Cinemascope

for my own reference

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

 

film list - 4 july 2012


t men – anthony mann – average noir drama about two undercover agents going undercover in the mob.
it's a wonderful life – frank capra – true blue feel good. jimmy stewart is all american goodness and an angel walks the earth.
the girl who leapt through time – japanese anime classic about a girl who leaps back a day to make a love affair happen- and fails many times. lovingly drawn. science fiction meets coming of age
robot carnival – a series of anime directors playing with robots. the fun ones are the ones with humor. the tedious ones that try make profound the man/machine divide.
the other guys – when the hero cops die after jumping off a building the other guys take their place. loser buddy cop comedy. almost funny.
macbeth – orson welles over the top melodrama set in a craggy landscape. the norse goth chiaroscuro is all very dramatic.
it happened one night – dil hain ki manta nahin with more sweetness and beauty.
shame – new york city and a strange sexuality / morality drama. sex obsessed man in crystal clear skyscrapers and his sister a crumbling wreck
yojimbo – akira kurosawa. epic drama where a traveling samurai plays one clan against another in a a small village torn into two.
faster . dwayne johnson is released from prison and goes an a revenge rampage.
the all round reduced personality .helke sander. terrific film about a berlin. a single mother photographer and another group of women photograph the streets of berlin. long track shots of berlin.
ghost world. sad bitter enough telling of the graphic novel where two girlfriends in small town america spend time being cynical outsiders while vying for acceptance.
le chinoise- godard’s experimental staccato parody(?) on chinese communism and its glamour among the french youth of the 60s. difficult.
of gods and men – true story set in algeria that is based in a christian monastery surorunded by gradually increasing violence. the monks try and withstand but are kidnapped and murdered.
bridesmaids – too nasty to be completely funny. a crisis emerges when one of two girlfriends decides to leave spinsterhood and get married. jealousy rears its ugly head.
money ball – sports film in which brad pitt along with a number cruncher saves a baseball team.
tintin. the animation is lovingly recreated comic book. much nicer than i’d like to admit from steven spielberg. cant complain. and i love snowy though haddock could be better.
father son and holy war – anand patwardhan’s rant making wild and entertaining connections across gender and violence. shrill but that’s the point.
war and peace – another patwardhan classic agit-prop- long anti bomb story. why cant we live happily with one another?
diary of a country priest – bresson and a hero who is an ailing young priest in a small village. not quite ‘a man escaped’
news from ideological antiquity . eisenstein marx das capital – alexander kluge making a film about eisenstein’s aborted film on das capital via james joyce’s ulysses. verbose pontificating galore- except for that fabulous short by tom twyker that catalogues al the material on a street in berlin. cameraman
all that jazz . bob fosse. semi autobiographical musical classic with many over the top and more than slightly annoying songs scattered through. the man dies at the end- i think. ‘the wall’ with broadway songs.
agora – rachel weisz plays greek mathematician woman who is killed for not toeing the line of the new catholic powers in alexandria.
melancholia – lars von trier’s diptych of women suffering. the wedding party of the dangerously on the edge kirsten dunst in a mansion on the edge of the world. and in the second part apocalypse is coming as a blue planet collides with the earth. metaphors and meanings overflow. but the premise still seems very silly. i laughed at all the profundity.
the birth of a nation – d w griffith’s silent extraordinarily racist film about the birth of the kkk. i cant believe it’s political incorrectness.
line of beauty and grace. jock surges takes photographs of beautiful people – mainly naked women in beautiful places. i find them boring. as did i this fanmail.
exit through the gift shop. banksy. twisted doc on the boom of street art which documents the creation of another scam “street artist” thierry guetta. fun.
shanghai. dibakar banerjee’s first mis-step is still very good. more than slightly moralistic the film still manages to make some indelible images of bureaucracy and small town india. the language is where he falters and also in the evocation of place. the decision to make the town a generic indian city- i didn’t think helped.
rowdy rathore – rocking good time. prabhudeva cracks it again this time- in spite of being saddled with akshay kumar.
the saroj khan story – saroj khan is a diva. the story arc is pretty much predictable like a hindi film- but seeing her in the background at aaiye meherbaan is a real trip. and it has madhuri dixit too. so there.
27 down – i am supposed to like this film- but i could not get over the predictable story telling- though some bombay train images were fabulous in black and white.
supermen of malegaon – it is good that the film in the film is a comedy. we laugh then at the places where we are supposed to laugh and not at the people making the film. warm loving film.
a nous la libertie – rene clair doing a chaplin and a tati. two scoundrels let loose on a phonograph company wreak havoc- but also make the factory the incredible machine making for much leisure.
gangs of wasseypur – pissed me off so bad with its idea of bullying as humor. and badly made too. and manoj vajpai hams his ass off.

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