now is time for the Brian De Palma's best film

er, poll

went with Dressed To Kill

and, yeah, I know it's wishful thinking to hope that anything other than Scarface wins here.

I need to fill a couple gaps here (very sneaky of you).

Whoa, I didn't even know it did THIS badly.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=Redacted.htm

Haven't seen everything, but Dressed to Kill's my pic. Blowout, though very good, certainly didn't deserve the Kaelian sommersaults.

I've seen 13, of which Femme Fatale leads over Blow Out and Carrie. But I think Casualties of War might have a chance with me.

re Redacted, my somewhat De Palmanic friend (also from Minneapolis!) saw those numbers and wondered if he should save Brian's career by watching it on-demand for $9.95.

he could also not vote for his congressmen who approved the war.

http://m1.2mdn.net/viewad/1639505/vertical4.gif

My ranking as of before Black Dahlia (which would be 17 and I ain't seeing Redacted btw.) Carrie is still #1.

1. Carrie
2. Dressed to Kill
3. Blow Out
4. Body Double
5. The Untouchables
6. Wise Guys
7. Phantom of the Paradise
8. Sisters
9. The Fury
10. Obsession
11. Femme Fatale
12. Snake Eyes
13. Scarface
14. Carlito's Way
15. Mission: Impossible
16. Mission to Mars
17. The Bonfire of the Vanities

Rank Brian DePalma's Films

im voting body double cause i watched it the other night and it was great, and it wont get many votes

I like it too! It's his fourth best film! ;)

no surprise if scarface doesn't win, i think ilx holds it in contempt because of gangsta popularity.

and it kind of sucks

I voted The Fury even still.

If I would've voted strategically, I guess I would've given a vote to Dressed to Kill.

Dressed to Kill, it's the archetypal De Palma. for me anyway.

the thing i love about de palma is that even with his worst films (actually come to think of it, probably especially with his worst ones), is the odd feeling of going insane watching them. using all these tropes and ripoffs of scenes from other movies and mashing them together in a slightly off-kilter way, it's like you're watching a re-enactment of a remake of a parody of another movie. it's really weird.

Bump, I don't want this to end like the Kiarostami poll.

between Carrie and Scarface for me. Carrie is probably the better movie, but Scarface is teh roflz

I'm not voting because I really dislike 6 of the 7 I've seen (scarface, untouchables, raising cain, carlito's way, snake eyes, mission impossible/Sisters). But I'm making a concerted effort to get over my hang-ups (about theft, film school, other dead horses) and maybe enjoy one of his homages.

I put obsession, dressed to kill, carrie, blow out, and femme fatale in my netflix que last week, not even aware of this poll.

Phantom of the Paradise would be pretty great if the music was better. the only instance I can think of where the little guy's film music instinct failed him (Muppet Movie and Bugsy Malone being totally awesome)

I haven't seen enough of his movies to vote but Scarface better be below Carlito's Way on everyone's list.

Most overrated movie ever.

i voted body double - i was also tempted by carlitos way which is only loved by me and french magazines

but daaaaamn depalma is a motherfucker for sure - i love so many of these movies

I hate the construction of Carlito's Way

you know, show the main character's death and tell the story in flashback - this storytelling conceit always annoys me

didn't like Sunset Boulevard then?

i voted body double - i was also tempted by carlitos way which is only loved by me and french magazines

no way man, I love that movie.

oh, Wilder makes up for it with the rest of the film

x-post

...and bo jackson overdrive

and the real Bo Jackson.

hmm, i'd be interested to see how 'the most overrated movie ever' does on this poll. third at best.

hate this guy but 'carlito's way'. prefer 'the untouchables' to the hitchcock rips thx.

I voted Scarface because fuck all the hataz, basically.

am not gonna see Casualties in time, so it's Femme Fatale, which renders all his previous thrillers superfluous.

I'll say this: he's better than Dario Argento.

i've used a camcorder once at a wedding, a coupla years back. i got most of the people in shot, although the lighting was poor.

moral of the story- I'm better than dario argento

Carlito's Way is one of Ally's favorite movies of all time - mine too.

