Movies You've Seen Recently |OT| October 2016

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paperboywriter said:
but in the end he just made a almost random decision
(the wrong one)
. He, and so the audience, based that decision on a gut feeling on who's the bad guy and who is the good guy. I dont know, maybe I missed something.
I didnt really see it as a question of faith because both options were believing in either one of those spiritual guides.
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He didn't make a totally random decision. He
saw that the girl had items from the victims and assumed she was using them to curse them, rather than save them. The clues were all there for him to see that the shaman and monk were working together against him the whole time, however he didn't read them in time (and I'm assuming most viewers as well). The guardian asked him to put his faith in her and trust her, but he didn't. Both sides were doing everything in their power to get him to believe them in order to fight for his soul, and he made the wrong choice because he was unable to tell the difference between the good truth and the evil lie. I took it as a sort of commentary on religion on the director's part, frustrated with both the church's inability to help (they turn away the protagonist), and god or other good spiritual forces failing to save people from evil because of how they work in mysterious and obtuse ways, in addition to being about the internal struggle of belief.
 
Fancy Clown said:
He didn't make a totally random decision. He
saw that the girl had items from the victims and assumed she was using them to curse them, rather than save them. The clues were all there for him to see that the shaman and monk were working together against him the whole time, however he didn't read them in time (and I'm assuming most viewers as well). The guardian asked him to put his faith in her and trust her, but he didn't. Both sides were doing everything in their power to get him to believe them in order to fight for his soul, and he made the wrong choice because he was unable to tell the difference between the good truth and the evil lie. I took it as a sort of commentary on religion on the director's part, frustrated with both the church's inability to help (they turn away the protagonist), and god or other good spiritual forces failing to save people from evil because of how they work in mysterious and obtuse ways, in addition to being about the internal struggle of belief.
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One thing that puzzled me
(and i have to rewatch it) is how you're supposed to tell the Shaman and the Japanese man are in it together.
Especially the exorcism scene, is it ever shown what is really supposed to go on there? And why the Shaman feels the need to go back and warn the protagonist, even though he wasn't really that close in doubting the Japanese man's culpability, let alone thinking the woman had anything to do with it (and she could've been upfront about everything from the start but didn't, so that wasn't an issue for the Shaman/demon).
To me it feels like they could've just let things go that way, and he would've ruined the bait anyhow.

My memory is shit, so i'm probably not remembering something obvious.
 
UrbanRats said:
One thing that puzzled me
(and i have to rewatch it) is how you're supposed to tell the Shaman and the Japanese man are in it together.
Especially the exorcism scene, is it ever shown what is really supposed to go on there? And why the Shaman feels the need to go back and warn the protagonist, even though he wasn't really that close in doubting the Japanese man's culpability, let alone thinking the woman had anything to do with it (and she could've been upfront about everything from the start but didn't, so that wasn't an issue for the Shaman/demon).
To me it feels like they could've just let things go that way, and he would've ruined the bait anyhow.

My memory is shit, so i'm probably not remembering something obvious.
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What made me suspicious of the shaman at first was finding the dead crow in the soy sauce, since the crow is a symbol for the demon that controls him and the Japanese man its likely they colluded to place that there and then "discover" it to convince the family of the shaman's powers. He also wears the same type of loincloth as the Japanese, and after the exorcism "fails" and the protag go to kill the Japanese man, the shaman says "the rat has fallen into the trap", since it was his goal to get him to kill the Japanese man so that the guardian could no longer protect his family like before. There's also the visual early on in the film that shows the japense man baiting a worm using two hooks (ties in to how the evil spirit is fishing for victims, and the two hooka might symbolize that he is not fishing alone). The shaman returns to "warn" the protag about the woman (who is actually a good spirit/shaman) because although she scared him off by making him puke up blood earlier, the demon refused to let him leave town by sending the swarm of moths at his car, and made him return to finish the job. And of course at the end we are shown that the shaman has all the photos (ie souls) of the victims that the Japanese man supposedly burnt
There's probably more stuff that I missed too, particularly during the
dual exorcism scene, where the shaman, Japanese man, and guardian are all doing different magic at the same time. It's possible the shaman didn't turn bad until the protag interrupted the shaman's exorcism and causes the demon to leave the Japanese man and enter him, but I think they were in collusion from the start and he was actually trying to rid the little girl of the guardian's protection.
 
