Green420
Well-Known Member
The only other movie thread is non recent movies, and it's not a "review and discussion" thread. Idk why that restriction needs to occur, so I'm making this thread. Here's some reviews I've written recently. These reviews may contain spoilers.
Cinema may be considered different from a show, in that shows are broken up into series. Sometimes directors like Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, etc. do shows, but this thread is for movies. They can be short movies, long movies, movies in a series, but the purpose of this thread is to review, critique, and discuss - basically.
Here's my reviews for the month of July:
Cinema may be considered different from a show, in that shows are broken up into series. Sometimes directors like Ingmar Bergman, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, etc. do shows, but this thread is for movies. They can be short movies, long movies, movies in a series, but the purpose of this thread is to review, critique, and discuss - basically.
Here's my reviews for the month of July:
This is a review of The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), dir. Pasolini. I was very impressed that the maker of Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom would make a straight up adaptation of the gospels and dedicate it to the Pope. It was a straight shooting selected interpretation of the gospels. It didn't include some stuff like turning water into wine because they're only adapting the gospel of Matthew. It was in black and white, and the shots were very beautiful. Jesus was played by a rather confident, charismatic, attractive man, and he plays a convincing Jesus.
There's several things about this movie which bother me - Jesus seems like a cult leader. He says I come not to bring peace but a sword, and anyone who loves their family more than me is not worthy of me. Basically he wants to usurp the authority of the Roman empire and the old Jewish order to make himself god. He basically said that one city didn't cheer for him loud enough, so they did a bad thing. Jesus also makes vague prophecies. They are cinematically compelling, like saying Peter would betray him, then Peter saying he didn't know him to avoid being killed, then weeping in the ditch.
The stories of the Gospels has some truly spectacular moments. Pasolini didn't want a pathetic, stripped down, robbed of his morals Jesus like the American version of Jesus, who preach the prosperity gospel. Jesus basically goes and destroys a marketplace because they set up shop inside of a temple; in other words, the law of the father is greater than the law of the market for Jesus. He also says that the rich have a better chance getting into heaven through the eye of a needle than if they give up all their stuff and follow him.
As an American who decided that I really have no reason to go to church, I felt like this book was like trying to follow the Bible through Pasolini's description as he recounts his favorite parts to you to give you a summary of it. It's the kind of movie which kind of commands multiple watches I think, as there's so much which happens which seems easy to miss as there's all sort of poetic dialog which I think if I really were to pay attention to, I wouldn't get as much as the Italian Catholics whose pope this film is dedicated to who probably know every word of it.
There's also the aspect of it feels like so much of this movie absolutely did not happen. The Jefferson Bible is supposedly written with all the miracles taken out of it. I've talked to a Bible studies person who felt that removing the miracles is like taking a knife to the Bible in a surgery. But the thing is, some things just don't happen. You don't walk on water. Some things can be untrue, and much of Christianity is absolutely untrue.
You definitely get the feeling why Pasolini, the maker of Salo the 120 days of Sodom would be intrigued with the Bible - it's a brutal story with all sorts of symbolic significance. But to say that morality is not possible without the Bible, maybe without Black Sabbath there would not be metal, but if they added other commandments besides 3 which are basically just god's narcissism, like don't depict another god and don't have other gods before me, etc. when there could have been laws like don't rape, and people seem to think don't steal doesn't apply to capitalism, even though the boss literally is taking the excess value that the worker makes and saying that's the only way that you can exist in the world, is to be the exploiter or the exploited.
The world has been irreversibly changed by the Bible, but let's be real, most of it didn't happen, Jesus was a cult leader, and the best thing you can get out of the Bible is that it's a proto-communist doctrine, and insofar as it's not communist, it can be dismissed. 8.0
There's several things about this movie which bother me - Jesus seems like a cult leader. He says I come not to bring peace but a sword, and anyone who loves their family more than me is not worthy of me. Basically he wants to usurp the authority of the Roman empire and the old Jewish order to make himself god. He basically said that one city didn't cheer for him loud enough, so they did a bad thing. Jesus also makes vague prophecies. They are cinematically compelling, like saying Peter would betray him, then Peter saying he didn't know him to avoid being killed, then weeping in the ditch.
