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| bartist |
 Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 12:30 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6944
Location: Black Hills
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yambu wrote: bartist wrote: Is this a drive-by, Yambu, or can you say why you didn't like the ending? It seemed to me a slice of life sort of story, so the ending worked for me. Her teaming up with her young ward the way she did should have caused the whole place to be shut down, pending investigation. Therapy it wasn't. But I guess such fantastical leaps are what make movies sometimes.
Yup, I had forgotten how over-the-top the whole thing with the self-harm girl was....esp. the scene where Grace contemplates attacking the father and then she and the girl smash up the car. It is where the movie departs from realistic portrayal of a group home (I worked in several group homes, some years ago)....in an interesting way, as it seems to suggest that there are situations where keeping a professional demeanor and distance might prevent establishing a meaningful bond with a resident. Sometimes that is true, in my experience, but not to the fantastic degee shown in ST12. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 1:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Didn't realize that's what you meant by the "ending." Yeah, that was a little far-fetched, but I believed it in the moment. The "ending" for me had something to do with the SPOILER ALERT fake escape made by the guy who REALLY attempted to escape at the beginning, which was appropriately funny and a great way to wrap things up. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2015 8:14 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Robert Altman's The Player has Tim Robbins playing a delightfully trashy Hollywood asst. producer who grudgingly takes garbage pitches all day and night when he isn't involved in an accidental homicide. The film has so many cameos they sometimes need three in one shot.
Whoopi Goldberg is the happiest, hippest homicide detective ever. As Robbins tells his tale, she starts laughing, and soon the room full of detectives is laughing. This pisses off Robbins, understandably, and the cops laugh even harder. Now I'm laughing. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 5:34 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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I mostly liked Short Term 12.
There were powerful and interesting scenes and the problem kids were well-delineated. I think my main reservation was that there often wasn't much context or info for us to know what choices should be made or if the ones being made were standard or unusual or outside the rules.
I think they meant to put us into the role of the trainee/newbie working there, but instead of being good disorientation, or followed by some grounding, it seemed like almost the whole film we were unmoored and unschooled in what would work or what was standard protocol. A few moments felt forced for story purposes, but those didn't bother me much. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 6:03 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Watched my first Yılmaz Güney film -- The Herd.
Actually Guney is listed as a co-director since he was actually in jail at the time the film was made. So it seems he just wrote the screenplay and possibly instructed his collaborator from jail.
Guney led quite a wild life which would make a good film in its own right.
He started off studying law and economics, but switched into film around age 21. Became a famous actor, known as the "Ugly King," for his rugged/peasant good looks. Probably also a minor slight at him for being a Kurd and of lower class origins. He started making his own films about the plight of the poor and common folk. Got thrown into jail for leftist political views. Got out made a few more films. Shot a judge to death in a bar fight. Got 19 years in the pen, where he wrote screenplays -- including for the film I just watched. Escaped after 7 years, and went into exile in France. Won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for his film Yol. Dead at 47 from stomach cancer.
Sounds sort of like a Turkish Fassbinder, to an extent.
Anywho, The Herd (1978) deals with a clan who has a running blood feud with the clan in the next valley. The other clan's main family has given their daughter to marry the son of their rival in order to make a lasting truce. But the woman miscarries and has a stillborn and with no heirs coming along, the patriarch decides he was given a worthless or worse (bad luck!) daughter-in-law, so the feud continues. Since everyone is stubborn and insistent in this film, the daughter-in-law has stopped talking for a whole year since her latest non-child. Not that anyone in the clan wants to talk to her anyway, except her husband, who really loves her.
These are poor nomadic sheepherders, and to make matters worse, the principle clan has contracted to sell 200 sheep in Ankara, but prices have changed and they are locked into a bad deal. I liked the first half of the film with the rural folks and the stupid feud, and messy family relationships.
When they start transporting the sheep by train -- much goes wrong especially every authority figure wanting a bribe and treating the rubes and their sheep like crapola -- the film becomes more standard.
In Ankara, they herd the sheep right through the streets of the capital, which elicits much amused and dismayed gawking from real Ankarans perplexed by this rural invasion. I liked the documentary footage mixed in-- also some was incorporated from the train journey -- even if it wasn't terribly seamless.