Androidsleeps said:
I suggest you watch it again, I liked it better the second time and I think I'll appreciate even more if I watch it again. Sort of like The Wailing (which I'm glad people keep mentioning here), it's like you know you'll digest it better the second time around. And for perspective, my top Cronenbergs are

Videodrome
Naked Lunch
Dead Ringers
The Fly

Good-not great:

Eastern Promises
History of Violence
Crash (I need to re-watch this asap)

Meh-ish/didn't age well:
The Dead Zone

Bad:
A Dangerous Method

Terrible:
Cosmopolis

Didn't watch Scanners or The Brood yet :(
Scared to watch Maps to the Stars, given his latter output
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Eastern Promises
History of Violence
Crash

Personally, these are some of my favorite ones actually.
 
Fancy Clown said:
What made me suspicious of the shaman at first was finding the dead crow in the soy sauce, since the crow is a symbol for the demon that controls him and the Japanese man its likely they colluded to place that there and then "discover" it to convince the family of the shaman's powers. He also wears the same type of loincloth as the Japanese, and after the exorcism "fails" and the protag go to kill the Japanese man, the shaman says "the rat has fallen into the trap", since it was his goal to get him to kill the Japanese man so that the guardian could no longer protect his family like before. There's also the visual early on in the film that shows the japense man baiting a worm using two hooks (ties in to how the evil spirit is fishing for victims, and the two hooka might symbolize that he is not fishing alone). The shaman returns to "warn" the protag about the woman (who is actually a good spirit/shaman) because although she scared him off by making him puke up blood earlier, the demon refused to let him leave town by sending the swarm of moths at his car, and made him return to finish the job. And of course at the end we are shown that the shaman has all the photos (ie souls) of the victims that the Japanese man supposedly burnt
There's probably more stuff that I missed too, particularly during the
dual exorcism scene, where the shaman, Japanese man, and guardian are all doing different magic at the same time. It's possible the shaman didn't turn bad until the protag interrupted the shaman's exorcism and causes the demon to leave the Japanese man and enter him, but I think they were in collusion from the start and he was actually trying to rid the little girl of the guardian's protection.
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The
moth being sent by the demon, instead of the Woman/spirit, makes sense.
The crow in the soy sauce however could've been a recurring technique to curse people/places, known to someone like the Shaman.
After all it's implied (by there being a shaman in the first place) that methods demons and ghosts use to do their dirty business are somewhat known and recurring.
Also, for "the rat has fallen into the trap" could've been interpreted as him having interrupted the ceremony, for fear of the daughter's life, falling into the demon's trap ( and i think that was actually the red herring used, for that line).
About that though, the straight forward implication of that scene is that the shaman's ceremony is hurting the demon, just as the demon is resuscitating the zombie and hurting the little girl; but of course if the shaman and the demon are working together, that's not what actually happened, yet i don't remember the ghost woman doing shit in that scene, aside from maybe moving the zombie/corpse.
My assumption is that the Demon can't actually die (as they mention multiple times) and so interrupted or not, that ritual wasn't going to kill him at all, but i'm still confused by that whole dynamic.
 
