Aug 29, 2013
The Place Beyond the
Pines
I’ll need to watch this again, cause I think I was in a bad
mindset the first time. I was always waiting for something huge to hit me, and
it never really did. Now that I know it won’t, maybe I’ll be a better watcher
the second time. I did realize the
movie was beautiful and poetic though. It was a grand vision for Derek
Cianfrance… and I think it will tell me something important next time. The
watcher needs to be patient and thoughtful though, definitely.
The Master
Dirty, dirty movie. Madness. In some ways I hated it (I
watched it twice), but then again this is exactly what I look for in all
movies. Real conversations, real characters. Messages, all over the place. And
PTA delivers, EVERY SINGLE TIME. He gives me what I want in a movie, so he may
be my favorite director (and writer?). Casting PSH was too perfect to be
reality, but yet it didn’t disappoint at all. I just loooooove watching him.
Joaquin is disgusting and disturbing, and I frickin hate his character, but I
can’t remember seeing such a real character in any movie. Ever. So I guess
that’s great acting!!!! And writing, too. These PTA films are the same in that
they give you emotional punch after emotional punch (I’ll talk about that much
more with Magnolia). It’s great
stuff. These are the films that are worth my time.
Magnolia
May be rising up to my top couple movie spots ever. It’s
just exactly what I want to see. The writing is exactly the kind of emotion and
shock and hard-hitting reality and relatability I want in a script. It’s
beautiful, and shakes your mind to watch. I love watching Phil, and Frank TJ
Mackey. And John C Reilly’s officer character is beautifully relatable to me.
I’m so glad someone else can dream up a sane man that also talks to himself
(thank you thank you thank you Paul Thomas Anderson). The 3 hour long script is
JAM PACKED with heartache, and it’s heartache attuned to me, unlike about every
other movie that’s supposed to be sad to me and isn’t. I guess I just have
different taste, and Paul knows it well.
2001: A Space Odyssey
My thinker movie. It’s long and dull, but still there’s
endless things to think about during it. One time I watched it, I had to pause
it many times, not to keep up with the movie, but just because my thoughts were
going to deep places and I needed to take care of them, undistracted. So in
that way, the movie became much longer than a 3-hour experience. I need to
watch it again I guess, I’m having trouble remembering it all… Well, there’s
Hal. The memory erasure scene with Hal is amazingly dramatic, unlike most of
the movie. And that series of a few rapid shots zooming in on Hal’s eye is so
so disturbing…. Holy crap. It feels like this demonic robot eye is looking
straight into your soul. Honestly. Also, when I watched this late at night with
all the lights off, the shots of Dave in his flight frickin almost made me
throw up they were so scary. That’s probably my scariest movie moment ever. I
almost lost it. So I sprinted over to turn the lights on, cause they just kept
coming. Also, the scene in the Victorian dining hall is pretty horrifying. That
time I just mentioned when I watched it, I was hoping to God that the guy at
the table didn’t look into the camera. Because Kubrick’s look-into-the-camera
shots are a thousand times scarier than any blood and guts of another horror
movie. Cause you definitely feel like these evil forces are looking at you.
He’s done it before… in The Shining,
the inappropriate bear and the guy look into the camera. So so scary. I wanna
watch 2001 with Alex. He’d love that.
Eternal Sunshine of
the Spotless Mind
I love love love this
movie. I know it forwards and backwards, and love it all. I can quote it well.
One mistake (probably due to Charlie’s over-emotional and idealistic writing
style) is the inconsistency of characters. I feel like Charlie started with one
idea, and then it changed, and then it changed again…. And he didn’t really
clean it up. So Joel starts out with my sympathy and compassion, and then by
the end he’s kind of annoying. And I relate to him much less. But yet, even
though it’s two annoying characters, I love them both and I love their story.
Maybe this is just what happens when you watch a movie 15 times. I donno. But
it’s a part of my life now. I actually want my relationship with Paige to
partly model it.
Synecdoche, New York
My favvvvveeee. How can another top it? It’s just like Magnolia with its constant little tricks
that I relate to and that are extremely interesting and entertaining to me, and
that keep me captivated. I could never be bored watching this movie. And now
that I’ve seen it so many times, it too is a part of my life (like Eternal Sunshine), only I think of it
much differently. It’s so much more sad and pathetic. Everything is gray,
everyone’s alone. Everyone dies. Eternal
Sunshine has color and love, Synecdoche
has death and gray and stupid and sad. Caden is stupid and sad and hopeless.
Caden Cotard is the grandest character I’ve ever seen. This whole picture is
nothing more than a portrait of a man, progressing through life. Rather, aging.
So Caden Cotard is my all-time great character. The priest’s monologue changed
my life one time. This whole movie takes me back… I regress to my sophomore
state of mind. I watched it—probably a few times—with my old blue Emily
deodorant. It made me feel ‘connected’. It made me not want to go to college.
And even though I’ve moved on from these feelings, I still have a lot to learn
from it. It teaches to make use of the time you have, cause it goes by quickly.
It’s almost a horror story: “DON’T END UP LIKE CADEN COTARD”. Don’t waste away
your life… But there’s really no message. It just clicks with me, and that’s
enough for me to watch it many many times. I only learn from it what I conceive
with my own thoughts. But anyways, Charlie Kaufman is pathetic but beautiful. I
don’t want to be like him, but still, he creates some great stuff and has some
great visions.
The Shining
Fantastic movie…. I just love thinking about it. It gives me
chills and makes me smile just thinking about how good and weird and freaky it
is J Kubrick obviously has
an eye for the disturbing… He knows what will shake you to the bone more than
any other director (Hm, I should write about Mulholland Drive next….).
Mulholland Drive
Ivana watch this again. Actually, this might hold my
scariest movie moment ever. I was watching it alone, lights off, nighttime, in
my bed, door closed, on a laptop. Couldn’t really see the rest of my room very
well. So the entire movie’s freaky, but there’s a couple moments. The first
one, when the creature came out from behind the wall, was the biggest heart
jolt I think I’ve ever experienced. You totally HAVE to not expect it… because
what movie would do that? It’s supposed to be an irrational, imaginary fear the
guy has. But yet, just like the scene in improv’s Trentwood where Mack is found hung by the hooks, the filmmaker
(David Lynch) gives you exactly what he said he would!!!! He said there was a
creature behind the diner, why didn’t you believe him????? Haha, it’s frickin
TERRIFYING. So that was a heart jolt, but the fear for my life came at the end,
when it goes back behind that wall, and it’s smoky, and dark, and you get to
see him again. I was praying to God, just like in 2001, that I wouldn’t get what I expected. This time it was just a
glimpse of that horrifying face that I feared. So this movie is WEIRD, and
scary, and horny, and the first time I saw it, I was analyzing it while mowing
the lawn the next day, and concluded that it turns from a dream, into a wet
dream, into a nightmare. ‘Nuff said………….. J
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