What I've Been Watching: The Catch-All Film Thread

Time to finish of my delve into the works of Akira Kurosawa. The final box set I had was the Kurosawa Classic Collection which contains five films on a more Dickensian theme than either samurais or Shakespeare. The following movies are all expertly shot, but do they manage to entertain?

Ikiru (1952, b/w) is a film of two parts. The first part slowly and morosely follows a council bureaucrat as we see the intense mundanity of his day to day life, made even more intense and morose as he discovers he has terminal cancer. The second part is the more interesting aspect to the film as we then watch a sort of courtroom perform the twelve angry men plotline as they attempt to bring justice to our protagonist's final act of courage.

It's two hours and twenty minutes long, which is far too long IMO and I don't think it would have lost anything by shedding an awful lot of the first part of the film. While it's well acted it also commits Kurosawa's biggest sin of over-lingering on so many shots for full emotional impact and, by doing so, cheapens each on in turn and tends to make one want to start rebelling against it rather than get into it. By the time I got to the more interesting part of the film I'd already spent most of my caring reserves.

The final part, about the last 45 minutes, where it's people discussing his life, is mostly a series of flashback to key moments and I can't help wonder why he didn't just make the whole film in this way, start off with the funeral and then provide the whole story in a series of succinct and concise flashbacks because, as it is, for all it's quality production and strong theme, it mostly succeeds in being disjointed and rambling. 3/5

I Live in Fear (1955, b/w) is a very unusual film. I can't say I've ever seen this plotline ever before. A family of a wealthy mining company sue the father and proprietor for, effectively, insanity because he wants to sell up and move everyone to Brazil, because he's clinically petrified of a nuke being dropped. He's then incenced that everyone is being so ungrateful, what with the whole reason the mine exists in the first place is because of him. He is also an incurable philanderer and has extra kids all over the place.

While being a respectable length at just one hour forty minutes, most of that time is spent following the lives and desires of so many different people that the film feels relatively pointless once completed. Sure, there's interest to be had, but mostly it's a big ol' let down of lots and lots of not a lot at all. I liked its themes and I liked to attempt at something different, just not the way it was presented. 2.5/5

The Lower Depths (1957, b/w) is some good old fashioned poverty-porn as we watch a bunch of slum dwellers go about their daily lives of squalor. There's no plot, per-se, it's just the pleasure of watching a whole bunch of character actors chew the scenery for two hours, each trying to win your heart in their own unique way. It mostly achieves this.

It's surprisingly well paced and actually did quite a good job of keeping me interested more the most part. With so many characters and no set protagonists the enjoyment rested entirely on the extent that you could find interest in each individual character, if you liked someone the film picks up, if you can't connect to a character the film slows down. For my part, I honestly had no idea what was 'going on' for pretty much the whole movie, I couldn't ell you much about any of the characters nor what their individual story was, but I still enjoyed this specific example of poverty-porn voyeurism. 3.5/5

Red Beard (1965, b/w) is surprisingly not a pirate movie. Weirdly, it's more poverty-porn encased within a hospital drama. Redbeard is the name of the head doctor. Like Ikiru, the film has two halves, or, rather one section that is two-thirds and one section that's one-third, and the two are very perfectly separated by an intermission. And good god will you be needing an intermission in this three hour film.

Also like the Ikiru, the second part is far superior to the first part by quite a huge margin. Like the second film, there's just too many short stories for it's own good. There are five stories told to the viewer, three of which, while interesting, are mostly superflouous and are mostly contained in the first part. One story fills the entire second part while the 'main' story, that of a spoilt doctor learning to love the charity of a poverty clinic, is mostly at the beginning and end of both parts.

So this is going to be very difficult to rate as I found the first hour and forty five minutes pretty much bog-standard fare of the 3/5 variety while the second part is such a beautiful and well contained little story, and one that shovels on the emotions with layer after layer after layer that I'd rate that part 4.5/5. A median or average of the two would not do justice to the truth of either.

