the stories of others who should be telling their own stories, I still would characterize "Hearts of Darkness" as firmly anti-imperialist.  Similarly, I think those same critiques of colonialism are present in Apocalypse Now, such as when Kilgore calls the Vietnamese woman a savage after he has obliterated a peaceful village without remorse, or when Clean shoots up a boat of innocent people because a woman didn't want to lose her puppy.  (Aside: I didn't understand the issue that Paul and Amy had with the puppy.  Maybe it's a little on the nose in symbolizing the innocence of that boatful of people, but it works perfectly well to me and I can't think of something that would have worked better.)  Now, these scenes don't push that message as much as, say, the scenes of atrocities committed on the Vietnamese people in Platoon, but I think that's because Platoon is about that particular war, those particular soldiers, and those particular atrocities.  Apocalypse Now is only commenting on imperialism as a whole, because that's what the story is about, and the setting is just the setting.

    It seemed like Amy really dislikes the film predominantly because she dislikes the monumental assholishness of the main figures behind the film, particularly Coppola.  I can't disagree with that assessment of Coppola, but at the same time, regardless of all the shit going on behind the scenes, the end result is masterful.  I do echo Amy and Paul's recommendation to check out the documentary Hearts of Darkness.  However, I disagree with Amy (and Abed and Luis Guzman from "Community") that the documentary surpasses Apocalypse Now, but I feel rather that it's an excellent companion.

    • Like 6

  13. Posted

    Apocalypse Now is still unavailable on subscription streaming services, readily available for rental

    The Lord Of The Rings- The Fellowship Of the Ring can currently be streamed from Netflix (at least in the US).

    Psycho can currently be streamed from Starz for those with Starz subscriptions, and can also be streamed from Amazon with the Starz package.

    Raiders of the Lost Ark can currently be streamed from Amazon Prime.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    Just to piggyback on the last post, if you find yourself in the situation that I did, in that the Redux version was free at my local library while the Original version was not, you can note the changes in this quite precise and meticulous list: https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=769

    Having seen both versions, I enjoy both, but the original is certainly tighter (which is saying something for a 147 minute movie).  If you've never seen either version before, I would definitely recommend shelling out the few bucks to see the original version.

  15. Posted

    I'm shocked that Paul and Amy don't think High Noon belongs on the list.  It's probably my favorite Western on the list (looking forward to an Unforgiven rewatch though), and perhaps my second-favorite Western of all time behind The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  I really think Gary Cooper's understated, world-weary performance is great and fully award-worthy.  The film builds tension better than any movie I can think of besides maybe The Wages of Fear, and without the use of nitroglycerine at that.  

    Its historical significance is beyond question, but that's because of its timelessness and universality.  I mean, it says something about this film that both presidents and psychopaths can identify so strongly with the main character (or maybe it says something about our presidents, but I digress).  It's a simple film that is executed masterfully across the board.
     

    4 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    While he wasn't confronting them head-on at the end, I still think it's an heroic takedown there.  Maybe I haven't seen enough normal Westerns to realize it isn't though, but outwitting and outsurviving is what heroes do.  He was indeed trying to save the town, a town of cowards no less, and I get that needed to be shown.  

    I don't think that he's a hero is in question (unless you're John Wayne); to me it was, is this effective heroing on a storytelling/film level?  And I feel some of the impact could have been expressed and felt stronger.

    Just to add to Cam Bert's response, I think the fact that he was able to dispatch Miller and his gang with only his wife's help really emphasizes how shitty the rest of the town was being.  As Cam Bert said, Kane didn't really want to kill Miller.  If, say, 20 people in the town had stood their ground with Kane, Miller might have seen that the odds were against him and left town without any shootout.  If only one or two able gunmen had helped Kane, in hindsight it seems like some minor planning would probably have been enough to take care of the gang without any of the volunteers getting hurt.  As it was, Kane took a bullet on behalf of the town, purely because they were too uncooperative to help him not have to take a bullet.  As AlmostAGhost says, that look of disgust is great, and I also read it a bit as a grimace of pain, since the dude just got shot.

    Would it have been a stronger ending if Kane had been more heavily wounded or killed?  Again, I think Cam Bert's point about the hypocrisy of the town coming out to celebrate is spot-on.  Those idiots don't even realize how they look, cheering for a man after fitting him for a coffin, and I think this is made stronger by how little help was actually needed.

    • Like 6

  17. Posted

    11 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    "Masterpice" is a tough standard, but the last Spielberg movie that I thought was "great" was Catch Me If You Can, and that's got daddy issues all over it.

