I just saw it 2 days ago. It's a strange movie, in a sense that with it's extremely bleak and hopeless athmosphere/imagery, you might consider it extremely demoralizing and depressing, but at the end you actually feel uplifted and begin appreciating all the small and convenient things you have in life, things that you took for granted before.
I could draw a comparison with No Country For Old Men, both the protagonists appearing to have given up hope on humanity, because they are not able to find any positive and redeeming qualities in their brethren anymore. However, the Boy does show that there is hope still, when he gets the Father to realize that it's morally wrong to leave a man completely stripped of all his belongings in the middle of the road of a harsh wasteland, no matter how cruel and survival of the fittest world we live in. We can see later on, in a very brief but suggestive scene, that the Father did come back to where he left that man stranded, returned his clothes and gave him some food. Subtle, but very powerful message.
On July 23 2011 11:00 Equity213 wrote: I saw an amazing movie on the weekend. Its in my top five for sure.
Red White and Blue, directed by Simon Rumley. Its about two people, one is a lady named Erika who is a big slut and cant connect with anybody. She meets a psychpath named Nate and they fall in love. The other half is about Frankie, a guy in a punk bank whos mom is dying of cancer.
Basically halfway through their storys meet and culminate in the most fucked up 45 minutes ive ever seen in my life.
This one is pretty depressing, but left a realllly big impact on me.
Wow this left a really big impact on me as well! It was HORRIBLE! sick stuff! talk of killing animals and then stabbing kids! this is just one of the worst films ever!!
A small John Ford film compared to his other epic Westerns, no John Wayne etc. only consists of character actors. Probably one of the best John Ford films ever made; some of the scenes are up close and personal. The methods of filming the shoot out scenes are amazing and at the time never before seen in terms of violence, especially for Westerns at that time and in some exceptions even today.
Best martial arts actor ever, one of the most consistently epic directors of all time, and a shockingly deep, complex, and beautiful story and presentation. Anyone who watches this movie all the way through and doesn't love it is absolutely insane!
Music and sound design are also incredible... AGH I have to watch it again now!
Alright, I'm going to give some short comments on films that I've seen based on this thread. (At least I think they're all from this thread- a couple might be from the Recently Seen thread. It's hard to keep them straight sometimes.)
Equilibrium- This one is so amazing. Never heard of it when it came out, but definitely worth watching. I can see why people argue how both feels like and doesn't feel like the Matrix.
Trolljegeren- Shaky cam yes, but not nauseatingly so. I also felt it was necessary for the storytelling rather than shaky cam for the sake of shaky cam. It has a much different feel than a big Hollywood film. Which is one of the reasons I like foreign films so much.
Donnie Darko Very oddball sort of film. I actually really enjoyed this one- not a big fan of typical horror films.
Pan's Labyrinth (this might have been from the other thread) Decent film, the atmosphere of it was very strange/ unsettling.
Dark City Not sure about this one. I enjoyed it, but I felt the 'man behind the curtain' was revealed far too soon. Would've preferred the strange phenomena to continue before revealing what exactly the Strangers were up to (a little more like the Truman Show?) Cool atmosphere and concept, just execution.
Casshern I really liked the feel of this film, but I don't think it's as deep as it tries to be. I liked the almost steam-punk feel to it. Really need more steam punk films!
The Illusionist/ The Prestige People will argue why one is better than the other. I enjoyed both for different reasons, but I haven't quite decided which one I enjoyed more. I really liked the subtext of The Prestige, but found the application of Tessler's machine a little jarring.
The Duellist Highly under-rated and Ridley Scott's first feature film. Amazingly talented even back then. Wish people would do more Napoleonic Wars films.
Scott Pilgrim Not my favorite of the bunch, but I also don't watch a lot of comedy and as a light-hearted flick I did enjoy it. (Really liked the fun it had with video games rather than the endless drivel of rom coms, lame comedian fronted films, and gross sex coms.)
The Cube Conflicted about this one. Obviously low-budget, but that wasn't it's greatest fault. I enjoyed the claustrophobic and indie feel to the film. I really didn't think they did a good job with the cop's major character switch- needed a greater sense of time and motivation. I think I liked the concept more than the execution of the actual character interactions.
Serenity (and by extension Firefly) I have to say Joss Whedon knows how to build a solid group of characters without pidgeon-holing characters. Even the hired-gun/thug Jayne is allowed character development. Also a functional marriage in a tv series. wut??? Infernal Affairs I had seen The Departed first, but forget that movie! I much prefer this one- I also happen to like Andy Lau films. But seriously, watch this one.
Wing Commander I liked this one, but not as much as the others. I think I mostly really liked this era of sci fi equipment and ships. Reminds me of the gritty feel of early Star Wars and Alien.
Pitch Black This one actually did surprise me because I had seen Chronicles of Riddick first and was not impressed. (The baddies costume/architecture design bugged me to know end- looked like a really bad sword and sorcery costume theme.) Pitch Black was a pretty decent action film though. The Breakfast Club I had heard about this one before, but finally watched it when archive binging this thread. Pretty decent portrayal of the various stereotypes in highschool. Maybe not over the top, but fairly intelligent I'd say.
