IfeellikeGregorSamsa
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| Name | Jac k |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| I'm From | Wonderland |
| Member For | 243 days |
| Last Login | Wed. Aug 20 |
| Profile Views | 598 |
| Age | 24 |
| MCT Score | |
| Status | Online Now |
| Movie: | Fisher King; Possession (1981); Knife in the Water; Arizona Dream; La Notte; Heat; The Insider; Eyes Wide Shut; Three Colors: White; Short Film About Love; 21 Grams; Network; Scarecrow; Angel Heart; The Big Lebowski; The Bicycle Thieves; Lost Highway; Tape; Sideways and many more... |
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| Actor: | Richard Burton, Al Pacino, Jeff Brigdes, Harvey Keitel, William Holden, Vincent Gallo, Annette Bening, Willem Dafoe, Janusz Gajos, Roman Wilhelmi, Klaus Kinski, Jason Patric, Isabelle Adjani, Asia Argento, Faye Dunaway |
| Director: | Michelangelo Antonioni, Michael Mann, Krzysztof Kieslowski, John Cassavetes, Abel Ferrara, Terry Gilliam, Nicolas Roeg, Dario Argento, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roman Polanski, Sidney Lumet, Billy Wilder, Peter Weir, John Huston |
| Quote: | "I find your lack of faith disturbing" - Darth Vader; "Don't cry - it's a waste of good suffering." - Pinhead; "Well, I should only kill people after I get to know them?" - Vincent (Collateral) |
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Dear Teenage-Girls-With-No-Pictures-Who-Are-Less-Than-A-Day-Here,
why don't you give me a break already? Please. I'm sure you're all nice and all but deep in my heart I'm pretty vain and all this questions and invites are making me lazy and feel like a rock star and I can't afford to feel that way on a dialy basis. Your understanding will be granted. For the time being, keep up the good grades at school and don't forget to watch some good movie once in a while! |
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Jac's Recent Reviews
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Rise: Blood Hunter
R
Note: It all starts with a whore who after being locked up in a cage upside down and then rescued is suggested to find herself some other job. And it's all downhill from there.
Since I learned before that Marilyn Manson has a cameo here - the man I still respect despite his artistic decline in the last few years, wishing him the best with the next album at the end of year - I waited this cheap burger out to see it. He seemed to be the only one who was properly casted, although I still wonder what he was doing there in the first place.
As soon as he disappeared, there was darkness.
The Dark Knight
PG-13
No year since the begining of 21th century passes by without a movie everyone waits for due to massive marketing campain before its release. This time we have death going around the event, for the lack of better word, and nothing brings more attention to the party, especially when someone talented and famous passes away. Not that I'm cynical. Death or no death, the picture remains the same, and "The Dark Knight", being as big and loud as all blockbusters prepared us to be, it is also amazingly mechanic and washed out from all freshness.
What made "Batman Begins" so fresh and even fascinating at times was an attempt to explore the genealogy of Batman, the idea itself, the mechanics of creating a legend. It was a story of inner struggle where there's no other option than to become what one fears the most in order to conquer it. Now, that's something worth watching, that's the damn good theme! Is there anything as strong thematically in "The Dark Knight"? Not really. Only a few pretences.
As awkward as it may sound, I find "The Dark Knight" to be the mix of 21th century James Bond and "Mission Impossible III". It is full of cocky yet tame police one-liners, car chases, blow ups and all this nonsense for children. Of course, it has its moments where mind starts to pay some real attention, as in the scene in which the Joker interrupts the Wayne's party and terrorizes Rachel, or when the Joker is "questioned" by the Batman. "Is it that I just saw too much of them already?", I thought when it ended. The pictures which feels like a circus, like a box full of whatever you desire and you go to see them knowing already that you will get what you want. It is a paradox of cinematic entertainment, really, that when you're not satisfied with what you've got, the authors may very well ask you: "Well then, what did you expect? This Antonioni guy?" and you'd wish to say "yes" at times, even though you know it's absurdish to think so. It's a great cope out from their part but, after all, you let yourself swallow the hook when all they wanted was to take some money out of you and that's the only point of it all. Therefore, thinking that there's a presence of any convincing moral dilemma in this picture is like believeing the Joker that killing the Batman will solve all of his problems - it's a fraud. It's all about chaos and fun. You wanted to be entertained and all you've really got is the realization that their proposition clearly feels dated.
