I know all you junior MovieSnobs, subscribed or not, have been distraught, crying your eyes out on the lack of posts here lately. That's because I'm writing you from the sunny Mediterranean coast instead of the skyrise MovieSnob offices. Since the beaches of southern mid-Italy aren't conducive to journalistic cinematic concentration and the fact I hate composing on my telefonino, I shine the spotlight on you, the potential discriminating cinema aficionado and journalist.

Go ahead, I double-dog dare ya! Post yer snobby opinion on whatever cinematic subject you desire! Think Gravity was the best science-fiction of the 21^st^ century and you're ready to defend that bold statement? Wanna expound on how Inland Empire was Lynch's finest moment (it wasn't)? Take your best shot!

Don't fret...I'll be around lemmy.film. But now, if you'll excuse me, I have spritzes and bikinis waiting for me.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3111234

Mongoose message: I'm crossposting this to !moviesnob@lemmy.film because I feel this post not only is getting lost at sea in !moviesandtv@lemmy.film but is also more suited to this community. I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time today. -- Mongoose

I originally saw this movie during a late night TV marathon for all the movies these two actors made together. I fell in love with them as an acting duo and recommended a few of their movies to multiple people. But years passed and I eventually forgot their names and the title of the movie.

Has anyone seen this movie recently? I saw it back in the 90's and I thought it was brilliant, passionate, romantic, and tragic. But I also remember it being quite crude with the dialogue and it's probably pretty sexist by today's standards.

I have always wanted to share this movie with my wife, but I couldn't remember what it was called. I have asked around before and no one knew what it was, based on my description. I just asked ChatGPT and it instantly identified it. I haven't seen it in 25 years, and I'm wondering if it holds up. Is this a good movie? Do you think it is wise to recommend to my wife that we watch this?

Crossposted from https://lemmy.film/c/moviesandtv. Thanks to @wilberfan@lemmy.film!

• Direct link to the Los Angeles Times article
• Internet Archive capture

-- Mongoose

Still in shock about the death of the great William Friedkin. I thought you were one of the best, Mr. Friedkin. And I can't wait to see his now-to-be-posthumously-released The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.

Going down that rabbit hole, reading the various articles on his passing, I came across the posted linked article originally from 2015 which just illustrates why, besides being one of the milestone movie directors of our times, he was a damned fine and funny racconteur.

If you're interested further on "Billy" telling stories, by all means check out this earlier post, but specifically the bonus links at the bottom. Also highly recommended is Francesco Zippel's 2018 documentary, Friedkin Uncut.

I'm speechless. One of the greats of modern cinema, one of the original "New Hollywood" directors of 1970s. He made it all look so dangerously real.

• BBC
• Variety
• Wikipedia

~Photo:~ ~Elen~ ~Nivrae~ ~from~ ~Paris,~ ~France,~ ~CC~ ~BY~ ~2.0~~,~ ~via~ ~Wikimedia~ ~Commons~

From the linked article…

Duncan Jones’s low budget directorial debut is a wonderful piece of intelligent sci-fi

…and The King would agree! 👍

It's summer, grommies! Surf's up! Catch a wave and you're sittin' on…well, most likely a whirl of microplastics, urine and algae. I remember grabbing my board and goin' down the Belt Parkway to catch a wave off of the 69th Street Pier, sometimes pipelining all the way to the Verrazzano…but I digress.

Big Wednesday is John Milius' 1978 surfer movie and what a wipeout it is. The 120-minute-plus movie in all the time it has to expound on the relationships of the three main characters—Banana Splits co-star and World's Greatest Athlete Jan-Michael Vincent, future Greatest American Hero, William Katt, and Buddy Holly impersonator and future reality-show staple, Gary Busey—never connects emotionally on any level. Director and co-scripter (with journalist Dennis Aaberg) Milius apparently preferred to remain squarely in melodramatic and nostalgic territory, despite the supposedly autobiographical screenplay. There are no big laughs, no big dramas, there's nothing big except for the swells and the film's title.

