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marantzo

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 6:40 pm

Guest

I almost hated The Deerhunter, but only just really didn't like it. Sue me.

I was happy to see Chimino crash and burn though. Self indulgent? Noooooooo!!!!!

Marc

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 7:30 pm

Joined: 19 May 2004 Posts: 8424

Gary, it's Cimino. He directed a terrific film with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges
called Thunderbolt And Lightfoot. I thought The Deerhunter was overrated, but it's still an engrossing, powerful movie.

marantzo

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 6:00 am

Guest

Well, I didn't overrate it. Smile

It did annoy me that it was considered great by so many, including the doofuses in the Academy. But that's no surprise. After that endless real time wedding, I knew I was in trouble. Nothing against the acting.

I hated Contact. And I hate Jodie Foster in almost anything, but this was a perfect movie for her A lousy movie that thinks it is special with a lousy actress who thinks she is special.

What did Hinkley see in her? Rolling Eyes

marantzo

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 6:20 am

Guest

I would have hated Mission To Mars (speaking of space movies) but it was way too dumb to hate. You feel sorry for it. It also makes some good actors look lousy. It's like DePalma does these things on purpose.

billyweeds

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 6:42 am

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

Marc wrote:

Two mistakes here. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was not only not terrific, it was a snore. And The Deer Hunter is three words, not two. This is a common mistake on the order of calling Touch of Evil "A Touch of Evil" (don't know how that happened, but it happens all the time--probably mixing it up with "A Touch of Class").

For the record, I thought The Deer Hunter was an impressive movie, but an example of non-entertainment. It left me depressed, and not in an enlightened way. And it's waaaaay too long.

whiskeypriest

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 10:48 am

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

marantzo wrote:

Well, I didn't overrate it. Smile

I loved the wedding scenes. But again, that's Cleveland porn - I could see the Russian Orthodox Cathedral it was filmed in from the window of the Red Line which I took in to work.

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

carrobin

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 1:00 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

Wow, I finally track down this forum and find that people were dissing "The Rose." Okay, it's true, I was disappointed in it (we had it for a screening when I was working for the film class) because Alan Bates' role was so brief, yet seemed to have so much backstory that wasn't shown. I asked his secretary later whether the role had been bigger in the original screenplay, and she said "Oh yes! or he'd never have signed up for it." I did think Midler was good, though. Forgettable Frederick Forrest was a blank. Harry Dean Stanton's single scene was memorable.

My cousin who saw "Butley" with me hated it. It's still my all-time favorite film. (Of course she and I have very different tastes, with the exception of our mutual love of "Singin' in the Rain.") There was another film in the American Film Theatre group, "Rhinoceros," with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, that was truly awful. I had read the play in French class in college, and I love Mostel and Wilder, but what a lousy version. I don't know if it's even available anywhere now, and I don't care.

One of these days I may see "Borat," but what put me off was the aspect of it that ehle mentioned. I find fake interviews uncomfortable, even the ones Samantha Bee conducts on the Daily Show. I laugh sometimes but feel guilty about it.

I wanted to see "Hot Fuzz" when it first came out because it sounded like a wild British comedy, but it disappeared too quickly. Recently it was on TV and I saw it. Awful. So glad I didn't spend money to see it. The premise was okay, but the murders were gruesome, and the film just kept going higher like a burning rocket when it should have wound down. I thought it was going to end up with everybody in England killing everyone else in England. Overkill, literally and figuratively.

There are a number of Alan Bates films that are really bad, but I won't go into all of them now. Except to mention "Club Extinction," Claude Chabrol's effort to remake (?) "Dr. M." I saw it in London when it came out, and I'm not sure whether it ever made it to the US. Pretentious and incomprehensible. Not Sir Alan's fault of course, but he looked ridiculous in the wig. (He said later that he made the film "to make my sons laugh.")

Joe Vitus

Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2009 4:49 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

carrobin wrote:

Harry Dean Stanton's single scene was memorable.

Indeed.

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You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

McBain

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 1:03 am

Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 1987 Location: Boston

marantzo wrote:

I almost hated The Deerhunter, but only just really didn't like it. Sue me.

I was happy to see Chimino crash and burn though. Self indulgent? Noooooooo!!!!!

My wife and I finally watched "Heaven's Gate" last year for shits and giggles. We were in awe of how broken the movie was and it made me go back and re-examine if "The Deer Hunter" is really any good.

_________________
A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.

billyweeds

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:56 am

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

McBain wrote:

marantzo wrote:

I almost hated The Deerhunter, but only just really didn't like it. Sue me.

I was happy to see Chimino crash and burn though. Self indulgent? Noooooooo!!!!!

And is it?

McBain

Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 7:19 pm

Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 1987 Location: Boston

billyweeds wrote:

McBain wrote:

marantzo wrote:

I almost hated The Deerhunter, but only just really didn't like it. Sue me.

I was happy to see Chimino crash and burn though. Self indulgent? Noooooooo!!!!!

And is it?

Yes, but I'm less forgiving of the flaws in pacing and other issues.

_________________
A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.

McBain

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:07 pm

Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 1987 Location: Boston

The fourth and fifth Harry Potter movies are both films that I hated. Completely incoherent stories filled with ethically and morally deranged characters with no clear motivations for anything.

The third movie was fantastic though. The sixth one was okay, but could have used quite a bit more script doctoring.

_________________
A life, Jimmy. You know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.

Syd

Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:40 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

McBain wrote:

I really liked the third and fourth, but I didn't care for the fifth as either book or movie (although Imelda Staunton was perfect).

