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| Syd |
 Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 11:51 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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I finally managed to see Room and was amazed at how good it was, with Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay just about perfect as a mother and son held prisoner in a one-bedroom shed by her kidnapper/rapist, for seven years in her case, and all five of his years. There's an amazing set-piece in the middle which ends the captivity, then the difficult adjustment to the world, which has suddenly grown for the boy from a nutshell to infinite space. I loved the gentle way the female cop elicits information from the kid who doesn't quite have the words he needs. Joan Allen is excellent as the girl's mother.
It's still sinking in, but I may decide this was the best film of last year. Either that or Inside Out, which dealt with childhood in quite a different manner. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 12:40 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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"Room," by a mile, for me. Inside Out was a fine and clever film, but Room was a masterpiece.
Just saw About Elly, liked it, and Farhadi's way of showing how the lies spin out of control. As WP mentioned, this film shows that A Separation wasn't just a flash in the pan. This one has an Altmanesque quality in places, dialog interweaving as the camera darts between rooms and characters like a perceptive fish. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 6:02 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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bartist wrote: "Room," by a mile, for me. Inside Out was a fine and clever film, but Room was a masterpiece.
Just saw About Elly, liked it, and Farhadi's way of showing how the lies spin out of control. As WP mentioned, this film shows that A Separation wasn't just a flash in the pan. This one has an Altmanesque quality in places, dialog interweaving as the camera darts between rooms and characters like a perceptive fish.
Agree that Room was far better than the very good Inside Out.
Farhadi is a genuine film genius. Haven't seen About Elly, but will posthaste. You should definitely see The Past. which isn't quite as astonishing as A Separation (what could be?) but is a terrific movie. His new one, The Salesman, was a wow at Cannes. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 11:17 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Will see both ASAHP. (the H stands for "humanly" for the acronymically challenged..)
I'm having a morning after reaction of even more enhanced admiration and amazement at Farhadi's use of the visual vocabulary, in addition to his writerly ability to track and reveal shifting lies and misdirections and misunderstandings. The camera movements in AE sometimes seem casual and even capricious, yet every cold glance or thoughtless laugh or incipient tear or tiny beat of social coercion - like a demand for tea - is delivered with great precision and power and draws us into their lives with a force that felt to me like some immense gravitational pull. Or, given the Caspian Sea setting, maybe "undertow" is more apt. Iranian life is full of secrets, some of them destined to go off like depth charges and leave you casting around for something to hold onto. Just effing amazing. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 2:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| On the strength of A Separation and About Elly I would seek out a Verizon commercial if Farhadi wrote and directed it. Been looking for The Past. May play hooky from work if Salesman pops up at Camelback. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2016 11:39 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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About Elly starts off slowly, and tediously, with a group of Iranian yuppies on an uninteresting vacation by the Caspian Sea. It doesn't take off until one of the women is in the kitchen and you hear a bang (about a half hour into the film), and the little girl runs to tell her father that a boy is in the water. I never heard an explanation for the bang.
It becomes a pretty good film after that, but you have to ignore that the lie that lost Elly is in a coma the hospital is, frankly, stupid. If you tell a man his fiancee is in the hospital, what is the first thing he'll want to do? And nobody anticipates it? Really?
I appreciate that the film is about behaving badly in a moment of crisis, but doesn't anyone use their brain?
(I get the impression that some people here think that About Elly is a followup to A Separation, but it's the other way around. About Elly is 2009, A Separation is 2011, The Past is 2013, and The Salesman is 2016. That's promising because there's hardly a missed step in A Separation.) |
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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 |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 3:31 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I was underwhelmed by About Elly.
All the praise here and elsewhere makes me think about rewatching.
But it didn't do much for me at all. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 5:35 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Syd-- Don't undetstand this phrase. Is it me or are there a couple of words missing?
"...the lie that lost Elly is in a coma the hospital..." |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:37 am |
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"...ignore that the lie - that lost Elly is in a coma in the hospital - is, frankly, stupid." Fixed.
The lie is a stalling tactic, so that they can get him there, then tell him what actually happened, or at least the part that can't be concealed. It's like the classic joke, "Mom's on the roof." |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 11:56 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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[quote="billyweeds"]Syd-- Don't undetstand this phrase. Is it me or are there a couple of words missing?