The stories of the Gospels has some truly spectacular moments. Pasolini didn't want a pathetic, stripped down, robbed of his morals Jesus like the American version of Jesus, who preach the prosperity gospel. Jesus basically goes and destroys a marketplace because they set up shop inside of a temple; in other words, the law of the father is greater than the law of the market for Jesus. He also says that the rich have a better chance getting into heaven through the eye of a needle than if they give up all their stuff and follow him.
As an American who decided that I really have no reason to go to church, I felt like this book was like trying to follow the Bible through Pasolini's description as he recounts his favorite parts to you to give you a summary of it. It's the kind of movie which kind of commands multiple watches I think, as there's so much which happens which seems easy to miss as there's all sort of poetic dialog which I think if I really were to pay attention to, I wouldn't get as much as the Italian Catholics whose pope this film is dedicated to who probably know every word of it.
There's also the aspect of it feels like so much of this movie absolutely did not happen. The Jefferson Bible is supposedly written with all the miracles taken out of it. I've talked to a Bible studies person who felt that removing the miracles is like taking a knife to the Bible in a surgery. But the thing is, some things just don't happen. You don't walk on water. Some things can be untrue, and much of Christianity is absolutely untrue.
You definitely get the feeling why Pasolini, the maker of Salo the 120 days of Sodom would be intrigued with the Bible - it's a brutal story with all sorts of symbolic significance. But to say that morality is not possible without the Bible, maybe without Black Sabbath there would not be metal, but if they added other commandments besides 3 which are basically just god's narcissism, like don't depict another god and don't have other gods before me, etc. when there could have been laws like don't rape, and people seem to think don't steal doesn't apply to capitalism, even though the boss literally is taking the excess value that the worker makes and saying that's the only way that you can exist in the world, is to be the exploiter or the exploited.
The world has been irreversibly changed by the Bible, but let's be real, most of it didn't happen, Jesus was a cult leader, and the best thing you can get out of the Bible is that it's a proto-communist doctrine, and insofar as it's not communist, it can be dismissed. 8.0
This is a review of Blood Tea and Red String by Christiane Cegavske. This film was absolutely gorgeous. It was very avant garde, but it also gave you certain impressions the way a dream gives impressions. The impression that the mice, dressed up as old school British empire bourgeoisie; although at times they may do inadvertently good things, like save their adorable turtle horse from being eaten by the spider. Albeit whatever they do that is good is for entirely selfish reasons, after they did a trade with the spider for their turtle for feathers from the bird that came from the egg - they also are the reason why the movie is tragic.
Now, there's a strange egg, which is being held by bird people. They place it inside of an ambiguous object. Is the object alive or dead? It has a human's face, and yet it is full of fluff. They put an egg inside of it which a bird emerges from, they sew it up. But the bird that emerges is alive, it flies, it has a human face, just as the spider has a human face, just as the sunflowers have human, or skull faces. Life and death is a continuous theme, in a Derridian way, things have multiple meanings that interpenetrate them.
The mice are like imperialists, they are, if I were to analyze a dream, the colonist destroys the sacred of the native people, and turns the sacred into trash, through their greedy plundering. They sit around drinking a red substance. We don't know if it's blood, there's no talking throughout the movie. There's a rather woodsy sort of flute that appears in a lot of the soundtrack for this movie, a woodsy folksy vibe. You get the sense that the bird people are a deeply spiritual people, who have their ritual with the egg in the ambiguous corpse with a human face. The mice steal the corpse from the tree which it is pinned up, a macabre scene. My partner and I said at first that the bird people were scary, but then we said that although they incubate their eggs in human looking corpses, or scarecrows, so we wouldn't want to meet them, they are not a bad people, the bird people.
But the mice are bad, at least until they're not. They are just mice, so there's some intellectual drag going on with the anthropomorphic characters. While the mice ruined a sacred ritual, and then they dressed up the corpse in feathers, poured red liquid, either blood or wine down it, and double crossed the spider and then bit a piece of her leg off, the hermit toad was a wise and helpful creature, who saved the birds from their drug induced sleep where they walked into people eating plants.
