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| lshap |
 Posted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 8:12 pm |
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Joined: 12 May 2004
Posts: 4248
Location: Montreal
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For the record, I loved Eastwood's Gran Torino. Most of it was intensely satisfying, and whatever it lacked in originality was made up for by the entertainment value of seeing Dirty Harry 35 years older as Curmudgeon Harry. Classic? No. Good film? Definitely!
If Eastwood's directing been overpraised, it's a recent phenomenon that begun with Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River. Both solid films, but I was mystified by the over-the-top praise and awards.
However, I take issue with the downgrading of Unforgiven, one of the great films of the 90's. It's a thoughtful, intense and achingly poignant story that puts the lie to the heroic gunslinger myth. |
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| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 12:41 am |
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Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
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lshap wrote: For the record, I loved Eastwood's Gran Torino. Most of it was intensely satisfying, and whatever it lacked in originality was made up for by the entertainment value of seeing Dirty Harry 35 years older as Curmudgeon Harry. Classic? No. Good film? Definitely!
If Eastwood's directing been overpraised, it's a recent phenomenon that begun with Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River. Both solid films, but I was mystified by the over-the-top praise and awards.
However, I take issue with the downgrading of Unforgiven, one of the great films of the 90's. It's a thoughtful, intense and achingly poignant story that puts the lie to the heroic gunslinger myth.
Private sidebar to Chilly: Help. Send me your proper zip code, please, thank you, the check came back, We of the S.A.S.S.Y.fied off-center take our pledges very seriously. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2010 2:54 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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I Love You Phillip Morris is a pretty wild ride and Jim Carrey does pull off a deceptively tricky role.
The film was a little harsher and more uncompromising than I expected. I didn't come away seeing much humor or hilariousness in the film, maybe just a sign that I got caught up in the underlying drama and conflict.
I was more trying to diagnose the main character rather than laugh at his antics.
I can see the trepidation for a US release, especially the introduction of the gay theme, along with the direct sexuality expressed.I liked, in the whipsaw beginning, how Carrey really blends in as a southern bible-belter, then morphs into other roles convincingly. Along with InLA's list, I also saw elements of Milk, especially in the McGregor role. |
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| shannon |
| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 10:15 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1628
Location: NC
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lshap wrote: For the record, I loved Eastwood's Gran Torino. Most of it was intensely satisfying, and whatever it lacked in originality was made up for by the entertainment value of seeing Dirty Harry 35 years older as Curmudgeon Harry. Classic? No. Good film? Definitely!
Yeah, I liked it a lot, too. It didn't take itself too seriously. Compare it with that other "old dude kicking ass and cleaning up his neighborhood" movie, Harry Brown, from last year that got considerably better reviews. Who knows why. Harry Brown was just an ugly, ugly movie. It literally made me want to vomit. And I'm rarely repulsed by anything. (The Death Wish series makes me laugh, especially the 3rd and 4th ones.) |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 10:26 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| My British friend, who lives in Cheshire, preferred "Gran Torino" to "Harry Brown." (We met in the New School film class.) I haven't seen either one, yet. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 10:41 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Though I know what shannon means about Harry Brown being borderline nauseating, I still way prefer it to the psychologically juvenile, badly acted Gran Torino. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Oct 26, 2010 5:58 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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I'm with Lorne on Gran Torino -- about as deep as the Platte River in August, but entertaining to see Clint be a cranky old bastard. Juvenile, perhaps, but with some genuine warmth and, again, that contemplative pace of Eastwood's that somehow gives you a little more than you were expecting.