UrbanRats said:
The
moth being sent by the demon, instead of the Woman/spirit, makes sense.
The crow in the soy sauce however could've been a recurring technique to curse people/places, known to someone like the Shaman.
After all it's implied (by there being a shaman in the first place) that methods demons and ghosts use to do their dirty business are somewhat known and recurring.
Also, for "the rat has fallen into the trap" could've been interpreted as him having interrupted the ceremony, for fear of the daughter's life, falling into the demon's trap ( and i think that was actually the red herring used, for that line).
About that though, the straight forward implication of that scene is that the shaman's ceremony is hurting the demon, just as the demon is resuscitating the zombie and hurting the little girl; but of course if the shaman and the demon are working together, that's not what actually happened, yet i don't remember the ghost woman doing shit in that scene, aside from maybe moving the zombie/corpse.
My assumption is that the Demon can't actually die (as they mention multiple times) and so interrupted or not, that ritual wasn't going to kill him at all, but i'm still confused by that whole dynamic.
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I think in the
exorcism scene, the girl was trying to hurt the Japanese man because we see him start to lapse into pain as she gets near, just like she caused the shaman to later vomit up blood when he got near. That's why she was up there in the first place, trying to stop him. I think the japenese man actually did die when they chucked him off the cliff, hence the guardian saying he's a sinner for committing murder under suspicion, and then that let the demon fully inhabit his body and that's why it was able to transform like that at the end
There are a lot of red herrings and things that could be viewed multiple ways though, I'll definitely have to rewatch it at some point.
 
Fancy Clown said:
I think in the
exorcism scene, the girl was trying to hurt the Japanese man because we see him start to lapse into pain as she gets near, just like she caused the shaman to later vomit up blood when he got near. That's why she was up there in the first place, trying to stop him. I think the japenese man actually did die when they chucked him off the cliff, hence the guardian saying he's a sinner for committing murder under suspicion, and then that let the demon fully inhabit his body and that's why it was able to transform like that at the end
There are a lot of red herrings and things that could be viewed multiple ways though, I'll definitely have to rewatch it at some point.
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Is the grandmother also complicit, because she chose the shaman to help her granddaughter or didn't she?
 
paperboywriter said:
Is the grandmother also complicit, because she chose the shaman to help her granddaughter or didn't she?
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I wouldn't say she was complicit really, it's just that the shaman prayed on people's superstitions and trust in witchcraft to be able to enter the home. I'd say any fault that's not on the part of the demon and shaman is squarely on the protagonists shoulders. He's the one who was a detective and promised his daughter he'd keep her safe, yet instead of doing his job he led a witch hunt to kill the Japanese man just based on suspicion. I'm not saying it was his fault, but I think you could make a case for him being complicit, but not the grandmother.
 
Fancy Clown said:
I wouldn't say she was complicit really, it's just that the shaman prayed on people's superstitions and trust in witchcraft to be able to enter the home. I'd say any fault that's not on the part of the demon and shaman is squarely on the protagonists shoulders. He's the one who was a detective and promised his daughter he'd keep her safe, yet instead of doing his job he led a witch hunt to kill the Japanese man just based on suspicion. I'm not saying it was his fault, but I think you could make a case for him being complicit, but not the grandmother.
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but wouldn't it be a quite big coincidence that she picked him? i would guess there are a lot of those shamans around doing this stuff and she basically picked him because she thought he was the best (and prob the most popular). seems weird to me that he had a connection to a weird japanese guy that fairly recently made his home in a small village in bumfuck SK.
 
The Nice Guys2015
★★★★★ Watched 09 Oct, 2016

Ryan Gosling makes you laugh out loud in this dynamic duo comedy. Gosling had so many great lines, but his physical stuff was what sold me the most. The elevator scene had me in tears.


Anomalisa 2015
★★★★ Watched 05 Oct, 2016

Hard not to relate to some of the struggles here. One of the best animated movies of 2015.



Brooklyn 2015
★★★★★ Watched 05 Oct, 2016

Great romance movie. Best if you go in blind to this one
 
paperboywriter said:
but wouldn't it be a quite big coincidence that she picked him? i would guess there are a lot of those shamans around doing this stuff and she basically picked him because she thought he was the best (and prob the most popular). seems weird to me that he had a connection to a weird japanese guy that fairly recently made his home in a small village in bumfuck SK.
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Yeah I'm not sure about how the Japanese man and the shaman first met. Perhaps they are part of a cult that worships the demon, or the shaman ran into the Japanese shortly before the events of the movie and discovered the demon and was actually a good shaman before? I'm not sure the movie gives us enough info the try and decipher their pasts
 
yooooo

The Eyes Of My Mother [trailer]

holy shit

The cinematography is amazing!