    Completely agree.  Somehow, I think Catch Me If You Can is just about as good as a movie can be without it being at all essential.  I love catching bits of it on cable over and over, and yet I never feel the urge to tell someone that they must see it, and I feel like if I never saw it again, I wouldn't throw a fit.

    It's an interesting point about the daddy issues in Catch Me If You Can, because it seems like that was portrayed mostly true to life.  From Wikipedia:

    Quote

     

    In November 2001 Abagnale reported, "I've never met nor spoken to Steven Spielberg and I have not read the script. I prefer not to. I understand that they now portray my father in a better light, as he really was. Steven Spielberg has told the screenplay writer (Jeff Nathanson) that he wants complete accuracy in the relationships and actual scams that I perpetrated. I hope in the end the movie will be entertaining, exciting, funny and bring home an important message about family, childhood and divorce".

    The real Abagnale never saw his father again after he ran away from home. Spielberg "wanted to continue to have that connection where Frank kept trying to please his father; by making him proud of him; by seeing him in the uniform, the Pan-American uniform". However, Abagnale praised the idea. "Even though I didn't see my dad again, every night after living a brilliant day and meeting many women, and making much money, I'd come back alone to a hotel room and I would just think of my mom and dad and fantasize about getting them back together again, and cry. It's the justification of a fantasy."

     

    So story-wise, Spielberg was tied by the truth.  I do think he portrays the father-son relationship in a more positive light than he did in Close Encounters and E.T.  Moving forward in his career to War of the Worlds, the dad there is an outright hero.  Then I think Bridge of Spies shows what he would have wanted his relationship with his father to be if they'd never gotten divorced, as the father there is a workaholic as Spielberg's father was, but he understands the importance of family and is someone that his kids can look up to and be proud of.

  18. Posted

    9 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

    You could say it is a form of nostalgia but I don't think that E.T. necessarily falls into the Goonies Conundrum. 

    Hot take: Hook is Spielberg's Goonies.  I loved that movie as a kid, but I think it's pretty objectively bad.  Hook also continued Spielberg's "daddy issues" theme, though it might be the nadir of those films. 

    Speaking of Spielberg's "daddy issues", I do wonder though if Spielberg's reconciliation with his father in the mid-90s had an effect on the quality of his films.  I'm of the mind that Jurassic Park and Schindler's List were his last true masterpieces, though I anticipate that will be debated on the Saving Private Ryan episode when they get to it.

    • Like 4

  19. Posted

    Well, looks like I'm in the minority here.  I get the appeal of this film as a kids movie.  I watched the VHS of E.T. a bunch when I was a kid, but I can't say it was one of my most rewatched movies back then.  This was the first time I'd watched it in probably 25 years, and I had very little emotional reaction this time.  Furthermore, I would say the emotions I did have were almost completely due to the score, which is definitely one of Williams's top 5 scores in his career.

    Maybe when I have kids, I'll watch it again and love it.  Maybe I won't find Elliott as shrill, the green screen effects as dated, and the whole second act so largely silly.  But for now, I have it slotted it at #15 out of 18 on my list.  Blame my cold, dead heart I guess.

    • Like 2

  20. Posted

    6 hours ago, CameronH said:

    Two, I never once said that going back home and going to school was worse than forced prostitution. That's putting words in my mouth and absolutely ridiculous. I only ever wondered if there was the possibility that she might be being forced to trade one form of abuse for another. We really don't know one way or the other, but I'm thinking about what could be going on in a 12-year-old's life that would make her actually run away, and abuse is at the top of that list. I think that's far more likely than "Mom wouldn't give me an extra scoop of ice cream for dessert so I'm running away forever and I'm never coming back! (Even if I'm given the chance, I want to, and it's clear that I'm in an unhealthy situation)."  

    Sure, and I apologize if I came off as flippant about that, or if it seemed like I was mischaracterizing your position.  You're right that there is a possibility that Iris is taken from one bad situation to another.  I had trouble this morning properly arguing why my view on the ending still aligns with that possibility, and I think the reason I had trouble is that I ultimately just don't believe it's the case.

