- Registrado
- 3 de Feb, 2013
"The Doom Generation" is hilarious. You also get to see Rose McGowans tits.
Pretentious Arthouse Films
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- Registrado
- 25 de Mayo, 2015
Begotten, a good little creepy and surreal film that starts off with God killing itself to give birth to Mother Earth. Gory as fuck, and it moves like a trance.
The Holy Mountain, a meditation on religion, alchemy, repentance and fiction by Jodorowsky.
The Holy Mountain, a meditation on religion, alchemy, repentance and fiction by Jodorowsky.
- Registrado
- 23 de Feb, 2015
And silly frog genocide. And poop smelling. This movie is only good on acid and even then it's kinda flat.
- Registrado
- 23 de Feb, 2015
Drive was not bad at all.
- Registrado
- 25 de Sep, 2014
Anything from this distributor is worth a watch. They're like the Janus Films/Criterion of animation...
http://www.gkidsfilms.com/
I remember traveling clear across town and paid good money on this...
Too bad I don't have a boutique theatre anymore.
- Registrado
- 3 de Feb, 2013
It's very different for better or worse. Take the slow silent arty moments and dial it up to 11 and you get Only God Forgives. Visually, it's gorgeous.
- Registrado
- 30 de Ago, 2014
Would you guys recommend Lars von Trier? I have a friend who is really into him.
- Registrado
- 23 de Feb, 2015
His earlier stuff is absolutely amazing. Antichrist is fantastic.
He gets really into himself in his later films and starts basically jerking off to his own edgy symbolism.
- Registrado
- 1 de Mayo, 2016
A few I liked:
--Antichrist and Melancholia by Von Trier: mostly I admire the cinematography in both and think Von Trier is dynamic at directing to fit a "mood"
--The 400 Blows by Truffaut: technically more of a precursor to art films, it's just a really solid coming of age movie
--The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, her Lover by Peter Greenaway: the production design and cinematography are gorgeous, it's darkly funny, the acting's great, you see Helen Mirren's tits, it's a good time
--Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman: I'm unsure if this qualifies, but it's an animated war documentary with many scenes reminiscent of art films, and it's beautiful and genre-bending and weird and fantastic
--while we're talking about Winding Refn on this thread, I adored Bronson
Disliked:
--Mulholland Drive by Lynch
--anything Harmony Korine touches
--Vivre sa vie by Jean-Luc Godard
--Requiem for a Dream by Aronofsky
--Antichrist and Melancholia by Von Trier: mostly I admire the cinematography in both and think Von Trier is dynamic at directing to fit a "mood"
--The 400 Blows by Truffaut: technically more of a precursor to art films, it's just a really solid coming of age movie
--The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, her Lover by Peter Greenaway: the production design and cinematography are gorgeous, it's darkly funny, the acting's great, you see Helen Mirren's tits, it's a good time
--Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman: I'm unsure if this qualifies, but it's an animated war documentary with many scenes reminiscent of art films, and it's beautiful and genre-bending and weird and fantastic
--while we're talking about Winding Refn on this thread, I adored Bronson
Disliked:
--Mulholland Drive by Lynch
--anything Harmony Korine touches
--Vivre sa vie by Jean-Luc Godard
--Requiem for a Dream by Aronofsky
- Registrado
- 10 de Jul, 2015
I just finished watching Tabu. (The 2012 one) Very dream-like film that I'm still struggling to decide whether or not I liked.
- Registrado
- 24 de Ago, 2014
The Noisy Requiem by Yoshihiko Matsui
Despite what I've read in the Loveshy subforum, I still don't believe that sexual deprivation can drive people to insanity or murder. That's perhaps why this very underground Japanese film, equally praised and reviled by the arthouse crowd, has little effect on me (and why I found von Trier's Nymphomanic ridiculous). The premise of the film is articulated very early on: desperation will turn the most innocent of people into monsters, committing atrocious acts that other people would not comprehend. The film follows one such monsters, a psychopathic drifter named Iwashita, who kills women and stuff their genitals into a mannequin that is his only love. He dances with it naked, makes love to it, and confides in it observations that Camus's Meursault would heartily approve. The mannequin, as if radiating evil sexual magnetism, draws three other groups of people -- an extremely grimly, mentally disabled bum; Iwashita's employer's midget sister (whose love Iwashita spurned); and a young innocent couple (the girl looks underage, and although the film's subtext suggests otherwise, the end credit identifies them as siblings) -- to the rooftop of the dilapidated building where it lays, thus setting in action their transformation into psychological monsters.
