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.

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.