Then the film switches to crummy business dealings, and rural folks being fish out of water. Finally mute wifey dies. Partly her own fault as twice when she is brought to a doctor she passively refuses to be examined.
An interesting film and fairly well done, but again I thought the first half really captured/portrayed a dwindling nomadic lifestyle, while the second half was more standard and less detailed.
I know I have Yol here somewhere. And I think a few other Guney films. I must have bought them about a decade ago, but they just got buried among the unwatched dvd's. Now that i've been to Turkey and currently reading Pamuk's memoir, it's a perfect time to catch up on Yılmaz Güney. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 11:36 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Had good luck.
Dug into the first container of dvd's and it had mostly ME and Spanish films.
Found Yol, and Ararat.
Plus dug out some Iranian and other ME films:
The Apple (Makmalbaf, Iran)
Divine Intervention (Suleiman, Palestine)
Ahlaam (Utopia) (Iraq)
My Father, My Lord (Israel)
Crimson Gold (Panahi, Iran)
even Khartoum (Heston and Olivier)
Oddly even retrieved Ordet from the same box, so I can torture myself with another dull stilted Dreyer film ...
Maybe the Christian theme was the connection -- though I think it just got stuck in there by accident. |
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| chillywilly |
| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 8:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8250
Location: Salt Lake City
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marantzo wrote: I saw Almost Famous when it came out. I thought it would be OK, but it turned out to be very good. A lot of fun.
One of my favorites. It has a great flow in many areas. Sort of a coming of age, but with that focus on how it happened to Cameron Crowe.
Philip Seymour Hoffman was great as Lester Bangs. And Kate Hudson's big break. Wish she would have done similar roles over the years. |
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"If you should die before me / Ask if you could bring a friend" |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:13 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Well, Yol didn't do that much for me.
It's definitely in the same mold as The Herd, which probably lessened its impact. Five prisoners receive one week furloughs to deal with personal/family issues. They all have to deal with crises and troubles. One doesn't even get too far as at a checkpoint their bus is stopped and he realizes he's lost his furlough papers.
The main story involves a tough prisoner who finds out his wife has cheated on him, and his rural family has had her chained up for the past 8 months, subsisting on bread and water, and going unwashed. That branch of the family is also holed up on a remote snowy mountain. Everyone including the filthy wife expects the husband to kill her for the family honor. The patriarch even says he'll disown his son if he goes soft on his adultering wife. And you start to think prison probably doesn't seem so bad compared to this mess.
And I think one of the points of the film is that all of Turkey is a prison -- whether you are inside or out of the walls. Maybe it was my attention, but I frequently lost track of who was who and what they were up against. Probably because we get little backstory and I believe only find out the crime of one of the five, and even though he's a murderer, it's not explained why he killed. In fact, the info is given out in a joke.
Not a bad film, but I think overall I preferred The Herd.
Both films were directed by Guney's assistant, based on Guney's screenplays and guidance. Guney escaped from Turkish prison and made it to France, where he edited Yol. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:18 pm |
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Location: Shanghai
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I watched Ararat and was reminded of all the reasons I don't like Egoyan's films. The dialogue sounds phoney and unnatural. Very obviously scripted statements identifying and underlining key themes.
This all felt very stagey as if it originated as a play. The modern-day characters are all elite and overly articulate, and always ready to make a confrontation. And then Egoyan loves to show videos and small screen replays of video. Why he thinks video in a film is cinematic is beyond me, but it seems to be a trademark of his films. And in Ararat, he makes everything at one or two removes from the genocide.
So it's not a film about the Armenian Genocide, as it's a film about making a film about the Armenian Genocide. There are three layers, a bunch of uninteresting modern-day Canadian-Armenians who have ridiculous family complications and make pronouncements about them. And a modern day Canadian customs agent and his gay son, who also fail to be interesting in any way. Then there's the Armenian genocide, which we see both recreated and recreated in the film. And loosely connecting them is an Armenian painter from the in-between generation. Unfortunately we spend most of the time with the annoying modern Canadians, and I found them unsympathetic while I never got engaged with the earlier generations.
