|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Jan 24, 2021 19:19:19 GMT -5
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) - I watched this with my daughter who is roughly the same age I was when I first saw a Star War. Chewbacca’s her dude and she marked out when he wrecked shop after Han Solo fell in a sci-fi base space hole and “made everything explode.” No one save for Chewbacca has names according to her they're just "That Girl" (Rey), "That Boy" (Finn), "That Other Boy" (Poe), "Chewbacca's Friend" (Han Solo), "That Angry Boy" (Kyle Ren), and "That Robot That Looks Like a Ball" (BB-8). Battle Royale (2000) - Way more dick damage than the similar Hunger Games and therefore a superior film. RIP an entire class of 9th graders from somewhere in Japan. Pretty sure your daughter's right and "Chewbacca's Friend" is the canonical name for that character. I now want there to be an in-universe throat lozenge named Chewbacca's Friend. |
|
repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,674 
|
Post by repulsionist on Jan 24, 2021 19:45:16 GMT -5
Land of the Lost (2009)
Mostly innocuous male gaze fun with fading stars of today. Jorma Taccone was fun as Chaka.
White of the Eye (1987)
Probably not my last Elliott Kastner-produced feature of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but this, like 92 in the Shade, fails to cohere. This is the penultimate feature of Donald Cammell, a director/artist of prodigious creative talent with a penchant for living beyond boundaries and transgressing for the sake of evolving his personality (see Performance). This feature has some loving shots of industrial areas of Tucson and its adjacent commercial steel and glass. Lots of beautifully staged murders with some seamless flashbacks involving the main characters that are only indicated by the bad wigs. What we get here, according to reading and aligning with my own sentiments, is this artist's truest cinematic vision that could be named his own. Unfortunately, Cammell's creative powers were clearly waning at this point. He committed suicide in the early 90s when a film of his got cut into another film by the Executive Producer(s). Ego, it's a helluva drug. This work adapted from a thriller book written by a graduate of UC Berkeley who now hosts a conservative podcast on The Daily Wire. Had I made this discovery prior to attempting a viewing, I would have passed on this.
|
|
|
|
Post by The Stuffingtacular She-Hulk on Jan 25, 2021 11:28:17 GMT -5
Lady Snowblood: The source material Tarantino ripped off for Kill Bill Vol. 1--some of the shots from the O-ren Ishii sequence in the film are direct lifts of shots here. Highly recommended if you like chanbara or revenge flicks. I watched this yesterday on your recommendation here and loved it. Quentin Tarantino owes everyone involved with this movie at least a million dollars apiece. I can also tell Cathy Yan has seen it, but she did a much better job with using the film as inspiration rather than just ripping it off wholesale for Birds of Prey. I'm picky about revenge movies and therefore don't watch many of them, but I'm glad I did. I really like that the director made a gory pulp movie but treated it absolutely seriously. There were some gorgeous shots! Thanks for the rec, patbat.
I also watched One Night in Miami (2020) and thought it was very good. I could tell it had originally been a play, but Regina King's decision to vary the settings and break up the main quartet a few times really helped keep it visually interesting. I have a few quibbles with some of the music-related bits, if only because I know the real history behind them, but I think they worked within the context of how the story was presented and the themes it was exploring. Also, Leslie Odom, Jr. should play Sam Cooke in a biopic and I'm mad we don't have it yet. He didn't even sound like he was doing an impression, which is quite the feat given how unique Sam's voice was.
|
|
repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,674
|
Post by repulsionist on Jan 25, 2021 15:40:39 GMT -5
The Shout (1978)
Relatedly, I finished White of the Eye. Its final set piece was beautifully unhinged; explosively so. However, the shift in tone from eerie and unsettling to wild and frightening didn't move as well as the film I'm about to blurb on. With The Shout Skolimowski masterfully makes a foreign film on English soil from a Robert Graves' story. The menace builds immediately with the setting of a friendly game of cricket on the grounds of an asylum. The film occurs in North Devon. The loveliness of English countryside with Devon's varied coast, dunes, and verdant rolling hills provides a psychic contrast from the start. Alan Bates' performance from the get-go is awesome and powerful. John Hurt and Susannah York both acquit themselves well as tolerant partners mostly happy with their existence until it's completely overturned by the insertion of Bates into their lives. I won't spoil the details of this film for those interested in some peak folk horror. Suffice it to say that this film will stick with you and cause some amazement in how much it does in its 1 hour 26 minute running time.
