OT - Great Film .. but I won't watch it again.

Post by **sophocle** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:20 pm

"The Vanishing", the Dutch -French production and not the Hwood remake.

Slo-mo trainreck doesn't even begin to capture the intensity and hypnotism.

Post by **timdrage** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 6:59 pm

I'm trying to think of examples, but I usually will happily re-watch any good film. Dancer in the Dark maybe; i don't really want to see it a second time but then again I don't really know whether I even thought it was any good or not.

not "intense and disturbing" (some of my most often re-watched favorite films fit that description!) but; Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love" is amazing but I distinctly remember not particularly wanting to see it again immediately afterwards... But I would certainly like to see it again now, must get the DVD some time. Same goes for 2046. ....as opposed to Happy Together which I saw twice in the cinema, or Chungking Express which I could happily watch any time of any day!

Things like Private Ryan + Shindler's List (which i did see twice actually, once on tv) i'm not inclined to view again just because I don't think they're particualrly great films, not because they're too harrowing... SPR especially; starts really powerful but degenerates into more of a bog-standard hollywood movie with cheesy poignent (literal!!!) american apple pie scenes etcc... and action that becomes more conventional/entertaining after the initial horror of the normandy landing scene....

Post by **JGrube** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:08 pm

Funny, I was talking with a fellow Peckinpah fan the last week, and we quickly came to the topic of "Straw Dogs". We felt the same: a very powerful and interesting movie, we've each seen in once in its entirety, neither of us has been able to watch it again. Too intense.

I'd also have to put Peter Jackson's "Meet the Feebles" in there. It's such a completely unique and twisted movie, I'm glad I saw it. I've not been able to get myself to watch it again. A little too weird when you know what's coming.

Best,

Jason

Post by **tlatosmd** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:41 pm

Saving Private Ryan? Veterans said it was what real wartime action was like but I don't know what was in it that wasn't in films like How I won the war or German 1960s Die BrÃƒÂ¼cke already.

Dancer in the dark? 8O Another awful Dogma-like film (well, what do you expect from a manifesto that speaks about exclusively making bad movies for the sheer heck of it?). I'd prefer to never see it again because it was so badly made and full of clichees, for the same reasons I don't watch other Video8 shows such as America's funniest home videos.

Post by **timdrage** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 7:53 pm

I like Bjork, but DITD was one of those films that was so over the top tragic that it kind of became annoying. Everyone just kept doing such stupid, obviously doomed things! (Maybe that was the point!?)

It felt like watching a feature-length industrial safety video.

[/b]

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:55 pm

"SPR especially; starts really powerful but degenerates into more of a bog-standard hollywood movie with cheesy poignent (literal!!!) american apple pie scenes etcc"

Agreed. Spielberg was better when he hadn't acquired a reputation among the average moviegoer as a pseudo-'art' director. When his expectations were set at enjoyable genre flicks, he generally delivered.

I love "Straw Dogs" and would readily watch it again.

I don't have any pressing desire to see "2001" again ;) The slowest well-known film ever made, IMO, and one with fairly little to say considering its bloated running time.

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:57 pm

"2) That experience got me thinking that *somebody* should go and film interviews with all remaining, willing holocaust survivors before it's too late. Their words and faces tell more than any book can. I believe Spielberg more or less did this preparing Schindler's List."

"The Last Days" was a collection of interviews with several Hungarian Jews who survived the Holocaust... it constantly shows on Sundance channel.

Post by **Angus** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:42 pm

2001, I've probably seen it in its entirity 20 times. I've only had the time to do so once since marriage but I'd readily do the same again.

Actually there is one film I cannot watch alone.

Poltergeist. Let it be said that I have no religious or beliefs or superstitions but I find that film so intensely frightening I cannot watch it alone in the dark. I bought it on VHS circa 1988 and I've never once watched that tape alone and in the dark.

Great film mind you...just gives me the creeps and makes me feel as if there's something in the room with me!

The Exorcist however I will happily watch...would probably happily watch alone in a graveyard at midnight.

Post by **timdrage** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:51 pm

Irreversable maybe... I'm not sure whether I hated it and/or thought it was great. It's so over the top nihilistic I didn't really know what to make of it at all. At the time I thought it was really powerful, but it was one of those films where the more I thought about it, the less I liked it! But then I talked to someone else about it and started to think it was good again!

Who knows?

Probably should have seen it in the cinema for full visceral effect, the sub-sonic stomach-churning frequencies which were apparently used didn't come thru on my puny tv speakers of course!

Post by **JGrube** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:48 am

Whoops, double post.

Jason

Post by **JGrube** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:49 am

Saving Private Ryan? Veterans said it was what real wartime action was like but I don't know what was in it that wasn't in films like How I won the war or German 1960s Die BrÃƒÂ¼cke already.

I would add that Louis Milestone's "All Quiet on The Western Front" is a very intense war film from 70 years earlier. I found the "battle of the Somme" scene early on to be every bit as violent as the opening of SPR. Some might disagree, but I always think of the French soldier who tries to cross the barbed wire and is hit by an explosive shell, which leaves his severed hands hanging from the wire. People in 1930 must have been flabbergasted. There's a film that I can't stop watching over and over.

Best,

Jason

Post by **David M. Leugers** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:00 am

The definitive war movie has not been made. No one could stand to watch it. SPR came very close. The big deal for American audiences is that it showed Americans killing enemy soldiers who were trying to surrender, Americans being extremely brutal ( "don't shoot, let them burn!" ) American soldiers less than John Wayne heroic in the face of danger etc, much like real life than Hollywood nonsense. And in the end, all but one soldier dies trying to save Ryan. Not your typical Apple pie... I think of it as Speilberg's best movie to date.

If people understood what going to war really means, who would go to war except slaves and psychopaths?

David M. Leugers

Post by **etimh** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:34 am

tlatosmd wrote:Dancer in the dark? 8O Another awful Dogma-like film. I'd prefer to never see it again because it was so badly made and full of clichees.

timdrage wrote:I like Bjork, but DITD was one of those films that was so over the top tragic that it kind of became annoying. Everyone just kept doing such stupid, obviously doomed things! (Maybe that was the point!?)

The film is a self-reflexive critique of Hollywood narrative genre conventions and their role in, and relationship to, American ideology and myth(s).

It is a film that is complicated far beyond its surface textures and experiments in structure and style (which are also important to its critique of "Hollywood").

Sorry, you two just didn't get this very important film.

Tim

Post by **tlatosmd** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 4:44 am

JGrube wrote:I would add that Louis Milestone's "All Quiet on The Western Front" is a very intense war film from 70 years earlier.

Maybe, but I was merely referring to Saving Private Ryan as a WWII portrayal. WWI is avery diffrent story on a lot of levels.

Post by **Angus** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:20 am

David M. Leugers wrote: American soldiers less than John Wayne heroic in the face of danger etc, much like real life than Hollywood nonsense. And in the end, all but one soldier dies trying to save Ryan. Not your typical Apple pie... I think of it as Speilberg's best movie to date.

That's why SPR is important, well...a few of the reasons why.

When I saw SPR I was living in the states and audiences were genuinely shocked by what they say...not just the brutally realistic images but as you say...the realisation that American soldiers (ie the "goodies") aren't always behaving as they'd been lead to believe.

There has been, possibly still is with some people, a notion that it is a great thing to go and fight for your country and that war is somehow noble. This idea was blasted away in Europe with the second world war but has persisted in the USA with many people. SPR may have done something to change attitudes.