Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 86

Adam_S · 01-16-2005, 02:04 PM

Hiroshima mon Amour -

01/14/2005
OARDVD

An interesting little film that begins as stunning and terrible but suddenly shifts gears into something else before suddenly trying to bring things full circle with the last two lines. Damn good on many different levels but difficult and in some ways dull in many other respects.

I think I'd prefer to see his docu short work more than his other features.

Adam

Adam_S · 01-19-2005, 03:27 AM

Ashes and Diamonds -

- 170 down

Outstanding film on every level. It's noirish with intense lighting but with a lot of varying levels and interests going on simultaneously. The photography was really damn incredible. and the film had something else that was just compelling about it--a film that really worked, and worked beautifully which I hadn't quite expected for whatever reason.

Adam

glen_esq · 01-20-2005, 01:07 AM

Happy new year everyone.

#335 Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966)

Well that was very disappointing. Movie did not connect with me the way it seems to for so many others. With Bresson, especially his later films, I have a lot of trouble getting past the robotic, unemotional performances. Alas, more of the same here.

I'm guessing it's been said before: Bresson does a better job of directing Balthazar the donkey than the human actors.

Anyway, a donkey bears witness to the frailty of human nature. Plenty of cruelty and vice here, some towards poor Balthazar, most often it lands among his owners and the other citizens of their glum village.

Does an actor ever smile in a Bresson movie?

EDIT - I'm adding this note about 2 weeks after I watched the movie. I wanted to add that I thought the screenplay was excellent, brilliant even. Using Balthazar throughout the movie to witness and suffer the worst of humanity was quite effective, struck a chord with me on a spiritual level. For the screenplay alone, I would recommend the movie to any film buff, maybe you'll be more tolerant of Bresson's emotionless actors than I am.

Bresson seen/ranked
1. A Man Escaped ***
2. Les Dames du Bois de Bologne ***
3. Pickpocket ***
4. Mouchette ***
5. Au Hasard Balthazar **
6. L'Argent * ½
7. Diary of a Country Priest * ½
8. Lancelot du Lac *

glen_esq · 01-20-2005, 01:16 AM

Ashes and Diamonds - the glasses and the hair!!! It was like Peter Fonda from Easy Rider did a time warp back to late 50s Poland to star in the movie

Adam_S · 01-20-2005, 04:28 AM

And immensely more interesting than Peter Fonda in Easy Rider a film I found hopelessy dated extraordinarily self-indulgent and almost completely uncompelling.

I was thinking he was much more like a James Dean or Young Brando type of figure than anything.

I have throne of blood, lancelot of the lake and tin drum on deck from netflix and there are three tarkovsky films playing in the next couple weeks at the american cinematheque (one of them is the Mirror, which I may rewatch if I have the time/money) and their 70mm festival opens this week including two venues (good since I'll be busy shooting this weekend) and a newly restored print of the Agony and the Ecstasy, Lord Jim, and Dr. Doolittle, plus a 70mm classics series that includes Patton, Lawrence of Arabia, and 2001. If I can get to see half of these I"ll be thrilled.

Adam

george kaplan · 01-20-2005, 11:14 PM

To Sleep With Anger

Gawd! What a truly horrible, pathetic movie. I swear, sitting through a film like this, I seriously contemplate just quitting this challenge. When I think that I could spend those two hours watching a great film, or even a good film, or hell, even a not very good film, it just makes me cringe to think it was wasted on something like this.

The only thing even remotely interesting in this film was at the very end, when one of the characters was telling a joke. But then they never tell the punchline. Keeping this film from having even one redeeming moment.

191 down
153 left

Jim_K · 01-21-2005, 07:10 AM

I feel your pain George.

Speaking from experience, you have many hours of misery to look forward to as you continue on the Sight & Sound journey.

Lew Crippen · 01-21-2005, 11:22 AM

In all the world, there is no impurity so impure as old age.

Death in Venice is a physically stunning movie that centers on the present desires of a dying musician and the regrets of his past. Director Luchino Visconti has perhaps made his adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel a bit simplistic, but even his scaled down version is thought provoking and well worth watching.

Adam_S · 01-22-2005, 11:00 PM

Lancelot of the Lake -

OARDVD
01/22/2005

A slightly boring take on the King Arthur legend that started off promising but quickly dried up. Still I liked Lancelot's performance and I think I would have enjoyed the interplay between him and guinevere more if I hadn't been fighting hard against the sleep the film kept attempting to induce.

Still there's something about films made in this era set in that era that has a striking look. Maybe it's a combination of the filmstock of the day and dreary European climate/daylight, but there's something strikingly unnappealing about the outdoors shots that make you constantly aware that it absolutely is not several hundred years in the past but only people pretending it is. Perhaps it's just that I've been thoroughly encoded to expect ancienct era films to be glossy epics with glorious lighting that glorifies the majestic sweep of the pre-modern era... Or perhaps I just can't get Monty Python coconuts clomping together out of my head when watching this film. Or maybe it's how they don't appear to be burdened at all by their seventy pounds of armor and walk as though it's about five. or perhaps the look of the long underwear underneath the armour. There's just something off and wrong about this film's approach to the subject that never quite gels... and I was hoping to embrace it because I was quite delighted at first at getting the Arthur legend in French (oddly appropriate I thought).

thomas_jesp · 01-23-2005, 10:24 AM

If its not too late I will join this club

Films I have seen:

Citizen Kane
Vertigo
8 1/2
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Godfather Part II
Seven Samurai
Rashomon
Battleship Potemkin
Singin' in the Rain
Lawrence of Arabia
The Godfather
Bicycle Thieves
Dr. Strangelove
Raging Bull
Psycho
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II
Apocalypse Now
The Seventh Seal
Taxi Driver
Casablanca
M
Wild Strawberries
Barry Lyndon
North by Northwest
Blade Runner
Pulp Fiction
A Clockwork Orange
Breaking the Waves
Don't Look Now
Once Upon a Time in America
To Kill a Mockingbird
Un Chien andalou
Jaws
Star Wars
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Conversation
The Exorcist
The Great Dictator
The Wages of Fear
Unforgiven
Europa
Fargo
The Godfather Trilogy
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Rosemary's Baby
Schindler's List
The Shining
Short Cuts

48 total.

(A few of them I will see again because it's a long time I seen them last).

On March 14th there will be three of the S&S films out in R2UK : Two or Three Things I know About Her, Vivre Sa Vie and Masculin Feminin. I think Vivre Sa Vie is already out in R1 but I haven't seen a release of the other two before.