Matsui's grimy, gritty B&W photography -- of the demolition sites, trash heaps, back alleys and sewers in Osaka -- gives the film great visceral impact; unfortunately this realistic view of urban decay is undermined by the unrealistic background characters that inhabit the film: the "normal" people either go out of their way to be nasty, or are strangely apathetic even when atrocity is committed under their very eyes. The editing is virtuosic, though I'm somewhat irratated the director love to linger on non-essentials (as if these are symbolic or something), and the last 15 minutes of this 2.5 hour film is extraneous: the film would have emerged stronger had it ended with the infamous rooftop fire. Though there are indeed moments of sadness, even beauty. I'm struck by the surrealist poignancy at the destruction of the mannequin.
File under: failed experiment.
Despite what I've read in the Loveshy subforum, I still don't believe that sexual deprivation can drive people to insanity or murder. That's perhaps why this very underground Japanese film, equally praised and reviled by the arthouse crowd, has little effect on me (and why I found von Trier's Nymphomanic ridiculous). The premise of the film is articulated very early on: desperation will turn the most innocent of people into monsters, committing atrocious acts that other people would not comprehend. The film follows one such monsters, a psychopathic drifter named Iwashita, who kills women and stuff their genitals into a mannequin that is his only love. He dances with it naked, makes love to it, and confides in it observations that Camus's Meursault would heartily approve. The mannequin, as if radiating evil sexual magnetism, draws three other groups of people -- an extremely grimly, mentally disabled bum; Iwashita's employer's midget sister (whose love Iwashita spurned); and a young innocent couple (the girl looks underage, and although the film's subtext suggests otherwise, the end credit identifies them as siblings) -- to the rooftop of the dilapidated building where it lays, thus setting in action their transformation into psychological monsters.
Matsui's grimy, gritty B&W photography -- of the demolition sites, trash heaps, back alleys and sewers in Osaka -- gives the film great visceral impact; unfortunately this realistic view of urban decay is undermined by the unrealistic background characters that inhabit the film: the "normal" people either go out of their way to be nasty, or are strangely apathetic even when atrocity is committed under their very eyes. The editing is virtuosic, though I'm somewhat irratated the director love to linger on non-essentials (as if these are symbolic or something), and the last 15 minutes of this 2.5 hour film is extraneous: the film would have emerged stronger had it ended with the infamous rooftop fire. Though there are indeed moments of sadness, even beauty. I'm struck by the surrealist poignancy at the destruction of the mannequin.
File under: failed experiment.
Última edición:
- Registrado
- 1 de Mayo, 2016
Popping into this thread again to share that I saw The Lobster in theaters a few weeks back and thought it was pretty great. I'd recommend it to any arthouse fans, with some reservations:
- The performances are very dry and understated. If you get frustrated when characters don't seem to show emotions, this might not be the movie for you.
- A lot of content might be distressing to more sensitive kiwis.
In particular, if you're bothered by animal death, body horror, suicidal themes, and/or common dystopia tropes, you'll probably find this movie unpleasant.
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Its ending is deliberately ambiguous. I think it's effective, but it can be frustrating for anyone looking for closure.
- Registrado
- 24 de Ago, 2014
Antiporno, by Sion Sono (2016)
Let me assure you that everything will fall into place in the end (sort of); but the first 30 minutes of this film might be the most annoying cinematic experience I've sat through. A half-dressed young woman, Kyoko, prances around in a room painted in searing colors, raving and shrieking incoherently. She picks up a piece of broken mirror, laments at her lot in life, but screams that it is no fault of hers. She hallucinates her dead sister, who informs her (Symbolism time!) that there are no butterflies in Heaven, because butterflies are free to fly away, unlike Kyoko's pet lizard which is trapped in a glass bottle. Kyoko considers herself both virgin and whore, but wonders who she really is because she can only pick one. She turns on a projector, which shows a porno of a young man fucking a school girl. Kyoko orders him to fuck harder.
