Risselada

Under discussion:

My Best Fiend  (1999)

This is the thirteenth feature length film I've seen by director Werner Herzog.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (My Best Fiend)

Herzog is not just my favorite director to hear talk, he is one of my favorite people to listen to altogether.  So I was excited to watch was appeared to be his most personal documentary.  About his most famous leading man Klaus Kinski, this is mostly about Herzog's interactions and relationship with the man.  If you know even a little bit about Herzog or Kinski or have seen either of their movies and have been fascinated, then I can wholeheartedly recommend this film.  My only real disappointment was that I had seen most of the footage in this film already through other sources.  So there wasn't quite enough new here to satisfy what I was hoping for.  Nevertheless, it should be fantastic for anyone with the right sensibilities discovering this for the first time.  If you are fascinated by a man with incredible acting talent but also with wild emotional swings between gentleness and the most egotistical hate filled violent fits along with other unusual psychosis, then that's what I'm talking about.

Werner Herzog:
Total feature length films seen: 13
Previous average film score: 8.75
New average film score: 8.7692

Rating: 9/10

Moral Tales, Filmic Issues

This one isn't in the Spout database but I thought I'd mention it because I enjoyed it.  You can see this on disc one of the Criterion Collection set of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales.  The first film in the set The Bakery Girl of Monceau is so short at 23 minutes that it would have seemed kind of wasteful to have nothing else on the disc.  So we get this fantastic 84 minute long dialogue with Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder.  These guys are as wonderful to hear talking to each other as it is to hear the characters in Rohmer's films talking to each other.  Even though I had not hardly any of the films he was referring  to I found it fascinating.  I will have to revisit this interview some day after I have seen more of his oeuvre.

Rating: 9/10

Under discussion:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs  (1937)

Snow White  (1916)

Snow White

The final feature length film from the DVD set "Treasures From American Film Archives" is a classic tale, but set some of the future standards of cinematic interpretations.  Or at least it is known to have been a considerable influence on Walt Disney in his inspiration and execution of his own version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  My biggest complaint is that there seems to be moments that jump over major scenes or plot points.  I don't know if part of the film is missing or the filmmakers just assumed people were familiar with the story enough to know what wasn't being shown.  Otherwise it's a fun example of very early American fantasy filmmaking.

Rating: 7/10

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Burn After Reading  (2008)

A Serious Man  (2009)

This is the forteenth feature length film I've seen by directors Joel and Ethan Coen.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

A Serious Man

It's a special moment that seems to have come around once a year in the fall season the last few years when I get to watch another new Coen brothers film.  Since they are my favorite filmmakers, and being a film lover, there are few moments of cinematic anticipation as big as this for me.

My love and admiration for their films always ends up being massive.  Sometimes immediately, and sometimes as it sinks in.  Last year's Burn After Reading was pretty much instantaneous.  A Serious Man I knew I liked just as much, but took me a while longer to figure out completely why.  The reason it took me a while, is actually the reason why it's so great.

It has a lot of the wonderful and distinctive Coen brothers characters and dialogue.  But in trying to make sense of the plot, the viewer is doing exactly what the protagonist is trying to figure out about his life.  A lot of things and events occur in Larry's life that either seem like they have some kind of meaning or otherwise at least incite a search for their meaning.  The same thing holds true about things and events in the film that incite the viewers to deeply question their meaning.  It's like the story within a story of the goy's teeth.  The Rabbi telling the story loves to tell it with enthusiasm, punctuating every detail, and seemingly building it up to a climax so that any average listener assumes there is some meaning behind the story that will be revealed.  When in actuality the point is never reveal as anticipated and the story teller's reason for even telling the story seems ambiguous beyond just enjoying telling the story.

I think the Coens see themselves as story tellers like this, and maybe they even sometimes see God as a story teller like this.  Either way, they will point out that life can be like a good story where certain events seem to stick out as if they have some kind of important meaning or foreshadowing that we are meant to investigate.  But a lot of times in life that meaning is never quite found, so why should a good story feel like it needs to give a clear answer or meaning in the end either?

As an extra comment about the film, all of the scenes where Larry is in his office are my favorite.  Be it either talking to the student Clive, or to his boss about his tenure, or on the phone with a representative from Columbia house.  These scenes should be added to the huge list of other sublime moments from the Coens' spectacular oeuvre.