Carrie.

eh ok maybe i was wrong - i seem to remember in another depalma thread everyone hated it

hate this guy
-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, January 4, 2008 11:28 AM

This I knew.

Dressed to Kill ftw

But Blow Out is surprisingly watchable. Great ending.

carlito's way is boring except for most scenes with sean penn. i'll go with 'femme fatale'.

Voted for Sisters. Pretty much been all downhill since though I tend to favor his unabashed exploitation trash more. (I like Black Dahlia more than Casualties Of War or The Untouchables)

we need a thread for Best De Palma Wenches.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

the bad guy has spoken

haha - I like how with these polls no matter how much whining there is from posters about the "no brainer"/most obvious winner, the obvious choices still win

eh scarface is better than a bunch that got votes

surprised untouchables got shut out

Almost all the movies that got zero votes basically deserved to. Even Greetings is done better with Hi, Mom!

I probably should've hedged my best and voted Dressed to Kill.

I saw Obsession at the Castro in SF last year (after seeing it on TV in my yute), and it's way better than films that got votes.

Wedding Party should have gotten the Bonfire votes and Untouchables should have gotten 4 of the 7 Scarface votes. Then it'd be cool.

and if the Fury and Blow Out got some of Body Double and Carlito's Way's votes.

yeah, if only we all had second votes to invalidate the first votes of everyone else.

or just do it by TELEPATHY!

Obession is too dour. Even Femme Fatale manages to transgress its allegedly lurid De Palma milieu without resorting to Paul Schrader b.s.

haha, IN A WORLD where BS plagues us... [controversial deletion re The Fury ]

much appreciated

70yo today.

Mission: Impossible is really underrated. Femme Fatale didn't get enough love here. Surprised no Untouchables, if only because you'd assume somebody would have just wandered into the thread.

Carrie >>>> Scarface

the ceiling-hanging scene in M:I was stolen from jules dassin's topkapi

finale stolen from The Great Train Robbery iirc

wouldve voted body double

mission 2 mars is really great, i think.

mission to mars is horrible! it's not even an interesting failure, it's just stupid.

woulda voted Blow Out, but Body Double is some awesome shit.

I love Body Double. Watched it the other night, in fact!

I think Obsession is my favorite.

mission to mars is horrible! it's not even an interesting failure, it's just stupid.

― latebloomer, Saturday, September 11, 2010 7:41 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no wai the part where hes working out in the spaceship to van halen, also i mean the ending come on

I'll always be mystified as to how anyone considers Scarface anything but laughably bad.

im vaguely mystified that people take scarface at face value

im vaguely mystified that people take scarface at face value

OTM. can be applied to a lot of De Palma stuff.

no wai the part where hes working out in the spaceship to van halen, also i mean the ending come on

― ice cr?m, Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

the van halen thing was stupid (mind-boggling to me how that's been help up by some De Palma stans as some kind of "pure joyous expression of cinema"--uuggghhhh stupid). the m&m's were stupid. the dialog was stupid. the alien hologram thingie was reeeeeaaallly stupid. especially when they showed dinosaurs evolving into wooly mammoths and shit (stupid!). the crying alien---beyond stupid---like "this is what stupid is" picture-in-the dictionary stupid. the ending is stupid.

i've seen this movie three times by now (stupid me). i love de palma as much as the next guy but "m2m" (stupid abreviation) is just a failure. stupid, stupid, stupid.

