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      CommentAuthorSteven
    • CommentTimeJul 13th 2018
    I get it, it's not a challenging film in terms of its narrative, themes and allegories. But it's just so damn slow and drab for me.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 13th 2018
    Wouldn’t that slowness itself count as a challenge?
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorSteven
    • CommentTimeJul 13th 2018
    Certainly. It's challenging in how boring and pretentious it is. But I didn't find it hard to follow the story or that difficult to understand its themes (mirroring, genetics, cancer, humans destroy shit, blah blah blah). But I do applaud it for its uniqueness, I just didn't happen to like the end result all that much.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 13th 2018
    Not on the level of EX MACHINA, but definitely one of the best films of the year so far. Loved it!
    I am extremely serious.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 14th 2018
    pretentious? it was downright pulpy at times. "pretentious" would seem to indicate that the movie had nothing to back up it's aspirations, that it is only pretending to be thoughtful. I think the thought is definitely there. It's definitely not a "humans destroy stuff" movie.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 14th 2018
    A Quiet Place

    ok, but too similar in tone and style to countless other dystopian movies. it made me want to watch "I am Legend" again.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 14th 2018
    A film I rank even higher than Annihilation. Stunning!
    I am extremely serious.
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      CommentAuthorLSH
    • CommentTimeJul 15th 2018 edited
    I've heard a lot of good and bad things about A Quiet Place; often within the same review(!).
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 15th 2018
    Thor wrote
    A film I rank even higher than Annihilation. Stunning!


    Yeah I just watched it again and I think I underrated it first time around. Very, very good. The second half of the movie is relentless.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 22nd 2018
    Memento

    really, really good. So many movies botch a good premise with bad execution, others do their best to salvage a bad premise with good execution, Memento is one of the few that takes a brilliant idea and fulfills it's promise. A completely satisfying movie. I wish Nolan still made stuff like this.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 22nd 2018 edited
    MEMENTO is great (although do watch Gaspar Noë's IRREVERSIBLE for a more gruelling take with the same narative mechanism). Nolan hasn't made a bad movie thus far.
    I am extremely serious.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018
    Thor wrote
    MEMENTO is great (although do watch Gaspar Noë's IRREVERSIBLE for a more gruelling take with the same narative mechanism). Nolan hasn't made a bad movie thus far.


    He’s probably a bit better than your average Hollywood director, but I find most of his movies fall into the former camp I mentioned, badly executed movies with a good premise.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018 edited
    OK. I disagree with that, as I actually think his execution is often more interesting than his premise, even though they're mostly all ambitious premises (in the case of INSOMNIA not his own, though).
    I am extremely serious.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018
    Thor wrote
    OK. I disagree with that, as I actually think his execution is often more interesting than his premise, even though they're mostly all ambitious premises (in the case of INSOMNIA not his own, though).


    I think the most prominent example would be inception, which takes the idea of infiltrating dreams and turns the "dreams" into, essentially, video games. There's very little surreal or sublime in these "dreams", just standard heists and shootouts with occassional twists. The whole movie can be summed up in the part where Tom Hardy, after saying, "Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger", pulls out a massive grenade launcher. In "Inception's" world, dreaming big means getting a bigger gun.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorSteven
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018
    I love Inception and Nolan. But that is a good point.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018
    Not at all. It's the sheer mise-en-scene of each dream level -- the amount of kinetic energy and ingenuity in them -- that makes his films. The stories are pretty straightforward, even those that are told in unusual ways; it's what goes on inside each segment that is riveting.
    I am extremely serious.
  1. Yeah, sure, they're well-shot and exciting as standard-issue gunfights and chase scenes. But other than the revolving doorway and the folding-Paris scene, there's precious little ingenuity or actual "dream logic" going on. Even the otherwise totally prosaic Doctor Strange showed a lot more creativity along those lines.

    In "Inception's" world, dreaming big means getting a bigger gun.

    Perfect movie for Americans then? wink
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018 edited
    I disagree. I think it's all highly visionary. Nothing "standard" about it at all, which is a rather bizarre claim to have for a director who never resorts to standard genre tropes.
    I am extremely serious.
  2. Thor wrote
    Not at all. It's the sheer mise-en-scene of each dream level -- the amount of kinetic energy and ingenuity in them -- that makes his films. The stories are pretty straightforward, even those that are told in unusual ways; it's what goes on inside each segment that is riveting.


    The thing is that Nolan's mise-en-scene can be a bit problematic at times. Inception's actually one of his best works in that regards (particularly Gordon-Levitt's drawn-out zero-gravity fight sequence) and the other one would be Dunkirk where he goes almost Spielbergian (the fantastic shot with the poles on the Mole, where a very ordered army becomes completely chaotic during an airstrike in a wide shot, which almost sums up what the film is about) at times (in fact when he quit his cynicism he somehow became Spielbergian also in his endings).

    But Dark Knight Rises' final sequence and, especially, the fistfight scene in Interstellar are awkward at best and cringeworthy at worst. I almost wished he did that fight scene in a single overhead shot. It just looks awful. I applaud the risky approach of not using a second unit in his films, but it's been a steep learning curve at times.

    Visually one of his best ideas might have been the chase under ice in Insomnia. I need to rewatch it.
    http://www.filmmusic.pl - Polish Film Music Review Website
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018 edited
    Love the fight scene in INTERSTELLAR; such tense editing. He's so brilliant at tempo, drawing out when necessary (with looming threats, like the sea planet), and then more rapid when needed.