So I'll imagine I've made a two hour fan edit with a lot of the fat taken out and throw forward a 4/5.

Dodes'Ka Den (1970, colour) is the poverty-porn film that literally broke Kurosawa. After being sacked from Tora Tora Tora for being to independent/arrogant/difficult, etc etc, he made this love letter to the slums and put so much into it that when it bombed he attempted suicide. A real dark era in his life. Do I harshly and coldly believe it deserved to bomb? Well, kinda.

Again, there's no actual plot, it's just two and a quarter hours of about eight interwoven short stories about a selection of slum dwellers. You've got your drunks, philanderers, rapists, good Samaritans, fantasists, assholes, crippled, thieves, gossips, the dark personal histories etc etc etc. But much like The Lower Depths, the extent to which the film is enjoyable is the extent to which you like each short story.

For me, I laughed along at quite a few, shared tears at a few, was meh'd by a few and a few bored me to death. It's amazing how one can be thoroughly enjoying one scene only to be literally twitching over the skip button about 5 seconds into a particularly boring scene with a different character. The worst of the lot is a couple who don't talk to each other, the resolution being finding out why they don't talk to each other. Which is nice and all… but… christ, by the final half hour I was volubly screaming "oh God, not these two again!" whenever it shot back to them.

So, like Redbeard, it's a very difficult film to rate, some stories are 4.5/5 while others are more in the line of 1/5, and one can't help feeling that if he'd just cut out a couple of characters and presented something more in the one hour forty mark then it would have been great. But that's the problem with auteurs who get so utterly wrapped up in their creations, they become so desperate to maintain every aspect of their 'vision' that it can wreck their movies as many times as it elevates them. Apparently, the director's cut is four hours long! LMAO. 3/5.

I'll now do a summary in list format of all the one's I would heartily recommend, for people that prefer brevity to the point of extreme, now that I've finished my three month wallow in one of cinema's most loved historical directors. A sort of top 10, as it were.

Yojimbo - 5/5
High and Low - 5/5
Seven Samarai - 4.5/5
Ran - 4.5/5
Silent Duel - 4.5/5
Rashomon - 4/5
Redbeard - 4/5
The Bad Sleep Well - 4/5
Throne of Blood - 3.5/5
The Lower Depths - 3.5/5
Sanjuro - 3.5/5
The Hidden Fortress - 3.5/5
Stray Dog - 3.5/5

There's still a small handful of his movies that I haven't seen but if I ever do see them and feel I've missed one out I'll make a new list one day.

lackblogger said:

I'll now do a summary in list format of all the one's I would heartily recommend, for people that prefer brevity to the point of extreme, now that I've finished my three month wallow in one of cinema's most loved historical directors. A sort of top 10, as it were.

Yojimbo - 5/5
High and Low - 5/5
Seven Samarai - 4.5/5
Ran - 4.5/5
Silent Duel - 4.5/5
Rashomon - 4/5
Redbeard - 4/5
The Bad Sleep Well - 4/5
Throne of Blood - 3.5/5
The Lower Depths - 3.5/5
Sanjuro - 3.5/5
The Hidden Fortress - 3.5/5
Stray Dog - 3.5/5

There's still a small handful of his movies that I haven't seen but if I ever do see them and feel I've missed one out I'll make a new list one day.

Click to expand...

Wow! That is dedication. I have probably seen 80% of those and understand your comments. I would still suggest Dersu Uzula as some of the cinematography was, for me, amazing. I might rate Rashomon a touch higher but probably influenced by artist girlfriend at time. (I even watched over 8 hours of Warhol’s Empire State Building to please her, the things hormones do.)

I'll watch Dersu if I ever find a copy for somewhat less than ten bucks , same with the other few I didn't watch. The UK can really suck when it comes to finding specific movies. Did you know, you can't even find reasonably priced copies of modern artists such as Bong Joon Ho here, the only film by him I can even get for under three bucks is The Host, LMAO.

