GWJ Film of the Week

This is a really good idea! I'm definitely in for the Netflix movies, and they have a pretty good selection of documentaries I'd love to watch but never get around to.

I might jump in from time to time to watch on Netflix or if I already own the movie. If this is anything like the Name That Movie thread then there should be plenty of new movies for me to see.

Seven Samurai isn't a move I'll watch very often due to the length, but it is absolutely fantastic.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

The next movie will be announced tomorrow!

Fingers crossed.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

The next movie will be announced tomorrow!

Fingers crossed.

IMAGE(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-6jW8SHMXF7o/TWx17O2Q9SI/AAAAAAAAFkQ/vqwFntPonu0/s1600/RAD+CRITERION.jpg)

I was all set to do a fake Criterion cover, but I came across this which is good enough and doesn't require me spending time shopping stuff together.

No!

Finished the second half tonight ( I only made it to the intermission the other night). Turns out I had forgotten more of it then I thought. Always nice to be surprised I suppose.

Some of the things I like:
- The handheld shots of the burning houses across the river.
- I like how all the characters aren't as simple as the first seem. The farmers are less innocent and much more cruel then they first appear. The samurai all have pasts (even if it's only hinted at). They're all complex and have they're own motivations.
- The whole movie just builds nicely to the conclusion.
- the fights are filmed well. Even when people are splashing around in the mud and rain it's easy too keep track of everything.

What I wasn't so fond of:
- it might just be a cultural thing but the acting has always seemed a bit off. Throwing yourself on the ground and wailing just doesn't seem like something that would happen.
- It is a tiny bit to long. However there really isn't any wasted space in it. Just a tiny nitpick.

One other thing, it's really easy to see the roots of Star Wars in this movie. The music cues with character themes, the slow building pace and climactic battle that Episode 4 shares with it.

Norfair wrote:

One other thing, it's really easy to see the roots of Star Wars in this movie. The music cues with character themes, the slow building pace and climactic battle that Episode 4 shares with it.

And the wipes! Good god, those wipes are fantastic. Yeah, lots of Kurosawa influence in Star Wars. You mentioned the fights. I like how realistic they seem. I don't really know if battles would work like that, but it sure seems more real than how Hollywood tends to do them.

Since it probably won't come up for a very long time and it's available on Hulu+, I'll recommend watching Drunken Angel. I just watched it this last week. It's a fairly early Kurosawa film that deals with an odd friendship between an alcoholic doctor and an alcoholic yakuza boss with TB set in the late 40s after WWII. The reason I recommend it is that there is the best knife fight I've ever seen in a movie. It's basically two guys fighting with knives who have no concept of actually how to fight with knives. I've never seen anything quite like it in a movie. At one point, they're in a hallway rolling around in paint. I'll just leave it at that to keep you curious. At least go check out the end to see the fight.

Norfair wrote:

- It is a tiny bit to long. However there really isn't any wasted space in it. Just a tiny nitpick.

I miss the days of long movies. Wish more was like that.

It's been along time since I've seen Seven Samurai. Unfortunately, it was checked out of the library when I checked on it. I'd add Stray Dog to the list of must see Kurosawa films Stray Dog is the story of a detective who loses his gun which is used in several crimes including a murder. Filmed only a few years after the end of WWII it's Kurosawa does film noir. Shot in a still partially bombed out Tokyo, it has an atmosphere that's contemporary and haunting at the same time. it's not as well known as some of his later works but is an excellent piece of filmmaking.

Due to popular demand, this week's film is Upstream Color!

[size=20]GWJ Film of the Week #2[/size]
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/xDWwXns.jpg)

[size=20]Upstream Color[/size]
Director: Shane Carruth
Writer: Shane Carruth
Notable Actors: Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz, and Andrew Sensenig
Synopsis (IMDB): A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

The film can be purchased here or viewed on Netflix here.

Sadly, I just couldn't make my schedule work for Seven Samurai this week. With my son's sleep issues, long movies are a lot harder to watch than short ones.

Looking forward to Upstream Color!