Joel and Ethan Coen:
Total feature length films seen: 14
Previous average film score: 9.9231
New average film score: 9.9286

Rating: 10/10

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

All About Eve  (1950)

This is the second feature length film I've seen by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

All About Eve

I don't have too much to say about such a famous movie mostly because I feel like it must have all been said before, and I would tend to agree with the general sentiments surrounding it.  If you rent the DVD for this movie, you will get more special features than you can almost handle.  I watched them all because I'm compulsive.  I enjoyed them, but now I've heard so much about this movie, that I can't stand to take too much time to write much more about it.

I usually tend to shy away from movies about backstage theatre drama, especially involving selfish divas.  People tend to write about what they know, so there are a highly disproportionate amount of backstage subject matters in movies and plays.  But when the writing, acting, and everything else are the best, I guess it doesn't matter what the subject is, as long as it's the best for what it is.  Mankiewicz loved the theatre yet was one of it's most its most harsh and savvy critics.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz:
Total feature length films seen: 2
Previous average film score: 10
New average film score: 9.5

Rating: 9/10

Under discussion:

Man of Aran  (1934)

This is the second feature length film I've seen by director Robert Flaherty.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Man of Aran

I've heard him called the "Father of the documentary" (although a quick search of the phrase shows more hits for John Grierson), his films are actually more constructed and narrative than in a method that required a lot more effort than filming what we would consider to be more of a strict documentary today.

The locations are real.  The people are usually native, but their relationships may not be.  And while their actions may be inspired by the more interesting parts of reality, they are still acted out for the camera.

The most exciting part of this film, the shark hunt was a recreation of a practice that had been abandoned for a generation or more.  People still had all of the equipment, but didn't exactly know what they were doing.  It was all constructed for the camera and for editing.  (When the kid found the basking shark though, I found that to be some creepy shit!)

There is a documentary on the DVD called "How the Myth Was Made" which revisits the Aran islands decades after the film was made.  It includes conversations with some of the crew, reactions from natives to how they view the film today, and interesting stories about how stuff was shot.  It also notes how a lot of aspects of life on the islands were intentionally not shown or mentioned at all in the film in a kind of manipulative way, but that's Flaherty's way.  People said he was more of a visual poet than a documentary filmmaker because he honestly wasn't trying for reality as a kind of cinematic poetry inspired by reality.

Robert Flaherty:
Total feature length films seen: 2
Previous average film score: 9
New average film score: 8.5

Rating: 8/10

Under discussion:

Hell's Hinges  (1916)

Hell's Hinges

This is available through the DVD set "Treasures From American Film Archives".  The western has always been such a distinct genre with it's own clichés, and for that reason it has always been a great genre to subvert.  I think this was probably one of the earliest really subversive westerns.  And the star William S. Hart was probably the first real star of the western genre.  This is probably one of my new favorite pre-1920s feature length films, although I haven't seen too many.  They are sometimes hard to appreciate, not just because equipment and technique seem primitive by today's standards, but most of the times the film has degraded so bad that we cannot appreciate what it originally looked like.  Hell's Hinges looks fairly good here though.  And sometimes you can be surprised by the great and gritty stories from these early years, especially since there wasn't too much censorship at that time, compared with a couple decades later.

Rating: 8/10

Under discussion:

Pather Panchali  (1955)

This is the first film I've seen by director Satyajit Ray.

Pather Panchali (Song of the Road)

I actually had watched most of this one a while ago on my computer, but got interrupted and never finished it.  Not because it was bad, but because I just don't prefer watching movies on my computer and also there was not as much urgency to finish it as there would be to a movie I rented and needed to return.

Quite a famous movie in the world of cinema.  It's the film that put Indian cinema on the global cinema map, and is often considered one of the greatest films ever made.

There's not any stand out aspect of the film.  It's great because there is no central character, but we get to see the interactions between many different members of a family from different generations.

For myself, it was also wonderful to see different cultural aspects of this particular rural part of India.  From the architecture, to the clothing, and the games, food, work, recreation, theatre, commerce.  It's immersing.

The primary conflict comes from the issue of poverty.  There are no real solutions to the issue, but people in these situations need just as much if not more of a portrayal in cinema than the fancy and often shallow upper class lifestyle.