Catching up on Denzel Washington:

Flight (2013) Sees Washington play a pilot who has quite the extravagant lifestyle, one might even describe him as a bit of a Hunter S Thompson. However, after one particular binge of intoxicants he manages to land a passenger plane that would have been crashed by any other pilot. However, while he's being praised as a hero by the masses his toxicology report comes through, putting him in a very curious position of potentially going to prison for the rest of his life.

The first half an hour were blindingly good. At this point I was stunned I'd not heard more about this film. Unfortunately, the middle section manages to be almost the opposite and it sort of trails off into a sort-of-romance movie before finally getting back to the main plot for the last twenty minutes. Which is a real shame as the bookends here are so good, what a shame the meat in the middle is so dry and overcooked.

The final scene of the film is also one of those 'and I'm now going to preach some arbitrary moral at you that was barely a feature of the film but kinda could have been if you wanted it to be', leaving a very disappointing final taste. An ambitious and interesting premise that got ruined by overly-obvious and poorly presented Oscar-bait. 3/5

2 Guns (2013) is quite the opposite. Here, a fairly boring and confusing opening 20 minutes leads into a nearly non-stop action routine before completing itself with a fairly bland and anti-climactic final 20 minutes. It has everything you'd expect of a Washington film both conspiracy and plot-twist-wise, but its all done so formulaic otherwise that it never feels interesting, merely more excuses to shoot guns at people and provide amusing odd-couple buddy dialogue. His co-star for the action being Mark Wahlberg, who I've never really imagined as an action hero but pulls it off quite well here. The late Bill Paxton also shows up for some great Paxtoning.

For all of its sound and fury though, its mostly forgettable schlock that entertains quite adequately while its on but washes out one's memory almost as soon as it's over, offering not much in the way of uniqueness. It doesn't take itself too seriously but isn't funny enough to be a quasi-parody, it just succeeds in making it easier to care less about any of the characters. 3/5

Catching up on Woody Allen:

Café Society (2016) doesn't actually star Allen, he's 82 now, but instead has Jesse Eisenberg play the Allen role in a fairly mundane and uninteresting love-triangle set during the heyday of both Hollywood and the prohibition era of America. As a result, the film looks stunning and sounds stunning as the most beautiful early jazz intermingles with scenes of 1920s high and low American society to perfection. The drawback here are the actors combined with the script.

If you're not overly familiar with Allen's films then Eisenberg might not irritate you, but as someone who's seen a lot of Allen all I could see was Eisenberg doing a poor man's version of Allen, a sort of cheap imitation as it were. I have no idea if he was coached to play it as Allen or if that's the only way the script could be played, but either way it really doesn't work IMO. Likewise, Steve Carrol's character doesn't work and, worst of all, the people playing the classic Jewish Brooklin poor family all seem to have the same problem with being believable in an acting sense, again, it was as if people were trying to do an impersonation rather than them being the things presented.

None of this is helped by the plot itself not really having any meat to it at all. There's no real stakes and its more akin to an afternoon TV movie in the level of drama. Just a very beautiful afternoon movie. You'd probably enjoy this one more the less you've seen any of Allen's other stuff and the more you're into casual soap opera drama, to which the above likely wouldn't affect you so much. I, personally, found it difficult to watch and even though its only 90 minutes long it felt like two hours by the end.

Looks great, but there's something off about it. 3/5

Wonder Wheel (2017) performed a lot worse than Café Society, both critically and at the box office, but I found this to be the superior of the two, by quite a large margin. I'm really struggling to see what people didn't like about it as I can't think of many flaws at all. Kate Winslet is fantastic in the lead role, Timberlake is surprisingly great, as is Belushi and everyone else for that matter. Again, it has a fantastic aesthetic and wonderful music, this time set in 1950s America.