I completed my viewing tonight! This will have been the third time I've seen the film since its release. My earlier thoughts can be found in the Upstream Color thread.

I desire to describe this movie in one word as "beautiful" but ultimately and quickly must pick the word "violation." It's not only the parasite, it's the people using the parasite for their own benefit who violate Kris and Jeff that convinces me of this.

Other thoughts: Shane Carruth sounds like William Hurt except younger. It's very odd once you start thinking he sounds like a young William Hurt.

Ultimately, this film is a photographer's dream. I just want a still from pretty much every scene in the movie. Shallow depth of field is used extensively but somehow not excessively.

We are first introduced to the Jeff and Kris together when they run into each other on the subway. I love how they do a shot of a pig going through the pig chute with the "open gate" noise. The shot is looking directly straight down the chute. There is a direct cut to the aisle of the subway from there. The pig/human parallel is shown so perfectly at that point.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/UBjT00ul.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/kWvnI9zl.jpg)

I love this shot with the three lights.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/rbsvERel.jpg)

This is the creepiest shot in the whole movie. It's not a spoiler until you watch it and figure out what's going on.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/goQaXKDl.jpg)

Here are some other favorite shots:
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/8g6aWCol.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/f1p2Dw2l.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Ot8kvrYl.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/glt7UUml.jpg)

So, I don't expect many of you to watch the film. I hope you prove me wrong. It's well worth your time.

I watched it last night! I agree that it's a gorgeous movie, and towards the end there's basically no dialogue but I was still really drawn in and fascinated.

Personally I was curious about the use of Walden in the movie, and whether there was this great big meaning behind it, but from what I've read after watching the movie, it seems it was chosen mostly at random and that he later found that a lot of the language in it coincided with the plot of the movie. I just thought it was interesting considering that the book is pretty much about how Henry David Thoreau chose to isolate himself, and how he thinks it's really important to be self-reliant, meanwhile the characters in the movie are all sort of interconnected.

Geeeeeez, though. I hate maggots.

Upstream Color isn't out in the UK yet but I've added it to my LOVEFILM postal list.

Higgledy wrote:

Upstream Color isn't out in the UK yet but I've added it to my LOVEFILM postal list.

Don't you mean..... Upstream Colour?

It's not out here yet either! But I downloaded mediahint for Chrome, so I can access the movies that are available in the US on Netflix.

Sometimes I rebel against US spelling. It depends what mood I'm in :).

I've been planning to watch this anyway; I'll either catch it tonight or Sunday evening.

The wife and I managed to watch this since our son *finally* decided to sleep for more than a half hour

Overall I was intrigued by the movie, but I'm not really sure what I think about the actual plot. It was a little jarring that the whole movie seemed to be shot in 5 second clips of a scene--I couldn't quite figure out the point of it. I initially thought that it was this way due to the whole idea that Kris was hypnotized and thought it was an amazing way to convey that. However, once it was over and the movie followed Kris & Jeff it didn't make much sense to me and made it kind of hard to follow what was happening. What I found interesting is that while I may not have had a good idea of what was happening, I didn't get bored or frustrated (which usually happens if I can't suss out the story), but was actually sitting up and very engaged.

Once the movie was over though, I definitely had more questions than answers. Which I suppose is probably the end goal:

So the guy who owned the pig farm was in some sort of business/experiment with the people who owned the greenhouse and with the guy who harvested the maggots, but to what end? To connect the consciousness of pigs and humans? Maybe to connect the consciousness of all humans, since Kris and Jeff have that moment where their own histories start to meld together and they argue about who's stories are who. Still though, to what end? Also, was part of the experiment to make those recordings of the random sounds/noises in the hopes that some human would be able to find their way back to the farm?

It certainly had some amazing cinematography, as evidenced by the pics that tuffalo posted--just some really amazing shots. I'm still kind of processing what I watched though, so I can't say definitively if I actually enjoyed it or not just yet. Still, a great choice for a movie club though!

Listening to people's interpretations of this movie uninfluenced of my own is one of my favorite parts of it.

