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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Films You Didn't Get

  
  

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MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
19:13 / 19.04.07
I loved The Tenant, but at the time I was a huge Skinny Puppy fan and was also getting off enormously on finally figuring out where all those samples from Mind:TPI were coming from.

Essentially, though -- and it's been a looooong time, so forgive me if I'm a bit fuzzy -- IIRC it's Polanski going on about people who get stuck in their own mental cages through repression/timidity/fear. It's a big thing with him and most of his major movies -- characters that collapse either literally or figuratively because they can't assert themselves or admit they have problems.

It's hard for me to think of a Polanski movie that doesn't come back to hubris and/or timidity shattering a life, actualy. In this case, The Tenant passively accepts his overbearing landlord, his boorish colleague, his nasty neighbours, and because he can't bring himself to stand up for anything, he diverts all of this into a bizarre personal mythology -- the heiroglyphics in the bathroom, the weird coincidences -- until he finally loses it.
 
 
h1ppychick
22:20 / 19.04.07
I've never felt able to confess this before, for fear of ridicule, but...Glengarry Glen Ross. I just didn't get what was supposed to be at all entertaining about this movie. It was, as far as I can tell, universally acclaimed, but I just found it tedious and embarrassing to watch.

Maybe there was supposed to be some deep point about quiet desperation and exploitation, but it was lost in my desire to gouge my eyes out and somehow invent a time machine so I could reclaim the running time back for my life.
 
 
Colonel Kadmon
22:50 / 19.04.07
Moulin Rouge - I am not joking when I say I could not find one redeeming feature about this atrocious movie. Bad music, badly done, plus bad acting, bad script, bad characters, bad story and bad direction. Does that sum my feelings up at all?

It was okay sitting through Nightmare Before Christmas, which had a neat plot and some neat characters. But to watch the same movie but without any interesting characters or plot? No, thanks.

Is it just me, or is that one of the most bizarre criticisms concievable?
 
 
matthew.
23:26 / 19.04.07
Elaborate.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:29 / 19.04.07
It was, as far as I can tell, universally acclaimed, but I just found it tedious and embarrassing to watch.

Maybe there was supposed to be some deep point about quiet desperation and exploitation, but it was lost in my desire to gouge my eyes out and somehow invent a time machine so I could reclaim the running time back for my life.

Yeah, but isn't all this what working in sales is basically all about, really?
 
 
h1ppychick
07:27 / 20.04.07
Well yes, hence the fear of ridicule. It seems so self-evident that it's surely a bit of a slim premise for a full-length play, never mind a feature film.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
07:35 / 20.04.07
That's Mamet's very own Death of a Salesman you're talking about there!

Now, where did he get such an original idea for a play?

... oh ...
 
 
Mr. Joe Deadly
13:24 / 20.04.07
The History Boys: ...What was the point, apart from everyone's gay for Dakin?

I thought the point was that, when it comes to the boys, gay teachers just can't help themselves? Ever? No matter how hard they try? "A constant struggle" was, I think, how that one gay kid who eventually became a teacher (Posner?) described it.
 
 
Janean Patience
14:02 / 20.04.07
I thought the point was that, when it comes to the boys, gay teachers just can't help themselves? Ever? No matter how hard they try?

A very contentious statement for someone to make, especially coming from a gay playwright who admits that the school and the period were outside his experience. After all, heterosexual teachers are hardly in love with their classes are they? No, I think the boys and what they took from their teachers were meant to be the point but when there are only two - Posner and Dakin - in a class of eight with any discernable personality then it's impossible to say we've learned anything from their perspective.

Anyone see the original play? Is the failure to communicate anything a particular failure of the celluloid version?
 
 
Triplets
04:46 / 21.04.07
In the latter category, Lost in Translation.

Two people, lost in life, find each other briefly, gaining comfort from recognition of their mutual situation but stumble when they mistake kinship for relationship and come to the sad realisation that, while they may be perfect for each other, they can't be together, due to baggage.

Brief, sad, funny and really touching.
 
 
Sibelian 2.0
09:26 / 21.04.07
can anyone confirm or deny this?

Yes. I can confirm that Peter Greenaway is *awfully* clever although not tremendously accessible. Nor is his cleverness always of a particularly appealing variety.
 
 
Dutch
10:04 / 21.04.07
I might be immediately positing myself as someone who knows nothing about movies with this, but;

The 9th Gate?

After sitting through this movie that never really got me interested save for the beauty of images themselves, the ending came and I was left stunned because I felt that nothing had happened and I had just lost a lot of minutes in my life watching a (admittedly beautiful) slide-show pretending to be a movie.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
15:55 / 21.04.07
You had every right to be stunned- nothing happened, you lost many minutes of your life watching a slide-show pretending to be a movie. You also saw two very, very talented actors, Johnny Depp and Julie Delpy, criminally misused on a warmed over supernatural thriller with arthouse pretensions.
Give up on understanding the film and read the book it was based on, The Dumas Club.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
20:57 / 21.04.07
The Science of Sleep... the best I can say about it was "frequently nice-looking mess."

which is what i love about it: life, especially relationship-life, tends to be a frequently nice-looking mess, even more so when dreams and the unconscious become part of the equation.

embrace the mess.
 