For reference, Skolimowski made Deep End which David Lynch has lauded in some early interviews as one of his favourite films. Skolimowski's more recent Essential Killing was an amazing tour-de-force, and he adapted Nabokov's King, Queen, Knave in the early 1970s. The dude's a major talent in cinema.
|
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Jan 25, 2021 18:58:39 GMT -5
Drunken Master (1978) - I’ve watched a lot of kung fu movies where something traumatic happens that pushes a character to partake in a training montage in order to get vengeance in the third act. Generally the traumatic experience involves evil Manchus murdering people or a rival school slaying a teacher. At the very least the main hero is losing a limb but here the traumatic event (and we know this is it since it gets replayed with reverb on the vocals and sad-ass melodramatic music later) is a guy with the excellent name of Thunderleg telling Jackie Chan’s character, Freddie, that his dad’s kung fu is shit and then burning up a pair of pants that Freddie was drying. That’s it. A pair of ruined pants drove Freddie to redouble his efforts and learn drunken kung fu from an alcoholic kung fu hobo with the DTs. More revenge movies should be about people meting out justice over ruined pants.
Unrelated to this I watched this on Netflix and the language track fucked me up. I picked Cantonese because my choices were that Japanese or Korean audio and then those plus English for subtitles so I started it up and from the jump got dubbed English...until it randomly switched to Cantonese and the switched back to English again later. It would switch back and forth between Cantonese and English through out the movie and if that wasn’t wonky enough it seemed like there were two different English dubs they were using: an American sounding dub and an Australian(?) sounding one. Sometimes you’d get one character going through all three audio tracks in a single scene which was just wild. If it were a movie other than a 1970s kung fu flick I might have cared but it honestly doesn’t matter with a movie like this so whatever
|
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Jan 28, 2021 19:18:34 GMT -5
The Man With the Iron Fist (2012) - If I, like RZA, were ever allowed to direct a movie due to my fame and success in a completely unrelated field to that of film making I would probably make a movie almost identical to this one with perhaps a slightly different soundtrack.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ben Grimm on Jan 28, 2021 20:30:16 GMT -5
The Princess Bride: Home Movie
This had been announced a while back, but for Quibi, so I assumed I'd never be able to see it. But Quibi crashed even faster than expected, so it's on Youtube now. It's quite fun; if you've ever wanted to watch a bunch of celebrities act out The Princess Bride using whatever they had lying around the house, it's as good as you're likely to get.
|
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Jan 28, 2021 23:58:26 GMT -5
The Man With the Iron Fist (2012) - If I, like RZA, were ever allowed to direct a movie due to my fame and success in a completely unrelated field to that of film making I would probably make a movie almost identical to this one with perhaps a slightly different soundtrack. Mostly Carpenters tunes? |
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Jan 29, 2021 0:03:53 GMT -5
The Man With the Iron Fist (2012) - If I, like RZA, were ever allowed to direct a movie due to my fame and success in a completely unrelated field to that of film making I would probably make a movie almost identical to this one with perhaps a slightly different soundtrack. Mostly Carpenters tunes? Yes but only from that album of 90s alt-rock bands covering Carpenters songs. |
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Jan 29, 2021 0:08:57 GMT -5
Yes but only from that album of 90s alt-rock bands covering Carpenters songs. I'd watch it. |
|
repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,674
|
Post by repulsionist on Jan 30, 2021 18:31:20 GMT -5
Watermelon Man (1970)
A studio feature from Melvin van Peebles before Sweet Sweetback.... I will presume most here don't have a basic reference for his work. Independent, black auteur (who made some questionable choices using his son in his most well-known film - for those who do have some context, they'll know I made a funny) that had a prominence in late 60s to 70s.
Godfrey Cambridge stars in the role of protagonist living a Kafkaesque nightmare made reality. He's a forceful comedic presence, because he was a well-known black comedian coming up with the now chagrined but once beloved Cosby and recently deceased Dick Gregory, who ran for US President in, uh, 1968.
Impressive location shots of Pasadena and Toluca Lake from 50 years ago.