Beyond the surfing there's only a superficial bond between the three "friends", Katt's and Vincent's romantic relationships are two dimensional at best and any other of the film's relationships, such as between surfboard maker "The Bear" and the boys, are never developed at any real level. The movie is just one anecdote after another with all the connections left out.

To add insult to the skin-deep injury is Basil Poledouris' full-orchestra heroic soundtrack which is far better suited to something that could withstand the weight; at times it seemed it was almost mocking the visuals.

The only really spectacular parts of this film are the surfing sequences, many actually performed by Vincent, Katt and Busey, plus surfer Gerry Lopez. If you must see it, see it only for that.

Fun fact: this movie actually launched the fictitious Bear brand of surfing gear and sportswear, which, unlike the movie Bear brand, these days is under license to Italian sportswear company, Cisalfa.

Edit 21:37:36, CEST: stupid typographical errors.

R.I.P. Paul Reubens

Robert Eggars' The Lighthouse (2019) escapes easy genre-pigeonholing. It is Edgar Allan Poe-inspired, it also has strong elements of Gothic Romanticism, psychological thriller and touches of the surreal, but here the whole is truly greater—and stranger—than the proverbial sum of its parts. One thing doesn't escape classification: it is beautifully shot in a sumptuous palette of grays on 35mm film and framed in an almost perfect square (actually 1.19:1 ratio). Forget about that pathetic trend of releasing black and white versions of movies (presumably to give them an art-house aesthetic they never remotely had to begin with), Eggars and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke have created a film that was born to be in black and white, dare I say, that would have suffered if shot in color.

I must mention that, besides the luxurious cinematography, another vital aspect of this film are the performances of both Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson that run the gamut from understated to over-the-top.

Replacement worker Winslow (Pattinson) arrives on a remote island outpost as assistant to lighthouse caretaker Wake (Dafoe). From there, the story begins to churn like the sea surrounding the island itself. Scores of seagulls seem to hang stationary in the lonely island air, nailed to the sky like a butterfly collection. The surrounding sea's pounding, crashing waves underline the isolation and transmit the inescapable feeling of a primal force so belittling, so humbling, so invincible; resistence seems truly futile. The only light in this film is that of the lighthouse's arc light, and even that has something of the sinister about it.

Between mermaids, seagulls and fever dreams, there are secrets under the surface of everything and everybody that, like corpses buried at sea, eventually bubble up and reveal themselves. Everything seems to get trapped, drowning, in the tar-black of Eggars' film, unable to free itself, sinking deeper, further entrenched. Nothing is as presented except the indominable sea.

Snob Shorthand: this is cinema! Big screen it!

This was going to be an article about why Singing In The Rain is one of the great films in the history of cinema, inspired by…well, it happened to be on TV. In my research I found this article, an excerpt from Jeanine Basinger's 2019 book The Movie Musical reprinted in The Atlantic. Personally, I think she says it best. So if you really need to have explained why this film is No. 10 on the BFI's decennial Greatest Films of All Time list, or No. 5 on the AFI's 100 Greatest American Films of All Time list, or on countless other cineastic "best of" lists, go read Basinger's article.

But…

Before you rush off, I want to bring to your attention to the film's unseen dancer, the invisible ballet going on during the entire film. While everyone is crying with laughter during O'Connor's flying, wire-fu-less Make 'Em Laugh (or whenever Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont opens her mouth), while the trio of Kelly, O'Connor and little Debbie Reynolds (who'd never danced in a movie before!) "effortlessly" tap-dance their way across the apartment and furniture in Good Morning and especially while Kelly effectively does the decathalon dancing without breaking a sweat in Broadway Melody, there is always the unseen dance partner, gliding, swaying and following the stars every shimmy.

Next time you watch Singing In The Rain pay close attention to ace director of photography Harold Rosson's gliding co-star camera work throughout and think about all the crane and dolly shot choreography that went into every one of the unforgettable musical numbers and the straight comedic or dramatic scenes. We are so normally wowed by Kelly and co-director Stanley Donen's choreography, the main cast's fabulous performances, or just the fact that it really is a funny romantic comedy, that we're unaware of Rosson's swooping, spinning and sliding camera is just as lithe as any dancer in the film. But as we say in VFX: if you can see my work, I didn't do my job properly.