So people like Scarface because it's like Plan 9 from Outer Space? You're right, I didn't pick up on that. Did someone tell Pacino? It's hard to tell if he's in on the joke or not.

crying_alien.gif

I will give "M2M" that it has decent effects (except for the alien hologram crap) and a couple of okay-ish setpieces but the last act ruins any goodwill I had toward the movie by that point.

it is an exceptionally silly movie, i know

*opens hidden door in palm tree sunset wall, walks through*

heh

I get Mission to Mars mixed up with John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (full title) in my memory but both are awesomely, very entertainingly bad iIrc--should have called it Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars.

rewatched scarface last year and it was such a plodding, dull film. barely saved by pacino's hamming. my friend says carlito's way is the best de palma, haven't seen it yet. love mission impossible though

The first half hour of Scarface is timelessly great IMO. The rest is a haywire Oliver Stone metaphor for America or whatever. I'm scared to rewatch Carrie or Blow Out because The Fury was so ridiculously bad on re-viewing a couple years ago--maybe whatever meta games he's playing were really vital cinema at some point, but now they just look cheesy. Casualties of War was the first Kael review where I was like, "Oh, come ON." Her review of Body Double is equally true-blue insane (for how mildly she pans it). Carlito's Way has good scenes and Al Pacino, and a vaguely persuasive love relationship. Did Blow Out have that?

Scarface is great when you can't hear Oliver Stone speaking

Ha, and when is that? I should say, I gave the book of the script to a high-school kid into the movie and just getting going on reading. As haywire metaphors for America go, there are ones with fewer classic lines or scenes of excess.

Ha, and when is that?

When there's gunfire or a buzzsaw.

I thought Kael was way off on a few films towards the end of her tenure (and in some of her post-retirement pronouncements in various interviews--including her continued attachment to De Palma), but I think she was exactly right about how great Casualties of War is. (And, as I remember it, she was one of the few critics who didn't lose sight of it in the wake of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and the late-'80s wave of Vietnam films, none of which I think is as good.) That would have got my vote in this poll, followed, in order, by Blow Out, Carrie, and Dressed to Kill.

o dude u know what we do to people who dont like full metal jacket around here

Gouge out my eyeballs and skull-fuck me? I do like it, especially (obviously) the first 40 minutes. But I think COW is better.

lol was gonna go w/unscrew yr head and shit down yr neck

Carlito's WAy is sooooooooooooo much better than Scarface. It actually has an anti-hero that you don't think is a complete piece of shit, for one.

Fuck you all, The Fury is fucking great.

I loved it too much as a kid to let it go forever, but is there something to the idea that transgressive shifts of tone and over-the-top slow-mo and otherwise toying with audience expectations in a new way have a shelf life? Because once I rejected those things, I just saw one-dimensional characters and Penthouse cinematography.

Still haven't seen Snake Eyes. Should I?

Why did you reject "toying with audience expectations in a new way"?

xpost Snake Eyes is pretty silly, esp the third act, but a lot of fun DePalma stuff in it - one of his best opening long takes and NICOLAS CAGE

The Fury is a deeply silly movie and yeah, if you "reject" all the bells and whistles and weirdness you're left with a pretty generic Carrie-government-conspiracy movie.

lol didn't even realize I wrote "silly" two posts in a row - now three!

I'd watch every De Palma I've seen again (Snake Eyes included) except The Black Dahlia, but then I avoided Bonfire (the book was fun for its descriptions, not its "ideas"). I rejected the De Palma-isms of The Fury the second time around because they seemed dated and indulgent. I sometimes think there's this De Palma switch where you're either in the palm of his hand or laughing at the hand, and he seems to want both reactions at once sometimes, except it's a true binary. And so much of his horror is hysterical, like the treatment of pretty much any real-life phenomena (mental illness, anonymous hook-ups) in Dressed to Kill.

Casualties of War, I don't know. It's been 20 years, but I felt as if the film was lurid, and about a crime that could happen in any war. The great movie about Vietnam crimes remains the documentary Winter Soldier, which was about how policy changed the way war was waged.

Sorry to put ideas in scare quotes, I just can't imagine a good movie of that book being made.

Taglines:
What kind of guys gamble with the boss's money, swipe a killer's Cadillac, and party on the mob's credit card?

Memorable quotes
Harry Valentini: [in the bathroom at the racetrack] Golden brown Knishes. Mmmmmmm. Can you smell 'em Moe, huh? Can you? Can you smell 'em?
Moe Dickstein: [a toilet flushes] It's the guy in the next stall Harry!

Carlito's WAy is sooooooooooooo much better than Scarface. It actually has an anti-hero that you don't think is a complete piece of shit, for one.