Spoiler:

The feeling I got was that none of the groups were connected. The pig farmer just rescues these people and takes care of the pigs. The orchid sellers just know to find the special blue orchids to sell on this certain river. The thief just knows that he can use the maggots on specific orchids to make the hypnotism drugs.

I think Kris and Jeff are the first two to connect the dots.

Since the movie is very obviously well framed and thought out what I want to know is why Kris wasn't wearing her wedding ring (very obviously shown to us earlier) in the last scene.

Also, what, if any, significance is the of the other married couple that the farmer spies on?

I'm hoping more people watch this and weigh in on their opinion

Norfair wrote:

Since the movie is very obviously well framed and thought out what I want to know is why Kris wasn't wearing her wedding ring (very obviously shown to us earlier) in the last scene.

Also, what, if any, significance is the of the other married couple that the farmer spies on?

I'm hoping more people watch this and weigh in on their opinion

You know--I got the impression that the farmer wasn't actually spying on anyone, that he was only picturing them in his mind how they went about their day since the people seem oblivious to his presence. Only reason why I say that is because they would keep cutting back to the farmer actually on the farm interacting with the pigs themselves.

I didn't catch that Kris wasn't wearing her ring in the last scene--good call on that.

Oh I didn't think he was actually there. Maybe more of a psychic link sort of thing (which sounds silly now that I get it out of my head) I imagined that he's just sort of watching people's lives and getting inspiration for his music maybe.

CptDomano wrote:

The wife and I managed to watch this since our son *finally* decided to sleep for more than a half hour

Overall I was intrigued by the movie, but I'm not really sure what I think about the actual plot. It was a little jarring that the whole movie seemed to be shot in 5 second clips of a scene--I couldn't quite figure out the point of it. I initially thought that it was this way due to the whole idea that Kris was hypnotized and thought it was an amazing way to convey that. However, once it was over and the movie followed Kris & Jeff it didn't make much sense to me and made it kind of hard to follow what was happening. What I found interesting is that while I may not have had a good idea of what was happening, I didn't get bored or frustrated (which usually happens if I can't suss out the story), but was actually sitting up and very engaged.

Once the movie was over though, I definitely had more questions than answers. Which I suppose is probably the end goal:

So the guy who owned the pig farm was in some sort of business/experiment with the people who owned the greenhouse and with the guy who harvested the maggots, but to what end? To connect the consciousness of pigs and humans? Maybe to connect the consciousness of all humans, since Kris and Jeff have that moment where their own histories start to meld together and they argue about who's stories are who. Still though, to what end? Also, was part of the experiment to make those recordings of the random sounds/noises in the hopes that some human would be able to find their way back to the farm?

It certainly had some amazing cinematography, as evidenced by the pics that tuffalo posted--just some really amazing shots. I'm still kind of processing what I watched though, so I can't say definitively if I actually enjoyed it or not just yet. Still, a great choice for a movie club though! :D

From what I gather, they abducted and drugged people in order to extort money from them, like they did with Kris and Jeff. I was more confused about the pig farmer, and there are things I still don't really get (even after reading the plot... immediately after watching it). But it's also kind of what I found great about the movie, that a lot of it is up for interpretation, and some of it might just be sort of hallucinatory. I think it merits a re-watch, though.

Norfair wrote:

Also, what, if any, significance is the of the other married couple that the farmer spies on?

I was really confused about the farmer being sort of this presence in other people's lives, but I think the point is that these are all people who have been drugged who still have this connection to the pigs, hence they sort of feel the presence of the farmer? Maybe? (!!)

Norfair wrote:

Oh I didn't think he was actually there. Maybe more of a psychic link sort of thing (which sounds silly now that I get it out of my head) I imagined that he's just sort of watching people's lives and getting inspiration for his music maybe.

I thought of it as a psychic link. You mentioned before that you you felt none of the groups were connected. I do think that everyone is connected in the sense that they're all a part of the parasitic life cycle. The connections between everything are very much similar to the real world. You can connect almost anything if you try hard enough. It's the whole "butterfly flaps its wings" thing.