The doorbell rings and Kyoko's secretary, an older, modestly dressed woman called Noriko comes in. She briefs Kyoko on her schedule -- we learn that Kyoko is a famous painter who is also a darling for fashion magazines -- but Kyoko is not listening. She finds every excuse to humiliate the patient, endlessly subservient Noriko, starting with verbal excoriations ("Be a whore bitch!...Ha ha you don't even have what it takes to be a whore! Only the purest woman can be a whore! You're just a worthless mutt!") and progressing through a series of increasing physical and sexual sadism. Oh did I tell you our darling Kyoko also suffers from recurrent bouts of vomiting? Symbolism Time again!
"Cut!", The walls slide open to reveal an all-male film crew. The meek, suffering Noriko turns out to be a vicious actress who is fuming that Kyoko's poor acting is holding everybody down. She subjects the scared, helpless Kyoko to all the abuses she endured previously and then some, to the amusement of the crew. And as if that isn't enough, Kyoko gets raped by the director.
So just another film-within-film? It is not so simple. The second half of the film offers an ever-shifting perspective: in the Groundhog Day-like reenactments of the scene, realistic vignettes intermingle with unbelievable fantasies. We are invited to piece together Kyoko's former life, but do we really know how much of her story is real, and how much is embellishment, psychological defense mechanism, power fantasy, survivor's guilt, death wish, and all sorts of nameless hang-ups?
On top of this personal drama, Antiporno also attempts a critique of how Japanese culture treats woman. Kyoko's disturbance, we are led to believe, stems from the contradiction between her strait-laced, upper-class upbringing and her witnessing her parents having sex. Words are used to confine women in preconceived modes: they are either "virgin" or "whore". Even freedom of speech is but a snare set up by the Patriarchy, enticing women to overstep so that men can find a excuse to put them in their place. And, picking up the theme of Sono's previous film Guilty of Romance, a woman can only take control of her body by subjecting herself to objectification and humiliation. As sexual degradation flips into a life-affirming exercise, porno becomes its opposite.
Unsavory eulogization of sex work aside, Antiporno shares with many "feminist" films in portraying their protagonists as victims of circumstances. The film pretends to be a woman's existential predicament, endless Nausea with No Exit, but it forgets the most important tenet of existentialism: personal agency. For all Kyoko's shrieking, she refuses to take personal responsibility. Hence we should not be surprised that, despite catharsis a-plenty, there is no salvation in store.
Let me assure you that everything will fall into place in the end (sort of); but the first 30 minutes of this film might be the most annoying cinematic experience I've sat through. A half-dressed young woman, Kyoko, prances around in a room painted in searing colors, raving and shrieking incoherently. She picks up a piece of broken mirror, laments at her lot in life, but screams that it is no fault of hers. She hallucinates her dead sister, who informs her (Symbolism time!) that there are no butterflies in Heaven, because butterflies are free to fly away, unlike Kyoko's pet lizard which is trapped in a glass bottle. Kyoko considers herself both virgin and whore, but wonders who she really is because she can only pick one. She turns on a projector, which shows a porno of a young man fucking a school girl. Kyoko orders him to fuck harder.
The doorbell rings and Kyoko's secretary, an older, modestly dressed woman called Noriko comes in. She briefs Kyoko on her schedule -- we learn that Kyoko is a famous painter who is also a darling for fashion magazines -- but Kyoko is not listening. She finds every excuse to humiliate the patient, endlessly subservient Noriko, starting with verbal excoriations ("Be a whore bitch!...Ha ha you don't even have what it takes to be a whore! Only the purest woman can be a whore! You're just a worthless mutt!") and progressing through a series of increasing physical and sexual sadism. Oh did I tell you our darling Kyoko also suffers from recurrent bouts of vomiting? Symbolism Time again!