    So while admitting that there is a possibility that Iris's home life is a terrible situation, here are the reasons I don't think it is.
    1. Iris ends up back with her parents in the first place.  If Iris actually has something legitimately terrible to fear from returning to her parents, I don't think that would have happened.  First, she could have fled from the scene and gone somewhere else.  Presumably, she instead waited for the police, either on purpose or because she was too scared/traumatized to move.  If she did not want to be returned to her parents, that would trigger some red flags.  The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was signed in 1974, so it would have been brand new at that time, and I have to believe that if she had objections to returning to her parents, Child Protective Services would take those objections quite seriously.  And under that view, the line "But we have taken steps to see she has never cause to run away again" reads to me like formerly neglectful parents who have been allowed by CPS to keep their child provided that they meet certain conditions.
    2. As pointed out, much of the movie is from Travis's point of view, and he's unreliable.  However, the scenes with Betsy and Tom inside the campaign office are not from Travis's point of view, and they exist to show the disconnect between Travis's point of view and reality.  Given that the film already established its willingness to break away from Travis's point of view, and given that the letter is read in the father's voice and not in Travis's voice, I see the letter as being read in the manner it was written rather than specifically the manner in which Travis interpreted it.  And as CameronH said, in the tone that it's read, it sounds innocent.  This could be an eye of the beholder thing, but I found nothing troublesome in the father's reciting of the letter.
    3. No real evidence whatsoever for this point, but I feel like her not wanting to go home when Travis tries to help her initially could easily be more out of fear from Sport catching her escaping than out of fear of her parents.  It could also easily be because Sport has manipulated her into thinking that her parents would kill her if they found out what she had become (which is not an uncommon tactic for child traffickers).  Moreover, unless I missed a line somewhere, we never find out just how long ago it was that she left, so as impressionable and manipulatable her 12-year-old mind is, it would have been even worse at a younger age.
     

    Of course, as pointed out, she had to run away for a reason.  So there had to be something serious enough to force her to leave and still not serious enough to prevent authorities from returning her to her home.  The seemingly paradoxical nature of this is why the "dead at the end" theory is so much better, since Iris having a happy reunion with her parents seems more likely to be Travis's fantasy than the truth!

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

    43 minutes ago, CameronH said:

    Yes, but if she “had cause to” that means she had reason for running away, and that reason is never given or discussed in the movie. My point is, she doesn’t want to go back home, and since one of the leading reasons for children to actually run away (and not just threaten to) is abuse at home, I think it’s a valid concern. Also, if the parents had to take “steps” so she doesn’t have “cause” to run away, then this further suggests that her reason(s) for leaving were not only external, but something that her parents were doing and had to take active measures to stop.

    For me, it’s also telling that when Bickle initially tries to help her, she doesn’t want to go home; however, she is open to the idea of going to a commune. This admits that she doesn’t really like where she is currently, but the alternative of going home isn’t even an option that she’s willing to entertain.

    Now, could this just be that her father is saying, “We need to show her more affection” or something? Possibly. But I think that’s the whole point of the ending.  It’s open to interpretation. It’s a happy ending if you want it to be. However, as that final shot in the rear view mirror suggests, even though things seem to have worked out for the best, they really haven’t. Why should we believe that everything has worked out well for Iris when Scorsese is literally looking us in the eye and telling us that this “happily ever after” is just a vaneer?

    I wouldn't go so far as to say Iris will live happily ever after, given what she's witnessed and gone through.  But again, I don't understand how anyone could say that her being back in school is a worse situation for a 12-year-girl than being a drug-abusing prostitute in New York.  If her parents were monsters in some way, there would have been a clue of that dropped by Iris in one of her conversations with Travis.  And even if her parents were abusive in any way, they are now more high-profile because of this story, so I have more trust in Child Protective Services to have their eye on this family housing a psychologically damaged former runaway than I would have had trust in any authorities to look out for a child sex-worker.

    So you can infuse darkness if you'd like by reading something sinister into her home situation, but even so, my point stands unless you're going to tell me that forced sex work was a better life.

  22. Posted

    I should add, I do really like Taxi Driver as a whole.  I hate the ending, but it doesn't ruin the whole film for me.  If I had to kick out a Scorsese, it's definitely Goodfellas.

  23. Posted

    On 9/7/2018 at 10:40 AM, WatchOutForSnakes said:

    He is 100 percent dead at the end.

    First of all, the dialogue as the camera scrolls past the news clips at the end is all voice over. That's the only time any VO is by someone other than Bickle's, so it leads me to believe that it's all in his head, and it's his story/fantasy the way we hear his thoughts as he writes. It's like the lies he writes to his parents about who he wishes he were instead of who he is.

    Second, all the clips are purely his fantasy of how he wants to be seen. It's the voice of Iris's dad profusely thanking him for returning his daughter and how great she's doing now that she's back at home. One of the news clips reiterates how grateful his parents are for finding their daughter. No way that happened. Now, regarding him being hailed as a hero by law enforcement - he straight up murdered people (you don't get leniency for them being "bad guys") carrying multiple unlicensed firearms, not to mention attempted political assassination. I just don't buy that any of the info we get in the VO or by the news clips on his wall were anything other than his own fantasies.