My guess is that this whole movie started out in Carruth's head after he was thinking about some sort of parasite. It feels like the movie evolved from a simple idea like that.

IMAGE(http://www.daviddarling.info/images/tapeworm_life_cycle.jpg)

There are even more crazy complicated parasitic life cycles, but that is a common one. It'd be great if someone did a CDC diagram for the parasite in this movie.

Edit: Hey, I'm so glad a bunch of you got a chance to watch the movie!

This week's film is The Lady Eve. This is one of the best romantic comedies ever made. So much glorious innuendo! It's just one of those movies that you have to watch, and if you've seen it, you will have absolutely no problem watching it again and again. I can't wait to watch it this week. There's so much to say about the movie, but I'll save that for later.

[size=20]GWJ Film of the Week #3[/size]

IMAGE(http://thehairpin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/LadyEve_500x250.jpeg)

[size=20]The Lady Eve[/size]
Director: Preston Sturges
Writer: Monckton Hoffe (based on a story by), Preston Sturges
Notable Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda
Synopsis (IMDB): A trio of classy card sharks targets the socially awkward heir to brewery millions for his money, till one of them falls in love with him.

The film can be viewed on Netflix. I wanted to do one more Netflix movie. We'll do a Hulu+ Criterion Collection movie next week. Let me know how if you've seen this movie all ready. I'm actually quite curious how many people have already seen it.

Every time I think you guys are my friends, I discover something like this has been happening and nobody told me (though it's also my fault, I really should actually look at the forums instead of just the "popular forum threads" and tracking).

I do have one question, though: what counts as an "intelligent" movie? There are simple movies done very well, and then there are pretentious films, and then there are "what drugs did you take in film school?" films. For example, for a variety of reasons I'd call John Carpenter's The Thing an intelligent film, though I doubt many others would.

I'm sure I'll have plenty of recommendations after I give mine and my brother's Netflix queue a look. Especially my brother's, though most of his choice flicks are foreign.

ccesarano wrote:

I do have one question, though: what counts as an "intelligent" movie? There are simple movies done very well, and then there are pretentious films, and then there are "what drugs did you take in film school?" films. For example, for a variety of reasons I'd call John Carpenter's The Thing an intelligent film, though I doubt many others would.

Any film that's intellectually stimulating counts. It's a really broad category. The Thing would totally be a candidate. Even classic slasher films like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street would count because of how influential they were.

I might have to PM you a list of recommendations, then, because there's a ton I could put up right here and now, though I'm sure I've already discussed a few (such as Brick, a noir film set in high school). I'll see what I can trudge up.

I'll also try and give this film a watch (which shouldn't be hard, I'm unemployed and have plenty of time on my hands).

Yeah, definitely PM me a list of stuff. Brick is a great one as is The Brothers Bloom! Eventually, I want to get to things I haven't seen, but it'll probably be a couple months before we get to that point.

Regarding Upstream Color

I'm Domano's wife, so you see in his thread above that one of my big questions was about the overall reason behind the abductions. I couldn't figure out if it was stealing the money (and lives!) of people, a strange biological experiment where a human soul/life could be transmitted to a pig, a combination of the two, or neither of them. The control aspect of it was interesting though, especially at the start where the woman is being hypnotized/commanded and she follows orders beyond physical need (the Wall is up, the Wall is down). If it was about controlling others, that at least explained that those in control may have different motivations. The man stealing money being more malicious (stealing, taking their time/money/memory away) and the farmer seeming more nurturing (physically doing the work and caring for the pigs, plus the sounds/music he created seemed to trigger memory). Maybe they all had their reasons for being part of it, and ultimately would have used their power in their own way if they'd succeeded.

It was interesting, and of course beautiful as a few of you mentioned (at one point I wondered if this was based on a graphic novel). But when those credits came up, I definitely had that "what just happened!?" moment. I haven't been mind-boinked by a movie like this since seeing Darren Aronofsky's Pi for the first time.

Looking forward to the next one. And The Thing is definitely intelligent

Guess we're gonna have to watch The Thing!

For anyone interested, the New Yorker write up on Upstream Color is a great read.