Subject of comedy is the racism that plagues American today. Nuanced understandings and deft touches, along with acceptance and empowerment, make this an excellent work. Available on Amazon.
|
|
|
|
Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Jan 31, 2021 15:53:51 GMT -5
Finding Ohana
Watched this on Netflix for a family movie on a whim. I would be fascinated to know what the original idea for this script was before it became this odd mix of estranged family drama, Goonies in Hawaii riff, and native Hawaiian ghost story. There’s also a subplot about one of the teen characters maybe wanting to go to Julliard that seems to serve no purpose beyond one line towards the end? As you may have guessed, it doesn’t really all come together that well.
|
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Feb 1, 2021 3:15:34 GMT -5
Barb Wire (1996) - To-day I watched the Pamela Anderson Lee vehicle, Barb Wire, on Netflix and must confess that I enjoyed the farfetched nature of an America in the distantly future year of 2017 in the midst of a Second Civil War with a government under fascist control and a plague killing off entire swaths of the population. Seems like something that could not possibly happen in the year 2017.
|
|
repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,674
|
Post by repulsionist on Feb 1, 2021 4:37:04 GMT -5
Winter Kills (1979)
Jeff Bridges as proto-"The Dude" follows red herrings from one location to another across a beautifully grand U S of A in this adaptation of a 1974 Richard Condon novel. Seriously, the horse-riding scene in wintertime Death Valley National Park takes a slice of cake folks are always yapping about when something truly astounds. Anyhoo, at one point despite saying they're in Cleveland they aren't, which might be an in-joke that I remain pleasantly ignorant of. Overall, the film works as enjoyable fodder for conspiracy nuts. But, wait, er, uh, that gets out of hand now, and we're incapable of critical thinking given the overwhelming amount of information to discern a worldview that only smells of baloney. Ever onward. Lotsa great cameos and smaller roles for older TV and movie stars of an era that's only remembered in the form of t-shirt nostalgia. Produced by 1970s cannabis smugglers in an erratic and uneven fashion (meaning money here, money there, money promised, money borrowed from the wrong people; maybe eventually it all works out and a picture is produced but then no one really likes it when it shows), the film production has a story, a documentary about the story, and some shaggy dogs that do play fetch. Running time 97 minutes.
|
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 1, 2021 7:39:28 GMT -5
Winter Kills (1979)
Jeff Bridges as proto-"The Dude" follows red herrings from one location to another across a beautifully grand U S of A in this adaptation of a 1974 Richard Condon novel. Seriously, the horse-riding scene in wintertime Death Valley National Park takes a slice of cake folks are always yapping about when something truly astounds. Anyhoo, at one point despite saying they're in Cleveland they aren't, which might be an in-joke that I remain pleasantly ignorant of. Overall, the film works as enjoyable fodder for conspiracy nuts. But, wait, er, uh, that gets out of hand now, and we're incapable of critical thinking given the overwhelming amount of information to discern a worldview that only smells of baloney. Ever onward. Lotsa great cameos and smaller roles for older TV and movie stars of an era that's only remembered in the form of t-shirt nostalgia. Produced by 1970s cannabis smugglers in an erratic and uneven fashion (meaning money here, money there, money promised, money borrowed from the wrong people; maybe eventually it all works out and a picture is produced but then no one really likes it when it shows), the film production has a story, a documentary about the story, and some shaggy dogs that do play fetch. Running time 97 minutes.
Yah, it's a strange one. Kind of like if you took the "I was a Chinese railworker" scene from The Manchurian Candidate (based on another Condon novel) and expanded it to movie length. |
|
|
|
Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Feb 1, 2021 12:34:31 GMT -5
The Dig (2020)
It’s a pleasant enough little movie. Ralph Fiennes makes for a good “unassuming old man who just wants to take pride in his work” type. It’s not the movie’s fault that some of his lines made me think of William Macy’s “The Shoveler” from Mystery Men. Ultimately, I would prefer a nice long audiobook about this story that could spend more time on tangents and historical context. There’s a lot going on with regards to classism, the looming war, etc. that there just isn’t time for.