     

    On 9/7/2018 at 2:30 PM, sycasey 2.0 said:

    I'm pretty sure Schrader and/or Scorsese have confirmed that they did not intend for the end to convey Travis' death. Yeah yeah, death of the author and all that. People can interpret it as they like. But personally I also don't think it plays as a dream sequence. I think the film is taking yet another turn and challenging the audience who would hero-worship Bickle, showing how his "heroism" is basically made-up and not actually a fix for what ails him.

    I had never thought of the possibility that Travis is dead at the end until Paul mentioned it, at which point I realized, "Holy shit, that would actually make the ending good."  WatchOutForSnakes spells out all the evidence for the theory well, and sycasey 2.0 points out rightly that it was 100% not the filmmakers' intention.  Thus, I'll focus on the ending they intended, where Travis lives.

    So people critical of the ending seem to be pointing out that it appears to vindicate Travis, and the supporters of the ending feel that it is criticizing the audience/media/world at large for easy hero worship.  (For the record, that easy hero worship is not even farfetched in today's world, though the speed of social media would likely quickly reveal Bickle as a milkshake duck.)  But I think that's mostly irrelevant, because Travis's actions in the climax all had positive outcomes.  (Unless you're of the mind that murder is always wrong regardless of the circumstances, in which case I applaud you for feeling that way while still very mildly disagreeing.)  The people Travis killed were hurting and exploiting people, and as a result of their deaths, it would seem that fewer people in the world will be hurt and exploited for a time.  Iris made it back to her parents and went back to school, which I would say is definitively a better situation for a 12-year-old that to be a prostitute in New York.  (As far as the line "But we have taken steps to see she has never cause to run away again" goes, I think the word choice of "has cause to" diminishes the likelihood that this is supposed to be read or heard as menacing.)

    So with this ending, what's bad about Travis?  He thought about killing someone reasonably innocent, but he didn't, and killed guilty people instead.  It's not that people are wrong to view him as a hero that is the problem with the ending, it's that they're absolutely right to view him as a hero.  And if that's what the filmmakers intended, then it's boring to me.  The chasm between moralities from different points of view is what made so much of the film interesting, and I find it hard not to read the ending as "But then everyone's moralities aligned in the end, and the good guys won and the bad guys lost. The End."

    I also have a lot to say about Scorsese and Fincher and Verhoeven and Harry Potter with regards to whether a writer/director bears any responsibility when people take the diametrically opposed message from the intended message in a piece of work, but I'll save that for another post.

  24. Posted

    On 9/8/2018 at 4:42 PM, Samwell27 said:

    First time posting, but I must ask, is Amy just a hater? It seems like every episode I've listened to (besides Titanic), she knocks the film and believes it is too "machismo." It is getting to the point where Paul is having to pull some positive notes out of her each and every episode. It is exhausting. Even when she finds an outside critic, she attempts to find the negative one? Why? Why always challenge and put down a film instead of raise it up? Yes, I believe in criticism but not when it constantly comes off as jaded. 

    Let me know what you all think. 

    Still love the show. 

    I think she's been positive on more films than she's been negative on.  She's been pro on Citizen Kane, The Wizard of Oz, 2001, Bonnie and Clyde, King Kong, Titanic, All About Eve, Singin' In The Rain, and Double Indemnity, and she was more positive than Paul on The General.  A relatively common criticism of her views has been that occasionally she will let a reasonably small detail completely sour her opinion of a film, but I haven't found any of that in Unspooled.  One thing I love about the podcast is that both Paul and Amy are eager to point out both the good and the bad in a movie, regardless of their ultimate feelings about it.

    Of course, I could be biased, since I agree with Amy about 90% of the time.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    7 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    I can't quite figure out how to answer 'should this be on the list?'  So far, I've rated 3 movies 5 stars.  And looking at some of your Letterboxd lists, that's pretty normal.  I'm inclined to think the whole list should be five star films.  Are we saying there aren't 100 American five-star movies?  I can't figure out if that's unreasonable or not haha.  But if it is, most of us don't think many of these movies should be on the list... 

    I am definitely curious to see how many of these top-100 I rate 5 stars.

    I'm another person who is extremely stingy with perfect ratings.  Namely, of the over 500 films I've rated on IMDb, I've only give 6 films a perfect 10 out of 10.  (Then about 50 films got a 9 out of 10.)

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