the LAST FILM YOU'VE SEEN thread

[Chris Knipp]

Carnet d'Ados -- la vie quand même/ Life after All. Olivier Péray 2000. (made for TV, in the US straight- to-DVD, netflix)

After their parents die in an accident, the older brother Vincent, 19 (Matthieu Tribes) wants to care for the younger one, Lucien (Maxime Monsimier) who's about 10. Somewhat reminiscent of The Cement Garden, because it's about kids trying to live on
after their parents die, and the smaller one retreats into an unhealthy fantasy world, while the older tries to escape his guilt through love-making.. The boy Lucien's playing with flowers is reminiscent of René Clément's Forbidden Games. For a TV movie, quiet and gracefully done; but the ending is too easy.

In Extremis/To the Extreme(Etienne Faure, 2000). US DVD.

Livelier treatment of a very similar theme can be found in another straight-to-DVD in US French film, about a wild bisexual guy, Thomas (Sébastien Roch) who seeks permission to raise the son of his girlfriend, Grégoire AKA Grég, Jérémie Sanguinetti) after she passes. In that one, more reality is confronted, much more happens, and the acting is fun to watch and includes Julie Depardieu and Jean-Claude Brialy. Far from bland TV stuff, In Extremis has other flaws such as pretension and a too-loose plot structure. Both movies seem to feel obliged to introduce more sex than their orphan theme needs. In Extremis is liberal in its male nudity, including the super-pretty boyfriend character, Aurélien Wiik (À travers le forêt), who's used to sell the DVD to the gay market.

[Chris Knipp]

The world of Jacques Demy/L'univers de Jacques Demy (Agnès Varda 1995). Netflix DVD.

By his wife. This is charming, and made me want to see Peau d'Ane (1970). Lola(1961) is by far my favorite of the few Demy films I've seen. Of course there are a lot I haven't seen.

[arsaib4]

Werner Herzog's The White Diamond (2005)

Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud (TIFF)

[wpqx]

Well The Squid and the Whale wasn't possible, so we had to go by what was playing at the time. So Pride and Prejudice, which I wasn't about watching. I'm suspicious of remakes, and extremely suspicious of costume drama crap designed to win awards. That said I found Pride and Prejudice a fantastic movie. I had no expectations for it, but it was much better than I could have imagined. I'll try and get a proper review later.

Also watched Eternal Sunshine again on DVD, nice film to watch in a group.

[arsaib4]

I guess with Domino I watched the wrong Keira Knightley movie.

L'univers de Jacques Demy / la vie quand même

Looks like your Netflix queue is getting a workout. That's how it was with me but I eventually got a little tired of it. Now I only subscribe every other month.

[Chris Knipp]

I didn't see Domino so can't comment, but she has gotten into something more arty no doubt with Pride and Prejudice, at least I guess it thinks it is. Netflix burnout coming? Maybe. This has been a time when I was in the Bay Area with not so many good movies to go to in theaters, but even so, it is a bit much, true. We'll see. I want to get through their recent French films that I haven't seen. There aren't really that many. Have you seen Téchiné's Barocco? Watching minor efforts is work. But there's always something to see, and to say. Visually it is stunning in many ways, and it shows T. has always liked those long horizontal tracking shots. I have Demy's Peau d'Ane and Baie des anges in my Netflix queue.

[arsaib4]

"Why is it that all the straight critics think BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN isn’t gay, or at least gay enough? Spit-lubed buttsex and onscreen kissing and, gee, two men falling desperately, tragically in love with each other? Sounds pretty gay to me, but then I don’t take for granted a corny Hollywood romance that reflects my sexuality since, uh, they don’t exist. I’ll concede that BROKEBACK is, with the exception of Ledger’s performance, mediocre filmmaking, but I wish all you hip, with-it heteros would stop running to the defense of us ill-served gays. Three cheers for middle-brow man-on-man masochistic romanticism, says I. I’ve been watching you straights wallow in it long enough."

Nathan Lee responding to Dave Kehr's rather "straight" review of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.

[wpqx]

I'll be honest Brokeback Mountain looks rather awful, but I have no faith in Ang Lee whatsoever.

I did finally watch Murderball, which means that yes I have watched all of my dvd's. I either have to go out and get more or re-watch something. Hurrah for me. I realize though that if I'm actually going to get a top ten for this year done in any timely manner, I should really get out to the theater more, but damn it's FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE.

If I had a DVD burner I probably would use Netflix, but I'm a fan of renting a dozen films a weekend, whenever possible.

[Chris Knipp]

Nathan Lee's attitude toward both Dave Kehr and Ang Lee's new movie is understandable, not to say obligatory, for a hip young gay New York film critic. I haven't read Dave Kehr's interpretation, but I've already seen this approach, which is palliative: first of all, this is just a love story. Second, it is two men, but, hey, it's just a love story, so (Roeper) "get over it," people. As an older gay non-New Yorker (though I might like to be one, a New Yorker that is) who was deeply affected by the A. Annie Proulx story when it came out eight years ago, and someone who always hopes for the best when big budget, big names, and big screen come together to do something small and powerful, I'm very hopeful that Brokeback Mountain will turn out to be more than just a showplace for Heath Ledger's emerging talent as a major movie actor. I can understand wpqx's expecting the worst. He's I guess hip, young, and straight, and so in a position to say the movie "looks rather awful" without having seen it. I'll be seeing it in two days, and quite frankly to me it looks rather wonderful.