And this one isn't so much as a love triangle as a love hexagon, or even octagon, which makes the plot vastly more interesting and edge of the seat than café society. Even just describing the characters is more interesting: The ex-actress turned waitress, the ex-drunk but still violent husband, the romantic artist, the ex-gangster mole, the arsonist; all combine to present something that I much more a tale of the struggles of human nature that anything Café society even came close to.

And it manages to do all this while walking a perfect tightrope between both darkness and comedy. I personally like films that are almost more like watching stage plays than films and this one is a great example with many of the scenes reminiscent of sitting and watching a play unfold before you. Looking at the IMDB reviews it seems to be one of those films that you either love or hate, however, even reading the negative reviews I can't offer anything in the way of agreed issues, I think its one you either find 'boring' or you don't, and I most certainly didn't. 4.5/5

Really liked Flight; really disliked 2 guns and cafe society (woody allen movies are always hit or miss with me - i like 1/3 to 1/2 quite a bit but really hate the others); never heard of wonder wheel.
-
DId I mentioned I really enjoyed Flight - very good movie.

lackblogger said:

Catching up on Denzel Washington:

Flight (2013) Sees Washington play a pilot who has quite the extravagant lifestyle, one might even describe him as a bit of a Hunter S Thompson. However, after one particular binge of intoxicants he manages to land a passenger plane that would have been crashed by any other pilot. However, while he's being praised as a hero by the masses his toxicology report comes through, putting him in a very curious position of potentially going to prison for the rest of his life.

The first half an hour were blindingly good. At this point I was stunned I'd not heard more about this film. Unfortunately, the middle section manages to be almost the opposite and it sort of trails off into a sort-of-romance movie before finally getting back to the main plot for the last twenty minutes. Which is a real shame as the bookends here are so good, what a shame the meat in the middle is so dry and overcooked.

The final scene of the film is also one of those 'and I'm now going to preach some arbitrary moral at you that was barely a feature of the film but kinda could have been if you wanted it to be', leaving a very disappointing final taste. An ambitious and interesting premise that got ruined by overly-obvious and poorly presented Oscar-bait. 3/5

2 Guns (2013) is quite the opposite. Here, a fairly boring and confusing opening 20 minutes leads into a nearly non-stop action routine before completing itself with a fairly bland and anti-climactic final 20 minutes. It has everything you'd expect of a Washington film both conspiracy and plot-twist-wise, but its all done so formulaic otherwise that it never feels interesting, merely more excuses to shoot guns at people and provide amusing odd-couple buddy dialogue. His co-star for the action being Mark Wahlberg, who I've never really imagined as an action hero but pulls it off quite well here. The late Bill Paxton also shows up for some great Paxtoning.

For all of its sound and fury though, its mostly forgettable schlock that entertains quite adequately while its on but washes out one's memory almost as soon as it's over, offering not much in the way of uniqueness. It doesn't take itself too seriously but isn't funny enough to be a quasi-parody, it just succeeds in making it easier to care less about any of the characters. 3/5

Catching up on Woody Allen:

Café Society (2016) doesn't actually star Allen, he's 82 now, but instead has Jesse Eisenberg play the Allen role in a fairly mundane and uninteresting love-triangle set during the heyday of both Hollywood and the prohibition era of America. As a result, the film looks stunning and sounds stunning as the most beautiful early jazz intermingles with scenes of 1920s high and low American society to perfection. The drawback here are the actors combined with the script.

If you're not overly familiar with Allen's films then Eisenberg might not irritate you, but as someone who's seen a lot of Allen all I could see was Eisenberg doing a poor man's version of Allen, a sort of cheap imitation as it were. I have no idea if he was coached to play it as Allen or if that's the only way the script could be played, but either way it really doesn't work IMO. Likewise, Steve Carrol's character doesn't work and, worst of all, the people playing the classic Jewish Brooklin poor family all seem to have the same problem with being believable in an acting sense, again, it was as if people were trying to do an impersonation rather than them being the things presented.

