| Author | Message | ||
     Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Maybe we've discussed this wonderful film elsewhere. As usual, I watch it years after everyone else. But it's damned good, isn't it? Day Lewis is incredible (as usual). | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
Really? Apart from the first 30 minutes or so, I thought the film incredibly tedious. Day Lewis seems to have gotten his 'gurning' down to a fine art - he's only happy if he can pull thirty different faces per thirty seconds of film. Once upon a time he was one of the greatest actors of his generation but he lost it, with the rot setting in at around 1997 with THE BOXER. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I loved Boogie Nights and Magnolia, so I was really psyched for this one. Certainly well made, well acted, with a very sparse and unnerving score by ____________ (name escapes me) from Radiohead. But overall I just felt so *depressed* watching it. Having read somewhere that Day-Lewis "inhabits" his characters, Method-style, I just imagined him living as that character day after day after day and it really got me down. I just couldn't immerse myself. I did love the scene at the end with that mad death scene in the bowling alley. THAT felt like proper PTA territory. But it was too little too late for me by then.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Johnny Greenwood. Yes, great score. Me, I was captivated throughout. The final scene had been orchestrated carefully. I needed length and density to have that powerful payoff. And the last line is magnificently ambiguous. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
(It was certainly far better than a film I watched the other night called Curfew. Jeez, what a pile of trash.) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Excellent film, I thought, combining a socialist critique of the early days of the oil industry with a really bitter sense of humour. That crazy drunken rant at the end gives us a powerful metaphor for capitalism: "I... drink... your... milkshake!" Wonderful stuff. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Have you ever read anything by Upton Sinclair, Joel? He sounds like your cup of tea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.245.229 |
I loved the film! Dark and mad, and totally centered around DDL, he dominates every scene completely. The use of action + silence during that one sequence was second only to RAN. I did think Ciarán Hinds was totally wasted here, that was disappointing. I actually didn't like the death at the end, felt it to be comically over the top... but then, "I drink your milkshake!" is meant to blur the comic and the crazed; as was, I thought, Paul Dano's entire character, so maybe that end was apropos. "A bastard in a basket!", another blending of the comic and the crazed, along with DDL's scene at the service, etc., parts where I didn't know whether to laugh, or sit quietly disturbed. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
I liked the film, but the thing that confused the shit out of me was that Paul Dano played two characters both of which were brothers. This really pulled me out of the plot as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Couldn't they have used two different actors? Maybe I was just being thick. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've never seen this!! Perhaps another 'Zodiac' in the making...? | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 82.22.75.99 |
Now Zodiac is genius and is the best film I've ever seen on bluray. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Only saw it for the first time the other week and was blown away!! An awesome movie and possibly Fincher's masterpiece? Much watch 'Seven' again to decide... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
I think DDL's performance in TWBB might be the most spectacular (does that mean best?) one I've seen anyone give in anything ever. Second only to Nicolson in CUCKOO's NEST. It's a magnificent film. Listen Greenwood's score as Plainview gives makes his promises to the assembled townsfolk. That scene is about the 20th century - the dream that was sold to everyone and the lie it became. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
Ack. 2nd paragraph redux: It's a magnificent film. Listen to Greenwood's score as Plainview makes his promises to the assembled townsfolk. That scene is about the 20th century - the dream that was sold to everyone and the lie it became. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Yeah, I've got to see this... I loved 'Hard Eight' & 'Boogie Nights' but thought 'Magnolia' was a touch too ambitious for its own good and didn't like 'Punch Drunk Love' at all. I thought he'd lost it so never bothered with 'There Will Be Blood'. Time to put that right so hopefully it'll be on again soon. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 89.240.140.137 |
Yes, I also love Zodiac. Probably the greatest police procedural film ever made. Probably. I'm with Gary and Proto on 'There Will Be Blood'. I consider it a masterpiece, up there with Raging Bull, Citizen Kane and Goodfellas, to name but a few classics. Sean Penn considers Lewis' performance in TWBB to be the singularly most complete performance ever captured on film! I almost agree, except I believe Penn himself to have given the greatest (male) performance for 'The Assasination of Richard Nixon'. | ||
| Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker) Username: Patrick_walker Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 91.103.168.21 |
I also agree about Zodiac. I've been dying to see any police procedural films along the same line, though the only other film which I can think of which is nearly as enjoyable is the made-for-tv movie To Catch a Killer, starring Brian Dennehy (at his best) as John Wayne Gacy. Can anyone recommend any others that I'll have missed? | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I think I've written this elsewhere but I thought 'There Will Be Blood' was a superb performance in search of a good film. Daniel Day Lewis was excellent but the film itself veered between the self-consciously artsy (ooh - lovely big flames against the night sky) and the laughable (the whole end sequence is the closest to Three Stooges knockabout violence I've seen in a recent film). I was very disappointed by this - it was far too long and felt as if it was desperately clawing its way through numerous interminably dull sequences in search of epic status rather than the effortless way in which, say, Sergio Leone could create classy Westerns. I could have just said I thought it was rubbish really, couldn't I? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.229.55 |
I've been dying to see any police procedural films along the same line... It's an old one, Patrick, but one of the greatest ever, is HE WALKS BY NIGHT, which I believe is what inspired the TV series "Dragnet," if I'm getting that correctly. It's not available, and Ramsey Campbell's mentioned it, but the remake of M, Joseph Losey's (1951), is also a solid police procedural - both M and HWBN lack central protagonists, singular or plural, but are concerned with the solving of a crime/s by a group of people: M might be closer, since it deals with a serial killer. But I'm probably way off on the kind of movie you might be looking for here.... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.49.80 |
THE EVIL DEAD and its first sequel are the most influential contributors to film vocabulary in decades, but THERE WILL BE BLOOD and David Lynch's work have provided the greatest recent advancements to film's grammar. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.49.80 |
Half way through, one of the characters in ZODIAC voices the problem with the film: the Zodiac case isn't important. The film never answers its own accusation and I was left shrugging at the end. More people have probably been killed by meteorites than this chap. | ||
| Patrick Walker (Patrick_walker) Username: Patrick_walker Registered: 01-2010 Posted From: 188.28.80.121 |
Thanks, Craig. No, you seem to be right on the ball actually and I think they're exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. I've heard of the M remake but not of He Walks By Night. Actually, other than the two I mentioned previously, the only other things I can think of that I have seen and which are also along these lines, are the first three seasons of Prime Suspect. Particularly 1 and 3. Good stuff! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.13.66 |
Hey, Patrick, if you want some lower-brow, comic-ish, fantastical, but still thoroughly enjoyable "police procedurals," see the four Dick Tracy movies made by RKO in the 40's - in order: DICK TRACY, DETECTIVE (1945); DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL (1946); DICK TRACY'S DILEMMA (1947); and DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME (1948). They're short, they're zip-bang-fast paced, they follow an enjoyable set formula for each one (crime is committed by a villain the audience sees, then we watch as villain plods on while DT and co. try to solve the crimes and get to the culprit; in the course discovering the real villain behind each event, unrevealed until the end), and they actually hold up quite well, very little staleness. (They just released all these in a special set last month, here in the States.) By contrast... okay, not the same genre, but it's about cops, so I'll mention it... anyway, I must have been mad, stumbling across a VHS tape of STAKEOUT, and actually watching it like I did. Sure, I rail on movies here a lot, as we know. But this level of execrable wretchedness is beneath the lowest of low contempt. It is the detritus of previous generations, their stale and stink, still noisomely festering in those gutters where they've been discarded, against which occasional unfortunates might accidentally scrape their shoes (as I did). Such movies should be burned from the face of the planet, the planet caved out and salted where they were burned, and all the participants of said rottenness brought to the Hague for crimes against humanity.... | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 98.220.97.79 |
TWBB: I didn't like it, alas. Lots of reasons, really, most of them stylistic. The beginning, f'rinstance: PTA admits cribbing his beginning, at least stylistically, from Kubrick's 2001. But there's a reason for the silence in Kubrick's opening scenes in 2001. In TWBB, there's no reason at all, except that PTA wanted to ape Kubrick. Annoying. Much of the film is the same way: PTA's use of style suggests a grandeur and a profundity that the source material actually doesn't have. It's a beautiful film, well acted, but in the end, it's a character study of an asshole. This merits the sober Kubrick treatment? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.173.83.71 |
