Talk About Movies: Part 4
Somehow threads merged, so here's part 4 of our ongoing movie discussion.
Murnau's silent version is terrific, as is Herzog's, which stars the always crazy Klaus Kinski.
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The Substance was a tough watch and well worth it. I'm not a horror fan at all, and this reached my limit. I wish it was just 10% less goofy at the end. I never understood the concept of "brave" nudity, but I can't think of a better term for this movie. (Moore and Qualley)
I'm curious to hear what others think. The director obviously was given an incredible amount of freedom to make exactly the movie that she wanted to make, as evidenced by the 140 minute run time, which was shocking for a movie of this type. But the end product felt more like an imitation of a good movie than an actual good movie. At times it felt like the director was using over the top body horror to stave off boredom in a movie that was incredibly repetitive by the end.
For comparison, Cronenberg brought The Fly in at a brisk 96 minutes. The Substance could cut a good 30 minutes.
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Jane Fonda stars in this film about participants in a dance marathon in the 1930s trying to win a $1500 prize. This is not an uplifting film. Just brutal. Just when you thought it was as bad as it could get for the contestants, it would get worse.
I'm not a huge Fonda fan, but she was outstanding in this.
Wicked Good fun if you like that sort of thing.
Disagree on the Substance ending :
Spoiler
Symbolically assassinating the audience works perfectly is not something that has been done frequently, especially in the cinema medium, and being one with herself/life as she peacefully dies is also elite af 
Murnau's silent version is terrific, as is Herzog's, which stars the always crazy Klaus Kinski.
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I was just reading today that Stoker’s widow won a copyright case in a German court ordering all prints & negatives of Murnau’s film destroyed but enough fragments survived to piece together what we have now.
Herzog’s My Best Fiend is fantastic.
My new hobby is to read a book and then immediately watch the movie that I either haven't seen or haven't seen in ages.
Recent reads/watches have been:
Jurassic Park
Alive
Misery
The Shining
All books have been good. Misery was the best movie with The Shining being the worst.
If anyone has any recommendations......FYI I'm not a fan of the supernatural.
I won’t give my opinions unless asked but you might find The Rules Of Attraction and Porno/Trainspotting 2 interesting for this exercise.
The Black Phone movie, based on a short story, is a masterpiece but you don’t like the supernatural.
A general comment on the topic: IMO the Trainspotting, Fight Club, & American Psycho movies are far superior to the books. The Hannibal movie was somehow worse than the book.
A Complete Unknown is really good especially Ed Norton, but it’s helpful to be familiar with the actual history. The most extreme example of this would be The Iron Claw.
Speaking of the french...
A beautiful three shot sequence...
I won’t give my opinions unless asked but you might find The Rules Of Attraction and Porno/Trainspotting 2 interesting for this exercise.
The Black Phone movie, based on a short story, is a masterpiece but you don’t like the supernatural.
A general comment on the topic: IMO the Trainspotting, Fight Club, & American Psycho movies are far superior to the books. The Hannibal movie was somehow worse than the book.
Primal Fear.
The early john Grisham books (time to kill)
The great santini book series
My new hobby is to read a book and then immediately watch the movie that I either haven't seen or haven't seen in ages.
Recent reads/watches have been:
Jurassic Park
Alive
Misery
The Shining
All books have been good. Misery was the best movie with The Shining being the worst.
If anyone has any recommendations......FYI I'm not a fan of the supernatural.
you should follow up on this with playing clue then watching the movie, battleship then watching the movie, and finally, taking the pirates of the caribbean ride and then seeing the movie
i think a really interesting one would be the bourne identity
i'd read all the bourne novels in high school - very light reading, by no means hemingway and quite often a bit cheesy - but the concept of a spy with amnesia who doesn't know why he knows what to do in all times but by following those instincts it leads to perfection is a very interesting concept
but what makes it interesting is the novel jason bourne is a careful thinking person, he goes to the meeting a day early to scout out the location and is able to suss out how they will attempt to double cross him and he then sets traps to disable any henchmen who will be waiting for him in x alleyway etc
it's much more like an adult version of home alone than film version of non stop action packed sequences where he's running around aimlessly with car chases, fights, and explosions
they basically took the core concept of spy with amnesia and then said "ok we got this from here"
also fight club is an amazingly good book to read and the film makes you appreciate it all the more because they don't alter much and even lift a lot of lines from the book verbatim
Fight Club is a pretty weak book, but an amazing film.
My suggestion is Dune. The movies are almost an ode to the novel, a companion. There’s a lot of imagery that relies on book knowledge.
It’s probably an age thing, yeah. I loved Palahniuk’s stuff in high school/college, but it felt pretty cringe revisiting 10+ years later. Was the same with other “edgy” writers like Wil Christopher Baer, Bret Easton Ellis, and Craig Clevenger.
They’re not terrible books or authors. There’s a lot of gold to be had in there and they definitely influenced my overall palate. I just think they explore darkness in a very particular way that doesn’t age well with the individual self.
Coming in 2025: The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection.
Sounds like a Mad Max sequel.
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Part 3 is gonna be titled The Passion Of the Christ: Where'd He Go?