~Image:~ ~Photoplay,~ ~1934,~ ~Public~ ~domain,~ ~via~ ~Wikimedia~ ~Commons~

Just who the hell is Zach Braff? Yeah, yeah, I know who he is but first allow me to blow away some personal…prejudices.

I mean, he's a funny guy. We all know him and love him as J.D. from the hit TV series Scrubs (2001-2010). Then the guy goes all auteur on us, writing and directing his first motion picture, Garden State (2004), a quirky, original and extremely enjoyable little comedic drama that actually made money, go figure. Nevertheless, in my mind he's still the guy from Scrubs who's got a pretty good movie under his belt.

Jump-cut to 2023: I saw a film today that had no shootouts, no chase scenes, no aliens, no superheroes, no explosions and only one car crash. What it did have is great acting from the entire ensemble, especially the magnificent performances by the incredible Florence Pugh and dare-I-say national treasure Morgan Freeman. A beautiful, down-to-earth film set in New Jersey titled A Good Person (2023) about the aforementioned car crash, the people and the families involved, specifically the driver of the vehicle, and how they cope with the incident and more. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes grim, with the light occasionally breaking through, it may sometimes lean into melodrama but nevertheless remains grounded. The film shows that when our lives fall apart, despite the proverbial best laid plans (demonstrated in Freeman's character Daniel and his model railroad), there is no manual on how to reassemble the pieces. Sometimes the pieces no longer even fit together.

"But, Mongoose, baby…who made this bittersweet drama?", I know you're asking. Well, it was written and directed by Zach Braff. This is my formal apology: no longer will I first think of Braff from Scrubs but instead "Oh, that talented, sometimes brilliant screenwriter/director/actor who tells life-size stories."

Oh, it's not perfect: the Amor Fate plot thread seemed either an afterthought or an undeveloped idea left in the final cut. I did initially question Daniel's decision to not let Allison (Pugh's character) leave the therapy group but instead invite her to stay. I don't know if I would be so welcoming to someone who changed my life so unexpectedly and drastically, were I ever in a similar situation. Maybe that says more about me than the film. With any luck, I hope I (and by extension, you) never have to find out.

I ask you, how is it that Braff has written and directed only three films with tiny budgets since 2004 —one apparently Kickstarter-funded!—when directors like M. Night Shayamalan are allowed big-budget low-brow turkey after turkey?—we'll get into that specific topic another time soon.

I'm now a Braff fan. What's next?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.film/post/309377

Leave the emotional blackmail to Spielberg and Disney. Some movies don't need to resort to incinerating toys or deer, or hunting down dying, friendly aliens to elicit an emotional reaction less lizard-brain than a jump scare from an audience.

It was truly touching in its subtlety, Ma vie de Courgette (2016), a French-Swiss co-production released as My Life as a Courgette (UK) or My Life as a Zucchini (North America), a stop-motion animated featurette by Swiss director Claude Barras, based on the novel, Autobiographie d'une Courgette by Gilles Paris.

The plot revolves around a child nicknamed Courgette, how he ends up in an orphanage, his adjustment to his new life and to the other children living there. This isn't Annie or Oliver!: although it's an animated film, these ugly-cute characters are rarely cartoonish. After Courgette's arrival at the orphanage, the film then goes into the other orphan's stories. While their stories are obviously never pleasant, some are downright tragic with accompanying emotional scarring.

Director Barras never goes for shock or melodrama during Courgette. It's his restraint that gives the film its strength. The film is airy, but not lightweight. The characters and their personal tragedies are presented as matter of fact, enough to give them depth but not to horrify or titillate. Despite the character design they are all presented as realistic, from the children to the policeman that handles Courgette's case to the administrators of the orphanage. Despite the subject matter, the children and the staff bring plenty of genuine smiles and occasional laughs to the table throughout the film. There are two especially touching moments—one, Rosy, the orphanage worker, kisses the children good night on the cheek; the other when Courgette and Camille hold hands on the schoolbus—that could have been merely maudlin tropes but instead illustrate how loving physical contact is as necessary as eating and breathing.

