Premier Rock Forum

zorg wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2024 1:44 pm Get Shorty after much time. Travolta very good in this, and some clever dialogue from Elmore Leonard in high Tarantino mode. Nothing consequential, but a fun well paced romp in a lighter version of The Player. I'm still laughing about the running gag about the Oldsmobile Silhouette.

gaetano dimita wrote: Wed Jul 24, 2024 7:55 pm Was it here on the forum that somebody had recommended a 1971 Aussie movie called Wake In Fright?

A man in his late 20's finds a job as a teacher in a remote village in the outback, and a single drunken weekend spent with the locals is enough to shatter his life completely.
A movie that just stays with you, really gave me the chills.

DaveA wrote: Thu Jul 25, 2024 6:29 am Wake in Fright was discussed here "back in the day," though maybe not in depth. One FM had a still from it as his avatar. It's a fantastic movie. Visionary even. Hard to believe it was directed by the same person who did Weekend at Bernie's and it just sort of languished for decades and could have been lost to time. Kotcheff also directed the first Rambo movie, which I've never seen. Wake in Fright is a great depiction of going down the rabbit hole, a bizarre cautionary tale, regardless of whether this was its makers' intention.

Watched Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World a few weeks back. Had started hearing about it not too long after its premier. Would give it a 3 out of 5 maybe. Manolache's performance is very good, and in some ways the film's heart seems to be in the right place, but I feel the same material could've been composed to be more emotionally resonant. A tighter edit maybe, but also more disciplined writing. There's a thematic through-line in the film, maybe several, but as a whole it comes off like a lot of anecdotal observations about our present predicament that are more slapped together than woven with sublime artistry. Even if this might have been the point--highlighting the disjointedness and enshitification of contemporary life/hustle culture--this could have been done with more aplomb. The overwhelmingly positive responses to the film bring to mind the buzz that surrounded Jia Zhangke's The World a couple of decades ago. I like some of Jia Zhangke's work but feel that this film in particular was praised in part because it was such an easy film to write about for critics and film studies types with a leftist/anti-capitalist bent. It offers up a lot of confirmation in this respect but as an experience is shy of great.

Anatomy of a Fall is well acted, has some curious moments, but I didn't really care for it. I think it was shot a bit too sloppily, as a whole, but also the same story could have been conveyed in like 2/3 of the TRT, probably less, without it capitulating to overly commercial values.

Hit Man has a star-making performance from Powell but has an uneasy/timid footing with its own "dark side." I haven't parsed it apart but it doesn't quite achieve the right balance between humorous and sinister, despite some entertaining moments and it being an easy-going sit.

Rented Bonello's The Beast several weeks ago, which has earned comparisons to Lynch and Black Mirror among other things. It's coming to the Criterion Channel. Was expecting it to be a bit more unnerving/scary. It's another film that has some good moments, can give a person a lot to think about, but is at times too scattershot for its own good. Léa Seydoux does a great job of being its glue amid some proceedings that are rather unpleasant.

Dunno . . . I watch fewer movies than usual now, only have the stomach for so much, but La Chimera is still one of the best newer things I've seen from an admittedly small sample size.