nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
Oh! The Ascent is also on YouTube! Another top ten!
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
Through a series of coincidences, I now have an Amazon Prime subscription. Last night I watched Saint Maud (2019). It had gotten good reviews, and I remembered someone on here had said it was the best of that year. Turns out it was gashonthenail, on a thread about a "the year in death" retrospective on Morrissey Central. There's an amusing BrummieBoy post shortly afterwards. Why didn't I rate that with a "funny"? Too late now. Anyway, Saint Maud was excellent. It's about the nexus between religion and psychosis. Just my kind of thing.
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Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
I've seen that (and The Ascent). Is Wise Blood good? I thought the novel was okay, but nowhere near as good as her best stories. She was a master of the short form but perhaps not the long. I haven't read her other novel. Have you seen A Man Escaped? Of the Robert Bresson movies I've seen, it's the only one that underwhelmed me. But Au Hasard Balthazar would be in my own top ten (or at least twenty). Are you able to do a top ten? I think I'd get stuck.
nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
oh, aubs, i thought you'd never ask!!!! i have a top ten list for everything as it turns out!!! i am nothing without my top ten lists!!!
first let me say that i am dismayed you dont like a man escaped!!!! in fact, you'll find that movie in my top ten list below! as far as bresson films go, it would be number one, followed by mouchettte (recommended to me by the lovely zoom from gloom, then known as k-ket-kitty), diary of a country priest, pick pocket and only then au hasard balthazar, because while i could look at anne wiazemsky (what do you think of her?) all day long, i found the movie to be a whole lotta nuthin, and not in the good, ordered a man escaped kind of way where the whole movie becomes a sort of meditative experience which leaves you feeling more embodied as you go about your day.
as to my top ten list, it is as follows:
1. wiseblood
2. red desert
3. heart of glass
4. teorema
5. a man escaped
6. wanda
7. last year at marienbad
8. the ascent
9. belle du jour
10. cranes are flying
as you can see wiseblood is in the number one spot on my list, so yeah, i'd say it's pretty good!!! actually i cannot explain how much i love this movie. i was obsessed with it for a while, partly because of brad dourifs mesmerizing performance, partly because of the absurdly hilarious cast of characters, but also just something about the atmosphere. there's such a vivid feeling to this movie, from the opening credits right to the end, so that i wanted to live in that town and to breathe that air and to be blind, sitting in a rocking chair, eating my dinner as i listened to the rain outside. there is nothing else like this movie. in fact, i think im going to watch it tonight-- and you should too!!
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
I'm afraid I didn't watch it. I watched Ammonite instead. I have so many movies to catch up on. I even need to watch London Fields, which is infamously bad, and for which Amber Heard won a Worst Actress award. There are three movies on your list I haven't seen, but Heart of Glass is the one I'd like to see most because I really admire several other of Herzog's films from that period. Amazon Prime has it; it's a steep 5.99 rental but should be worth it. I also like Flannery O'Connor a great deal, so I owe it to myself to watch Wise Blood, and that'll be free so long as it stays on YouTube. I had never heard of Wanda, but it looks intriguing.
Sad-eyed Anne Wiazemsky is great in Au Hasard Balthazar. She's sort of Mary Magdalene to the donkey's Christ. For me the movie is emphatically not "a whole lotta nuthin." We have such opposite reactions to A Man Escaped and Balthazar. I think Balthazar is the meditative one and A Man Escaped is the yawn.
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
Ammonite (2020). Saoirse Ronan is "just somebody's wife" and probably would've stayed that way, but her husband is a Royal Geological Society "bro" and his interest in fossil collecting takes them to Lyme Regis to visit Mary Anning, who is brusque and antisocial and lives with her mother, with whom she shares proprietorship of a curio shop. The bro then decamps back to London to let his ailing wife take some of the sea air to get over a bout of melancholia. Things proceed from there—not very complicated, but lovingly told and beautifully unsentimental.