>>>t's a character study of an asshole. Is that necessarily a criticism? You could say the same about Madame Bovary, The Mayor of Casterbridge and King Lear (to name but three). | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Actually, I liked the silent opening and didn't find it pretentious or aspirational at all. If you claim that there's no reason for the silence in the opening part, are you basing that judgement on the director's? Or your own? Either way, they're both up for debate. I mean, why should an artist have the final say on interpretation? (Des, where are you, Des? Help me out here.) I thought the opening silence, the guy at work alone, played an important part in relation to the scene in which those company representatives tried to force him to accept their deal offer. At one point, DDL says, "I'm the one who went looking for oil, who got dirty doing it. You should try it, instead of manipulating those who have." And we, the viewers, really believe that, because we've seen him starting out, just a guy and the silent world and with no guarantee of anything at all under this latest drill. The sound and fury that follow are just a consequence of a moment of luck. An empire born of silent chance. Etc. Make of it what you will. That's what I'm doing now. And that's why I think it worked well. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
John, I certainly didn't find the last scene laughable. I found it harrowing. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
It didn't work for me at all. However, in view of all the good press it's had I might give it another look sometime. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Fair e'nuf, squire. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.9.155.123 |
Proto ... I think the Zodiac case stands out because, like Jack the Ripper, the actual murders were thin on the ground but the killer did an incredible job of marketing himself to the public. He was never caught, which always adds a demonic dimension, but he used the press to turn himself into a terrifying monster, and in the end he didn't need to keep on killing. I found it interesting in ZODIAC that the main character was a press man rather than a cop. I thought the movie was bang-on in that respect. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I thought Zodiac was sound and intelligent but – apart from Robert Downey Jr typecast but riveting as a manic drunk – very dull. That still puts it several steps ahead of the showy, vacuous FX display that was Se7en – the cinematic equivalent of a supermodel. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.143.178.131 |
See that's the one Fincher film I like. Zodiac that is. I found it riveting. I do seem to be one of the only people in the world who thinks that Fight Club is a steaming pile of shit. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 98.220.97.79 |
Gary F: >>Is that necessarily a criticism? That the film is a character study of an asshole is not a criticism. I only meant to suggest I thought PTA used the wrong approach. A character study of an asshole does not, in my view, merit the cold, objective, Kubrickian tone. It's a bad fit. The story is a good one, really; I just don't see why PTA decided to turn it into a faux-existential melodrama. It's not Camus. It's not Kafka. The story's themes are not in line with that approach. >> Actually, I liked the silent opening and didn't find it pretentious or aspirational at all. If you claim that there's no reason for the silence in the opening part, are you basing that judgement on the director's? Or your own? Either way, they're both up for debate. I mean, why should an artist have the final say on interpretation? I knew before I watched the film that PTA had been influenced by Kubrick. I didn't know that this influence would be so obvious and so ill-fitting. I watched the opening of TWBB in a sort of awe: the sheer chutzpah. It was like watching a film of a man eating a cheeseburger shot like the shower scene in Psycho. It was almost comically wrong. But you liked it, that's cool. I don't mind. And of course this is "up for debate." This is all subjective, dude. By saying it didn't work for me I'm certainly not saying no one on earth should like it. Plenty of people did, smart people, too. You're in good company. Don't worry about it, friend. I meant nothing personal. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 98.220.97.79 |
Jonathan: FWIW, I didn't like FIGHT CLUB either. And ZODIAC is the only Fincher I've seen that I unreservedly loved. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Of course, Chris. Was just jamming with ya.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
>>>A character study of an asshole does not, in my view, merit the cold, objective, Kubrickian tone. It's a bad fit. The story is a good one, really; I just don't see why PTA decided to turn it into a faux-existential melodrama. It's not Camus. It's not Kafka. The story's themes are not in line with that approach. >>>I knew before I watched the film that PTA had been influenced by Kubrick. I didn't know that this influence would be so obvious and so ill-fitting. I watched the opening of TWBB in a sort of awe: the sheer chutzpah. It was like watching a film of a man eating a cheeseburger shot like the shower scene in Psycho. It was almost comically wrong. These comments make me feel insecure, because it's well-documented here that I know nowt about films. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