The only "cartoon" character is the aunt of Camille, a newly arrived orphan, and her storyline was the only discordant note of the film, veering out into cliché territory, but under Barras' direction, not too far out.

Ma vie de Courgette was nominated for the 2017 Academy Awards' Best Animated Feature Film and won Best Animated Film at France's 42^nd^ Cesár Awards, but who cares? If you didn't catch it the first time around or if you're looking for a poignant film that won't insult your intelligence, I strongly suggest you see Courgette.

~Image~ ~courtesy~ ~of~ ~Wikimedia~ ~Commons,~ ~fair~ ~use~

Forget about plastic dolls come to life, puffy-faced 60-year-old men jumping around in front of greenscreens and American 20^th^ century witchhunts! If you click the image next to the post title, you can watch the original summer blockbuster, the first epic movie (sez Scorsese), one of the first colossal films, 1914's Cabiria by Giovanni Pastrone in 720HD! All this and an accompanying soundtrack, yet!

If we wanna push definitions, it's one of the first superhero movies or, with less definition pushing, the first "action hero" movie, introducing the perennial Italian-cinema superman, nascent cinema's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maciste!

Besides inspiring the later American epics of D.W. Griffith, Cabiria also gave birth to the (by today's standards) simple idea of putting the camera on wheels (dollying), henceforth naming said camera technique "the Cabiria shot."

Even more impressive, generations raised on weak scientists turning into giant, green musclemen or wisecracking, belligerent raccoons would do well to note, the sets in Cabiria were not 3D nor miniatures[^note]. Those babies were either constructed, old school, life-size! or shot on location, taking advantage of the Roman Empire's slave labor hundreds of years earlier, thus getting around various unions and guilds—that's a IATSE joke. Among the most impressive are the scenes of Mount Etna's eruption and ensuing destruction, and most famously, the temple of Moloch and the human sacrifice!

• Yes, it's in (gasp!) black and white, although this copy is hand tinted. Pretty!

• No, the intertitles are in Italian but never fear: the King Mongoose has a link for you all to an English-language version from our friends at The Internet Archive. Unfortunately, it's at a lower resolution and no accompanying soundtrack.

• Yes, this version comes in at 02:34:22 and isn't exactly paced like a Fast and Furious movie. Set the video to 1.5x speed if you get fidgety; oddly enough, the film doesn't suffer but the soundtrack may seem a little frenetic. YMMV.

[^note]: That is not to say miniatures were not used among the few cinematic tricks, to wit, the film's eruption of Mount Etna, coupled with double exposure.

Does this belong here?

We are inundated by so many external moving images, advertising unfortunately being the most pervasive, that it is near impossible to know on what to spend 90 minutes of your limited time in this plane of existence. In our quest to enrich of your cinematic culture(!), this is the first of an ongoing series of viewing (minimum) the first ten minutes of any given film and judging if it's worth watching any further. Hit or Miss in 10 minutes. Red pill or blue pill, swipe right or left. You are all cordially invited to participate.

Today's film is Alta Vista (2020), written and directed by Joe Clarke, starring Joe Clarke, Stacey Scowley, Tanika 'Tea' Vickers. Clarke wins today's Marv Newland Triple Crown Award.

Ten minute analysis (real time: 00:15:30)
Summary: protagonist sad sack Joe's father has passed away. He needs a fresh outlook in life and packs in his Iowan reefer fog to pursue his dream as a filmmaker in Hollywood…or maybe just to sample the drugs out there.

• The opening credits—yes, the opening credits—are just so wrong. They are just too…friendly for the immediate feel of the movie[^note1]. Most likely done by someone who just didn't care.
• Cameraperson either suffers from Parkinson's or is drinking their breakfast. Either that or the post artist is heavy handed in his AE Wiggle settings.
• Blade Runner Memorial Award: Narration. Worse yet, mumbled narration. Even worse, narration tries to cover up for flabby storytelling. Alibaba USB Audio Award: There is a clear-cut difference in audio quality between the narration and the diegetic audio.
• Stiff acting.
• Continuity: where was the sister, who is introduced in the next scene, at the funeral? No reason is even intimated.