Oh, and The Gamers 1 and 2 (Dead Gentlemen Society) I had already seen it, but was happy to see it in this thread. If you're a pen and paper rpg'er, you owe it to yourself to see these two indie films. Made by gamers for gamers.
Phew, that's all I can think of for now. I've been using this and the other thread for a year or so now to find new films.
A film I'd recommend: Mo Gong (Battle of the Wits/ Warriors)
Subtitles- I've gotten a little tired of 'epic battles' = throw more CGI soldiers together with no thought. This has big battles, but they're smart battles as the title suggests. Highly recommend.
Another I'd suggest is Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price.
It's black and white, but not silent. I was really not very impressed with I Am Legend. This one holds a lot truer to what the Legend was was supposed to be. The pacing is a lot different than your modern action flick, but hold on, it's a well told story. It's also pre-modern zombies (although called vampires.) Finally Vincent Price is the Man. Go see it. I also happen to like Black and Whites- Nosferatu, The Public Enemy, etc.
Finally, some things are hidden simply by time, though are well enough known. If you haven't see Hitchcock's The Birds, I would recommend seeing it. One thing I've found is while I absolutely detest modern horror flicks, I really like old school horror films.
There's a surprising lack of Hong Kong movies in this thread so i decided to write a short guide of (my favorite) HK movies to help those who aint familiar with the genre.
Yuen Woo Ping is the man. He is the action director of some movies you might have heard, like Ip Man, Matrix, Kill Bill, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and such. If you enjoy watching beautiful action scenes, he's your go to guy. Some of his less known movies, which i for one, count as better as his already mentioned titles:
Masterpiece from 70s. You can see Siu Tien Yuen, father of Woo Ping, in this movie along with Jackie Chan during his early days. If you havent seen one single HK movie ever, and want to watch one, watch this (or Fist of Legend if you dont want to watch comedy). It's prolly worth noting that the drunken style of kung fu actually exists.
This was mentioned in early pages of thread, but deserves to be mentioned again. Lots of similarities with Drunken Master. Same actors, same goofy comedy, but no drunken kung fu. Instead, Jackie combines snake and eagle styles of kung fu to form cat's claw kung fu.
This was mentioned once already in this thread around 50 pages ago, but deserves to be mentioned again, because this might be the best movie ever made. Directed by Gordon Chan, even though the action choreography looks like work of his almighty Yuen Woo Ping. Edit: this is propably because the action choreography actually IS by Woo Ping himself, even tho imdb doesnt credit him for it. Starring Jet Li.
There was totally 6 of OUATIC movies made, but the rest of em dont come nearly as good as the first two. Enjoy seeing Jet Li spanking 30+ people at the same time with his wooden pole? Then watch these (and Fong Sai Yuk series). Directed by Tsui Hard, starring Jet Li.
If you enjoy watching Wing Chun (the style of kung fu made famous by Ip Man), with slapstick comedy, check this out. Directed by Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao in main role.
Tsui Hark's comedy masterpiece from early 80s. This one is a bit hard to describe. First 5 minutes you might think you are watching any oldskool kung fu flick, but then it all goes to total mentalness. Theres plenty of magical beeings, evil witches, scholars who can fly with their cooking pots, Sammo Hung fighting with his eyebrows and mustache, a guy whos so strong he has chained himself on a huge stone, and so on. Yuen Biao in main role.
Sequel for the latter from 2001. This was the most expensive HK movie ever made, when it came out. 2/3 of the funding went straight into CGI, so theres lots of that. People fighting with 10 meter long swords and whatnot. Not as funny as the first one tho, IMO. Lack of Yuen Biao is a shame, but hotness of Zhang Ziyi (the Hidden Tiger chick) makes up for it.
That has to do it for now. Many of these can be found from Youtube. One tip though, which applies to all HK movies: avoid dubbed shit. Most of the yankee DVD releases which are dubbed, aint only (very poorly) dubbed, but are also cut. For example, one particular Jet Li movie, which's name i cant recall at the moment, is modestly 20 minutes shorter in yankee dvd format, than the orginal. Also many of these are so badly dubbed, the jokes get lost and in some cases whole plot gets hard to understand or, even worse, completely different than in the original. Original audio + subtitles is the way to go, unless ofcourse you happen to understand chinese. If you are looking for good DVD releases, try to get DVDs released by Hong Kong Legends (which unfortunatelly doesnt exist anymore) which all are remastered and contain original audio with proper subs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Legends
Warning: Some people cant enjoy Hollywood action movies after having watched enough HK action, because Hollywood action feels like its boring and lacks action, so proceed with caution. Im one of them.
I 100% agree. Subtitles are the way to go. Dubbing always irritates me as the voices rarely match the character they're portraying and it usually just sounds stupid.
I searched about 20 or so pages of the thread, sorry if any of these repeat. Becoming more important every day. Watch this movie.
edit: And of course I find this on some random page posted by Grado2003. Oh wells, I'll leave it up.
For those of you posting kung fu movies, this one sports a really beautiful cinematic landscapes, great humor and awesome (Jackie) action, oh and he sings some of the music.