"Cut!", The walls slide open to reveal an all-male film crew. The meek, suffering Noriko turns out to be a vicious actress who is fuming that Kyoko's poor acting is holding everybody down. She subjects the scared, helpless Kyoko to all the abuses she endured previously and then some, to the amusement of the crew. And as if that isn't enough, Kyoko gets raped by the director.
So just another film-within-film? It is not so simple. The second half of the film offers an ever-shifting perspective: in the Groundhog Day-like reenactments of the scene, realistic vignettes intermingle with unbelievable fantasies. We are invited to piece together Kyoko's former life, but do we really know how much of her story is real, and how much is embellishment, psychological defense mechanism, power fantasy, survivor's guilt, death wish, and all sorts of nameless hang-ups?
On top of this personal drama, Antiporno also attempts a critique of how Japanese culture treats woman. Kyoko's disturbance, we are led to believe, stems from the contradiction between her strait-laced, upper-class upbringing and her witnessing her parents having sex. Words are used to confine women in preconceived modes: they are either "virgin" or "whore". Even freedom of speech is but a snare set up by the Patriarchy, enticing women to overstep so that men can find a excuse to put them in their place. And, picking up the theme of Sono's previous film Guilty of Romance, a woman can only take control of her body by subjecting herself to objectification and humiliation. As sexual degradation flips into a life-affirming exercise, porno becomes its opposite.
Unsavory eulogization of sex work aside, Antiporno shares with many "feminist" films in portraying their protagonists as victims of circumstances. The film pretends to be a woman's existential predicament, endless Nausea with No Exit, but it forgets the most important tenet of existentialism: personal agency. For all Kyoko's shrieking, she refuses to take personal responsibility. Hence we should not be surprised that, despite catharsis a-plenty, there is no salvation in store.
- Registrado
- 10 de Jul, 2015
Just saw You Were Never Really Here, and it was great. I loved every other Lynne Ramsay movie and her new one is no exception. Great cinematography (Considering that the DP is a first-timer afaik.), sound design and lead performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It isn't the violent thriller that the trailer makes it out to be, instead being more of a moody character study that's punctuated with violence. And even then, we mostly see either the aftermath, or it's off-screen. Also be warned that if you go in expecting a movie where the story beats are spoonfed to you, then this isn't the movie for you.
Also to the old people in my theater, if you're at the point where you need the movie explained to you even with a hearing device, just stay home.
Also to the old people in my theater, if you're at the point where you need the movie explained to you even with a hearing device, just stay home.
- Registrado
- 24 de Ago, 2014
Yes, share what you think about this film, especially the second half that I can't make head or tail of.
But I prefer another film by Shinya Tsukamoto, A Snake of June. It is extremely beautifully filmed and extremely well-acted, although, like Tetsuo, the imageries become very confused in the second half.
Cable 7
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 20 de Mar, 2015
Ill preface this by saying, holy fuck what a weird ass film. A barage of flashing images and noisy industrial left me feeling like I was in a car crash. Not to mention that final scene which honestly is the greatest ending to any movie I've seen. Only other scene that I feel can top that is the part where the salaryman kills his wife with a drill penis.
All that aside. I did enjoy the movie. And I realyl enjoyed the soundtrack. I should check out the other Tetsuo films at some point.
- Registrado
- 24 de Ago, 2014
La Belle Noiseuse
by Jacques Rivette (1991)
A four-hour film about an old painter's struggle with his initially reluctant model. The reclusive Édouard Frenhofer has given up painting, after his failure to finish his masterpiece La Belle Noiseuse with his wife, Liz, as a model. He is persuaded to give it another try, with another model, a head-strong young woman called Marianne. Much has been said about the film's supposed realism, and indeed director Rivette conveys the frustration and struggle of both the artist and the sitter by using extremely long, drawn-out, takes of the drawing process: every scratch of inked nib on paper, every botched wash of sepia. He wants us to feel the sheer sensation of the artistic process. It is telling that the half-way point of the film has this intertitle, "take a five-minute break before the next pose".