Yeah I love John Leguizamo too.

there's this De Palma switch where you're either in the palm of his hand or laughing at the hand

That's De Palma, right there.

i saw him on the street on his birthday!

No one should be homeless on their 70th birthday.

I'll always be mystified as to how anyone considers Scarface anything but laughably bad.

― clemenza, Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:49 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im vaguely mystified that people take scarface at face value

― ice cr?m, Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:57 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

veer wildly btwn both but it doesn't stop me enjoying it nonetheless.

Casualties of War, I don't know. It's been 20 years, but I felt as if the film was lurid, and about a crime that could happen in any war. The great movie about Vietnam crimes remains the documentary Winter Soldier, which was about how policy changed the way war was waged.

I felt like this was a problem in Redacted, but Casualties Of War didn't feel as aggressive about extrapolating something about that specific war from the crime. I felt like the earlier film dealt more with the lead's guilt and complicity as a witness (BIIIIG DePalma subject) where Redacted got really shrill and WAKE UP AMERICA WAKE UP about it in comparison.

I saw Winter Soldier a couple of years ago. Someone spoke that night--maybe someone from the film, I can't remember. I thought it was good, but it didn't hit me like Casualties of War, and I find it difficult to compare them anyway.

not to mention that Casualties Of War (which isn't any more lurid than any of his Nancy Allen movies, though arguably more uncomfortable because it's not set in an updated Hitchockville) really uses the breadth of DePalma's visual gifts (those rack focuses!) while a lot of Redacted consists of guys screaming at each other beneath security cams.

xpost based on that comparison, did people at the time see Casualties Of War as DePalma's attempt to outdo Platoon or something? Because I think its more impressive as DePalma's taking on something heavier than serial killers than his EXPLAINING VIETNAM

I forget if I already said it in this thread, but the first 1/3 of Redacted is pretty outstanding, more like if DePalma had made a Hi Mom! about Iraq. It only melts down when it tries to throw Casualties into the mix and winds up doing a disservice to both.

Both that and Black Dahlia had just enough great stuff among the bad bad bad ideas that I still get excited for his next film even if I can't actually recommend the previous ones to anyone other than hardcore DePalma fans.

I can't bring myself to defend Redacted. Parts of it were "worst movie ever" territory.

sometimes think there's this De Palma switch where you're either in the palm of his hand or laughing at the hand, and he seems to want both reactions at once sometimes, except it's a true binary.

I really disagree with this being a "true binary" - there are plenty of horror movies where I know the tricks they're using, but they're getting me excited all the same.

Yeah, it's not a true dichotomy. Dressed to Kill and Raising Cain are scary-funny.

People have differing levels of tolerance for it though - Raising Cain trips into the "no, this is just bad" category for me - and it really does seem like movies that play with the "is this bad or just shameless and campy" - Snakes On A Plane, Drag Me To Hell, A-Team - are destined to underwhelm at the box office.

I'd say Carrie is really scary-funny--some of Travolta and Allen's back-and-forth is fantastic.

Same here. I find Carrie genuinely scary-funny, Raising Cain just insanely over-the-top, which is easier and rarely as worthwhile (Strangelove and some other things pull it off).

as much as DePalma gets slighted by his peers (I wonder how he felt when his old drinking buddies Speilberg, Lucas and Coppola gave Scorsese his belated Oscar), all these directors wrestling with self-awareness and the marketplace really need to tip their hat to him.

Raising Cain just insanely over-the-top, which is easier and rarely as worthwhile (Strangelove and some other things pull it off)

Meaning it's OK to be over the top when reality is JUST AS INSANE, MAN?!

I lost you there. Maybe I tried to overthink something very simple: Strangelove is funny, Raising Cain isn't.

Mostly I was wondering why Cain and Strangelove were being compared in the first place. (And parts of Cain are pretty funny imo.)

I find RC hilarious, even John Lithgow's hamminess. I was wrong upthread to call it scary.