I found this whole approach rather tedious and distancing. The reason I hadn't watched Ararat previously is because I disliked the other Egoyan films I had seen (Speaking Parts, which dully obsessed with video, and one other, Felicia's Journey I think it was). |
Last edited by gromit on Thu Sep 03, 2020 1:59 am; edited 1 time in total
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2015 2:36 pm |
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Location: Black Hills
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I have a more positive view of Egoyan, due to having seen only The Sweet Hereafter, which I liked. He gets good perfs from Ian Holm and Sarah Polley, among others.
After all, an Atom has both positive and negative parts. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 5:15 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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| The Sweet Hereafter is a film I watch over and over. (I think I'm drawn to films with snow and swimming pools.) I've seen alot of Egoyan's films including: Chloe, Exotica, and Felicia's journey and liked them. I did think Ararat was tedious and before that I knew nothing of the Armenian genocide. I own it so I'll give it another try. And Gromit, I'll try to focus on your criticism. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 8:28 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| On a completely different note, a 1980 classic with no snow or swimming pools, which I had somehow never seen, was Coal Miner's Daughter, a fine biopic based on Loretta Lynn's memoir. I have always been more of a Patsy Cline fan than LL, but this film won me over and, happily had quite a bit of Ms. Cline too, played by Bev d'Angelo. For me, it was really Tommy Lee Jones perf, as the stage husband struggling to keep his family and himself together, that really stood out. We had the pleasure of seeing this at a local revival house, on a big screen. Outstanding sets and location photography immerse you in Kentucky coal country, at the outset. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 9:06 pm |
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| I've never seen Coal Miner's Daughter, but I remember Beverly d'Angelo surprising me with how good a singer she was in Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will. I could see her making a good Patsy Cline. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 11:33 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Watched the Iranian film The Apple (1998).
I knew nothing about it going in -- and the cover and the title menu featuring a pair of spazzy girls chasing after an apple didn't seem terribly promising. But this was quite an interesting experience.
The girls are 11 year old twins and have never been let out of the house, and have serious developmental issues (they can barely speak and look malnourished). Neighbors petition the children welfare bureau to intervene.
So they do. And the girls are exposed to the outside world.
Their mother is blind -- and disconcertingly keeps her chador completely covering her entire head -- and the father is an elderly beggar, who prays for people in exchange for money. And despite being a bumbling wreck most of the time, when we see him recite prayers at home one time, he is quite an effective/experienced at praying.
This is based on a true story and the actual family play themselves in the film. I assume those are the real neighbors as well. Quite a coup.
It evens opens with a brief bit of what appears to be documentary footage of the social worker going into the outside gate and meeting the family locked in their home. I was pretty impressed by this small film.
I should add that this was the debut film of Samira Makhmalbaf, the daughter of the famous Iranian director, made when she was just 17.
Just checking and I've also seen her 3rd film
At Five in the Afternoon (2003), which concerns an Afghani girl trying to get an education and another woman trying to find her missing husband. As I recall, that also had a realist/almost documentary feel to it. And again dealt with the deprivations women face in such traditional patriarchal societies. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2015 1:31 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Sticking with my ME/Arab viewing, I went Hollywood and watched Khartoum. Well, it was filmed at Pinewood Studios, London.
Heston and his charisma are good as Gen. Gordon.
He also has a helluva great military wardrobe.
I guess the idea was to impress the natives with flashy dress.
Olivier is a little odd as the Mahdi (I think they had him wear black lipstick ...). But the film is mainly about Gordon (and the Brits) and The Mahdi is just supposed to be a dark inscrutable presence.
And I was impressed with how the film deftly handled the British political intrigues, with Ralph Richardson getting a nice part as Gladstone.
The extra characters are delineated well, though the later Kitchener and Woolsley are just quickly sketched in.
The action/war sequences are fairly well done, though I worried about a number of horses that took some rather heavy tumbles.
A solid well-told epic. I can see why the screenplay got an Oscar nomination. Lots of extras, great costumes, good location shots. |
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