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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

Joe Vitus

Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2009 1:00 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

Nine sucks shit. A Broadway-to-Hollywood fiasco of Carousel/Briagdoon proportions. Less that a third of the score retained (the song "Nine" itself is missing, and thus both the show's central message and the explanation of its title) and only four of the original characters remain. The songs are reduced to somnambulent dirges like a 78 record played at 33 1/3 rpm. Rob Marshall canabalizes his own work in Chicago. Yet again we have a character that fantazizes their life on a stage, but it doesn't make sense in the context of this work.

Chicago was centered around a narcissistic opportunist who fantasized her way to the big time and had the heartless cunning to visualize it perfectly and plan her triumph. Nine onstage was a musical breakdown, and the constant fantasy segues illustrated how Guido was losing control. He was obsessed with women, and himself, thus there was only Guido and a cast of females. But in the movie, the fiascos of his life are being collected and clarified into the movie in his mind. And the women are in the backgroud for the most part, supplanted by a lot of men: producers, priests, pressmen. What, if anything, is Guido obsessed with now? The whole concept is turned on its head, and the real tragedy isn't the reversal, but that it works so poorly.

It isn't just the concept from Chicago that is ripped off. Most of the numbers recall numbers from the earlier film (and one number embarrassingly recalls "Mein Herr" from Fosse's film of Cabaret).

The movie isn't a mess. It isn't At Long Last Love or One From the Heart. If only it had that sort of passionately misplaced energy! Instead it's an utterly proficient bore. Completely under control and dully prosaic. Imagine a perfume commercial with Vegas dancers and you have the idea. Judi Dench is dry and likable, Penelope Cruz is warm and likable, but that's the most you can say for the cast.

Throughout the whole movie, I kept thinking of the original Broadway production. Of those women filling the stage barely moving but still making "Folies Bergers" a knockout number (and Liliane Montevechhi openining that tiny box from Young Guido and unravelling that long, long boa: "I LOVE it!"). Or the nun stripping off her habit to become Saraghina on the beach. Or Anita Morris twisting herself into a pretzel for "A Call From the Vatican." Or the great opening with Guido conducting all the women as an orchestra (for a sung Overture) unitl his wife broke away to announce "Guido, I have to tll you, this is just not my idea of a successful marriage." Or when the flashbulb exploded in her face at the end of "My Husband Makes Movies."

The real problem though, isn't that the movie isn't faithful to the play. Most of us who complain about adaptations don't consider the original productions a temple to protect from defilement. It's only when a movie fails on its own terms that the stage production is recalled in preference.

I can totally understand the Oscar buzz. In the first place, if you just consider the sets, costumes, cinematagraphy, it's all of a very high level. And the cast is too competant to make fools of themselves. Kate Hudon handles her number nicely. Even Day-Lewis does the best that he can, though the restrained structure and pacing of the movie prevent him from being comic or dramatic enough for us to care about his inner struggle. The choreography is a repeat of Chicago with touches of Cabaret and (a more offensive steal to me) the Prologue from Follies. But that doesn't make it technically bad. I imagine if I was on the set as a number was being filmed, or I caught some scenes in dailies, and putting that together with a major cast, I'd think it was going to be a flim of the year, too.

The weirdest thing about this movie is that it's supposed to be an interior journey into a harried man's mental collapse, but it's all exteriors. Elaborately realistic locations and dialogue, outside the numbers, shot in a stately, frustratingly rational way. It's like a Merchant-Ivory adaptation of Ulysses.

But Sophia Loren is the saddest thing about it all. The woman who personified earthy, natural sexuality is now rail thin and mummified into an expressionlessness by too many severe face lifts. And the treatment of the character perfectly illustrates the odd wrongheadedness of the whole thing. She's supposed to be a mother, and if you know Fellini or the whole Italian mother complex thing, you know what that should mean. But she's treated as an elegent seductress—which kills the whole mother-whore dynamic that between herself and Saraghina is supposed to have set Guido careening down path he's now at the end of, and which is recreated in his relationship with his wife and his mistress. It puts a Freudian twist on the material that, like everything else in the movie, is never really explored or resolved or even exploited. It's just limply there. And why is the poor woman from a small village costumed throughout as if by Chanel? But the whole movie genuflects to her, and she wanders through in a stately, elegant, pointless fashion. Visually, she comes to represent the debacle of the movie. Can an actress recieve a bigger insult?

This movie is such a dull, dreadful waste of space that the fact it is likely going to go down in most people's minds as the definative Nine—because more people are likely to be exposed to this movie even if it flops, due to wide release, showings on television, and probably a DVD that will sit on movie rental shelves forever, than ever saw the stage version—boils my blood. Don't just skip it. Do your best to erase any knowledge of it from your consciousness.

_________________
You've got a great brain. You should keep it in your head.

-Topher

jeremy

Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 2:12 am

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

I agree that Chicago was overrated. Sometimes it seems to me that Hollywood allows itself, for reasons of sentiment or herd mentality, to collectively convince itself that something is very good when really it's just ordinary. And, for me, A Beautiful Mind was actually bad - easily the worst Oscar winner in the modern era. By comparison, I actually like Billy's two bete noir's: The English Patient and Shakespeare In Love. Though I would agree that Ralph Fiennes has been proven a failure as a romantic lead, I won't hear anything said against the delectable Kristin Scott Thomas.

My least favourite film experience? It would be too easy to say, "Anything with Adam Sandler in it," so I'll opt for Dances With Wolves , the longest film ever made, or so it seemed.

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