I still think it's hilarious that anybody thought to cast Hilary Swank as Madeleine in Black Dahlia. Like I've always thought she's cute, but she's nobody's doppleganger, least of all Mia Kirschner.

I've heard nothing but bad things about the movie, which is a shame as I loved Ellroy's book. I think it'd make for a great miniseries.

you can hear some good things right now- it's weird but has a compelling vibe (though it's really inconsistent in tone)- but i've never read the book so prob enjoyed it better for that

Strangelove and Cain are probably a bad comparison. I just meant that they both have over-the-top performances, and that in one film they work (for me) but not in the other.

I just bought a budget DVD of Dahlia. I'll probably pick it up numerous times over the coming months, think "Do I want to give this a try?", and end up watching something I've seen six or seven times already instead.

What kind of maniac votes for Bonfire?

exercising their right to vanity

I still think it's hilarious that anybody thought to cast Hilary Swank as Madeleine in Black Dahlia. Like I've always thought she's cute, but she's nobody's doppleganger, least of all Mia Kirschner.

The audition reels of Kirschner talking with an off-screen DePalma are GREAT, but oh god Swank is the wrong kind of campy. Originally DePalma wanted Fairuza Balk for the role which would have been so much better, but I guess the producers wanted some of that Oscar magic.

Dahlia was butchered to all for release, wasn't it? I was watching it again a few months ago, and while I don't think a longer cut could save its problems (Swank, for instance), it definitely might improve it.

jennifer connelly would have been a proper doppelganger

black dahlia was pretty painful for me. feel like there is a *great* movie (maybe even a great depalma movie) lurking in there, but it was just bad. if i had voted in this poll, i might've voted Sisters.

the last thing a batshit OTT novel like the black dahlia needed was a batshit OTT director, it kinda brought out the worst in both the core story and the filmmaker.

^^ batshit OTT post

the last thing a batshit OTT novel like the black dahlia needed was a batshit OTT director, it kinda brought out the worst in both the core story and the filmmaker.

I think a bad cast was a much bigger problem with this movie than an OTT director - the most entertaining scene was the OTT dinner sequence!

josh hartnett is just the worst

yeah, he really is. so dull. at least the worst of depalma's other movies still have pretty great off the wall performances (cage in snake eyes, for ex.), but Hartnett is so boring.

I try to actively avoid movies he's in. It was also funny hearing him say the opening lines to Sin City in bad pseudo-noir speech

it's funny cuz when I read Black Dahlia, I pictured people much tougher and less pencil-dicked than Eckhart and Hartnett. I mean Hartnett a former boxer? Dude looks like the kind of guy who freaks out if you tussle his hair.

the cast is pretty laughable in Dahlia (totally agree about the wtf casting of two "doppelgangers" who don't look remotely alike) but it has other problems too. that final shot of Hartnett freaking out on the lawn, just terrible... there are two decent sequences in it: the long tracking shot discovery of the body, and the OTT high society dinner scene. the rest is garbage.

yeah, that tracking shot is nicely done. it's true -- depalma's always worth watching for moments like that, even if the rest of the flick is awful. pretty much every one of his movies has something awesome in it, however fleeting.

missed this - would have gone with body double or femme fatale.

I sometimes think there's this De Palma switch where you're either in the palm of his hand or laughing at the hand, and he seems to want both reactions at once sometimes

― Pete Scholtes, Sunday, September 12, 2010 9:12 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

otm, good looking out

I rewatched Casualties of War last night. Excellent. Two instrusive flaws: too many "God, no" reaction shots of Fox--the JFK syndrome--and his "Maybe it matters more" speech is altogether unnecessary. Neither is that damaging. I remember when this came out, a local Toronto reviewer--someone who has since gone on to a very prominent role in the film festival here--dismissed the film as another of De Palma's "kill the bitch" (the phrase turns up in the film, and I'm pretty sure it was echoed in his review) indulgences. I thought it was a criminally stupid thing to say then, and still do. The treatment of the Vietnamese girl in Casualties is about as sad and as humane as anything I can think of.