|
|
|
|
Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Feb 1, 2021 14:53:57 GMT -5
Sundance Films In Order of Goodness
The Sparks Brothers
I really don't know much about Sparks but this is a fantastic, interesting, dynamic documentary. Thanks, Edgar Wright! A
The Blazing World
Yes, this movie doesn't really know what it wants to be and wears all of it's influences (Singh, Argento, Coscarelli) right on its sleeve, but it's a blast and an interesting exploration on recovering from trauma with very little support. B
Marvelous and the Black Hole
Sweet and well acted little coming-of-age movie. B
Land
It will probably get nominated for a lot of stuff and it's well acted all around, but it's very basic and doesn't say anything new, nor does it ever become very interesting. I wanted this to be so much better. C
Mayday
If you think for more than a second about a lot of the messages of this film, there's some uncomfortable victim-blaming and messages about the "right" way to recover from trauma. Also, this movie is severely up its own butt. D
Because of Sundance's complete lack of clarity about how online and on-demand screenings work, we had tickets for Cryptozoo, Superior, and Strawberry Mansion and did not get to see any of them. Bummer.
|
|
|
|
Post by haysoos on Feb 1, 2021 17:30:48 GMT -5
The Foreigner (2017)
I finally got around to watching this Jackie Chan film because it was about to leave Netflix. Jackie Chan is a restaurant owner in London whose daughter is killed in a terrorist attack, and he takes it upon himself to hunt down and take revenge on the bombers. Unlike most Jackie Chan movies, he is unusually dour and serious and well... scary.
What I didn't realize was that it isn't actually a Jackie Chan movie. It's a Pierce Brosnan movie. Brosnan plays an Irish Deputy Minister with connections to the IRA from way back in the day, and both the British government and Jackie Chan are convinced he can find out who the bombers are. Brosnan tries to convince the Brits he can get the information to advance his own political interests, while having to convince Jackie Chan that he doesn't know shit before Jackie beats up or kills all his goons looking for answers.
Brosnan is in 90% of the movie, while Jackie Chan is more like the Terminator, showing up at inopportune times to make his life more difficult and then disappearing again.
It was actually a lot better than I expected it to be. 7/10
Bleeding Steel (2017)
Since that one went so well, I decided to watch another recent Jackie Chan movie. This one is some kind of cyberpunk adventure where Jackie Chan is a cop or something fighting cyborgs who are after a mechanical heart or something that will unlock the secret to building immortal androids. Or something. But his daughter, who had leukemia and died in the opening scenes is now in high school and he needs to stay undercover to protect her, but she keeps picking fights with a gang and...
Let's just say the plot is a bit of a mess. This could almost be forgivable, but the tone just whips back and forth between Spy Kids 3, the Matrix, Moonraker, Alita, Mission Impossible, and a Carry-On film. Sometimes in the same scene. It's like a cocaine-fueled fever dream. There are actually one or two interesting action set pieces, but entirely too many incomprehensible plot points, and "jokes" that rely on rape or cross-dressing being hilarious. 1/10.
|
|
|
|
Post by Hachiman on Feb 3, 2021 7:50:41 GMT -5
The Man With the Iron Fist (2012) - If I, like RZA, were ever allowed to direct a movie due to my fame and success in a completely unrelated field to that of film making I would probably make a movie almost identical to this one with perhaps a slightly different soundtrack. I too would also play a hero who beats up everyone and has Jamie Chung for a girlfriend. Soundtrack could stay the same but maybe the setting would be more of a Samurai theme? I gotta stay on-brand. Screw it. I’ll just watch Ghost Dog. |
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Feb 3, 2021 8:04:43 GMT -5
The Man With the Iron Fist (2012) - If I, like RZA, were ever allowed to direct a movie due to my fame and success in a completely unrelated field to that of film making I would probably make a movie almost identical to this one with perhaps a slightly different soundtrack. I too would also play a hero who beats up everyone and has Jamie Chung for a girlfriend. Soundtrack could stay the same but maybe the setting would be more of a Samurai theme? I gotta stay on-brand. Screw it. I’ll just watch Ghost Dog. I wonder if Ghost Dog's on Netflix of if I'm going to have to dig out the 3 for $10 DVD copy I bought at a Walmart a decade ago. |
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 3, 2021 15:47:03 GMT -5
I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)
While not a great film, strong performances from Carrey and MacGregor and an interesting look at how malignant narcissists get away with things. For that reason, an effective viewing experience in the Trump post-mortem.
|
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Feb 3, 2021 19:09:29 GMT -5
Princess Mononoke (1997) - I've seen I think three Miyazaki films at this point and of the three this one was hands down the best. I am quite of the mind that more cartoon movies for small children need body horror, dismemberment, cheery towns populated by former sex workers, and characters attempting to kill god. Beyond that I really liked how there really weren't any villains outside of the largely anonymous samurai who showed up to fuck shit up for the sex worker and leper populated "Irontown." The two primary factions (Irontown and "The Forest") were both presented as having a rational reason for doing what they were that just happened to stand in opposition of what the other faction was trying to accomplish. Neither Irontown nor The Forest were presented as purely evil and moreover there wasn't even a monolithic point of view within each of those factions which is something you rarely see in cartoon movies for small children.
|
|
ABz B👹anaz
Grandfathered In 
This country is (now less of) a shitshow.