More open to question are the characters' motivations. At first Marianne is put on the spot by her boyfriend, the painter Nicolas who is a great admirer of Frenhofer, but after the first session she returns to Frenhofer on her own accord, despite Nicolas's angry complaints. What motivates her? Frenhofer is hardly an engaging storyteller; indeed he is silent while at work, and beneath his avuncular demeanor he is prone to saying disturbing things: wanting blood on the canvas, for example, and dislocating his sitters' joints. He is capable of emotional cruelty too, and worse, he absconds his own responsibilty: "it is not me who is being cruel; I assure you I feel as bad as you do -- but it is the painting doing its job!"
Thus, the story only makes sense if you buy into the supposed transcendence of art. Unlike Marianne's boyfriend Nicolas, who deals with lines and brushstrokes, Frenhofer wants nothing but "The Truth" in paintings. Marianne's gradual change in mood: from sulking reluctance to fascination, to compliance, and eventually, when Frenhofer is on the verge of giving up, to active goading -- may be motivated by her being on board with the notion of finding "the truth", like Bluebeard's wife trying one door after another. But to me, Frenhofer looks like a Bluebeard who has lost his keys, if not an Emperor without clothes.
I found Liz, Frenhofer's wife and former Noiseuse, a more relatable character. Liz understands that the painting of a new Noiseuse is going to obliterate the old (which turns out to be literally true. Frenhofer's go-to excuse: "I feel bad about that too, but I have no choice!"). She implores Marianne not to let Frenhofer paint her face, a request that Marianne denies. Then she slyly tries to shape Marianne in her own image, putting her own pendant on Marianne's neck, which earns her an angry retort. Frenhofer is impossible to live with (as Liz confides with Marianne), and Liz's attempt to escape by having an affair with his art dealer has somehow made things worse. Still, in the end, the Artist has to triumph. After seeing the finished Noiseuse she concedes that Frenhofer has indeed done a beautiful thing.
So, the Art is the be-all end-all, and we must keep the faith in the aura of the artist. The frustrated Marianne acts out to everyone around her, but is deferential to Frenhofer (she breaks down in tears once, causing Frenhofer to take a time out, but later apologizes and says it was her fault). Marianne's first look at the finished Noiseuse entails a two-minute wide-eyed daze, then an angry stomp out of the studio and a nervous breakdown. Are we supposed to take the film's premise at face value, that Frenhofer has indeed painted The Truth inside Marianne, who is unprepared to face this divine revelation? After the painting is finished, everyone reconciles and lives their lives as before, but Marianne is a changed woman -- the cheerful ditz we meet at the film's beginning has become a collected, sullen, yet more sexual being. Is this, as she asks herself, her true self, or just another mask?
La Belle Noiseuse is a film that any cinephile is expected to have an opinion about. One may balk at its length and lack of traditional drama, but at the very least you can feast your eyes on the scenery, drenched in brilliant Provençal sun. The blu-ray transfer is absolutely immaculate.
by Jacques Rivette (1991)
A four-hour film about an old painter's struggle with his initially reluctant model. The reclusive Édouard Frenhofer has given up painting, after his failure to finish his masterpiece La Belle Noiseuse with his wife, Liz, as a model. He is persuaded to give it another try, with another model, a head-strong young woman called Marianne. Much has been said about the film's supposed realism, and indeed director Rivette conveys the frustration and struggle of both the artist and the sitter by using extremely long, drawn-out, takes of the drawing process: every scratch of inked nib on paper, every botched wash of sepia. He wants us to feel the sheer sensation of the artistic process. It is telling that the half-way point of the film has this intertitle, "take a five-minute break before the next pose".
