Critically Evaluate the last movie you saw.

[henrik78]

I wached Contagion

[clocker]

I wached Contagion

For this I loose hundreds of lovingly crafted posts.
Thanks a lot, asshole.

[IdolEyes787]

Are you implying that henrik's wasn't equally well thought out?

[clocker]

Nothing personal towards henrik.
I was just raging against the machine and not going gently into that good night.
Making a stand, digging deep, winning for the Gipper.

As one does.

[AlexJ1]

I recently watched the movie Seraphim Falls with Pierce Brosnan, and Liam Neeson.

[IdolEyes787]

• What is the latest movie you watched and what did you think of it?

Being as lazy as I am I regret the effort on my part that it took to amend the title of this thread.
Btw if I actually wished to listen to people talking but really saying nothing I would follow politics.

[Artemis]

Nothing personal towards henrik.
I was just raging against the machine and not going gently into that good night.
Making a stand, digging deep, winning for the Gipper.

As one does.

It is not you that has gone gently into that good night, just your lovingly crafted posts.......

[chalice]

I've been binging on Bukowski of late. I do enjoy a soupcon of squalor to remind me I'm not so badly off, comparatively speaking. He's fascinating in a chronically self-destructive, unapologetic, unfeigned kinda way. There was a decent documentary film profiling him released in 2003 called Bukowski: Born Into This http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342150/. This got me thinking about film adaptations of his work and how successful or faithful they are to the source material, so off I toddled and misappropriated whatever I could muster. I'll work chronologically.

Tales Of Ordinary Madness (1981) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086410/ Marco Ferelli.

This is strange. It's sorta like a Spaghetti Western, deeply European in style yet set in LA with the protagonist/antagonist shuffling into a series of sexual misadventures and heavy drinking. Ben Gazzara (who?) while bearing a resemblance and turning in a fine performance is just too sleazy and that's saying something. Very uncomfortable to watch and utterly depressing without the feeling of 'fuck it' Bukowski embodies. This is a portrayal of the older Bukowski and it just doesn't add up. If anything, he had mellowed by that stage. He had to.

Genital self-mutilation and perversity figure largely and all I wanted to do afterwards was self-harm, so it was a pretty successful European film in that regard.

Barfly (1987) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092618/ Barbet Schroeder (I wonder if anyone ever commented on the irony of the director's forename.)

Bukowski wrote the screenplay after much cajoling, discomfort and bribery, not to mention a large degree of contempt for the medium. He was unhappy at the finished product. He had major reservations as regards casting. Mickey Rourke plays Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's 'fictional' conduit and falls somewhat short in that in 1987 Rourke was far too handsome a fellow to be playing Bukowski by any stretch. Bukowski's essential character developed out of ugliness of body and spirit. He had severe acne problems throughout his life and poor early treatment by unreliable and often sadistic medical practitioners which left him pretty scarred up. Rourke plays an impressive drunk, but he's much too manic and overplayed to portray Bukowski's laconic, sneeringly resentful tone.

Apparently, Sean Penn had offered to play the role for a dollar with the proviso being that Dennis Hopper had to direct. This fell through and Rourke got the job. One wonders if this was the onset of Rourke's subsequent fall from grace. Perhaps he was enamoured with the idea of Bukowski and sought to push things to the extreme as the author tended to do. I don't know. He probably would've done it anyway. The film stood on its own, objectively, is a decent movie, with two strong central performances from Rourke and Fay Dunaway. Problem is, Dunaway is not manic enough. I'd still fuck her, and from what I've read from Bukowski, his early sexual endeavours are nothing to desire. Quite the opposite. She's too classy a broad to play the degenerate alcoholic whore Bukowski describes.

Having said all that, I reckon Rourke would make a fair breast of an older Bukowski now, what with him being totally mangled and all.

Factotum (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417658/ Bent Hamer (I wonder if anyone ever commented on the irony of the director's forename.)