 
This Sunday
21:08 / 21.04.07
Or, watch it as a parody more than a legit thriller. 'Ninth Gate' was funny. And, y'know, the hits, as they say, just keep on coming. That climax can't come from not-comedy.

It's the 'Dance of the Vampires' for its time.

And I think it did the hardboiled detective thing jest fine.

Watching it with the expectation that the mysteries will be solved, the dangers real, et cet. is expecting a different film.

Alternately, look at it as not a way in, but a way out.
 
 
Mug Chum
22:20 / 21.04.07
Someone mentioned earlier Lost In Translation. I think there are other gists to it other than the characters, their situation etc.

I think there are little nuances of loneliness concerning unreachability, of things getting lost in translation of the mediator (or like the end's whisper, the media of film), of symbols and language becoming numb, meaningless and flat (all PoMo yada-yadas; but mostly, the entire world itself becoming a flat unreachable landscape seen through a window, like the TOO-MANY moments we see Johanson doing it, the world becoming the Japanese language...). Of course, this all would have to entail the characters' loneliness, their situation, trajectory etc (Johanson saying she didn't feel nothing at the Buddhist ritual; Bob's marriage happening in each place of the world and different frequencies unable to reach out or pass through, literally each one in different continents). The film seemed like meaning and reachability rising ex-nihilo amidst (or due to acknowledging) entropy of meaning (intentional nihilism, or unintentional due to desensibilization, cynicism, etc).

I think this is a way more savvy "media-student" film than people acknowledge it, and it's the reason I'm actually excited to see Marie Antoinette (it was released down here, but I didn't got a chance to see it). Barry Lyndon + 80's + All-Star snickers + Paris Hiltons (/Sofia Coppola before arthouse filmmaker) as decepated dumb party girl Antoinette. Mostly people seemed to hate it, but it seemed to come from somewhere personal in Coppola's view and past experience as 80's spoiled party girl and so to go against a natural inertia of seeing such character as "chop her fucking head off!" material.

Either that, or LoT was just a petty big "fuck you!" to Spike Jonze from Coppola in many ways (if not, and if it's actually profound and thoughtful....... it's still a petty big "fuck you!" to Spike Jonze from Coppola in many ways).

--------

And Peter Greenway... yeah, apparently he's genius. But I can't... Only saw "8 1/2 Women" around age 16, and all I got was the Fellini reference. That was it. It was like "oh ok, I understood the title", pressed the "Play" button and from then on, I was lost... I should give it another try nowadays. Or read something on/from him (just read one interview with him, but it repelled me even further -- not 'cause it was hard to go through it, but he was so dickshly pretentious as he would say the most astonishingly simple dumb and silly things, patronizing all the way through).
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
22:48 / 21.04.07
I don't understand the "fuck you to Spike Jonze" bit. Help?
 
 
Mug Chum
23:02 / 21.04.07
The geeky photographer husband in LoT apparently is the fictional Coppola's ex, Spike Jonze (and the blondie actress he drools over apparently would be Cameron Diaz).

Of course, keep in mind, just rumor and (really) low level gossip (amidst some bits of the film that seems intentional).
 
 
Mug Chum
23:08 / 21.04.07
(and why the hell I keep writing "LoT"? Jesus...)
(irony, "Lost In Translation" was translated here in Brazil as "Encounters and Desencounters")
 
 
Mistoffelees
08:34 / 22.04.07
You also saw two very, very talented actors, Johnny Depp and Julie Delpy, criminally misused on a warmed over supernatural thriller with arthouse pretensions.

Julie Delpy wasn´t in The Ninth Gate.
Polanski used ony half the novel for his adaptation, is more ambiguous about the true nature of The Girl and often deviates from the book. This is one of my favourite movies. Corso is just in it for the money at first and is such a nice contrast to the delusional rich devilworshippers that cross his path, which might be the reason he enters the gate at the end. The devil is intrigued by his disinterest in all those things that the book owners are so infatuated with.
And the movie has such a calm and composed quality despite of all the murders, sex scenes, car chases and fights. Plus the movie has the most amazing soundtrack by Wojciech Kilar, I never get bored of it.
 
 
matthew.
11:28 / 22.04.07
I agree. I loved the Ninth Gate. I don't think it's any better or worse than the novel... the movie's is its own separate beast.
 
 
kan
11:43 / 22.04.07
Last Year at Marienbad, it's the only film I've left the cinema in the middle of, not a great basis for critique I know. But it seemed like a lot of posh German people standing about in the grounds of a grand country estate spouting cryptic things. I just couldn't take it anymore.
 
 
kan
11:58 / 22.04.07
well I've been piqued by the memory to go and read about it here
sensesofcinema.com
and it seems there's a bit more to it, frankly I'm not surprised I didn't get it the first time.
 
 
ibis the being
14:10 / 22.04.07
Well, I got what LIT was supposed to be, I just thought it was sophomoric, self-indulgent, and shallow. But hey that's just me.
 