Posts: 1,971
|
Post by ABz B👹anaz on Feb 3, 2021 20:08:45 GMT -5
Princess Mononoke (1997) - I've seen I think three Miyazaki films at this point and of the three this one was hands down the best. I am quite of the mind that more cartoon movies for small children need body horror, dismemberment, cheery towns populated by former sex workers, and characters attempting to kill god. Beyond that I really liked how there really weren't any villains outside of the largely anonymous samurai who showed up to fuck shit up for the sex worker and leper populated "Irontown." The two primary factions (Irontown and "The Forest") were both presented as having a rational reason for doing what they were that just happened to stand in opposition of what the other faction was trying to accomplish. Neither Irontown nor The Forest were presented as purely evil and moreover there wasn't even a monolithic point of view within each of those factions which is something you rarely see in cartoon movies for small children. The "there are no real bad guys" is a very common theme in Miyazaki movies, and I greatly enjoy it. |
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 4, 2021 9:18:44 GMT -5
Barb Wire (1996) - To-day I watched the Pamela Anderson Lee vehicle, Barb Wire, on Netflix and must confess that I enjoyed the farfetched nature of an America in the distantly future year of 2017 in the midst of a Second Civil War with a government under fascist control and a plague killing off entire swaths of the population. Seems like something that could not possibly happen in the year 2017. Recently listened to Kevin and Trace of MST3K on Jonah Ray's podcast talking about the Mistie movie and relating, with sardonic glee, how the studio ultimately threw its promotional weight behind Barb Wire instead of their film. Wise choice, Universal. |
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Feb 4, 2021 19:22:17 GMT -5
Barb Wire (1996) - To-day I watched the Pamela Anderson Lee vehicle, Barb Wire, on Netflix and must confess that I enjoyed the farfetched nature of an America in the distantly future year of 2017 in the midst of a Second Civil War with a government under fascist control and a plague killing off entire swaths of the population. Seems like something that could not possibly happen in the year 2017. Recently listened to Kevin and Trace of MST3K on Jonah Ray's podcast talking about the Mistie movie and relating, with sardonic glee, how the studio ultimately threw its promotional weight behind Barb Wire instead of their film. Wise choice, Universal. Though I vastly prefer MST3K's movie-film I will say that Universal throwing their promotional weight behind Barb Wire would have been the smarter movie without the gift of hindsight. MST3K was (and still is) largely a niche thing while Barb Wire was lowest common denominator 90s blockbuster action nonsense starring Pamela Anderson Lee at pretty much the height of her popularity. |
|
|
|
Post by pantsgoblin on Feb 4, 2021 19:36:06 GMT -5
Recently listened to Kevin and Trace of MST3K on Jonah Ray's podcast talking about the Mistie movie and relating, with sardonic glee, how the studio ultimately threw its promotional weight behind Barb Wire instead of their film. Wise choice, Universal. Though I vastly prefer MST3K's movie-film I will say that Universal throwing their promotional weight behind Barb Wire would have been the smarter movie without the gift of hindsight. MST3K was (and still is) largely a niche thing while Barb Wire was lowest common denominator 90s blockbuster action nonsense starring Pamela Anderson Lee at pretty much the height of her popularity. I don't disagree that Barb Wire had more cultural reach, but I would argue it would have promoted itself just fine with Pamela Anderson Lee. Also, the ROI on MST3K could have been greater with promotion. I don't remember the budget quoted by Kevin and Trace but it wasn't nearly the $9 mil reported for Barb Wire and it was also repurposing/promoting a movie in Universal's library, This Island Earth. |
|
|
|
Post by Nudeviking on Feb 4, 2021 19:49:39 GMT -5
Though I vastly prefer MST3K's movie-film I will say that Universal throwing their promotional weight behind Barb Wire would have been the smarter movie without the gift of hindsight. MST3K was (and still is) largely a niche thing while Barb Wire was lowest common denominator 90s blockbuster action nonsense starring Pamela Anderson Lee at pretty much the height of her popularity. I don't disagree that Barb Wire had more cultural reach, but I would argue it would have promoted itself just fine with Pamela Anderson Lee. Also, the ROI on MST3K could have been greater with promotion. I don't remember the budget quoted by Kevin and Trace but it wasn't nearly the $9 mil reported for Barb Wire and it was also repurposing/promoting a movie in Universal's library, This Island Earth.I can see that point too since I'm pretty sure MST3K turned a profit even without any sort of real promotion while Barb Wire did not. |
|
|
|
Post by nowimnothing on Feb 6, 2021 0:34:19 GMT -5
My teenager won't usually watch a movie if I recommend it, but sometimes I can put something on in the background that she ends up getting into. Tonight that was Back to the Future. We were making a stray cat shelter* and I put it on. By the halfway point she asked me to make some food for her because she did not want to miss any of it.