And our hero Joe is on the road to Hollywood. Do I care? Honestly, no. Joe, in any of his roles as director nor screenwriter nor actor, hasn't given me one reason to. In fifteen minutes this film doesn't know what it wants to be. Next!

Do you think I missed an undiscovered cinematic gem? You tell me; that's what the comments are for!

[^note1]: From the cool blue color correction and (terrible) noir-ish narration of its opening minutes, the film presents itself as a crime drama/mystery…but it's not…or is it?…or maybe it's a comedy? It just doesn't know.

Mr. Nolan…ermm…Sir Christopher, I generally love your films but, please…stop it. Just stop it already.

You shot Tenet and we got COVID-19.

You shot Oppenheimer, we got basically all of Hollywood out on strike.

I think it's a curse because you were executive producer of two versions of Justice League, akin to saying "Beetlejuice " three times.

~Photo:~ ~Georges~ ~Biard,~ ~Christopher~ ~Nolan~ ~Cannes~ ~2018~~,~ ~CC~ ~BY-SA~ ~4.0~~.~

So said Andrei Tarkovsky speaking about Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"2001: A Space Odyssey is phony on many points, even for specialists. For a true work of art, the fake must be eliminated."

And with that provocatory remark, MovieSnob presents for your viewing pleasure, Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972).

Bonus Link: also via Open Culture, Antonios Papantoniou's analysis Solaris Shot by Shot.

I have a confession to make that may disturb many of you. I've tried to combat this aversion but have failed, so now I have to live with it. Let me don my Kevlar™ vest. Take a deep breath and…

I generally don't like anime. I find it mostly boring and repetitive. If you've seen one giant robot…

You must have heard this one knock knock joke regarding a banana before. You must have. Oh, well…

  Knock knock
  Who's there?
  Banana
  Banana who?
  Knock knock
  Who's there?
  Banana
  Banana who??
  Knock knock
  Who's there?
  Banana
  Banana who???
  Knock knock
  Who's there?
  Banana
  Banana who?!?

…this charming exercise goes on ad nauseum until the racconteur decides to finish with…

  Knock knock
  Who's there?
  Orange
  Orange who?
  Orange ya glad I didn't say Banana?!

…and that, mes ami, is how I perceive most anime.

Why did I call you all here today? To talk about Paprika (2006) by Satoshi Kon, produced by Madhouse animation studio. It's a wild, wobbly, surreal ride into the world of dreams. I'm not going to say it's anime cliché-free: just as American or Indian cinema have their own formulaic bromides—stylistic or cultural—Nipponic cinema, especially anime, also has its own. There's no escaping your roots.

The plot is a science-fiction police procedural: Tokita—a cartoonish, morbidly obese, bumbling engineering genius—invents a headset device dubbed the DC Mini for an unnamed firm headed by The Chairman, who—get this—is literally confined to a wheelchair. So far, so anime. The DC Mini headset allows dream co-habitation between two or more wearers (theoretically, doctor and patient); the psychiatrist (headset wearer no. 1) may enter and influence a (headset wearer no. 2) patient's REM dream state to better study the patient's psyche. The DC Mini is still in prototype stage, all its security precautions haven't yet been worked out, and of course multiple headsets have been stolen. Someone is trying to control everybody's dreams. It's up to the other protagonists, mainly Detective Konakawa, Dr. Chiba and her dream alter ego, Paprika, to solve the mystery.

While the idea is high-concept science-fiction, the story itself isn't much deeper than your typical manga[^1]—the film is based on 1993 novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui—nor is the style anything you haven't seen before in anime. For the given subject matter, the art direction is quite linear and not at all abstract nor dreamlike. But it's Kon's presentation that gives it its depth. The dream sequences that unexpectedly weave in and out of the film's reality are intriguing enough; the opening titles are a wonderful example as is the hilarious shot of a line of salarymen, in tribute to Esther Williams, that take a nosedive off of an office building! But the main event is "The Festival", a fever-dream mad parade that extends to the horizon of marching refrigerators, medical simulation mannequins, waving neko cats, golden Buddhas, dolls dolls and more dolls and just about every other absurdity in a never-ending parade. Everything ebbs and flows like made of soft putty.

