The cinema thread

[swami]

Nice , Link?
Would love to have had a chance to get a few words with him, he was in RO at the premier btw

[Faust]

Nice , Link?
Would love to have had a chance to get a few words with him, he was in RO at the premier btw

Haha, was he? I don't have a link to the full article, it's in our first printed issue. Which you should buy, along with the rest of them

[swami]

duh... I has all of them , I remeber now
Nice excuse to spend some time revisiting the old issues this wknd , Wonder what else I missed

[kamsky]

Just saw "Fury." First word that comes to mind to describe it is superfluous. Might add sound acting/Academy-Award-baiting, if one's looking for generous things to say about it. Otherwise forgettable in just about every respect.

[Faust]

Strange, I hear only good things about it. Even the New Yorker critic loved it, and he's very tough to please.

[kamsky]

Strange, I hear only good things about it. Even the New Yorker critic loved it, and he's very tough to please.

I might've had overly high expectations as a result of this.

Spoiler alert. Maybe read on only after you've seen it. This being a Hollywood movie, about WWII, there's maybe not a whole hell of a lot to spoil if you're older than, say, 5-and-a-half, but still.

Having had a day to think it through a little, I'll say that I still feel like it's a movie we've seen before. A little like "Overlord" but comparatively more of a crowd-pleaser in that the main character doesn't die (though probably not very many will accuse "Fury" of mawkish sentimentality). It's less rigorous than "Overlord" was in its characters' psychological scaffolding, development, and depth; "Fury's" characters aren't quite flat, but they are tropes, and their personalities are revealed by means of their quirks, idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. As such, they're not always recognizably human, or entirely humanized. I think it also takes some cues in the way it represents a bond between a heteroclitic group of individuals from "Band of Brothers"; here again, it does this less effectively (but the format of the mini-series vs that of a movie might make the comparison perhaps a little unfair). Visually, stylistically, it borrows somewhat from "Saving Private Ryan" although I will say that "Fury" has its own visual coherence and...economy?... that I found appealing. It bears another similarity with "Saving..." in that its narrative arc also culminates in a final-showdown, all-in-for-nothing, suicide-mission violent orgy. Blood, viscera & entrails all abound, as perhaps they ought to in a cinematic representation of war.

This might be damning by faint praise, but it's not a terribly bad movie; I hesitate to call it derivative because every movie, every director is somehow the point of convergence of any number of lines influence (at least that's one way to think of them, though I'm not suggesting it is the only one). To my mind, to derive is not necessarily objectionable, but at some point one would hope that there's something added, something new brought to the table; I don't think "Fury" extends itself too far in any direction that hasn't already been explored, with better results, elsewhere. It's not that it derives, then, but rather that it imitates which I think disappointed me. To the extent that I walked away from it feeling like I'd seen something fresh, it was through the inclusion of an admittedly rather amazing entr'acte of sorts, which while being a respite from the otherwise mostly relentless battling and killing of Nazis, creates the most tension in all of the movie. This occurs, oddly enough, in the sharing of a meal; almost wish that they would've constructed an entire movie out of the elements of this scene.

[malaesthetique]

Just saw this and it was excellent.

[Faust]

Watched Venus in Fur. Loved it. Best Polanski films in a while.

[Faust]

First review of Interstellar (New Yorker) is lukewarm at best.

[Resonkuken]

Just came from watching Linklater´s "Boyhood". I left the theater with even more love and respect for his work, and I´ve been his fan for a while. Truly amazing what he achieved and particularly how it´s shot. It all feels so intimate, you are experiencing everything with them, specially your typical linklater "awkward moments". It´s seems so raw at times, but the performances never waver. It´s a long movie, more that 2.5 hours I reckon, yet it´s totally worth it and it keeps you involved all the time.

[Arkady]

I have to say, I have a deep appreciation for Nolan's style but I was flat-out shocked at how much of a mess Interstellar was. There were some redeeming attempts to visually articulate space-time paradox but overall it's rare that I'll find something so simultaneously half-assed and overdone.

[Faust]

Haha, that's kinda what the New Yorker critic said.

[Tafkap]

I have to say, I have a deep appreciation for Nolan's style but I was flat-out shocked at how much of a mess Interstellar was. There were some redeeming attempts to visually articulate space-time paradox but overall it's rare that I'll find something so simultaneously half-assed and overdone.

NYpost says something like it's one of the best films of "this century"....

[Resonkuken]

I have tickets for tonight. Will see if all the critics are right. They pretty much all agree on the technical prowess Nolan keeps showing, specially in this movie, but seems like there´s a lot of meandering (plot wise), and it also takes a while to lift off, in all areas.

[Faust]

I have tickets for tonight. Will see if all the critics are right. They pretty much all agree on the technical prowess Nolan keeps showing, specially in this movie, but seems like there´s a lot of meandering (plot wise), and it also takes a while to lift off, in all areas.

Is it safe to say that Nolan has lost the plot?!