*we have a few possible strays in the back yard and it will be cold this week, so my daughter wanted to put something together with an old plastic bin.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ben Grimm on Feb 6, 2021 15:10:49 GMT -5
Earwig and the Witch
This one didn't really work for me. The lead never felt real in the way that Ghibli's leads usually feel, and was preternaturally self-assured and manipulative to the point of being actively annoying. The "with" of the title was also oddly purely villainous for a Ghibli movie. And the movie felt completely plotless, which, granted, worked for Totoro, but Totoro was close enough to perfection otherwise to hold up without needing a formal structure (though even Totoro had a more compelling final act conflict than this did). The whole thing felt like something pieced together from cut scenes or b-plots more than it did a movie in and of itself.
|
|
|
|
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Feb 6, 2021 15:32:34 GMT -5
Trio of three of my favorite French or made-in-France movies: two from Truffaut’s Doinel cycle, Baisers volés and Domicile conjugal, and Orson Welles’s F for fake.
Domicile conjugal is quite good but I tend to skip over a bit because there’s a bit of racism—Doinel gets involved with a Japanese expat, Kyoko, and his wife takes it…very poorly. But that isn’t really the case with the expat herself, who’s more caught up in the fringes of the Doinels’ domestic problems. Doinel’s “she’s not another woman, she’s a whole other world!” is treated as the bullshit it is. I’d remembered their fling falling apart over communications barriers, but I misremembered them as being linguistic (this is partly why I’d been in the mood to revisit it—this was a bit of a problem in my last pre-COVID relationship). They’re not—the barriers come more from Doinel’s own immaturity, not from actual language (her French is good). And Kyoko gets the last word.
F for fake is just one of the best. The whole narrated-from-the-editing room aspect really adds something to the “here’s a guy who’s telling an incredible tale”-ness of the movie. The fact that it’s innovatively edited, that it’s hosted in the editing room (giving you a sense of the mechanics of how this all works, much like we see the act of making fakes in the movie itself), and there’s all this great, solid color makes it seem a lot like one of the Eamses’ short films, actually (need to get back to watching those). You can really tell that Welles is dipping into his old past as a painter, too.
Fashion comparison: Something about the way everyone’s dressed in the Doinel films is great—I don’t think it’s even conscious, I just think it was a good moment. Doinel himself has a small wardrobe and doesn’t seem quite bourgeois, even if he has the staples—maybe a child’s wardrobe of “nice clothes” is the best comparison, although the clothes, though simple, work really well (blue button-up shirts without button-down collars, allowing the points to kind of flap around a bit, which works, a couple of awesome checked ties, and a dark green v-neck). He also has his more aspiring author stuff, like his scarf that even gets tied around his turtlenecks. And the turtlenecks work here too—we’re right in the period between turtlenecks still being a working garment and turtlenecks being completely pretentious.
Welles in F for fake is playing himself up, dressed in all black with a big black hat like some kind of guy from a 19th century print or an Edwardian stage villain. Most of it’s at Ibiza, where you have a lot of rich people dressing very casually. We’re definitely at some point teetering between classic riviera wear and trying to keep with the more casual, more radical, times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s really embarrassing (don’t need to see a fifty year-old guy in a too-tight Mickey Mouse t-shirt). Ever hate (but not hate-as-much-as-you-should)-read some of the more Eurotrashy product-placed lifestyle journalism? This is their progenitor.
|
|