[possibly obscure simile aid -- "Nebraska" means "flat water" and was how the natives referred to the river's being notably wide and shallow. It was rare to have to speak of "fording" the Platte, because you could easily walk across without moistening your knees, a lot of the year] |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:21 am |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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Danny Boyle’s new film 127 Hours recreates the nightmarish events that led up to Aron Ralston (played by the extremely charming James Franco) cutting off his own arm in a mountain climbing accident. Ralston was trapped for 127 hours in a canyon in Utah when a falling boulder pinned his right arm to the canyon wall. Facing certain death, Ralston decided to do the unimaginable: he cut off his right forearm using a dull pocket knife. He survived and became an international hero, a survivor, a human being with an almost superhuman will to live, inspiring. It’s a rousing a story, but not one that is particularly cinematic or filled with any surprises. How much drama and action can you generate when the story is limited to one cramped location and everyone seeing the film most certainly know its outcome? Boyle does his best by using lots of flashbacks, dream sequences, technical wizardry and a pounding techno soundtrack. For the most part it works. The movie is not boring. It has its moments of heartbreak, humor and some very trippy imagery. But the real reason most people will be buying tickets to see 127 Hours is not for its artistry, but for its money shot: the arm cutting sequence. And they will not be let down. Ralston amputating his arm is done in graphic detail, it’s genuinely shocking, and Boyle uses visual effects and sound to make the scene borderline unbearable. The snapping of bones, Ralston’s screams, a special effect in which the viewer sees the knife doing its work from a perspective inside the arm, combine to make the amputation a gore classic. While the movie strains to make deep spiritual and philosophic points, most of its highmindedness is lost in the sheer audacity of the arm cutting scene. And there ain’t no doubt that people will be talking about it. As much as the film explores Ralston’s soulsearching while being trapped, most of us are on the edge of our seats waiting for the money shot. With that in mind, Boyle, who also wrote the screenplay, tries to pump up emotions using the dream sequences and flashbacks, none of which really amount to much. But they are flashy. The cinematography by Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle is stunning and Bollywood music genius A.R. Rahman’s pulsating score gives the movie a heartbeat. But all the razzle dazzle is dwarfed by a cheap penknife puncturing and tearing at human skin. Flesh and blood is the ultimate special effect.
This is a much better film than torture porn like Saw, but despite its good intention, 127 Hours achieves its biggest thrills through the same formula as many graphic horror films: showing us the most disgusting thing possible. And Boyle is such a talented director he manages to show it to us in newly visceral ways. When bones snap, they snap in superamped Dolby surround sound, with a searing bright flash of subliminal light jumping from the screen. In an effort to give the audience a sense of what it felt like to be Ralston in that moment of self surgery, Boyle has chosen to subject his audience to its own endurance test.
Tonight’s screening of 127 Hours at the Austin Film Festival had the hardy film freak audience gasping, hiding their eyes and squirming in their seats. Ralston was in that cave for 127 hours and as much as Boyle tries to compress all of that suffering, soulsearching and fear into 95 minutes, the movie only really comes alive in those few minutes when it literally cuts to the bone. |
Last edited by Marc on Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 8:50 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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That description of 127 Hours makes the movie sound exploitative in a way I'm certain it doesn't wish to be considered. To describe the arm-cutting scene as the "money shot" may be accurate in terms of the movie's effect, but if it becomes known as simply the "arm-cutting" movie it will not get the box office that inspiring story deserves.
The fact that you never mentioned the name of the actor playing Ralston speaks multitudes about the failure of the movie as a rousing, inspirational tale. It sounds like Saw IX, and I'm not sure I'll be checking it out. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 8:57 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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drinking game for 127 Hr. general release:
Take a sip every time a reviewer writes, "literally cuts to the bone." |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 8:59 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| As soon as I read about that movie I wondered why anyone would want to make it, or want to see it. I can't even watch the ads for it. Though it sounds as if the director did a good job of turning it into drama--it's my idea of a must-not-see film. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 9:35 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| Personally, I think the title 127 Hours was a mistake; it makes it sound like some sort of Andy Warhol experimental film, or a bloated Kiefer Sutherland TV vehicle. Though it is no doubt preferable to the film's original working title, A Farewell to Arm. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:00 am |
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Definitely, pas pour moi.
You have to start wondering about Doyle. Slumdog Millionaire, though a fine movie, does have some pretty gruesome scenes that are hard to take. The one that bothered me the most, strangely, was the one where the kid was covered in crap. I don't consider that gruesome however.
Great directors don't graphically display things like torture or butchering, they use their art to stir the audience's imagination and experience it as an emotional shock rather than a stomach turning disgust. Of course way over the top violence in the service of humour is a different thing. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:06 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Interesting comment about Boyle and regurgitation. For me, the most disgusting Boyle moment was in Trainspotting, when the guy flung the shitted-on sheet across the room, spewing feces everywhere. Yuck doesn't even begin to describe it for me. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:19 am |
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Oh yeah, I forgot that he directed Trainspotting.
Yep, he's got some sort of shit fetish. I'd hate to be his wife.  |
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