The cinema thread

[Fuuma]

From the New Yorker review, "Tarantion has become an embarrassment." I concur. I am going to watch Pulp Fiction now.

I re-watched Jackie Brown after seeing "Inglorious Basterds", Jackie B.=still excellent. Inglorious B. had great individual scenes but it didn't gel.

[deius]

Rave reviews where? It got trashed in the American media.

It has a decent score on Metacritic.
I've seen enough positive reviews to cement this as well received critically.

I think that, although I greatly enjoyed IB, it doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. The key elements are tension conveyed through lengthy dialogue, characterisation, and of course stylised violence and imagery.

A lot of press has been suggesting some sort of homage to classic war movies, yet I can think of very little IB has in common with the narrative of say, The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare etc. In fact there are no "action sequences" at all (plenty of graphic violence yes, but not long gunfights). The trailer itself was also misleading, not that many people would mind.

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Mean Streets...Scorsese never gonna do a film this tightly made ever again, hasn't since Bringing Out the Dead

[klangspiel]

but a country that gave tarkovsky gets a free pass for a few decades I think

i think through the years, more than any other region with a rich history in cinema, post-soviet cinema has consistently been the most wonderful for me. just this last month alone, i saw 3 films that were nothing short of fantastic.
i) alexei german jr's paper soldier - the entire film is on youtube (unfortunately sans subtitles) but is of course best seen at a cinema which i've done twice and wouldn't hesitate doing it again) particularly for the visual (and aural) element of the film - i just can't imagine watching some of the imagery and scenes on the small screen. his previous effort - garpastum - is worth checking out as well.
ii) balabanov's morphia - loved this from the get-go. grim stuff. can't say i've ever been a fan of his work with notable exceptions being his adaptation of kafka's the castle, of freaks and men (which was bloody bloody awesome), and maybe cargo 200.
iii) kirill serebrennikov's yuri's day - another stunning film this year. certainly the most melancholic and poetic so far. absolutely fell in love with it.

there were 2 other recent films that i eagerly wanted to see but they never made it to australia. so far anyway. maybe next year. the first being bakur bakuradze's shultes. i've heard an awful lot about this film and from the sound of it, it could turn out to be either a van sant or a tarr. i'm hoping the latter. the 2nd being pavel lungin / lounguine 's tsar. loved the island and his biopic on rachmaninoff (despite its shortcomings). both are must sees especially the island.

I really like the Aleksandr Sokúrov films i've seen

the master. the one and only :). he really shouldn't require any introduction here. i mean, isn't he already some kind of institution? his first film, the lonely voice of man, is a piece i'd happily watch on a daily basis. the days of eclipse, which is a strugatsky bros adaptation, is a film i'd swear by. the starkly depressing second circle is another. the brooding langour and monochromatic spectral beauty that is whispering pages (loosely based on crime and punishment) is yet another - a film even more minimally murkier (hell, it's a desolate sludge, really :)) than lopushansky's letters from a dead man.

as a matter of fact, everything from lonely voice right up to mother and son should be essential watching. after that, his films seem to do very little for me, though i still rate them better than 90% of whatever's out there. the exception being the suites of films composed on video (almost paralleling, say, kiarostami's foray into the medium, eg., five dedicated to ozu or the victor erice collabs) as part of a broader project of video elegies or elegiac portraits that traverses approaches resembling personal video diaries and documentary but without being simply or reductively self-confessional or / and documentarian. works produced include pieces on tarkovsky (moscow elegy), solzhenitsyn, hubert robert (sumptuously beautiful stuff - brings to fore his standard impressionistic camera work), rostropovich & vishnevskaya, shostakovich, etc..
my favourite of the lot has to be the series of "japanese elegies" - oriental elegy, dolce, and a humble life. those subtly blew me away especially dolce. i can only describe them as constituting his cinematic vision at its most austere. the visuals in particular, and the way they intertwine with the narratives, are exquisitely poetic and breathtaking. again, ideally they should be seen at a cinema or with a larger scale projection than the pitiful small screen.

since we're on a post-soviet tip, id like to mention an underrated filmmaker who i hold in very high regard - someone who could do absolutely no wrong in my books - kira muratova, who is another living great with an astounding body of work. without question an auteur with an extremely idiosyncratic and singular cinematic vision. definitely one of the rare few who has a claim on being an original voice in cinema. it's a terrible shame her films aren't as widely known as they should be - highly underappreciated by comparison to some of her more illustrious contemporaries like sokurov. she's certainly up there with the best of them.

one of the more laudable features of her work that i'm constantly drawn to is the manner in which she masterfully sustains a stylistic / aesthetic / narrative tapestry that effortlessly weaves together the baroque and the minimal. above all, though, i especially love her sense of bleak absurdism (and the pitch black humour that usually envelopes and entails from that sensibility) which comparatively speaking, in its grit and complexity, makes works by filmmakers who seemingly mine kindred terrain, like (some) bela tarr or tsai ming liang, appear like cheap absurdist one-liners. :)

one of her early films, and an absolute favourite of mine, the chernukha-infused asthenic syndrome, is as far as i'm concerned a landmark piece of cinema. nothing quite like it. such a beguiling piece of surreal dementia that is as much a caustic satire of the socio-cultural reality of the time as it is a poeticisation of derangement (human or otherwise). easily one of the finest moments, if not the masterpiece, of perestroika cinema.

amongst her very impressive post-soviet output, her most minimalist film to date, chevkhovian motifs is in my (humble) estimation the greatest film of the last 10-15 years. fuck that, make it 20. a reviewer once described it as a piece which renders tenable the erratic bedfellowing of brecht, bunuel and beckett - the ironic, the surreal and the absurd. i kinda agree. shockingly demanding film though, even for those already trained in the hardened unyielding ways of the CINEMA. the "family dinner" scene is particularly memorable - indelibly etched into my all-time favourite list of scenes.

[mamaboy]

he knows what chernukha means....

[Faust]

Thanks, klangspiel. Off to Russian bittorrents I go.

[galia]

Thank you klangenspiel. I have to make a note of all this for when I go to Russia this winter. DVD shopping-spree !

[Jorge Hache]

I believe i need to start learning russian ASAP!

Edit. I just ordered Pavel Lungin's "The Island" with english subtitles

[Diego]

I whispering pages!!!

[galia]

The island is amazing, good for you

[mamaboy]

russkie privichki schastia ne prinosiat

[Jorge Hache]

Akin's The Edge of Heaven

[Faust]

Good, but nearly not as good as Head On. That movie killed.

[Jorge Hache]

Agree, Head On is pretty impressive, the most cohesive work of Akin by far

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