This, to my mind is the most successful of the tryptic. Matt Dillon has Bukowski down straight. His mannerisms, gait, delivery are spot on. He's likable, downtrodden, increasingly uglier and just the right side of tragic to swing it. Even the acne scars (though not quite enough) make an appearance.

I'd write more about it, but nobody's gonna read this anyway.

[IdolEyes787]

I

Ben Gazzara (who?) while bearing a resemblance and turning in a fine performance is just too sleazy and that's saying something.

Gazzara has made a career out of playing sleazy characters.I would have thought that he's be instantly recognizable having been in dozens of movies and TV shows over 50+ years in the business.Anyway if you still have any desire to revel in the debauchery and want to see Gazzara at his best then consider The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Only in 70's would a movie like this ever come out of Hollywood.

I've shown this movie to baffled girlfriends and eye-rolling friends who've left the room after twenty minutes. The picture was essentially unreleased upon its completion in 1976, and is now available on video only because of the retrospectives of Cassavetes' work that followed his death. The movie is considered bewildering even by many Cassavetes champions, but for me it ranks among the greatest American movies. As Cosmo Vitelli, the strip-joint owner who's a clown who thinks he's a king, the sublimely reptilian Ben Gazzara leans into an offstage mike and tells the audience, "And if you have any complaints--any complaints at all--we'll throw you right out on your ass." Like Jake LaMotta, or Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, Cosmo is a walking aria of male self-destruction. He finally pays off the shylocks he's in hock to for his place--the Crazy Horse West--and celebrates with a gambling spree that puts him right back where he started. To pay his debts, Cosmo agrees to murder a Chinese kingpin the L.A. mob has marked for death--but that only gives the barest indication of the strange, ecstatic poetry of Cassavetes' greatest and farthest-out-on-a-limb movie. The movie is a strangely crumpled form of film noir; a classic Cassavetes character portrait, with more than the usual romanticism and self-disgust; a super-subliminal essay on Vietnam and Watergate; and an example of a one-of-a-kind lyricism that's closer to 2001 than a gangster picture. With its odd rhythms, Warholish color and substance-altered performances, it's one of the rare movies for which there exists no point of comparison.

[chalice]

Gazzara has made a career out of playing sleazy characters.I would have thought that he's be instantly recognizable having been in dozens of movies and TV shows over 50+ years in the business.Anyway if you still have any desire to revel in the debauchery and want to see Gazzara at his best then consider The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Only in 70's would a movie like this ever come out of Hollywood.

I've shown this movie to baffled girlfriends and eye-rolling friends who've left the room after twenty minutes. The picture was essentially unreleased upon its completion in 1976, and is now available on video only because of the retrospectives of Cassavetes' work that followed his death. The movie is considered bewildering even by many Cassavetes champions, but for me it ranks among the greatest American movies. As Cosmo Vitelli, the strip-joint owner who's a clown who thinks he's a king, the sublimely reptilian Ben Gazzara leans into an offstage mike and tells the audience, "And if you have any complaints--any complaints at all--we'll throw you right out on your ass." Like Jake LaMotta, or Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, Cosmo is a walking aria of male self-destruction. He finally pays off the shylocks he's in hock to for his place--the Crazy Horse West--and celebrates with a gambling spree that puts him right back where he started. To pay his debts, Cosmo agrees to murder a Chinese kingpin the L.A. mob has marked for death--but that only gives the barest indication of the strange, ecstatic poetry of Cassavetes' greatest and farthest-out-on-a-limb movie. The movie is a strangely crumpled form of film noir; a classic Cassavetes character portrait, with more than the usual romanticism and self-disgust; a super-subliminal essay on Vietnam and Watergate; and an example of a one-of-a-kind lyricism that's closer to 2001 than a gangster picture. With its odd rhythms, Warholish color and substance-altered performances, it's one of the rare movies for which there exists no point of comparison.

Thank you. I will. Though I'll prolly hate it.