ak's viewing log ii

[Ally]

apparently eli roth is also a pretentious prick. and if you see any of his movies, this behavior from him is unwarranted.

[james]

hostel is good because it's like the fratboy flipside of Rivette's quote about 2001

[Stefan]

I've pretty much written you off completely...

So mean..

[CoinQuatro]

Hostel (2005, Eli Roth) 62/100
expecting something like "saw," it's hard to not be taken aback by just how utterly bizarre this film is. there's no tension or atmosphere but nor, i think, is there supposed to be. the gore has very little impact, but i don't think it's supposed to have an impact. toward the end, it turns into something resembling godard's experiments with post-noir, and plunges into darkness a bit, with one character arbitrarily killing themselves, suggesting perhaps eli roth was hung over when he wrote that particular scene. the film is such a mess of arbitrarily shifting moods that it's hard to get into it, BUT, what results is a baffling failure, and proof that what the saw movies made look so easy is not such at all. i will also say that one important plot point is revealed via a lengthy monologue by a character which is fucking ridiculous, at least eli roth's good friend tarantino has TWO people when he does this, and not just the one.

an american slasher flick with tits, gore but no atmosphere and whatnot.
very bizarre indeed.

[Carmelo]

oh I might try it then, I thought i was supposed to be bad.

[Simon M.]

it is.

[AgentKnight]

oh I might try it then, I thought i was supposed to be bad.

i wouldn't exactly recommend it.

Office Space (1998, Mike Judge) 64/100
time for some more comedy oriented movies, i suppose? it was not really my choice to watch this, i would have much rather watched, say, "the hills have eyes," or "doomsday," or "rise of the footsoldier," but friends of mine apparently don't like or weren't in the mood for gorecore cinema, unfortunately. so this was kind of funny, particularly that the protagonist looked a lot like charlie sheen, and has a nice "life is what you make it" kind of message even if that isn't necessarily true and if it was real life and not a movie the non-balthazar getty charlie sheen lookalike would have been serving prison time. really failed to make me happy or forget about life which is kind of what ideally a comedy is supposed to do but i think the nerve-chewing gore theatrics of the saw movies do that kind of thing a lot better, you know, as far as numbing the pain and all of that kind of thing goes goes.

Bruno (2009, Larry Charles) 69/100
better than borat for sure, not really ever boring, and utterly hilarious every now and again (the thing that bruno shows the test audiences is so utterly ridiculous, hones in on the number eight rule of humour, jokes that kind of make sense initially but make less and less sense as they go on are awesome). again, i would have liked it a lot more had someone been disfigured in some repulsive way. as far as the current mainstream goes, i'd suggest that an "outrageous comedy" is less interesting than "silly action film" or "bizarre horror movie," speaking of which, there was an ad for this horror/thriller-ish movie with alison lohman in it from sam raimi that looked like total rubbish in the best possible way. however, no such terrible horror film could compare to the hilarity of keifer sutherland trying to play someone other than jack bauer in the unintentionally hysterical and entirely birlliant "mirrors," which i heartily recommend.

[wigwam]

im not reading your bruno rvw til i see it but :shudder: to that office space movie, it totally addresses the prison-time scenario, and is a primo example of comedy not being "escapist" dreck like these tortureporns your friends shouldnt be hanging out with you over, and again back to my fundamental bias, where people pretend horror is this method of tangibly coping with desires and base emotions (see that p-rouge post that i admire yet disagree with), it's in such extremes as to render itself useless, thus its primary application is like you're describing where you're only looking at films as escapism/entertainment (to jump back to p-rouge's post, she specifies "her" horror as not "these" horrors), i dunno, i just find that fascinating - horror feeding into the basest simplest caveman-reactionary impulses/avenues of understanding (even those who claim to be beyond that and into it for aesthetic choices, those aesthetics are also elsewhere and you found them in horror films by gravitating toward what i'm objecting to) ( ), whereas comedy is all about the intellect: it plays with what you know and how you know it and how you feel about that knowledge, and all those complexities that make us modern humans, not cavemen jumping at boos and shadows and shit

plus, i like it when they beat up the fax machine!

[Simon M.]

Office Space is fun. I was pleasantly surprised

[Jake Aesthete]

Office Space is ok but they show it on tv way too much...

[drone]

AgentKnight, have you posted your top films list on here yet? I remember really enjoying yours from the other forum.