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nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
damn you, aubs! you were supposed to have had watched it! i was looking forward to reading your review of it! you ARE allowed to watch movies out of order, you know!!! i bet you just wanted to watch the other one because there was a pretty girl in it
i read london fields but have not seen the movie. pretty sure ill skip it, espcially now that i know amber heard is in it! odd choice for nicola six, since from the book i had understood her to be exotic and darker skinned and not some generic blonde bubblehead!
i love herzog too and heart of glass is ammmaaaaaaaazing. the guy who plays the factory owner, aside from being devilishly sexy, gives the most moving performance ive ever seen, all while under hypnosis!! theres this one scene in that movie that stands out to me as the most beautiful scene in all of cinema, where this same factory owner who we have seen be childish and brutal in his desire to find the secret of the ruby glass, gives up his quest, relinquishes the search, and his portrayal of the sad serenity that is the aftermath of the realization that ones heart desire is unattainable is utterly superb and pitch perfect and will move anyone to tears who has ever felt the same. that one scene alone would have ensure the movie a place on my top ten but there are so so many amazing scenes throughout!
as for au hasard balthazar perhaps ill have to give it another watch when, if, i ever find a way to watch movies again!
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
No, it had been at the top of my to-watch list for years for multiple reasons, but primarily because "lesbian romance" is a favorite subgenre of mine. This is not due to prurient interest. I dislike the ones that exploit things in a quasi-pornographic way, like Blue is the Warmest Color. Unfortunately there was a little bit of that in Ammonite, and it took my enjoyment of it down a notch. I'll admit to being a prude in thinking that sex in movies should usually be suggested with something like a kiss and a fall into bed. Close the door, fade out, and move on. What I like about lesbian romance is the idea of things proceeding without, and against, men. Men by their very presence are always kind of an ambient villain in the best lesbian romances.
That's excellent praise. I will definitely watch it.
Is London Fields a good book? I remember starting it; I probably got a fifth of the way through before giving up. It might help my viewing of the movie that I have no loyalty to the book. Martin Amis is a difficult writer for me. I do like his father, though. The Alteration is great.
Mozzer1980
Well-Known Member
Polish movie posters from the 70s/80s are art in themselves. And the movie I watched ( Hospital of the Transfiguration , 1978 - based on Stanislaw Lem book ) leaves a trace on the psyche, it does not let you sleep, it makes you think.
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nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
why do you find martin amis difficult? what do you mean by that? i dont know, the book was okay. he's great at creating characters, but it wasnt the sort of book i would normally read. i preferred The Zone of Interest and House of Meetings which were both written in a unique and amusing style.
im so glad you explained to me what it is you like about lesbian films because i was just under the impression that you were a dirty dirty dog, a notion i had accepted and decided to tolerate because you're a fine enough fellow besides that, but im glad there's a more cerebral reason behind you liking lesbian films. i had never thought of them in the way you describe but that may be because the only lesbian film, other than heavenly creatures, if you consider that a lesbian film, ive watched is blue is the warmest color, and yeah, that was too much for my taste.
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
That's a good question. I don't really know. It's not that his writing is dull. He's highly talented. There's just a"tone" to it, I guess, that puts me off. I tried reading The Rachel Papers once, and it was the same as London Fields: I didn't finish it.
In that case, I'm glad I explained it too. I remember there was a poster on here named "Oh my god. It's Robby!" who frequently talked about his sexual proclivities and his fondness for pornography. Thankfully he's gone, but I would not want to be the resident forum perv in his absence. Out of prudence, I guess I should take this opportunity, since I've mentioned Jenna Jameson before, to say that I do not like her for the fact of her being a porn star. I'm really not interested in gynecological close-ups or looking at other men's johnsons or the awful bestial aesthetics of the human sex act. I just like her for her good looks—her "hair metal girl" appeal.
