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billyweeds

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 6:48 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

gromit--Darling is a British film.

whiskeypriest

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 7:47 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

marantzo wrote:

Quote:

It reminded me of a 1970's movie with bad cinematography.

That reminds me of something I thought would be a good little diversion for the film forum. What is the worst decade for American movies. I thought of this because there were a couple of absolute clunkers on TCM a few days ago and they were typical of crap from the 50's. Of course the thought came to me that the 50's were the worst.

Any decade that begins with Sunset Blvd. and ends with Some Like It Hot and contains some of Hitchcock's best movies is not even in the running for worst decade. For me, it's the 90's.

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gromit

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:10 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

Next you'll try to tell me that the Rolling Stones are British.

But isn't Britain a colony of the US?
And if not, why not?

Being overseas for so long, I guess I end up dividing films between those in English and those in other languages. Or maybe it's just the way I approach Dvd's. I can't watch too many films with subtitles in a row.

Actually I've seen a fair number of old British films this year:
Kind Hearts and Coronets, Overlord, Green For Danger, 49th Parallel, Tunes of Glory -- all thanks to the Criterion label.
The first two were the best, in my O.

Last edited by gromit on Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:15 am; edited 1 time in total
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

gromit

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:31 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

whiskeypriest wrote:

]Any decade that begins with Sunset Blvd. and ends with Some Like It Hot and contains some of Hitchcock's best movies is not even in the running for worst decade. For me, it's the 90's.

Shee-it, 1999 alone makes it a fine decade.
Nevermind the Coen Brothers kicking ass all decade long.
(now don't go telling me they were British)

Last edited by gromit on Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:10 am; edited 1 time in total
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

jeremy

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:47 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

I agree about the 90's - Fight Club, Pulp Fiction...Trainspottingand particularly The Coens. Didn't you know they were second cousins to the Duke Of Argyll.

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My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.

tirebiter

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:49 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4011 Location: not far away

gromit: Canada is a colony of the U.S. Britain is a protectorate of the U.S.

Hope this clears things up.

Kind Hearts & Coronets is a movie I can watch again and again. Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Alec Guinness-- heaven.

Rod

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:03 am

Joined: 21 Dec 2004 Posts: 2944 Location: Lithgow, Australia

I might start posting a weekly list. Anyway.

Top 20 Films/Oeuvres of the 2000s (so far)

Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)

The most ambitious film of the decade, perhaps then the biggest failure, but by any standard a brash, original melding of epic tale with black comedy, punk fairytale, multi-cultural dreaming, music hall history, and the bloody Shakespearean.

Elephant / Last Days (Gus Van Sant)

Crisp, deft, quietly observant pair of films that dissect modern youth/pop culture with a scalpel, examining creators and destroyers with the same unblinking appreciation for how they resist the attempts of modern life to reduce them to paste.

Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (Takeshi Kitano)

My pick for the best Asian action film, over Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with its slightly strained seriousness, and Hero and House of Flying Daggers from Zhang Yimou, both gloriously textured but a bit light on the pallet; Takeshi captures the emotive weight of old-school melodrama whilst cross-breeding it with musical comedy.

Femme Fatale (Brian De Palma)

Witty, perversely funny, incredibly watchable, indeed a visual feast from one of the cinema’s best movie-makers, pulling apart genre tropes like a kid with a insect under the microscope. Plus, yes, that robbery/make-out scene is just incredibly hot.

Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat)

Breillat’s a real provocateur, and this film is a lethal assault on modern adolescence (sort of like, what they’re doing when not at school in Elephant), or A Clockwork Orange for a victim as bent as the villain.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Peter Jackson)

The epic of the decade, the finest action film, the best Hollywood blockbuster, sublime movie-making, rich with pleasures, if a bit over-inflated in parts.

Lost In Translation / Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola)

The Princess Diaries, Vol 1. and Vol. 2 But Miss Sofia is proving the most lithely poetic and able director of her generation, making her gossamer-light but affecting observations on life, alienation and longing in a manner blessedly free of the self-crucifying angst of male counterpart bores like Wes Anderson and Charlie Kaufman.

The Good Thief (Neil Jordan)

Jordan’s spin on Bob le Flambeur is probably the best crime film of the decade, as well as the funniest, and the best noir; colorful, nuanced, sexy, and rich in cultural context.

Ali / Miami Vice (Michael Mann)

Mann’s always a sublime maker of films, even if the films aren’t so hot; Ali might fail as a biopic and yet it succeeds as something much more interesting, a portrait of a white hot historical era that has time for guys just sitting around and drinking coffee. Miami Vice does for modern America what The Good Thief does for modern Europe; repaint it in neon-and-digital textures both smoulderingly romantic and brooding with pulp existentialism, and capture the shifting cultural and ethnic identities.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)

Part pop-culture collage, part ironic fantasy study of current-day male-female relations, it’s the work, all the way through, of the best film-maker to emerge in the ‘90s.

The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles)

Que Viva Che! Sinuous melding of modern cinema’s internationalist impulses and sheer fuck-the-establishment freedom-seeking.

2046 (Wong-Kar Wai)

Intense, symphonic, suffocatingly beautiful study. It’s a thematic mess, but in a way that captures deep emotional confusion; plus it is, in its way, as reflexive and referential in construction as Kill Bill.

