Random 10: Random Films for Comment

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Continuing from Random 10: Random Films for Comment - Week 17

3843. Reservoir Dogs, 1992 (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
4759. True Crime, 1999 (dir. Clint Eastwood)
3575. Peter Pan, 1924 (dir. Herbert Brenon)
2079. Halloween, 1978 (dir. John Carpenter)
2595. Knife in the Head, 1978 (dir. Reinhard Hauff)
4672. Tokyo Fist, 1995 (dir. Shinya Tsukamoto)
1183. Crime and Punishment, 1983 (dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
3831. Renaissance, 1963 (dir. Walerian Borowczyk)
654. Birdy, 1984 (dir. Alan Parker)
4622. Throne of Blood, 1957 (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Voting starts on Friday...

Back into the ILF slipstream, ah ooh...

― Girolamo Savonarola, Sunday, 27 March 2005 11:56 (twenty years ago)

3843. Reservoir Dogs, 1992 (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
2079. Halloween, 1978 (dir. John Carpenter)

I love how one of these is a ridiculous, violent, nihilistic waste of time and the other is a fairly sensitive (albeit ruthlessly photographed) fillum.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Sunday, 27 March 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)

Reservoir Dogs - the only Tarantino worth a damn. PF is rechewed cud stylistically, as far as I'm concerned; JB is too little too late; and KB would've worked much better if he'd just taken the soundtrack out and made his commentary track the actual soundtrack.

I don't really care about the hilarity ensuing or the "witty" obsessive conversations - this film is, in an odd way, about restraint, and I like those aspects of it. The heartbreaking ending in spite of itself is worth most of what comes before. A shame that Madsen became a caricature of this character afterwards (but something that could easily be said for Sam Jackson post-Pulp, too).

Throne of Blood - respectable Kurosawa, but it just doesn't quite live up to the high expectations I had received of it for years prior. The lighting and eerie material is excellent, but aside from some fog, I can't made heads or tails about how I feel about most of the rest of the piece. The arrows are great, as is the dimentia of the wife. Mifune seems too flat, though. So be it.

― Girolamo Savonarola, Sunday, 27 March 2005 21:22 (twenty years ago)

I love Throne of Blood. Not as much as Ran, maybe, but the austerity -- severity, even -- of the filmmaking perfectly suits the story.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 28 March 2005 00:09 (twenty years ago)

"ruthlessly photographed"?

― fe zaffe (fezaffe), Monday, 28 March 2005 14:09 (twenty years ago)

I like Throne of Blood but Mifune isn't at his best. I still to this day can't understand why my brother feels the need to go on at length about Reservoir Dogs. At least with Pulp Fiction he found a use for John Travolta which couldn't have been easy. It's quite a boring film, but not nearly as boring as True Crime. Birdy though kept freaking me out, I didn't know about the soundtrack at the time so I thought they were ripping various Security tracks to hell. And the big jump at the end is, grebt. And does Birdy have the soberiest Nick Cage?

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Monday, 28 March 2005 14:22 (twenty years ago)

The end game of Messer Im Kopf is one of the best executed examples of creeping ambiguity, that ill-feeling of is-this-sympathetic-or-is-this-sick. As always, Bruno Ganz is fantastic in it, and I think it very well might be better than The Lost Honor of Katarina Blum in the way it handles German police brutality and the press during the RAF period, and the whole concept of violence begetting violence (mainly because ultimately the doctor is an even more "innocent" specimen than Katarina ultimately is).

― Allyzay Subservient 50s-Type (allyzay), Monday, 28 March 2005 16:18 (twenty years ago)

"ruthlessly photographed"?

Halloween is pretty extreme. Lots of blank space in those frames (maybe Dean Cundey deserves some of the credit).

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Monday, 28 March 2005 16:52 (twenty years ago)

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Random 10: Random Films for Comment - Week 18