It has nods to The Night Of The Hunter, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Martyrs, and reminded me of Excision. One of the influences was also Audition.

The way the family is nonchalant about death was a bit like Addam's Family. But this isn't some dark comedy. It's absolutely sickening horror. The reveal of
the eyes being sown up and vocal cords being cut out
, I almost wanted to throw up.

But mainly it's a film about loneliness under all that.

The director, Nicholas Pesce, is in the same group as Antonio Campos (Simon Killer), Josh Mond (James White), Sean Durkin (MMMM).

Where is the hype for this?!

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paperboywriter said:
but wouldn't it be a quite big coincidence that she picked him? i would guess there are a lot of those shamans around doing this stuff and she basically picked him because she thought he was the best (and prob the most popular). seems weird to me that he had a connection to a weird japanese guy that fairly recently made his home in a small village in bumfuck SK.
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Well,
she says "I was told he's the best" so we can assume the Shaman and the demon have this sort of con well prepared before they decide which village to target.
The shaman has a lot of helpers shown during the ritual, and assumendly makes a lot of money out of people, too, it's not a stretch to assume he can spread the rumor about him being the best, especially since shamans aren't probably a dime a dozen in the first place, and he has the help of a real demon, to set up the scam.
 
paperboywriter said:
watched The Wailing(Goksung) yesterday and not sure what to think about it. I think it went on for too long and the twists in the movie seemed undeserved. its really nice looking and has good scenes of tension and comedy but all in all this was a bit to streched out.
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Agreed. The movie definitely didn't need to be almost 3 hours.
Also the movie was a lot goofier than I expected. I think it's vastly overrated.
 
plasmawave said:
Agreed. The movie definitely didn't need to be almost 3 hours.
Also the movie was a lot goofier than I expected. I think it's vastly overrated.
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That's what makes it good.
Same with Memories of Murder.
The way it handles goofy dark humor and legit dread is great, gives characters more humanity.
 
I like most of the Cronenberg movies I've seen (A History of Violence, The Fly and Videodrome are at the top. I still need to see Dead Ringers.)

I really didn't like Naked Lunch, though.
 
Messofanego said:
yooooo

The Eyes Of My Mother [trailer]

holy shit

The cinematography is amazing!

It has nods to The Night Of The Hunter, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Martyrs, and reminded me of Excision. One of the influences was also Audition.

The way the family is nonchalant about death was a bit like Addam's Family. But this isn't some dark comedy. It's absolutely sickening horror. The reveal of
the eyes being sown up and vocal cords being cut out
, I almost wanted to throw up.

But mainly it's a film about loneliness under all that.

The director, Nicholas Pesce, is in the same group as Antonio Campos (Simon Killer), Josh Mond (James White), Sean Durkin (MMMM).

Where is the hype for this?!

4.jpg

1.jpg

2.jpg

5.jpg
Click to expand...

Dude! This looks great! Thanks for the heads up.
 
Messofanego said:
yooooo

The Eyes Of My Mother [trailer]

holy shit

The cinematography is amazing!

It has nods to The Night Of The Hunter, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Martyrs, and reminded me of Excision. One of the influences was also Audition.

The way the family is nonchalant about death was a bit like Addam's Family. But this isn't some dark comedy. It's absolutely sickening horror. The reveal of
the eyes being sown up and vocal cords being cut out
, I almost wanted to throw up.

But mainly it's a film about loneliness under all that.

The director, Nicholas Pesce, is in the same group as Antonio Campos (Simon Killer), Josh Mond (James White), Sean Durkin (MMMM).

Where is the hype for this?!
Click to expand...