    So far, I haven't seen any mise-en-scene in a Nolan film that didn't impress somehow, both in its ambition and execution. He is one of the very best directors in Hollywood at the moment. Although I wasn't as thrilled with DUNKIRK as seemingly everyone else. That's the exception for me. Still a great film, but a bit more lacklustre in that particular area.
    I am extremely serious.
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      CommentAuthorAidabaida
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018 edited
    Thor wrote
    I disagree. I think it's all highly visionary. Nothing "standard" about it at all, which is a rather bizarre claim to have for a director who never resorts to standard genre tropes.


    I guess while a shootout in a building with unpredictable gravity is a little more interesting than just a standard movie shootout, the fact that a shootout is even occurring in what is supposed to be a dream is what makes the movie so disappointing. Everything is so logical and literal when it ought to be strange and foggy. If you're dreaming in a spinning car, everything starts spinning in the dream. if you're dunked in water, there's a flood. Secrets are pieces of paper stored inside literal safes. You can create armies of standard henchmen. Everything is bound by the laws of physics as we know them.
    Bach's music is heartless and robotic.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 23rd 2018 edited
    Well, it's Hollywood. It's not David Lynch. I don't expect dream sequences in big Hollywood films to adher to the same logic as actual dreams.
    I am extremely serious.
  3. Maybe not, but it could adhere a bit less to the logic of standard Hollywood action scenes... wink
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 24th 2018 edited
    Ha! I could maybe understand the 'standard' thing if you were talking about Rob Cohen or Jon Turtletaub or Jon Favreau or something -- all capable, but pretty standard genre journeymen. But Nolan? Nah. Makes no sense.
    I am extremely serious.
  4. Thor wrote
    Love the fight scene in INTERSTELLAR; such tense editing. He's so brilliant at tempo, drawing out when necessary (with looming threats, like the sea planet), and then more rapid when needed.

    So far, I haven't seen any mise-en-scene in a Nolan film that didn't impress somehow, both in its ambition and execution. He is one of the very best directors in Hollywood at the moment. Although I wasn't as thrilled with DUNKIRK as seemingly everyone else. That's the exception for me. Still a great film, but a bit more lacklustre in that particular area.


    It's just finally impeccable. You never (horrifyingly, to add, due to that) lose track of what's happening. And there is one shot that is somewhat symbolic of what's to come and I don't think Nolan ever used that kind of poetics, some kind of a few-second metonymy. Inception and Dunkirk were the films (also The Dark Knight, though people are actually pointing technical mistakes out in the huge midpoint chase scene, never noticed any myself) where I found no technical fault. That's what disappointed me so much in the final act of Dark Knight Rises.
    http://www.filmmusic.pl - Polish Film Music Review Website
  5. Edmund Meinerts wrote
    Maybe not, but it could adhere a bit less to the logic of standard Hollywood action scenes... wink


    To be a bit of a devil's advocate here: Carl Gustav Jung (contrary to Freud for whom dreams were essentially wish fulfillment) analyzed dreams in context of Aristotle's Poetics. Putting it simply, for Jung dreams had a strong narrative structure. The symbol theory used and explained in Inception is more rooted in that tradition than in Freudian, like the irrational and downright oneiric David Lynch. Lynch is more complex than that, but applying Freud's theories to Eraserhead definitely made it make a bit more sense thematically (whatever we are looking at is about the fears of parenthood) and Mulholland Drive (though paradoxically the "dark" reality of the film is much more nightmare-like than Betty's dream world) could be definitely explored in these terms.

    While it may sound a bit weird that Nolan's film about dreams is one of his most impeccably logical and rational in terms of storytelling, something has to be said about him being somehow able (contrary to Interstellar) to muster up so much from something that is constant exposition. I know that Thor will find a lot of his beloved visual elements (though frankly, never as deep as his references are, and I am saying it as a Nolan film. And, except Dunkirk, Inception is possibly his most immersive film. Interstellar is his most beautiful, but part of that comes from how the farm scenes are informed by Terrence Malick's visual style), but the film constantly explains everything via dialogue. However, it works in this world, because it also reminds what the stakes are.
    http://www.filmmusic.pl - Polish Film Music Review Website
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      CommentAuthorSouthall
    • CommentTimeJul 26th 2018
    Nuts in May

    Was overjoyed to find this genuine gem of British comedy on the BBC iPlayer, having not seen it for about 25 years. A very, very special and very, very funny film about a camping holiday, I don't suppose many here will have seen it or find it as funny as I do - but I'm so happy to have seen it again (the last time would have been with my late parents, and I vividly remember how funny I found it then).
    • CommentAuthorTimmer
    • CommentTimeJul 27th 2018
    ^
    Yes! Not sure how it would go down with a younger audience now but I love it.
    On Friday I ate a lot of dust and appeared orange near the end of the day ~ Bregt
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 27th 2018
    I'm always up for discovering more vintage British comedy. Is it on Netflix?
    I am extremely serious.
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      CommentAuthorThor
    • CommentTimeJul 27th 2018 edited
    By the way, I don't often post my own viewings in this thread, or similar threads at other boards, as it's kinda my job to view and write about films in a more professional capacity elsewhere. But if anyone's curious, I keep updated lists about what I view -- both new films and ALL films -- in these two places:

    2018 films seen (ranked):

    https://mubi.com/lists/2018-films-ranked

    All films seen in 2018 (not ranked, latest first):

    https://mubi.com/lists/all-feature-films-seen-in-2018
    I am extremely serious.