It is impossible not to make the connection between this film and Nolan's later Inception (2010). Paprika had to be an inspiration to Nolan (and apparently your King presumes correctly).

For such a surreal premise, it's paradoxically grounded and straightforward; it's closer in spirit to Vanilla Sky than Mulholland Drive. The film's broadstroke characters, its resolution and the ending were all a bit…anime…for my tastes (there's no escaping kaiju or mecha in Japanimation, I suppose). But forgiving all that, Paprika is still entertaining and definitely worth seeing at very least for its spectacular eye candy. So, for now you can keep your Akiras, your Evangelions and your Cowboy Bebops. But I am all about Paprika!

[^1]: Relax, I know saying your typical manga means nothing as there are hundreds of different genres. Nevertheless, admit it, you're not normally going to find Sartre-, Hemingway- or Dostoevsky-level literature in your average comic book/manga/fumetto/whatever. No matter how much incest or revenge you want to infuse, it still ain't Shakespeare.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1295951

STUDIOCANAL announced the 4K restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s new-wave masterpiece, LE MÉPRIS, selected as part of the Cannes Classics Selection 2023, in celebration of the 60th anniversary. The restoration of LE MÉPRIS is to be released on 14th June 2023, starring Brigette Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, Fritz Lang.

The premise is simple enough. AFI presents a single frame of a film and you, cinema aficionado that you are, have to guess the movie its from. Fun! For the less, uhm, obsessive of you all it's a five-reply multiple-choice.

Secret King Mongoose Cheat: the movie is on at least one of the AFI-curated lists…so that should narrow it down.

Thank you, @Ansgar, for his post that inspired this one.

The name of this instance, lemmy.film reminds me of Lenfilm, the famous Soviet production company. Anyone want to share their favorite Soviet movies (not just from Lenfilm)?

Mary Harron's Dalíland (2022) tells the story of fictional gallery-assistant-to-gallery-owner James Linton's (Christopher Briney) time with one of the unquestionably most important figures in 20^th^ century art, Salvador Dalí (Sir Ben Kingsley) and his wife, Elena Ivanovna Diakonova otherwise known as Gala (Barbara Sukowa) during the early 1970s.

The film's main thrust (or should I say droop) is aging: in that specific period Dalí was in his 60s, Gala in her 70s, and although the mad parade they cultivated continued around them, Harron presents the famous couple out of breath trying to keep up with it all, caught up in their own act. Dalí is shown as tired, occasionally neurotic and succubus to Gala, presented here as a sort of Nora Desmond. Gala keeps a sloppy control of the Dalí empire, with bad limited-editions being overprinted among other imprudences. They both have their various…ahem…dalliances, Gala with Jesus Christ Superstar's Jeff Fenholt (played by Zachary Nachbar-Seckel), Dalí with latest muse Amanda Lear (portrayed by Andreja Pejić) and others of his entourage, but ultimately these are shown to be not only empty acts of selfish pride but apparently unconsumated.

Kudos to Harron and crew for capturing the era in which the film takes place with a palpable accuracy; it all has a certain Nicholas Roeg feel to it.

Harron's film is slow to start, but once it gets moving it's an interesting glimpse into a period of the lives of the iconic surrealist and his original (and lifelong) muse.

Bonus Links:

• Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí— Destino (2003)

• Spellbound—Hitchcock on Dalí (1945)

~Photo:~ ~Roger~ ~Higgins,~ ~Public~ ~domain,~ ~via~ ~Wikimedia~ ~Commons~

This just in…

As your good King Mongoose is constantly doing research to provide interesting posts here for you all (no thanks necessary, glad to do it!), I entered my search terms famous hollywood noirs into my personal favorite search engine, DuckDuckGo and to my uncomfortable amusement, the linked image was the result. Click the link, try it yourselves, and let me know if your results are the same as mine.

Remember, kids: in life Context is Everything.