None of this is helped by the plot itself not really having any meat to it at all. There's no real stakes and its more akin to an afternoon TV movie in the level of drama. Just a very beautiful afternoon movie. You'd probably enjoy this one more the less you've seen any of Allen's other stuff and the more you're into casual soap opera drama, to which the above likely wouldn't affect you so much. I, personally, found it difficult to watch and even though its only 90 minutes long it felt like two hours by the end.

Looks great, but there's something off about it. 3/5

Wonder Wheel (2017) performed a lot worse than Café Society, both critically and at the box office, but I found this to be the superior of the two, by quite a large margin. I'm really struggling to see what people didn't like about it as I can't think of many flaws at all. Kate Winslet is fantastic in the lead role, Timberlake is surprisingly great, as is Belushi and everyone else for that matter. Again, it has a fantastic aesthetic and wonderful music, this time set in 1950s America.

And this one isn't so much as a love triangle as a love hexagon, or even octagon, which makes the plot vastly more interesting and edge of the seat than café society. Even just describing the characters is more interesting: The ex-actress turned waitress, the ex-drunk but still violent husband, the romantic artist, the ex-gangster mole, the arsonist; all combine to present something that I much more a tale of the struggles of human nature that anything Café society even came close to.

And it manages to do all this while walking a perfect tightrope between both darkness and comedy. I personally like films that are almost more like watching stage plays than films and this one is a great example with many of the scenes reminiscent of sitting and watching a play unfold before you. Looking at the IMDB reviews it seems to be one of those films that you either love or hate, however, even reading the negative reviews I can't offer anything in the way of agreed issues, I think its one you either find 'boring' or you don't, and I most certainly didn't. 4.5/5

Click to expand...

Speaking of Danzel Washington, I highly recommend both recent Equalizer movies.

The character here added their own twist to their lives/ethics/motivation, which is different but equally valid and authentic from the original Woodward TV series (if you are old enough to have watched that!).

I don't - IMO Equalizers are the only Denzel's movies you may skip and die a happy person.
He made both watchable and proved his talent for the xth time, but that's it.

Every other movie he appeared in is a mustwatch. Well maybe not Heart Condition, but that's not his fault.

You can safely ignore Joxer's comment as the Equalizer movies are pretty good; the first a lot better than the second.

joxer said:

I don't - IMO Equalizers are the only Denzel's movies you may skip and die a happy person.
He made both watchable and proved his talent for the xth time, but that's it.

Every other movie he appeared in is a mustwatch. Well maybe not Heart Condition, but that's not his fault.

Click to expand...

I watched that Aquaman film yesterday, a lot of flash but not much substance. At least I got through it, I believe I'm closing to hitting my quota on superhero movies in general at this point.

Yes, I'm looking forward to trying out the Equalizer movies at some point.

Interestingly, at the second hand DVD retailer I get a lot of these old films from, the Blu Ray for Equalizer 1 is actually cheaper than the DVD. Bizarre I know, but you'd be amazed how often I see this in the second hand market. I had the same problem with the first Daredevil series. At the moment the two equalizers are both just out of my price range.

John Wick 3

Carnifex said:

I watched that Aquaman film yesterday, a lot of flash but not much substance. At least I got through it, I believe I'm closing to hitting my quota on superhero movies in general at this point.

Click to expand...

You mean quota on mainstream superhero movies…

IIRC I did write about two brilliant japanese superhero movies - Hentai Kamen. Grab'em.
After those two, pick Chronicle from 2012. and explain to me why is Hollywood pretending they never made this gem, it's fantastic.

While these three are a world of their own, don't think that all superhero movies not aggressively advertised by rich lobbies are good. Avoid trash that is supposed to be a different refreshment, but is in fact so bad you don't have time for that bullshit (Brightburn, Rendel, Zashchitniki).

Note, I still have Inuyashiki on hold thus can't say if it's worth watching. Yet. I have too many other titles "marked" as priority so this one will have to wait:


Anyway, the point I'm repeating is - avoid mainstream.
There are so many gems out there, each better than another. Life is too short to spend it on shallow or plotholes ridden mediocrity.

lackblogger said:

Yes, I'm looking forward to trying out the Equalizer movies at some point.