So happy you liked it. Was one of the nice surprises for me at the LFF so far. What did you think about the other films you've seen so far (or have you already written about them around here?). I didn't manage to go to the premiere night of Sieranevada afterall (but did manage to see it on the second one tho).
 
Into The Forest - 3/10
Imperium - 8/10
Childhood of a Leader - 9/10(may end up a bit higher or lower, still processing it)
The Shallows - 7.5/10
Blood Father - 7/10
 
Ugh... Haven't had much time to write about stuff and I haven't even started with the 31 Days of Horror films I've watched. This month is pretty crazy for me. Anyway, I have a few minutes so...

Snowden - Oliver Stone's newest film that no one cares about. I saw Citizenfour when it was out in my local art house theater so the majority of the story isn't brand new to me. It was cool to learn about his time in the military but ultimately it's overdramatized. A first I thought JGL's performance was decent
until at the end where they switch to the real Edward Snowden and it's not pretty. JGL's attempt at mimicking Snowden's voice is downright embarrassing.
Not overly dull but pretty par for the course when it comes to biopics. Just watch Citizenfour instead. 5/10

The Girl on the Train - This is the type of film I would normally hate based on the story alone. The writing is not great and it's real predictable. That being said, Emily Blunt's performance saved this film, for me, from becoming a junk film. The other performances pretty well done too and it really feels as though the source material (or possibly the screenplay? I didn't read the book) really let the cast down in this one. The direction of the film is actually pretty well done and I liked how they introduced the characters at the beginning. So, pretty much it's a weak story with stand out performances by Blunt and Theroux which bumped it up a couple points in my book. 6/10
 
Trudno byt bogom (Hard to be a God)- Aleksey German

Adaptation of the Arkady and Boris Strugatsky sci fi novel (an Earth-like planet has yet to evolve beyond the Middle Ages), Trudno byt bogom is a fucking gorgeous movie (muck and mud never looked this good). Shamefully everything is too theatrical (reminded be about the exaggeration many Gilliam movies suffer), too hard to penetrate, too long. Such a visual experience deserved something more balanced.

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It might not be great but it's special.
 
plasmawave said:
Those out of place humor definitely is not what made the film good.
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The humor is definitely part of what made both those movies great. Like UrbanRats said, the humor humanizes the characters and makes the dark stuff hit that much harder. The characters are not dreary or one note, they endear themselves to us as flawed but likeable characters, and the stuff they deal with in the movies is totally out of the realm of their normal daily experience. It also keeps both quite long movies from feeling like a slog through macabre and gloom for 2 and a half hours, and instead adds texture and variance to the film in addition to the characters.
 
9) Jigoku - (Nobuo Nakagawa, 1960)
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10) The Cat o' Nine Tails - (Dario Argento, 1971)
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11) Don't Torture a Duckling - (Lucio Fulci, 1972)
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12) Dressed to Kill - (Brian De Palma, 1980)
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13) What Have You Done to Solange? - (Massimo Dallamano, 1972)
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14) Torso - (Sergio Martino, 1973)
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plasmawave said:
I still think it was an unnecessary addition. The movie shouldn't have been that long to begin with.
Click to expand...

I thought the length was justified, and I'm usually the first person to complain about a movie being too long. The length here gave us enough time to become immersed in the location, know the characters, and develop the pretty complicated plot and reversals.
 
I agree with Fancy Clown, as someone who usually groans about movies going over the 2 hours mark, i didnt feel the length at all, with this one.

Speaking of length, i watched Apocalype Now Redux yesterday night (because the ps4 refused to read my Police Squad dvd) and i should've stuck with the theatrical, as usual, but it had been a while (years) since i had seen the full version, so i wanted to see if my memory was serving me right.
3 scenes i found more than superfluous: The tiger scene; the Playmates scene (at least when they have a go at them) and obviously, the French plantation scene.
They stop the movie in its tracks, and, in the case of the playmates scene, they also feel pretty dumb.