speak of the devil. Jonathan Rosenbaum on Snake Eyes

I haven't read a lot of Rosenbaum--I have one of his books, and skipped out on a chance to see him six years ago so I could see one of the Red Sox-Yankees playoff games--but it doesn't surprise me that he'd use Snake Eyes as a means to put down Casualties of War. De Palma probably brought that on himself. You make enough versions of [i]Snake Eyes and Raising Cain in your career, and you pretty much ensure that people are ready to pounce when you make Casualties of War. As I know people here will. But I've been in the same place--I'd take Jaws and The Sugarland Express a thousand times over Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan--so I won't complain.

dude lost me at Raising Cain, Carlito’s Way, and Snake Eyes are generic stylistic exercises that reveal he’s digested his sources rather than simply devoured and regurgitated them.

Leaving aside the idea that "generic" is something to aim for, plenty would argue with Carlito's Way and Raising Cain he was simply devouring and regurgitating himself

Not to mention all the Coppola/Scorsese regurgitation in Carlito.

Rosenbaum's a huge fan of Femme Fatale.

is The Bonfire of the Vanities worth a peek?

I thought for sure I had it, and was thinking about finally watching it tonight. I don't. I must have held it my hands and contemplated buying it about a dozen times at least.

Bonfire is only worth seeing to compare with that Devil's Candy book. I can't think of a single thing that works in it.

yeah, horrible movie imo

Improving Bonfire's Opening Scene

I've really wanted to rewatch Femme Fatale for a while now. I should get on that.

But I've been in the same place--I'd take Jaws and The Sugarland Express a thousand times over Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan--so I won't complain.

I think most critics feel this way now. I might be mistaken (maybe an actual critic can help out here), but from what I gather critics really go for early Spielberg up to and including Empire of the Sun and then pick up again with A.I. and on through to the present.

one of my current castmates was in Bonfire of the Vanities, in a small bit role. He said Brian De Palma is the worst director to work with as an actor, and said he rarely, if ever talks to his actors, and often puts them through hell.

Improving Bonfire's Opening Scene

― da croupier, Saturday, September 18, 2010 10:40 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

lol

DePalma may well be horrible with actors (though a lot of people have been happy to work with him multiple times), but after reading the Devil's Candy I dunno if I'd assume someone "in Bonfire of the Vanities, in a small bit role" would be best at gauging how he usually is.

It was a bit role, but he was frequently on the set. he was in scenes with Bruce Willis, though I don't know which. again, one's experience differs from another, but that was just his take. He's done several movies with high profile directors, and merely said DePalma was his least favorite to work with.

i will say he wasn't one of the cast/crew who disliked Willis -- he had fond things to say about him

i think he was in the scenes described in that book because he talked about something like "three days of hell"

Don't really care how the sausage is made, especially when I don't usually watch De Palma movies for their performances.

just giving an insider's perspective, that's all. he just happened to mention de Palma on saturday and I thought of this thread.

I can def buy that he's not the sort of director who really pays a whole lot to his actors (anymore ... tho maybe in the Carrie era).

It's part of the Hitchcock worship--he feels obligated to treat his actors like cattle.

is he in that long-ass opening track shot with Willis? Guarantee you're treated like cattle on that one.

he may be -- I haven't seen the movie so it was hard to identify with the scene he was talking about. I'll see if I can find a clip on Youtube.

what an interesting director. bizarre oeuvre.

caught the fury on amc a couple of years ago and it was hilarious

scarface, of course is legend.

sisters creeped the fuck out of 12 year old me

phantom, ah

need to revisit his hitchcock crap

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/brian-de-palmas-films-ranked

Haven't read it, but the rankings lose me at #2. Casualties of War 23rd? Absurd!

The rankings "lose me" at #1, but as I mentioned on Facebook, I want there to be passionate defenders for every De Palma movie ever made.

I mean in a general sense--you don't think Blow Out ought to be somewhere in the top six or seven?

"Black Dahlia" should have been ranked #24. What a piece of crap.

I thought it was pretty bad too--dreadfully-dull bad, not insane bad like Femme Fatale.