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nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
haha oh no i never thought you were like robby!! theres nothing creepy or predatory about you. it was more like "oh poor aubs, he's so smart and yet he's a slave to his lil wienie. ah, well, it happens to the best of them!"
i do think that you're thinking with your lil wienie to a certain extent though even though you may not realize it and this is evidenced by your thinking that jenna jameson who is a total lantern jawed munter has "good looks". there are billions of women out there with ACTUAL good looks (anne wiazemsky for one!) and yet you pluck jenna jameson out of porn land, an obscure personage to anyone who hasnt an interest in porn (i had to look her up the first time you mentioned her), as an example of someone with good looks. thats just weird.
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
That's interesting; you had never heard of Jenna Jameson? Maybe it's different in Canada, or it's a generational thing. I think she had "household name" status in the late 90s/early aughts. Kind of like Marilyn Chambers and Traci Lords. I've never seen their movies, but I know their names out of sheer notoriety. I don't have an interest in porn per se, but I'm sure Jenna Jameson would've come onto my radar even if I hadn't discovered her relatively early by having worked at a video store and had to shelve the titles in the "Adult" section.
Doing an image search for her now, thirty years later, "lantern jawed munter" is sadly apt for most of the results, but there was a slender window in the mid-90s when, for a brief shining time, Jenna Jameson was good-looking (if you had been captivated in adolescence by a certain look. "The child is the father of the man" and all). But I realize that my "lil wienie" is probably contributing a vote, and that given the mountains of photographic evidence amassed over several decades to the contrary, I should probably not be using her as an exemplar of good looks.
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Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
The Servant (1963). A Morrissey favorite starring the enigmatic Dirk Bogarde, and elegantly crafted, but only "four stars out of five" in my book, as I thought the third act suffered from a degree of implausibility. Peter Bradshaw (The Servant: a 60s masterwork that hides its homosexuality in the shadows) offers some interesting background on the adaptation from the book, which had been written by W. Somerest Maugham's nephew. The standards and mores of the times probably wouldn't have allowed it, but a more faithful hewing to the source material might've been even better.
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Crisstti
Well-Known Member
I watched Murder Mystery, with Jennifer Aniston. I usually enjoy her movies, but this one was very very poor. Very unfunny comedy, decent at the beginning, but it only goes downwards from there. Was barely even watching towards the end...
Cronenberg's The Fly. Having seen and loved the original one, wasn't expecting this one to be able to top it, but I think it does. Such a movie could so easily go wrong. It's physical, gross, perturbing, sad.
Cronenberg's The Fly. Having seen and loved the original one, wasn't expecting this one to be able to top it, but I think it does. Such a movie could so easily go wrong. It's physical, gross, perturbing, sad.
nicky wire's legs
Christ is king!
Well i never heard her name in my household. if i had it would've been from my sister who probably had porn star aspirations. but i spent the 90s/early aughts reading vogue magazine and watching old movies so it wasnt likely i was going to come across her. i've never heard of marilyn chambers either, and the only reason ive heard of traci lords is because she filled in as becky on roseanne when the original becky left and then of course because of the manics association (although the woman who sang with her voice in the little baby nothing video was far prettier than she could ever hope to be). in fact, the whole idea of a porn star being a household name is bizarre to me, because what would be the context for them to ever be brought up in a non-sexual setting??
anyway, thanks for your thoughtful consideration of the subject including the part your lil wienie plays in it all!
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
I think it's just the way people like to talk about naughty and scandalous things. From what I remember, Marilyn Chambers was kind of a curiosity because she had been a child model in wholesome commercials for soap or something and then went into porn when she grew up, and Traci Lords had famously been a minor when she starred in her porn. They weren't names in my household, though. My parents were conservative and discouraged any talk about sex (or porn). I guess it was through school that I learned of these people. I do remember when John Holmes died; he got one of those "celebrity obituaries" in the newspaper. He's another example of how the occasional porn star can make it into the national consciousness. America is a strange place.