With all this said, I found myself bored everytime the Joker disappeared from the screen. He is, for better and for worse, sadly, the main force of the picture and it doesn't take a lot of time to figure out who was the character Nolan focused on when he was writing the script. It's no suprise - especially when we add Ledger's excellent acting - that when it comes to the Joker, no one can be equally captivating as he is so he must steal every scene he appears in, making the rest of the characters feel painfully neglected. Take Rachel, Lucius Fox or Alfred for example in that matter. Gordon wasn't much of a character to begin with and so he remains in status quo, whereas Harvey Dent, even though being a full character here with he own cause-and-effect, feels more of a plot device from one point on. What happend to the small, meatsy characters on the second plan? Remember brilliant Tom Wilkinson with his famous line: "No gun?! I'm insulted!" Right... As for the leading man, Bale is terrible in this picture. He looks tired and bored, as if he actually was neglected, and when he speaks he sounds as if he was shortly after a two week bender. Apart from fact that he has nothing to act here, as a character he's no counterbalance to the Joker. His inner drama is thin, overshadowed by Joker's madness.
Then we may ask, where is the Gotham city? Where is this noirish mood, the open streets in the rain full of steam coming from the underground? They're gone. Gotham city is non-existen here, it's just a Chicago where two guys run after each other like a two boys that forgot they're dressed unaccordingly to their age. So yes, why so serious? Did it give something new, something extra to this already compelling world of Batman? Made us feel that Batman is more human because of his unability to decide as fast as he serves punches? Well, no.
I wish Christopher Nolan going back to some, relatively smaller movie projects that made him so interesting since the late 90's, but seeing his work earning 440 milions dollars already and being on first place at iMDB etc., I highly doubt he will. He's a new force of Hollywood entertainment, just like Peter Jackson, Wolfgang Petersen or Michael Bay are. They're all the same: those who organize circuses - that have nothing to do with a real cinema - at the theaters so the millions of people can sit back for a 2,5 hours with big nice Coca-Cola and even bigger popcorn. With extra butter, of course. After all, nothing feels better than a good business, right?
"The Dark Knight" is to "Batman Begins" what "Matrix Reloaded" was to "Matrix": an overpacked, overlong summer flick that soon will be forgotten and all this childish talk about being it the Greatest Movie Ever will perish like a fart in the wind. In any case, I just hope it will. I still have before my eyes the scene I envisioned when the credits started to roll. It was Tim Burton, sitting next to me, saying quietly, somewhat in disgust: "Well, once they used imagination. Now they just have too much money. And they sure don't bring much brains to the table anymore either, do they?"
À l'intérieur (Inside)
Unrated
Jesus H. Christ, what a bestial bloodbath! Literally as well as methaphorically. This deadly serious, relentless horror really shakes you up, by the end endlessly balancing on the verge of absurdity. It is as brutal as it gets.
The plot is simple: sociopathic woman (Beatrice Dalle) desperately wants a baby from pregnant one (Alysson Paradis) and she does everything to get it, if you get the idea already. Impressive special effects, disturbing editing, noisish soundtrack and brilliant work of make-up department adds up to inner states of the two.
This is very heavy stuff but it's decently written, well-directed and uncompromising without chesseness of recent torture flicks and I haven't seen that kind in a while.
Paranoid Park
R
The last few Gus van Sant's pictures were hit or miss cases and while I despised "Elephant", I loved "Last Days" and even more the experimental "Gerry". "Paranoid Park", on the other hand, is just a bad movie-- poorly written, uninvolving story for a 30 minutes strechted out for 80 minutes.
The plot is messy, from one point jumping from past to present whenever it suits it best, as if connecting the events into dramatic structure was too big of an effort. Probably was. Christopher Doyle's sensible cinematography doesn't make it any better. In fact, it reminds viewer of Wong Kar-Wai's recent pictures-- often beautiful to look at, but deadly thin on its substance. "Paranoid Park's ending is undoubtely interesting but by the time one gets to it, it nearly isn't as thought-provoking as it could've been if things prior to it weren't so tiresome and heavy-handed. It's like getting on a tasty dessert after a bad dinner-- distaste stays.