That said, holy shit what a fucking movie tho, the whole helicopters section is just insanity, in terms of production.
It has a bit of that "Darth Vader effect" where, the movie has been parodied so much, that actually watching the thing makes it feel like a parody in itself, unfortunately.
 
theatrical over redux all the way. i think over time i've really grown to appreciate the ambition of that film. if it wasn't for thin red line it would be my favorite war movie ever.
 
First time I saw apocalypse now was the redux and I was...thrown off. Thankfully I gave it another shot and my mind was blown. Then in college for one of my classes we had a screening of it in a nice theater and the sound mixing on those speakers and seeing it on a big screen blew my mind all over again. Had a poster of it in my room as well, it's one of the GOAT for me. I'd put it over the Thin Red Line I think.

I've had the 3 disc bluray for a while and I've debated whether I should give the redux another shot when I decide to rewatch it again...but nahhh.
 
Yea Apocalypse Now works better without all the extra stuff. Now what the best war movie is would be hard to say. I'm partial to Full Metal Jacket in that regard but really only for the front half so Apocalypse Now might just be the best.
 
I think i still prefer Thin Red Line over it, too.

True Savior said:
I like the plantation scene. It gives a very nice context of the conflict.
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Most of that stuff felt implied to me, and takes a lot of time to make an obvious point.
If it was the only moment of respite the movie had, it'd be more justified, i think.
 
High and Low (1963): I've now seen two of Kurosawa's non-samurai films, and both this and Ikiru feature a multi-act structure that wholly switches focus midway through. It's an interesting choice to set basically the entire first half inside one room, which almost feels like it's an adaptation of a play, before the detective portions of the story take us outside it. Much as this is a different sort of story for Kurosawa, it's a different kind of role for Toshiro Mifune, who's a lot more subdued here (and less reliant on recurring tics he used in his samurai roles).
 
Every time I read about High and Low I want to watch it again. It's soooo good. And yeah, Mifune is great in it in much more restrained role. That scene where he's mowing the lawn and you can just feel the weight of the world crushing down on him.
 
Wow, just completely blown away by a movie i just suddenly discovered.


Captain Fantastic

MV5BMjE5OTM0OTY5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDcxOTQ3ODE@._V1_SY1000_CR0,0,674,1000_AL_.jpg
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It was made by this guy,

v1.cjs0NTE4NTtqOzE3MTA1OzIwNDg7MjIwOzE5Ng


who i recognize and am actually surprised made something this good

Anyway, Viggo is the star in this, he is amazing, and somehow they managed to get 6 child-teen actors that are all fantastic in this. Casting dude gets bonus points.

It is really amazing though, top 5 for me this year. Very emotional and original, i honestly am so positive on this, you guys need to see it when you get a chance. Short premise is its about a very smart family living as survivalists and need to come to terms with society. Once again, Viggo is amazing, fucking Aragorn still exists and demands recognition as an actual evolving actor.

oh yeah and bonus points for the Sigur Ros-Jonsi esque soundtrack. 3 minutes into the movie i paused and searched and found that in fact they are all involved in this I felt good nailing it so instantly.
 
Saw The Accountant. Legit one of the best comedies of the year.

And I'm serious, shit is funny when it knows to be. The super-serious trailers really give the wrong impression (though those trailers are awesome)

It could be a little slimmer, more streamlined with its story, and twists you'll see a mile away, but a highly entertaining movie and, outside of some clunkiness here and there, solid action shooting and choreography. Affleck is great, totally sells the character.
 
Anyone that has seen all three of the following movies and can say which was the best?

I Saw The Devil
Memories of Murder
Confession of Murder

Thanks.
 
Watched Star Trek Beyond on an airplane recently and loved it. I can see why a lot of people didn't like the movie, and it certainly wasn't perfect, but all the characters were on point, lots of funny one-liners and a cheesy plot and villain (as Star Trek does). Thoroughly enjoyed it and glad that, more or less, Scotty
was the one to get the alien babe instead of Kirk
.

But man, the "For Anton" at the end of the credits hit me harder than I would have thought. Poor dude.
 
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