The Film Thread: Page 436 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

The Film Thread

Coombs

Klaus wrote:
Coombs wrote:
Joe Vs the Volcano is a masterpiece. Can't stand either actor, but that movie is the only way you can actually make them work, both against themselves and for the film. Brilliant.

Yes! It's done in such a good way too. It's a very cinematic movie. Instead of obsessing over images of cities you've already seen on a million postcards (like Seattle and New York in the other two Hanks-Ryan films) it creates its own little world. The opening scene where people are zombie walking up a barren hill towards the factory along this crooked, flash-shaped path is so good. You wonder why it's been laid out that way when it only makes that dreadful walk longer and more difficult, and then the movie cuts to an image of the company logo which is shaped the same way. It's better than any shot in Metropolis.

Hanks has always been one of those actors that James Baldwin called escape personalities for the audience. He wrote something along the lines that you don't go to the movies to see Humphrey Bogart be Philip Marlowe, you go to see Philip Marlowe be Humphrey Bogart. Baldwin also noted that there's usually a white racial superiority theme to these escape fantasies by pointing out that "no one makes their escape personality black."

Hanks was launched by Hollywood as the perfect image of the good old white American do-gooder. But in this film his character is the anti-Hanks, someone whose corporate-shaped existence is so lousy and undesireable that jumping into a volcano would be an improvement. It makes him extremely relatable for once without people necessarily wishing to be him. It also has the good taste to place him in a supporting role in scenes that he shares with more charismatic actors, like the beautiful Ossie Davis. Even the story about jumping into the volcano is a reversal of the race theme that often plagues these type of movies. The island people are way too content with their own existence to do it, so they call on Joe instead whose life is empty and simple. The emotional journey he embarks on in the film that ends up giving his existence meaning closely corresponds to the physical journey that takes him far, far away from a typical Tom Hanks role.

Love that analysis, Klaus, very much agreed. Nice one.

Claudius

Agreed. That second paragraph is a significantly better description of what I was trying to get at. Good man.

Clrnc

Anybody caught don't fuck with cats on Netflix? Thought it was a really good docudrama. Sick bastard though

Burnwinter

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR LAWRENCE is a strange and surprising film. Homoerotic and rather sadistic fantasy barely veiled by stiff upper lip British nationalism, with a starring role for David Bowie as well as Japanese luminaries Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kitano who both appear as unexpected characters.

Coombs

Never saw it, only know that Oshima was a weird, eccentric man.

Burnwinter

Quite liked it. It's like someone tried to graft Pasolini onto BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Also has a very strange, extended childhood flashback sequence and an ethereal Sakamoto synthesiser score that intrudes from time to time.

jones

Never saw the film but the soundtrack is class. Sakamoto is one of the most talented musicians of the last hundred years, it's unreal how diverse his catalogue is.

Burnwinter

Don't know his stuff, but his score for this film's okay.

He makes a pretty good fist of acting the role of a Mishimaesque prison camp commander with a lisp in this, too.

Burnwinter

Just watched EXTRACTION on Netflick. Ridiculous and gratuitous body count given its themes, and overall mediocre, but quite well made with a ridiculous international cast including a parcel of Bollywood stars and the stunning Golshifteh Farahani. Hemsworth is also great for what he does, and his character is hilariously Australian in it.

arsedocmd

Netflix are making these ridiculous over the top action flicks. Extraction was a waste of time but the previous one with Ryan Reynolds had a couple of funny moments is all.

Burnwinter

EXTRACTION was far better than that Reynolds film if it's the one in thinking of, found that totally unwatchable. It definitely didn't hang together though, and I wondered why they made it so extreme when the bones of the plot only really needed about ten corpses, not hundreds.

I don't mind over the top action per se, just didn't seem to add anything of value in this case.

QuincyAbeyie

The Assistant was an interesting watch, although many hate it apparently. It follows an assistant in a film production company through a very long day, and is about the office culture and the power dynamics at play there. So yeah, about Me Too, but about more than "just" that. It's a slow watch, but Julia Garner puts in a great performance. She had a role in The Americans as well and I've heard she's very good in Ozark. Impressive track record so far.

Burnwinter

My projector blew up last night. Wasted its precious final hours on episodes of THE LAST KINGDOM 🙁

Pepe LeFrits

Burnwinter wrote:
My projector blew up last night. Wasted its precious final hours on episodes of THE LAST KINGDOM 🙁

What season? I started watching it recently and got as far as a couple of episodes into season 2, and I'm kind of wondering why I'm still watching it...

QuincyAbeyie

Bad Education was pretty good for a small screen movie. The directing and cinematography were the best parts, especially from a director I've never heard of before, but the story was told in a way that was very much by the numbers.

Burnwinter

Pepe LeFrits wrote:
Burnwinter wrote:
My projector blew up last night. Wasted its precious final hours on episodes of THE LAST KINGDOM 🙁

What season? I started watching it recently and got as far as a couple of episodes into season 2, and I'm kind of wondering why I'm still watching it...

Right in the middle of the final episode of season four, so the last episode currently out. I feel like I got a furious "J'accuse!" from my projector. I stopped paying full attention some time during season three. The main (perhaps the only) virtue of the show was that it fit its plots into the known history of the heptarchy and King Alfred, and season four really drops the ball by setting itself up around an event that never happened in history. The guy that plays Uhtred is quite unbearable, his clipped Scando-German accent is just a joke.

QuincyAbeyie

Burnwinter wrote:
Just watched EXTRACTION on Netflick. Ridiculous and gratuitous body count given its themes, and overall mediocre, but quite well made with a ridiculous international cast including a parcel of Bollywood stars and the stunning Golshifteh Farahani. Hemsworth is also great for what he does, and his character is hilariously Australian in it.

Agree with pretty much all of this. Though I think that the worst thing about many Hollywood action films is that the action itself is often bad, so I'll forgive a lot of the faults in this movie since the action really was pretty good, the car chase in particular was impressive (and car chases are almost always bad in my opinion). As with the John Wick directors it's a stuntman gone director and this one too knows how to shoot these scenes at least. I actually think it looked like he may have tried to replicate the style of gun fights from the John Wick movies and maybe that's why there were so many of them.

Oh, and if it's a problem with the lamp it's actually not that expensive to replace it, but I'm guessing you know that. I didn't when it happened to me.

Burnwinter

Also how stunning is Farahani? I don't often form celebrity crushes, but …

EXTRACTION was like a blend of the JOHN WICK films and Michael Mann for mine, not up to snuff overall but I give it points for trying some ingenious stuff.

Yeah, it's not the lamp, it's a power issue sadly. If I had to guess wouldn't be surprised if it was the internal power supply unit.

I'm checking the local appliance repair places to see if they have the required know-how to fix it or procure whatever needs replacing, but these things tend to suck here in Darwin. The projector itself isn't really good enough to spend up too high fixing, I'd be better off going shopping for a newer model.

Claudius

Extraction was over the top but I did like a few things. Like Quincy, enjoyed the car chase. Also just liked seeing all the brown folk. I can’t stress enough how great it is that Netflix is pushing so much big budget content with non-white leads. I didn’t actually care about this before, but now that I see the content, it’s really enticing. It makes me realise just how White big budget content has always been and how that’s shaped a lot of how I think about art and celebrity

QuincyAbeyie

Burnwinter wrote:
Also how stunning is Farahani? I don't often form celebrity crushes, but …

Yes, your last two stunning actress shout-outs to Farahani and Adjani have both been spot on. 🙂

« Previous Page Next Page »