Rating: 9/10

Under discussion:

Erik the Viking  (1989)

Black Adder [TV Series]  (1983)

This is the fourth feature length film I've seen by director Terry Jones.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Erik the Viking

All of the previous films I've seen with Terry Jones' name attached with directing credit have been the Monty Python films.  So it's hard to judge this film without having the Pythons work somewhere else in your mind.  Especially since Jones himself and John Cleese both appear in the film as well.  Jones states in the special features on the DVD that he feels as though part of the reason the film was mostly a flop was because of people's expectations for another Python film.  I'm not sure if that's really a fair reason though.  If he thought that was the reason, he should have known as much from the start.

Also, he seemed to want to blame the editing of the film.  In fact this film has been reedited a number of times.  I'm not sure the exact count.  The version currently available on DVD is the shortest version yet, entitled "The Director's Son's Cut" because Jones' son Bill was the editor for the release.  I'm not sure why Jones thought that it was necessary to keep cutting and slashing this film down to smaller and smaller sizes.  I got a hold of a copy of the previously released version, and I didn't feel like it dragged any more than the latest cut.  In fact, the new cut takes out so much and rearranges things so much, that I found it a bit confusing.  There's not a lot of logic for why one scene leads to another because all of that has been cut out.

The story is fun though and there are some great characters and actors.  It was fun to see Tim McInnerny of Blackadder fame who makes a great pear with both his father played by writer Charles McKeown (who has co-written a few Terry Gilliam scripts) and also with his main rival / best friend Richard Ridings.  McInnerny's scenes of going berserk are my favorite in the film.

Although Tim Robbins does well in the role of Erik, I do not think he is right for it.  Listen to the commentary and even Terry Jones will admit.  They had a lot of other people they wanted to play the role first that fell through.  It's not really his acting that is to fault, it's just his stature.  Robbins is one of the biggest and tallest guys of the group, but it would have been much more fun and funny if he was more short and scrawny.

The inexplicable romances in the film are another thing that put me off a bit too.  But the characters and settings still make it fun enough that I'm glad I was glad to have seen it.

Terry Jones:
Total feature length films seen: 4
Previous average film score: 9.3333
New average film score: 8.75

Rating: 7/10

Under discussion:

I Am Sam  (2002)

Search for the Beast  (1997)

Search for the Beast

I, like my friend joem18b, agree that people way too often use the hyperbolic description of a movie they hate as "the worst movie ever".  You will not hear me use this phrase unless I really mean it.  For a long time I claimed the my least favorite movie ever was I Am Sam.  Now, I haven't seen it in a while, nor would I want to, but I think I have finally found a movie that is so horrible in every single aspect of filmmaking that it surpasses even my disdain for the despicable, manipulative, false sentimentality of that film.

Yes, Search for the Beast, the third of the Bigfoot themed films available on the four movie DVD Bigfoot Terror.

I'm sure if I were able to go through the VHS collections of enough Americans I would be able to find some shitty movies that people made in their backyard in the 90s with no budget, and a lot of these would be worse than this film.  The only difference is that somehow this movie was able to get video distribution through a decent sized distribution company.  Something this shitty should not be on Netflix!!  Should it?

Watching this is torture.  It's 82 minutes long but feels more like three hours.  I wanted to pull my hair out and punch things.  I couldn't believe it.  Most of it is just boring though, even the nudie scenes.  And the ending will shock you with bad taste, but because it's so absurd how it's inserted into the film.

Watch it only if you want a contender for your own personal "worst movie ever"

Rating: 1/10

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

A Fistful of Dollars  (1967)

For a Few Dollars More  (1967)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (1967)

Once Upon a Time in America  (1984)

Once Upon a Time in the West  (1969)

Giù la Testa  (1972)

This is the sixth feature length film I've seen by director Sergio Leone.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Giù la testa (Duck, You Sucker) (A Fistful of Dynamite)

Sergio Leone is the author of my very favorite film, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  The similarly styled and A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, both starring Clint Eastwood as essentially the same character were highly enjoyable lead ups.  You could see Leone's style developing and improving along the same path.  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was the perfect climax of that style.