Click to expand...

My condolences.

Watched Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

I had seen a variety of reviews saying that it was an overall fun film except for excessive plot development spent on family drama. I have to disagree: the entire movie is incredibly dumb! It had me rolling my eyes more often than not… and why do the missiles off Air Force jets seemingly have a range limit of a couple hundred meters anyway?!

5/10.

Saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night. Enjoyed it overall, and found it very funny at certain points. Really well written, as always with Tarantino films. But it did have a lot less violence and action throughout, compared to his other films. But the characters were very likeable. Especially Dicaprio's and Pitts main two. Those were great.

And I was shocked how quick time flew by, I was expecting to feel it a lot longer, since some people said it was meandering at times. Which it was, maybe, depending how much you like mood-setting scenes. But the final 30 minutes or so were absolutely glorious. Too bad people were laughing too hard, and I didn't hear some lines. But a second watch on my own will fix that.

It was a nice ride, but much more relaxed than his other films. I'm not sure where I would put it, I'll have to see it again. Also, the girlfriend liked it very much, and a lot more than his other films due to the lower amount of violence.

8/10 for me.

I'm looking forward to watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I've heard from folks that enjoyed it and others that thought it was a waste of time. I may grab it on dvd but will more likely wait until it releases on HBO.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to join the gang who weren't overly excited by One Upon A Time In Hollywood.

The film is over two and a half hours long. It's setting itself up to be something that's worth that amount of time and, ultimately, I don't think it warranted that amount of time. A case of directorial gluttony and too much love for their art to let the editor wield their scissors and do their job.

Too many characters and too many long lingering scenes that didn't add much to the narrative. I guess it works well as an ambience piece if you like your movies to just amble along in a nice atmosphere, but I'm a fan of keeping things tight and all too often the film would wander into cul-de-sacs that are nice individually but don't connect to anything.

I liked a lot of it, I just felt there was too much time wasting and too little entertainment factor. The screening I went to was full of pensioners, I assume it was some kind of communal day out thing for them, and combined with the premise of the film being an aging actor coming to terms with the twilight of their career, I couldn't help but feel that it's meandering was intentional, a sort of old age pensioner version of Tarrantino. 3/5

lackblogger said:

A case of directorial gluttony

Click to expand...

Yup. I really wanted to like the film, but overall I felt it could have greatly benefitted from LOADS of editing and less indulgence on an aimless trip down Tarantino's memory lane.

Yes, there was something off about it generally, but not rotten off, just in a pacing, structure, relevance sense. It's not something I'd feel ripped off about as it's a definitely quality throughout. I, for example, would completely ignore any videos or 'news' pieces that used titles like "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is the WORST Tarantino film EVER and here's WHY" as disingenuous clickbaiting claptrap, but something more along the lines of "What I didn't get about Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" would certainly interest me.

Can we go into spoilers yet? Oh, ok, I'll use spoiler tabs.

@lackblogger;:

Agree with pretty everything you said in the spoilers section. But I'm not sure I'd take the complaints as actual complaints, and I'm not saying you're complaining either, maybe more making observations.

For me it was very much an "experience" of the end of the 60s to 70s transition period, which I was not part of. I'm an 80s kid myself. So, I just let loose and enjoyed the ride.

Whenever I feel something isn't the way I feel it should be I like to ask myself why should it even be that way? Why can't it be different.

It is the kind of movie that you need to see in a certain state of mind I guess. I was very much tired when I saw it, and just let it wash over me. And very enjoyed myself. But I can see how other people can find it boring or meandering.

Only annoying thing about that night was that I saw it in a german cinema, but in the original english, and for some reason the germans seemed to find it overly funny. They pretty laughed at everything, even more serious scenes. I found that a bit weird, and sometimes annoying as I couldn't hear the lines.