[AgentKnight]

something like this

1. borderline (2008, lyne charlebois)
2. bad lieutenant (1992, abel ferrara)
3. mutual appreciation (2005, andrew bujalski)
4. the blackout (1997, abel ferrara)
5. the insider (1999, michael mann)
6. trouble every day (2001, claire denis)
7. the arrival (1996, david twohy)
8. zabriskie point (1970, michaelangelo antonioni)
9. nausicaa (1984, hayao miyazaki)
10. cure (1997, kiyoshi kurosawa)
11. violent cop (1989, takeshi kitano)
12. the man who left his will on film (1970, nagisa oshima)
13. solaris (1972, andrei tarkovsky)
14. ossessione (1943, luchino visconti)
15. another lonely hitman (1995, rokuro mochizuki)
16. what time is it there? (2001, tsai ming-liang)
17. the church (1989, michele soavi)
18. demonlover (2002, olivier assayas)
19. futurama: bender's big score (2007, dwayne carey hill)
20. pumpkinhead (1988, stan winston)

[David]

Intresting list, many I haven't even heard of before. I just checked the trailer of Borderline and it looks intresting!
I've been meaning to see Mutual appreciation forever, I own the dvd for at least two years by now...
And yay for Zabriskie point, one of my favorite Antonionis!

[Jake Aesthete]

Less Charlie Sheen than i might have expected...

[warthog]

the blackout was so fucking horrible man...

[Simon M.]

pumpkinhead

[Jake Aesthete]

pumpkinhead

Yeah i somehow missed all the moody atmosphere in that one...

[AgentKnight]

i just felt i needed something with lance henriksen.

[AgentKnight]

Over Her Dead Body (2008, Jeff Lowell) 33/100
no reason to watch this other than to masturbate to paul rudd's keen sense of humour, but with eva longoria constantly onscreen that might turn out to be kind of difficult...

<--- HOLY FUCK!!!

88 Minutes (2008, Jon Avnet) 67/100
highly idiosyncratic, caffeinated with of the "16 blocks" ilk. the opening scene of al pacino grinding asses with far younger girls in some bar to obnoxious hip-hop is a great example of cliches combining in an utterly bizarre ways that only really happens in this kind of thing. i take no issue with it's blah-blah action/thriller/mystery thrills, spills and plot twists, even if it does get increasingly stupid toward the end. alicia witt is so fucking beautiful as well.



Saw III (2006, Darren Lynn Bousman) 77/100
not quite as "no bullshit" as its predecessor, with some flashbacks that tug at the heartstrings when they should be tugging on the testicles. basically the same film again, but with less characters and less viscerally. that said it's still very, very good, and the rack is the best trap thus far.



Saw IV (2007, Darren Lynn Bousman) 73/100
i'm adjusting to the gore -> police procedural bullshit -> plot twist structure of these movies and i can't pretend that i'm not getting a little tired of it after, what?, six whole hours of it?. nothing to complain about otherwise - the traps are incredibly good, the gore is probably the most extreme so far, and the narrative makes even less sense than usual. the adrenalin rush of discovering these awesome films is dying away a little bit but i mean they're still the best out of everything i've been watching lately. can't resist the sharp punch to the throat of those hyper-edited, brutal deaths. the ice crushing the head thing was just beautiful.



Saw V (2008, David Hackl) 81/100
a new director reinjects life into the series, making this the best saw since the second! (but not as good). the police stuff is at long last interesting again, but it's not donnie wahlberg who does it, this time it's by being so unusually suffocating and atmospheric, doing what "se7en" did, discovering the tension of things like cops just going through shit in the library, but better. and the gore is some of the most ridiculous thus far, the opening scene more than enough to satisfy me, but of course, there's a lot more to come. it's the least "messy" film since the second as well, a little more cohesive, a little more clever. the new director cuts his scenes to shreds a lot less than darren lynn bousman, which is mostly great, though does mean the film's limited budget is a little less obscured (the guy getting his hand cut in half was pretty fake). can't wait for number six!!

[Stefan]

I saw 88 Minutes. I mostly agree with your review. Great, now I don't have to write one.
But what's with all these Saw films? James, you're supposed to be better than that.

[AgentKnight]

that alicia witt is really something huh??

*comes everywhere*

[Jake Aesthete]

So it's Alicia now? What happened to Laura?

[AgentKnight]

alicia witt is an actress from the movie 88 minutes. get off da drugs.

[AgentKnight]

Player 5150 (2008, David Michael O'Neill) 53/100

Broken Hogwarts

The three students went through the school. They had not thought yet Brom. They just walked only in the school.

The school was almost empty corridor, except for these three. Around them were all Broms.

"Ok Brom!" Ron said, "My Brom is, I would like to deny it, let me ride, unlike Harry Brom. Let's go MY Brom!"

Ron's Brom unresponded.

"To Brom ...?" Hermione said to her Brom.

Her Brom, too, unresponded.

The bromines just sat there.

"That's strange ..." Hermione said, "Our Broms are unresponding. Do you believe that ..."

"My Broms were here ..." Harry said, "We have to go ..."

The three quickly run away, away from the Broms.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4633772/5/Harrys_Brom

[Carmelo]

I can't believe that there are that many sequels to saw.