You could say every single one of his films took place at an era in history bit later than his previous one.  His next film Once Upon a Time in the West is also fantastic and shares a lot in style with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but there is a definite change in direction as well.  I guess he was thinking since he had perfected that style, there was no reason to keep remaking it.  Once Upon a Time in the West is slower paced, more brooding, and for the first and only time as a lead role for a woman.  Something about the movies seem to be more and more dark and socially and politically conscious.  To put it frankly, they are less fun.

Since I had already seen his final film Once Upon a Time in America, I can now see that I should have expected what tone Duck, You Sucker would be in.  But for some reason I thought I read here that this was Leone's most comical film.  That is pretty far from the truth.  The two main characters can themselves be comical, but in a way that is covering up or coming out of a lot more sickness and pain.

It's a film about revolution, with some of Leone's signature sparse and enigmatic character flashbacks.  Yeah it's a great film, but for pure satisfaction, I prefer the dollars trilogy era Leone.

Sergio Leone:
Total feature length films seen: 6
Previous average film score: 9
New average film score: 8.8333

Rating: 8/10

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Shriek of the Mutilated  (1974)

Shriek of the Mutilated

The second film on the quadruple feature DVD set Bigfoot Terror that my girlfriend and I watched from Netflix.

This is probably the most well known of the films in this seat.  It's the one that's poster dons the cover.  And a clip of this film we saw on youtube was one that had terrified us and we watched over and over again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zn3oW5wocA

This was actually my favorite of the films, although it might actually be the one that fits the least on this set.  It gets really strange at the end.  And one of the most exciting parts was actually a strange violent scene near the beginning before we even encounter any Bigfoot type monsters.

 Rating: 3/10

Under discussion:

Tini Zabutykh Predkiv  (1964)

This is the first film I've seen by director Sergei Parajanov

Tini zabutykh predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)

I was quite looking forward to seeing this one.  It had been highly rated and recommended from many sources.  But while it's a beautiful looking film in many ways, it failed to move me much.

Parajanov was a good friend of Tarkovsky who has made some films I would highly praise.  While they are similar in a few ways including just the fact that they believe film should go beyond simple entertainment to be more primarily a kind of artistic stimulation.  But in many ways they are quite opposites as well.  Parajanov's camera is quick and bumpy and jumpy with extreme wide angle lenses.

The film creates a strong sense of location.  I always like seeing films that transport me to another culture.  The music is distinct here as well, like nothing I've ever heard before.  And I assume it's indigenous folk music of the Hutsuls who populate this film.  Other than that, I couldn't really get a grip on any of the characters or story.

Rating: 6/10

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Shogun Assassin  (1980)

Lone Wolf and Cub 3: Baby Cart to Hades  (1972)

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance  (1972)

Lone Wolf and Cub 2: Baby Cart at the River Styx  (1972)

This is the third feature length film I've seen by director Kenji Misumi.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Kozure Ôkami: Shinikazeni mukau ubaguruma (Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades)

This is the third in the Lone Wolf and Cub series.  I loved the first two which some people may be more familiar as being reedited and combined to create Shogun Assassin.  Since my favorite of the series so far is the second film, and they were able to combine the first two films into one.  I'm hoping this may be some case where the even numbers of the series are the greatest.  I had this feeling like there were some unfinished portions of the plot in the third movie, even though it was really fantastic.  I'm looking forward to the fourth one.

Kenji Misumi:
Total feature length films seen: 3
Previous average film score: 9.5
New average film score: 9.3333

Rating: 9/10

Under discussion:

A Fistful of Dollars  (1967)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly  (1967)

Once Upon a Time in America  (1984)

Once Upon a Time in the West  (1969)

Mother Night  (1996)

Inglorious Basterds  (2009)

This is the seventh feature length film I've seen by director Quentin Tarantino.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Inglourious Basterds

I've seen all of Tarantino's films.  And since I've become a fan I've made to sure to see all of them in the theatre.  There are a lot of things that irk me about his style.  Some of them irk me while giving me delight at the same time.  But I always find the films entertaining.

This film starts right out with a scene that was clearly modeled off of one of the very first scenes of my favorite film of all time The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  I know this to be Tarantino's favorite film of all time as well, so I wasn't too surprised.  But Tarantino really has me being pulled back and forth violently regarding my admiration for this scene.  My joy at wanting to call it a delightful homage and my disgust at what seems almost like straight up plagiarism are constantly at war trough my viewing of this scene.