You're as wrong about Femme Fatale being bad as I am about Blow Out not being great.

Dressed To Kill coming to Criterion according to their Facebook just now.

Just saw that. The only thing I love more than that news is how angry it's making the people who don't realize Mulholland Drive got confirmed.

ha yeah it's always the same when Criterion do that innit. the fuss over Tootsie.. man alive that was something else.

I think anybody who likes a few De Palma films will like the Baumbach/Paltrow documentary--just two hours of him talking plus clips, with stuff on every single film from Murder à la Mod forward (and a couple of the earlier shorts). I was so glad it was that instead of interviews with his actors and whatnot, like the mediocre Altman documentary. He's a good storyteller, much easier to take than Bogdanovich (his "Marty"s and "Orson"s don't come across as self-glorification, for one thing). About his strongest language is "holy mackerel"--that was odd. I thought the funniest story, the one time he really nailed somebody, was Cliff Robertson's ineptitude on Obsession; most interesting to me, because I love the film so much, was the way Michael J. Fox and Penn related to each other on Casualties of War. The two films I most want to re-see are Obsession (if that's possible--will check tonight) and Mission Impossible. Also a Peter Hyams film from '74 called Our Time, which I thought was where De Palma found Amy Irving, but I don't see her in the credits. (Hyams is in the O.J. documentary quite a bit.)

the Baumbach/Paltrow documentary
o_O

sounds interesting though!

Lol initially thought this was Gwenyth and I was like odd choice for her.

Just checked now, and indeed her younger brother. He spoke after the film--he and Baumbach have supposedly been friends with De Palma for a few years.

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTM2NDcyNDY5NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMjY2NzE1._V1_UY317_CR132,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

Sisters should have more votes!

And Scarface fewer!

(I don't dislike it, but what'd Kael say--"A De Palma movie for people who don't like De Palma movies?")

One thing I was reminded of last night was how really vilified De Palma was for the violence in Dressed to Kill/Scarface/Body Double (obviously, towards women especially). I again had to look away from the elevator murder in Dressed to Kill. Not sure if those films would be less or even more vilified today; the normal trend is towards the former, but on the issue of violence and woman, it might be more.

The documentary was perfectly in line with my own feelings about De Palma: it clearly identified Carrie, Blow Out, and (hurray) Casualties of War as three of his four masterpieces. (There's a shot of Kael's Casualties review.) The other that the film seemed to argue for was Carlito's Way, which I like, but not as much (Pacino's fairly controlled, but schtick creeps in sometimes). De Palma says that he was somewhere over in Europe watching Carlito's Way, and when it finished he said to himself, "I can't make a better a film than that."

I'd take "Carlito's Way" over "Scarface" any day as far as Pacino/De Palma goes. It's not a perfect movie but pretty damn close to it.

*perfect De Palma movie

Same here. I don't think Carlito is as good as those other three, but it's much better than Scarface.

Cahiers du Cinema called Carlito's Way the best film of the 90s (although it shares that distinction w The Bridges of Madison County)

Found a copy of Obsession on Amazon. Visually, there's usually something going on, some of it pretty striking. The story holds together for a while, until it doesn't, and then it gets sillier and sillier. (Don't know if I've ever seen a film where the bad guy was more instantaneously identifiable.) I shared Cliff Robertson's evident confusion during the endless 360 that ends the film: did what I think just happened actually happen? Yuck.

Summer series at the Lightbox--haven't checked, but it looks pretty complete.

http://tiff.net/summer2016-cinematheque/split-screen-the-cinema-of-brian-de-palma

Theatre was pretty empty for Casualties of War. Don't think I'd ever noticed the newspaper in the first shot with the headline about Nixon resigning. Don Harvey is terrifying at times in this; he's the one principal whose career never seemed to go anywhere, although he has worked steadily the past 25+ years.

his first feature Murder à la Mod didn’t really work - it didn’t entirely make sense for one thing, and the music was annoying - but there were interesting things about it, including visual elements and the final events re-enacted from three different points of view.