The scenery was stunning, whether it be a sunset at dusk, or a trail at night, each scene was treated with a special care that you might also see in a movie like Tale of Tales by Yuri Norstein. The water is done with reflective plastic, shimmering in the light, as opposed to water. Everything is stop motion and has a 3 dimensional texture. The movie plays with imagination, the primitive, and the destruction of the sacred in a psychedelic way, which sometimes literally involves the use of psychedelics. It ends on a very sad note, the blue bird with the girl's face ending up dead from being cocooned by the spider. But then for some reason, she turns into a diamond. No reason was given.
But that is the beauty of this film. It knows that what makes it good is what makes a David Lynch movie good. That liminal space between knowing and unknowing, the absurd and the rational, where there's a-signifying signs working on multiple linguistic levels at once. A divine masterpiece of a movie, which didn't move me to tears or anything, it's not the most emotionally gut wrenching movie, but it's a cold macabre sort of beauty which is just what I would want. It's a "mood" movie, a movie that represents the exact mood I am in to please me. Other movies are Tales of Tales, Chronopolis, Fantastic Planet, and this one can enter the pantheon with a near perfect score. 9/10
Now, there's a strange egg, which is being held by bird people. They place it inside of an ambiguous object. Is the object alive or dead? It has a human's face, and yet it is full of fluff. They put an egg inside of it which a bird emerges from, they sew it up. But the bird that emerges is alive, it flies, it has a human face, just as the spider has a human face, just as the sunflowers have human, or skull faces. Life and death is a continuous theme, in a Derridian way, things have multiple meanings that interpenetrate them.
The mice are like imperialists, they are, if I were to analyze a dream, the colonist destroys the sacred of the native people, and turns the sacred into trash, through their greedy plundering. They sit around drinking a red substance. We don't know if it's blood, there's no talking throughout the movie. There's a rather woodsy sort of flute that appears in a lot of the soundtrack for this movie, a woodsy folksy vibe. You get the sense that the bird people are a deeply spiritual people, who have their ritual with the egg in the ambiguous corpse with a human face. The mice steal the corpse from the tree which it is pinned up, a macabre scene. My partner and I said at first that the bird people were scary, but then we said that although they incubate their eggs in human looking corpses, or scarecrows, so we wouldn't want to meet them, they are not a bad people, the bird people.
But the mice are bad, at least until they're not. They are just mice, so there's some intellectual drag going on with the anthropomorphic characters. While the mice ruined a sacred ritual, and then they dressed up the corpse in feathers, poured red liquid, either blood or wine down it, and double crossed the spider and then bit a piece of her leg off, the hermit toad was a wise and helpful creature, who saved the birds from their drug induced sleep where they walked into people eating plants.
The scenery was stunning, whether it be a sunset at dusk, or a trail at night, each scene was treated with a special care that you might also see in a movie like Tale of Tales by Yuri Norstein. The water is done with reflective plastic, shimmering in the light, as opposed to water. Everything is stop motion and has a 3 dimensional texture. The movie plays with imagination, the primitive, and the destruction of the sacred in a psychedelic way, which sometimes literally involves the use of psychedelics. It ends on a very sad note, the blue bird with the girl's face ending up dead from being cocooned by the spider. But then for some reason, she turns into a diamond. No reason was given.
But that is the beauty of this film. It knows that what makes it good is what makes a David Lynch movie good. That liminal space between knowing and unknowing, the absurd and the rational, where there's a-signifying signs working on multiple linguistic levels at once. A divine masterpiece of a movie, which didn't move me to tears or anything, it's not the most emotionally gut wrenching movie, but it's a cold macabre sort of beauty which is just what I would want. It's a "mood" movie, a movie that represents the exact mood I am in to please me. Other movies are Tales of Tales, Chronopolis, Fantastic Planet, and this one can enter the pantheon with a near perfect score. 9/10
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