 
Mug Chum
17:47 / 22.04.07
Anyone else thought "Mystic River" had many juxtaposed layers of "so fucking what?"

I like Clint's work as a director. But this one I can see only a few moments as golden nuggets.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
18:45 / 22.04.07
(Hat/ring interpolation) Lost in Translation: two people in the top point-oh-one percentage bracket of human demography as relates to wealth, privilege and life opportunities get to go to a beautiful, endlessly fascinating foreign country for free, where they fail to learn a single thing from their new environment, mock the indigenous population for daring not to speak English perfectly for their benefit, condescend to their fellow expatriates for expressing enthusiasm for anything or having a direction in life, treat their spouses contemptibly and can't even get it together to have miserably unfulfilling sex for the audience's entertainment.

I guess I'm falling on the "got it, just didn't bloody well care" side of the fence.
 
 
Peach Pie
16:31 / 23.04.07

Sexy, glossy lenses galore, but it's saying something for the depth of a film when an expedient opening shot of a woman's backside tells you as much as you actually learn in the next two hours. Heard a sermon on this once. The vicar somehow came to the conclusion that obnoxious male lead character was not unfaithful to his partner, and that God's message was "lost in translation". A moment for just nodding and smiling if ever there was one.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
02:07 / 26.04.07
i just recently listened to an interview with Chris Rock where he describes Lost in Translation as being "the blackest movie ever" and goes on to describe how no other movie he's seen captures the emotional essence of being black and middle class in america.

thought that was interesting.
 
 
fish confusion errata
02:22 / 26.04.07
After seeing Barton Fink, I was all like, "who killed the girl?"
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
03:40 / 01.05.07
I liked Lost In Translation but didn't care about the characters. I sort of thought that was the point - but again, I could be wrong.

I didn't "get" Reality Bites. Not that I didn't understand it, I spose, but I don't hold it as quite the talisman as some of my friends do. It seemed to be a film predicated on richkid whining - but I guess that's a whole genre unto itself. But yeah, I thought the whole thing was an exercise in coolquotery rather than any deep meaning.

I also feel that there's something really nasty about Tarentino's works that is just eluding me. Or rather, the ability to verbalise what irks me about them is eluding me. Particularly with Kill Bill - it's like there's a dead rat behind the fridge and I kind of know it's there, but suspect that there may be more, elsewhere. I equate him with a bad smell in a couple of ways.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
04:29 / 01.05.07
I loved the 9th Gate too, even though every one of my friends hate it, and all accused me of lying when we left the movie theatre and I said I liked it. I eventually got it on DVD and watched it once in awhile. Depp's character is very amusing, and a lot of the scenes are just a touch on the quirky side and added with the score of the film make me smiley.
 
 
This Sunday
05:11 / 01.05.07
You have to have a pleasant and almost perpetual sense of humor to love Ninth Gate. I almost never see films in the theatre more than once, unless it's an event film, like doing Hedwig at the Laemmle in LA. Ninth Gate I saw twice, just because a friend's girlfriend had semi-coerced me into seeing all three Scream movies, with the last one being in the theatre. Horrible film, and I felt the Polanski stuff was inconsiderate considering the whole Tate/Manson tragedy. The only amusing bit was Jay and Silent Bob, and I mean, I get that from actual Kevin Smith films. Anyhow, my revenge, because she was a total chainsmoker and drank like a fish, was to suggest Ninth Gate because it's got so much lovely luscious smoking and drinking, it tugs at the addiction strings about every half minute. Anything from forty years ago, also could have done the trick, but literally there's more cigs and drinks in Polanski films since around the time of The Thin Man.
 
 
Daemon est Deus Inversus
05:51 / 01.05.07
I loved Ninth Gate. I just didn't quite understand the blonde student in the train. Loved the old baroness.
 
 
TroyJ15
06:37 / 01.05.07
Adaptation failed to impress.

Moholland Drive. I understand the whole evil's of Hollywood thing and the drugged out final few scenes --- but I still say so what? Not that interesting. Kinda of weird for the sake of being weird.

Departed, people I know loved it. But honestly, I feel that Nicholson is chomping scenery (like he always does) and that it's decent Scorsese but he's made much better films.

Oh, and on an even more recent note, Tarantino's Death Proof. I keep reading reviews that says it was the best in Grindhouse --- but it only gets good when the first set of girls bite it. Which is like an hour into the film.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
09:04 / 01.05.07
I liked Lost In Translation but didn't care about the characters. I sort of thought that was the point - but again, I could be wrong.

I don't think you're wrong but I'm surely not the only person who kept waiting to like anyone in the film? I thought it was a good film, never have I felt so alienated by a movie and it felt like it was meant to do that but I absolutely and completely hated it. They were just so incapable of being happy, "is this the inside of Coppola's brain? What's wrong with her?" was basically the only thing I could think for the second half of the film.
 
  

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