The segment starts out with the subtitle "Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France" which is another in the long line of "Once Upon a Time..." titled films started by The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly director Sergio Leone with such films as Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America.  Then we hear the music of Ennio Morricone who became famous for providing all of the music in all of Leone's films from A Fistful of Dollars onward.  Now the scene being referenced is our introduction to Lee Van Cleef's character, or "the bad".  In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, we see him riding up ominously to an isolated farmer's home.  The farmer has a long, tense meal with the farmer.  It begins with very few words and ends with mass murder by guns.  There are endless similarities in structure, character, and tone.

 Tarantino's use of characters talking about movies is another point of tension for me.  It's cool to see references to other films and film personalities of that era, but sometimes it seems a little unrealistic or forced the way these things are discussed.  Is Tarantino trying to show us how cool and knowledgeable he is about film, or is he naturally just so that it comes out.

Brad Pitt is super fun in this movie and would have been the most memorable character if he wasn't completely blown away by the revelation that is Christoph Waltz.  Thank goodness Tarantino brought this guy to my attention.  I'd never heard of him before despite the fact that he clearly has tons of talent and experience and a long filmography of European films.  Here's hoping this guy will get more worthy parts.  Anyone have any suggestions for his older films to see?

*What follows may be a spoiler of sorts.  There was a while as the plot was building that I felt like there was a lack of tension because what the protagonists were trying to do would alter the outcome of major World War II history was we know it.  Since I already knew how the war ended, I felt like I knew if certain aspects of the plot would be successful or not.  But as we neared the climax I realized there was no reason to feel like Tarantino of anyone would stick to straight history over his own sense of what would make a film the most exciting.  It's an alternate history as a form of exploitation filmmaking that isn't apparent at first.

It was a little strange to watch this film right after Mother Night.  Although the films are quite different, because they both deal with Nazis and even some on screen representation of real famous Nazis I almost got a few scenes mixed up in my head.  At least some of the themes of the two films entwined themselves in my mind.  It made an interesting thematic double feature of sorts.

Quentin Tarantino:
Total feature length films seen: 7
Previous average film score: 9
New average film score: 9

Rating: 9/10

Under discussion:

Human Condition, Part 1: No Greater Love  (1958)

Story of a Prostitute  (1965)

The Fighting Elegy  (1966)

This is the fifth feature length film I've seen by director Seijun Suzuki.  I chose to watch this film based on previous good ratings I've given other films by this director and to better my favorite directors by algorithm listing.

Shunpu den (Story of a Prostitute)

Not quite as kooky and dynamic as some of Suzuki's other films.  This is probably the least fun and the most humorless film I've seen from him.  I kind of miss those elements.  Still, it's a decent film with some interesting moments.

Some of the elements here of love between prostitutes and soldiers could be seen better in The Human Condition Part I - No Greater Love.

As far as war films go.  It's sad to me that Suzuki was never able to make his sequel to Fighting Elegy, one of my favorite films.  The main character was going off to the war at the end and its a disappointment that was never realized on film as well.

Seijun Suzuki:
Total feature length films seen: 5
Previous average film score: 9.5
New average film score: 9

Rating: 7/10

Under discussion:

The Fantastic Planet  (1973)

The Holy Mountain  (1973)

Cosmos [TV Series]  (1980)

This is the first film I've seen by director René Laloux

La planète sauvage (The Fantastic Planet)

"Weird" is a word that is usually not very descriptive or original, but there are few films I've seen for which it would be more appropriate to use the word "weird" as a description.

At times I was kind of getting the same vibe as a Terry Gilliam Monty Python animation or maybe even a bit of Dr. Seuss only much more strange and menacing.

The film feels like it must be a metaphor or allegory, but for what I'm not sure.  The description for the film on Netflix claims it is "said to be based on the Soviet occupation of the Czech Republic".  I wouldn't know too much about that.  It must have been a really strange occupation.  Of course the themes of racism, slavery, and revolt are all prevalent here and not unknown to any human society.

I first saw a clip of this film projected on a wall at a kooky loft apartment party where the rest of the room was dressed up as a set for some kind of sci-fi space sex film.  Clips from The Holy Mountain and Carl Sagan's Cosmos.  This seemed like the most appropriate setting for the exhibition of the film.

Rating: 7/10