Three Times (Hsiao-hsien Hou)

Similar in look and feel to 2046, but more subtle, and exceptionally careful in telling three different era’s versions of romance. One of those films that slides over you like fine silk.

Babel (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)

The potential foolishness of the idea overcome by a neo-realist commitment to storytelling mixed with verisimilitude.

Red Lights (Cedric Kahn)

Of the many chilly Gallic misanthropic thrillers made this decade, my favorite, from a Georges Simenon novel – godfather of the chilly Gallic misanthropic thriller – with, from Jean-Pierre Darroussin, probably the best male lead performance of the decade; sharper made and less pretentious than similar works such as Under the Sand and In the Bedroom.

Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright)

Alright, I know it’s not exactly cutting-edge material, but it’s an impeccably styled, vivacious, exceedingly civilized film, an historical romance in the vivid cinematic tradition of Tom Jones and Far From The Madding Crowd.

The New World (Terrence Malick)

Malick overcame garbled experiments and career gaps to make an intelligent, intellectually and emotionally broad-minded tone-poem.

Munich / Catch Me If You Can / Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)

Spielberg’s become a true auteur in that each project subtly alters the next; for the noble failure of AI and War of the Worlds, the three above link together - as well as being impeccably crafted and highly entertaining films in totally different styles and genres – in their moral questioning, their variations on crime-and-punishment concerns, and their urgent concern for the future of family life.

Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass)

I pick this over the recent fine (if not groundbreaking) work by Loach, Leigh, and the other Euro-realists; astonishingly staged and affecting docu-drama.

I’ll leave my 20th position free for a few films I’d like to see again before deciding their place, such as Alfonso Cuaron’s Y tu Mama tambien, Claire Denis’ Friday Night, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain,George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck, and also all the good ones I haven’t seen.

Last edited by Rod on Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:34 pm; edited 2 times in total
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whiskeypriest

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:11 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

gromit wrote:

whiskeypriest wrote:

]Any decade that begins with Sunset Blvd. and ends with Some Like It Hot and contains some of Hitchcock's best movies is not even in the running for worst decade. For me, it's the 90's.

Shee-it, 1999 alone makes it a fine decade.
Nevermind the Coen Brothers kicking ass all decade long.
(now don't go telling me they were British)

Well, perhaps I missed something in 1999, but off hand Magnolia was the only American movie of that year I was all that fond of.

Fargo and Barton Fink rank high on my list; Lebowski might if I ever get around to seeing it. Not as high on Miller's Crossing. And the less said about HudSUCKer the better.

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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

gromit

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:29 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

MCMXCIX

American Beauty
Being John Malkovich
Three Kings
Fight Club

The Virgin Suicides
The Straight Story
The Matrix
Magnolia

In the realm of Gromitdom, the first four are exceptional films.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

whiskeypriest

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:44 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

gromit wrote:

MCMXCIX

American Beauty
Being John Malkovich
Three Kings
Fight Club

The Virgin Suicides
The Straight Story
The Matrix
Magnolia

In the realm of Gromitdom, the first four are exceptional films.

Ah. Three Kings I also quite liked, and Being John Malkovich was a good idea that fell a little short in the execution. The rest....

I am open to reevaluating American Beauty, once I get the notion of what a lucky bastard Mendes is out of my head. I dislike Matrix, loathed Fight Club and haven't seen the others. Note that I haven't seen a David Lynch film since Blue Velvet and do not intend to see another.

_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

marantzo

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:29 am

Guest

I'd certainly go along with The Virgin Suicides, The Straight Story and The Matrix.

Quote:

Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (Takeshi Kitano)

My pick for the best Asian action film, over Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with its slightly strained seriousness, and Hero and House of Flying Daggers from Zhang Yimou, both gloriously textured but a bit light on the pallet; Takeshi captures the emotive weight of old-school melodrama whilst cross-breeding it with musical comedy.

I am in complete agreement with you there. As my glowing review of the movie some years ago attests.

marantzo

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:30 am

Guest

I never did see Flying Daggers, but Hero left me less than thrilled.

Befade

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:11 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ

Quote:

and a big bunch of the 'women's' movies.

This is the minority report here. I pick the 40's for its big bunch of women's movies.

Rod......I like the way you group a director's work. Why didn't you include Gerry in the Van Sant group?

I watched About Schmidt for the second time. I wasn't as critical of it as before. There's something tender about it's look at old age.....even though there are alot of pot shots taken at old women. Jack Nicholson is an great actor that unfortunately has a celebrity persona that is always lurking right under the arched eyebrows. I kept waiting for him to sling off his "old man" getup and turn into JACK.

Bart........You would enjoy the dvd extras.........alot of Nebraska love there.

gromit

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:18 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

The three top grossing films of 1999:

Not sure if that helps make the case or not.
Of those, I've only seen TS2.
The Blair Witch Project was also 1999, but again I haven't seen it.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

chillywilly

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 12:19 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 8251 Location: Salt Lake City

whiskeypriest wrote:

So you like Spike Jonze in front of the camera but not behind it?

As for not liking Fight Club, there's a lot of people that didn't like it. Do you like other Fincher films?

No Lynch since Blue Velvet? Not even Lost Highway?

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"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend"

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