Just the word "in" |
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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 |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2016 12:40 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Syd wrote: gromit wrote: I'm looking forward to The New Land (1972) and The Emigrants (1971) which are supposed to be his masterworks
Odd thing is that I thought those both were Bergman films. If I remember, I liked "The New Land," but it was a long time ago and I wasn't excited enough to revisit it.
Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman in a Swedish films probably triggered Bergman in your head.
The Emigrants is good. There were some moments and some editing choices I liked. But also something a little lacking at times. I also noticed that the occasional humor didn't really work either due to translation or the timing/use of subtitles. The two leads actors do a commendable job. Ullman is really persuasive as a god-fearing un-educated peasant woman. I kept waiting for her to have more to do than walking around with her mouth open a bit and eyes darting around. And then when she finally got a scene to rip into, it felt a bit clunky.
It's a long film at 3'10" and the intermission came at the perfect time for me to go to sleep last night. In some ways, the immigrant experience has been done a good deal. Here we see what hardships they face in the Old World, and why they decide to leave. The troubles aboard the ship seem to go on for a long time, which is probably the point. And it is kind of impressive/crazy when you finally make it across the ocean to then plow ahead all the way to Minnesota (train to Buffalo, then steamship across the Great Lakes).
Have to say that much of upstate NY and Minny looked like Sweden to me more than the US. I haven't checked where they filmed those parts, but I'm guessing none of it was America.
Ina way, I think the 1970 film style is both an asset and a hindrance to the film at different times. Well, I plan to tackle The New Land next. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2016 5:27 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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[quote="Syd"]billyweeds wrote: Syd-- Don't undetstand this phrase. Is it me or are there a couple of words missing?
Just the word "in"
I think it's the phrase "the lie that lost Elly" that threw me. It sounds as though the "lie" was the trigger for losing Elly. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 2:26 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I liked but didn't love both The Emigrants and The New Land. Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow are very good and carry the film. Though I really liked the woman who plays the Ulrika the reformed prostitute. On an extra interview, Ullman mentions that that actress was a well-known jazz singer in Stockholm. She really comes across as brassy and tough, hiding wounded pride, but also gets to be tender and loyal.
And actually her character is probably the best in the film, because she is complex, whereas the others are more limited. It's a film about simple peasant folks, and they don't have much besides their willingness to work hard and their faith. The film is more about the land and the plight of the people, and they stick within a pretty narrow range of behavior despite moving form Sweden to the USA.
I was kind of disappointed that Ullman didn't have that much to do for 6 hours but look uneducated (she does this quite well). Ullman said that these films got her the recognition and entry to Hollywood, where she made 4 films in 2 years and then left.
Anyway, these are good epic films. I found it interesting that the immigrants were Swedish, and it delved some into the Swedish sociopolitical issues of the mid-19th C -- basically a form of peonage or semi-serfdom, with some religious hierarchy and persecution thrown in.
Both films are over 3 hours long. But I took a cue from the intermissions and split it nicely into four 1.5 hour films over 4 nights. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2016 12:30 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Bitter Rice (1949) is a fascinating and entertaining Italian film. An odd hybrid of neo-realist (farm) worker drama and film noir/crime film. They even manage to slip in some erotically charged music/dancing scenes. I think the great cast really makes this work so well. I was a bit surprised by the degree of sexuality on display here, especially for a film about migrant farm workers. And somehow the women walking around barefoot most of the time added to that. It's also impressive that the film primarily focuses on women and their hardships, and the final denouement involves both men suffering serious arm injuries, so the women wind up with the guns and determining the final outcome.
Was great to finally see this. I bought a public domain version roughly a dozen years ago, which didn't contain English subtitles, so I only watched 5 or 10 minutes and really had no idea what to expect. A few of the scenes -- the initial dancing, the sluice busting -- were familiar from Scorsese's appreciation of post-war Italian films. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2016 9:00 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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| Really love that the musical theme for "Irrational Man" is Ramsey Lewis' 60s jazz standard, "The In Crowd." A piece I learned a couple years back, did my own piano solo arrangement. Perfect for this movie. Better than a lot of Allen's recent films, though I may tend to be smitten by both Parker Posey and Emma Stone, ergo biased. Terrific plot, with some real suspense. |
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