The Wedding Party wasn't really any better than Murder à la Mod although it did feature early appearances by Robert De Niro and Jill Clayburgh

Untouchables

looking forward to seeing his films again. next one up for me is Sisters

Sisters was a good Halloween film

Scarface coming out on top in 2007 is reason enough to do a re-poll, I’d say. I recently saw someone online refer to the film as Stupid Godfather, which pretty much nails it.

it really doesnt

yeah not exactly the wittiest zing tbh

no, just say it's shit

Proud hater of Scarface for 36 years. (I can never get past Pacino's hamminess...visually, I guess it has its moments.)

i feel like the gonzo/ham aspect of Scarface is an essential part of it's appeal tbh.

not my favorite BDP, but it has its pleasures for sure.

Sisters has my favorite ending of any DePalma movie.

DePalma is generally thought of as one of the more visual directors ever, with famous extended sequences in all most highly regarded films, but for me, it's performances and script that set apart my favourite films of his.

Another Sisters lover here

https://img.discogs.com/wySBEoI5LjCQnNkA1GKYE0n-KPY=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-3534517-1334242114.jpeg.jpg

Blow Out shows up on a marquee in Joker.

I was worried that Carrie wouldn’t hold up but it does

still really moved by the story and by Sissy Spacek’s performance

My no. 2 horror movie of all time

Obsession was a really pleasant surprise for me.

The Fury is one of the De Palma films I hadn’t seen before now. It is great too

Yes, I loved that too.

as with Carrie there’s a lot to the story and the scenes all seem so vivid

Also enjoyed Raising Cain a whole lot. But I think Body Double and Obsession are my absoloute favorites.

Didn't realize he had a film out earlier this year.

One of his next projects is described as "a horror film set in Hollywood and featuring a predatory movie mogul."
Sounds like a risky move.

saw Scarface for the first time, it is very flamboyant. Pacino’s performance is histrionic but is kind of mesmerizing. I started feeling fatigued by it after the 2 hour mark though

What they don’t tell you about Scarface is that Pacino’s character is actually a cyborg

I like that Blow Out combines the obsession and paranoia of The Conversation and Blow Up with the story, style, set pieces of Hitchcock

haven't been able to see Dressed to Kill or Body Double yet. I didn't really like Wise Guys

Body Double is possibly my favorite, such an insane film

Get to Know Your Rabbit (1971)

This caught my attention. Anyone seen it?

I’ve seen Body Double at least three times in the past several years but it still exists in my mind as something I saw in between fever dreams as a kid on HBO in the middle of the night in the 80s.

I also missed Obsession

I never saw Body Double as a kid, but it absolutely exists in that kind of hallucinatory weirdness.

Get to Know Your Rabbit is an interesting but unfunny experimental comedy

Scarface has become weirdly underrated. It's a ridiculous movie in many ways, but has just as many brilliant elements as well.

Dressed to Kill was really good as a thriller. I liked Angie Dickinson in it, also the way it both indulges in and criticizes viewers’ voyeurist fantasies. I thought the elevator scene, the subway scene, and the shower dream sequence at the end in particular were memorable. But its stereotypically negative view of a transgender woman as a killer was very retrograde

I liked that the ending mirrored the beginning

really liked Casualties of War, I think more than his previous film The Untouchables

"What I find interesting when you see contemporary people watch these movies, is they’re shocked by the nudity. They go, “Oh my God.” I’m thinking, “What, are we living in the Victorian age here?” You know, they have these things on YouTube where they have two people watching a movie and reacting as they watch it? I saw two people watching the opening of Carrie. I thought they were going to have a heart attack! I was like, ” What has happened to this next generation?” They seem to have gotten very Victorian."

https://archive.ph/FAaxP

Those reaction videos are usually supposed to be entertaining or flattering a certain audience, they look like they're performing to an extent. I have one friend who used to act like that long before youtube, reacting out loud to every punch in a movie "Oh! Oh! Oof!!!" etc...

Dressed to Kill especially got a lot of grief when it came out. It was so completely out of step with what was acceptable even then, in 1980, I have no idea how it would be received today.