The San Francisco theater that's showing it started with a midnight showing Thursday night, and is showing it in three auditoriums. Does that tell you anything about how the distributors are expecting it to play with the average gay man in America's gayest city?

An open mind is a terrible thing to lose. But does any of us have one? Apart from my non-hip older gay enthusiasm for seeing two young near-superstar mainstream movie hunks playing in a glossy well-made gay love story, I will begin inevitably with the approach I always have when a film is closely based on a work that can conceivably qualify as literature, as just evidenced by my evaluation of the Joe Thomas Pride and Prejudice: I come in with a strong sense of the text they were working from, to see how well they did with it and when they depart from it, how well that works.

[wpqx]

Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) - Philip Kauffman

Took a damn long time to finally get this film, considering I wouldn't settle for anything short of the Criterion release. The resulting film was . . . long, really, really long. There was a lot of dead weight here, and Kauffman took a someone lean 2 hour film and milked another hour out of it. I will give Sven Nikvist credit for being the first person to ever make Czechoslovakia look beautiful, granted there were still scenes showing it as a repressive hell hole, the image most of us associate with that and all countries during their stay under the "Iron Curtain". The film is extremely sexual, but that's like saying Harry Potter is magical. I would like to applaud the acting, rather top notch as one could expect from this cast, I really admired the ridiculous amount of self confidence that Daniel Day Lewis was able to bring to his role.

[Chris Knipp]

André Téchiné: Barocco. (1976).

DVD bought in Paris, supplied with English subtitles. This is early and inferior Téchiné but not without any rewards. The noirish plot of an ex-prizefighter (Gérard Depardieu) who gets killed by a Mafia hireling (also played by Depardieu) when he fails to do what he's been paid by them to do, claim a homosexual affair with a political candidate they want to ruin, is surreal and without conviction. Neither Depardieu nor a young Isabelle Adjani, nor Jean-Claude Brialy (as a newspaper editor) and some other good actors, can save it. But for a Seventies movie it is surprisingly up to date in its elegant look, beautfiful color, stiking compositions, and typically Téchiné use of wide aspect ratio and long right-to-left pans. That doesn't make it a good movie, but it makes it a pleasure to look at. Depardieu was surprisingly lean and buff at this time, but Adjani looked better later when she got some more age and character in her face. As the prizefighter's girlfriend who then befriend's his killer, without noticing that he looks exactly the same (except for hair dyed dark brown), she has an impossible task.

The images are beautiful, but the soundtrack is rather murky.

[arsaib4]

I have seen Téchiné's Barocco but it's not very fresh in my mind. I think it's available on DVD here.

"But for a Seventies movie it is surprisingly up to date in its elegant look, beautfiful color, stiking compositions, and typically Téchiné use of wide aspect ratio and long right-to-left pans." I'm not sure what you mean. Why is the look surprising?

Nathan Lee should be a regular at the Times or the Voice.

[Chris Knipp]

"But for a Seventies movie it is surprisingly up to date in its elegant look, beautfiful color, striking compositions, and typically Téchiné use of wide aspect ratio and long right-to-left pans." I'm not sure what you mean. Why is the look surprising?

I'm not sure what you mean. Why would this statement not be clear? I didn't say the look was surprisiing; I said it was surprisingly up to date in its look. A lot of Seventies movies look dated (obtrusive camera movement, excessive zooms, stuff like that) and the color often doesn't look very good. I'm sure you know what I mean about the emphasis on horizontality; you've probably noticed Téchiné loves long horizontal tracking shots over a landscape, a field, etc. Here he does it both with interiors and with streets. I'd have to watch the film with you to point out details of what I mean, I can't describe it in words here. It's just very fresh looking visually; I think Téchiné was very into giving the film a nice look. He has a lot of carefully composed, perhaps almost too studied shots with a lot of color, both in interiors, including the whore's room and the nightclub, especially the singer with the long stage and the tall dancer who comes up to join her, a very horizontal shot, and a number of outdoor street scenes that have long horizons, crowd compositions in which the eye picks out the principals. In terms of visual composition this is a film worth watching. The plot is silly and uninteresting so one focuses on the visual, and it's pretty clear that he did too.

[wpqx]

Death by Hanging (1968) - Nagisa Oshima

Finally got some of those impossible to find Oshima films, or at least a film. From what I've read, he doesn't have any sort of style, and that no two films are really alike. Death by Hanging is nothing like his other films I've seen, and I'm not sure what to make of it, because it's not quite like any other film I've seen.

The story begins somewhat Japanese New Wave esque, with a description of an execution and then we witness one. Next thing we find out, the condemned man "R", didn't die. He winds up somewhat demented, and the executioners spend the rest of the film trying to remind him who he is so that he'll remember his guilt so they can hang him again. Yet before it gets to the end everyone's sanity is questioned, and I severely couldn't tell what the hell was real and surreal. Still a fascinating film, and I really hope to be able to find more of his nearly impossible to locate 60's films. This one certainly was intriguing enough.

[oscar jubis]

I'd love to have a chance to watch Death by Hanging again, over 20 years after first viewing. The anti-death penalty subtext is strong. The fact that R is Korean and the executioners are Japanese is not coincidental. It's rather symbolic of the history between the two nations.