More open to question are the characters' motivations. At first Marianne is put on the spot by her boyfriend, the painter Nicolas who is a great admirer of Frenhofer, but after the first session she returns to Frenhofer on her own accord, despite Nicolas's angry complaints. What motivates her? Frenhofer is hardly an engaging storyteller; indeed he is silent while at work, and beneath his avuncular demeanor he is prone to saying disturbing things: wanting blood on the canvas, for example, and dislocating his sitters' joints. He is capable of emotional cruelty too, and worse, he absconds his own responsibilty: "it is not me who is being cruel; I assure you I feel as bad as you do -- but it is the painting doing its job!"
Thus, the story only makes sense if you buy into the supposed transcendence of art. Unlike Marianne's boyfriend Nicolas, who deals with lines and brushstrokes, Frenhofer wants nothing but "The Truth" in paintings. Marianne's gradual change in mood: from sulking reluctance to fascination, to compliance, and eventually, when Frenhofer is on the verge of giving up, to active goading -- may be motivated by her being on board with the notion of finding "the truth", like Bluebeard's wife trying one door after another. But to me, Frenhofer looks like a Bluebeard who has lost his keys, if not an Emperor without clothes.
I found Liz, Frenhofer's wife and former Noiseuse, a more relatable character. Liz understands that the painting of a new Noiseuse is going to obliterate the old (which turns out to be literally true. Frenhofer's go-to excuse: "I feel bad about that too, but I have no choice!"). She implores Marianne not to let Frenhofer paint her face, a request that Marianne denies. Then she slyly tries to shape Marianne in her own image, putting her own pendant on Marianne's neck, which earns her an angry retort. Frenhofer is impossible to live with (as Liz confides with Marianne), and Liz's attempt to escape by having an affair with his art dealer has somehow made things worse. Still, in the end, the Artist has to triumph. After seeing the finished Noiseuse she concedes that Frenhofer has indeed done a beautiful thing.
So, the Art is the be-all end-all, and we must keep the faith in the aura of the artist. The frustrated Marianne acts out to everyone around her, but is deferential to Frenhofer (she breaks down in tears once, causing Frenhofer to take a time out, but later apologizes and says it was her fault). Marianne's first look at the finished Noiseuse entails a two-minute wide-eyed daze, then an angry stomp out of the studio and a nervous breakdown. Are we supposed to take the film's premise at face value, that Frenhofer has indeed painted The Truth inside Marianne, who is unprepared to face this divine revelation? After the painting is finished, everyone reconciles and lives their lives as before, but Marianne is a changed woman -- the cheerful ditz we meet at the film's beginning has become a collected, sullen, yet more sexual being. Is this, as she asks herself, her true self, or just another mask?
La Belle Noiseuse is a film that any cinephile is expected to have an opinion about. One may balk at its length and lack of traditional drama, but at the very least you can feast your eyes on the scenery, drenched in brilliant Provençal sun. The blu-ray transfer is absolutely immaculate.
Última edición:
- Registrado
- 10 de Jul, 2015
I've recently been getting into the movies of "Joe" (Apichatpong Weerasethakul). I really admire the unconventional structures of Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century.
- Registrado
- 23 de Jun, 2015
When it comes to artfilms, there are a few that I dislike. Most of them by Godard as he is a fucking hack.
Contempt is one those film that I hate the most by him as it make the biggest mistake a film can make: I didn't care at all about what would happen to anyone in the film and I was not engage at all with the story. It is boring and full of itself. I hated every single minute of it.
An artfilm that I really like has already been mention in this thread and that one is Waltz with Bashir. First and foremost, it blur the lines between a documentery and a regular film and does it well. That it is beautiful animataed is another reason to see it (even as the director of the animation tried to draw it as ugly as possible) and it is an engaging film. There is a reason why it is one of my favorite films of all time.
Contempt is one those film that I hate the most by him as it make the biggest mistake a film can make: I didn't care at all about what would happen to anyone in the film and I was not engage at all with the story. It is boring and full of itself. I hated every single minute of it.
An artfilm that I really like has already been mention in this thread and that one is Waltz with Bashir. First and foremost, it blur the lines between a documentery and a regular film and does it well. That it is beautiful animataed is another reason to see it (even as the director of the animation tried to draw it as ugly as possible) and it is an engaging film. There is a reason why it is one of my favorite films of all time.