it's well-documented here that I know nowt about films. Yeah, man, you only have one film listed on your Facebook profile. And it's not this one. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
Smokey and the Bandit? Cannonball Run? Towering masterpieces of Western art. It takes a unique genius to see this, however. Both have been dismissed by the herd. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
>> These comments make me feel insecure, because it's well-documented here that I know nowt about films. That's silly. I'm a dope. Don't listen to me. And you know more about film -- about story, more importantly -- than you're letting on. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
No, I must insist. I'm a clothhead when it comes to films. I thought Mirrors was good. See? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.4.252 |
I do seem to be one of the only people in the world who thinks that Fight Club is a steaming pile of shit. I'm one of the even more extremely few who've yet not seen the film, and strangely have no desire to whatsoever. But then, as we on the inside know: one of the main rules of Fight Club is never to watch Fight Club. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.21.220 |
"In TWBB, there's no reason at all, except that PTA wanted to ape Kubrick." I'm sure RTA has his reasons and if he doesn't, I have mine. To call the character an "asshole" seems overly-simplistic, too. Plainview has many positive qualities. Jack Nicolson's character in CUCKOO'S NEST is in prison for statutory rape. That doesn't make his character unsuitable for exploration, in my book. Nor does it make him just one thing. Paul, I appreciate your thoughts on Zodiac, but if the film do you really contend that the film was about the media's relationship with the killer? The vast majority of it was police procedural. If the film doesn't directly address the media's inflation of a murderer's image then it is part of the problem. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.21.220 |
PTA, not RTA. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.21.220 |
Ack, ignore "if the film" in the second paragraph. What's wrong with me? | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.21.220 |
Oh, and FIGHT CLUB is Fincher's best film. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'Fight Club' is a great black comedy but nowhere near the same level of quality as 'Seven' or 'Zodiac' imo. Fincher's other films all fall into the "almost there but not quite" category for me... although I haven't seen 'Benjamin Button' and, like you Craig, strangely have no desire to - the synopsis and any clips I've seen make it look irritating as hell. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.4.252 |
Oh, and FIGHT CLUB is Fincher's best film. Shoot. Because I do so love his other films... now it looks like I will have to see this one, too.... | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.9.155.123 |
Proto ... no I don't. But I thought it was interesting that the press angle was in there. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.21.220 |
Paul, sure - I think that the makers of the film had marinated so much in the facts of the case that they missed the really interesting angle to take on the subject. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
Proto: >> That doesn't make his character unsuitable for exploration, in my book. Nor does it make him just one thing. Never said it didn't, brother. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
The really interesting angle in 'Zodiac' was the hero's obsessive search for the truth, even though he knew it was putting himself and his family in direct jeopardy from a vicious lunatic with a monster sized ego. As I said elsewhere, the film reminded me a lot of George Sluizer's horror masterpiece 'Spoorloos' (The Vanishing) from 1988. 'Zodiac' too is one of the great psychological horror films imo. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.9.155.123 |
Proto ... I think you've probably got a point there. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
As evidence I would present the absolutely petrifying scene in the basement with that creepy old guy... pure horror cinema at its best that had me munching on my fingernails like a scared kid! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.253.220 |
(don't know where else to put this, so...) Speaking of police procedurals, coincidentally (or a "propinquity" perhaps, as I learned from R.A. Wilson), I just saw an absolute gem of a police procedural, from some fifty years ago: VICE SQUAD (1953), starring Edward G. Robinson. It's a single day in the life of a busy vice squad in Los Angeles - and wow is it busy! I counted six storylines at least, weaving in and out of each other, some connecting and some merely tangential; a "Hill Street Blues" or "ER"-ish structure, which to a fan of the ensemble/portmanteau/anthology film, was wonderful to see in unique form, and in something going so far back. EGR is at his Double Indemnity best as the unflappable head of the vice squad, and in every situation, he bends the law to its limit, to come at the truth/bring about justice in each case. This seems to be the theme of this film, the law's close proximity with lawlessness, its dependence upon loosely interpreting its reach (I was amazed at the knowing - even accepting - stance the film took toward organized prostitution). Anyway, don't know where or if this is available (taped off TV), but... if you're a fan of old noirs and cop dramas from 40's/50's Hollywood like I am - one not to miss. |