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Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
Benedetta (2021). This one was reviewed earlier in this thread by Deleted member 28602, who liked it more than I did. The source material has the makings of, and potential for, absolute greatness: lesbian romance, the nexus of religion and psychosis, and the aesthetics of Counter-Reformation Catholicism—where the lurid and the mystical found prominence in the Church as a middle finger to dour, workaday Protestantism and cool, rational Enlightenment thinking. You didn't question whether a vision was real; you only had to discern whether it came from heaven or hell. These are the wild days of the stigmata and the Marian seer. Unfortunately, Benedetta is an unexciting production, and wild only in silly ways.
The director is Paul Verhoeven, who is in his 80s, and it shows. This is an old man's movie, "paint by melodramatic numbers," like Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Technically fine, but too obvious, and offering little of interest. Laughable in parts. Here is some unpardonable cheese that would've been better off in a B movie.
Charlotte Rampling is infected with the plague, teeming with pocks and boils, and in order to transmit it to a wicked nuncio, she rushes up to him, kisses him "all over his face" and hisses: "the kiss of peace!" Poor Charlotte Rampling.
The lesbianism is played for softcore pornography. Deleted member 28602 was on the mark when she said, "I find it discomforting when older directors explicitly and voyeuristically depict female sexuality, or what they imagine it to be in their head game. Usually the women behave like horny men, going for it when- and wherever they can." I find it discomforting as well. This film was a disappointing missed opportunity. It didn't even cover the fact that Benedetta was a vegan. Jesus advised her in a vision, for the sake of her spiritual purity, not to consume meat, eggs, or dairy. Sounds good, but this isn't the Jesus of the gospels. This was one of the red flags to the ecclesiastics who became convinced she was a possessed by a demon, since the devil can appear as an angel of light, and as it is written: "some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, and abstaining from meats" (1 Timothy 4:1-3).
★★☆☆☆
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goinghome
you must not tamper with arrangements
A poster here recommended 1931 German film, Madchen in Uniform/Girls in Uniform, which some reviewers deemed lesbian; more a delicate human portrayal imo -
I enjoyed the Swedish production of A Man Called Ove, based on the book - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4080728/
Spanish movie Parallel Mothers was engrossing, stylish and layered - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/parallel_mothers
French Playground was unusual and uncomfortably real - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/playground_2021
Disney movie Coco was a guilty vibrant pleasure! https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/coco_2017
I enjoyed the Swedish production of A Man Called Ove, based on the book - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4080728/
Spanish movie Parallel Mothers was engrossing, stylish and layered - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/parallel_mothers
French Playground was unusual and uncomfortably real - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/playground_2021
Disney movie Coco was a guilty vibrant pleasure! https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/coco_2017
Lucifer Sam
الموت لأمريكا
Resurrection (2022). Bad, bad, bad. Ever since the awful Fight Club, it seems you can get away with "it was all in his or her mind," which is ultimately a variation on "it was all just a dream," which we were taught in creative writing was the worst narrative cop-out you could possibly pull. I am a dinosaur. I didn't even care about the characters anyway. The intern and the daughter looked like the same person. Tim Roth was supposed to be something like Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear—your bad mistake come back to haunt you with oily passive aggression. But he didn't pull it off as well. And Rebecca Hall was a self-important corporate careerist, the kind of person Carlislebaz would write a critical poem about because she drinks three-dollar lattes. There are no lattes in the film, but you get the idea. No one strips Rebecca Hall naked and lashes her as a punishment here (that's the poet's fantasy in the Carlislebaz piece), but she does go through a psychological wringer. Except the end of it is bad, bad, bad, and nonsensical.
The end is nonsensical: first her daughter says she never wants to speak to her again, and resolutely runs away. Then the ending jumps to the daughter inexplicably back home and happy. Where the baby came from isn't questioned by the daughter. This must be a hallucination. What about the murder of Tim Roth? She left behind too many clues. Is she dreaming this, or hallucinating it? Are the bleached whites and gauzy glows supposed to suggest she's in a mental institution?
This movie was well-reviewed. Perhaps I have aged into the half-literate redneck scratching his head at a subtle and tricky ending. Are bland-color-palette psychological thrillers about three-dollar caffè latte drinkers more clever than me? Ouch.
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