Gus van Sant may still respect viewer's intelligence and sensitivity as he always have but it seems that no matter what cinema you wish to create, the story still remains the core on which everything else takes off and this one feels like a pretext, therefore making van San't ambitious thought blurry.
Audition (Ôdishon)
R
Note: Despite being predictiable, this Takashi Miike's masterfully directed drama manages to sustain one's attention and, by slowly unfolding the plot brilliantly uplifts the tension till its horrorish finale. Nevertheless, in the end, the overall sense of a lack is in the air as clear as a smell of a nice hot burritos from the joint on the edge of the town.
Jac's Favorite Movies
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5.
The Indian Runner
R
There're not many films that actually moved me, leaving me feeling so strongly about character on screen as if I was looking into the mirror. In fact, there're a few. Sean Penn's brilliant debut, sadly forgotten "The Indian Runner" is one of them and even if he hasn't managed to even come close to this masterpiece in his later work, we should be grateful for this uncompromising journey into confused mind of an isolated human being. Its simple story - inspired by Bruce Springsteen's song "Highway Patrolman" from his beautiful acoustic "Nebraska" - told with raw honesty and sheer compassion, follow lives of two brothers who presents two sides of a life. First one, Joe (Morse) is leading steady, responsible life, being married and a father, working as a sheriff when second, younger, Frank (Mortensen) is angry, bad-tempered and withdraw, recently sent back home from Vietnam. Upon their first meeting as they driving to see their parents, Frank decides not to see them and go on his own, turning his back on the family for the first time. Frank will turn his back many times and Joe's need to help his younger brother'll turn out to be idle, for, in the end, Frank will go for good... When their mother passess away and their father later commits suicide - probably out of despair over his loss and fear of living without his female companion - Joe persuade Frank to come back home. Frank agrees to do so but first sight of him in the old place is rather dramatic than happy one as he, drunk out of his mind, stands naked before the mirror with gun in his hand and says the line that will be crucial, emboding chaos within him: "Somebody was boring me. I think it was me." His anti-social behaviour - cold verbal and physical cruelty - first cause him to go to jail after he punches his girlfriend, then, after being released, to humiliate her, spitting with green peas over her face. He also along the way beats up badly a stranger at the bar. Joe does everything he can to help Frank to stand on his own feet - cuts him a break, get him a job, let him move with his girlfriend to their parents' house - but it's a mattter of time before Frank will snap and do something reckless which'll put everything he's build in vain. When his girlfriend is about to give birth to their first child, Frank flees to a bar to his only remaining way of getting relief: in bottle of whiskey. Frank seems to be young Rimbaud: vibrant, unpredictable, violent, scared and deeply sad - all at the same time - wanting only to get out of this whole - terrifying in its simplicity - system of "being this, doing that" that he actually desires but because of restlessness, not wanting to put himself in this position since escaping then will be much more problematic, he decides not to step into it at all. Feeling all that, it seems abstract to have a family, have a wife, have a job, keeping providing a necessary stability and when you can't seize it and someone ask you why and you can't find right words, it confuses you even more. Joe did everything he could but he didn't understand the state of Frank's mind since he asks: "Why you find it so hard?" on which Frank responds: "Why you find it so easy?!" It's not the lack of Joe's empathy but rather director's statement about our inability to look through the other human being, no matter how well we know him - which is often because we only think we know him well - just the way it is in life. For Joe the whole matter is obvious, there's nothing to be scared of, but for Frank it's a level of living that is beyond his understanding. Behind that, there're only a feelings of regret and shame. There're many beautiful moments here, one of the most moving I've ever seen. Mutli-character sequence with accompaniment of Jefferson Airplane's wonderful ballad "Comin' Back to Me" is experience you'll remember for the rest of your life. Climax conversation between the two in the bar is another moment of greatness, not easy to forget. 30 years-old Penn's directing is so confident as if he was on the other side of the camera for a least couple of decades and Viggo Mortensen gives a performance of his career. As Franz Kafka wrote: "Impatience may be the only sin we can commit", and for me, that would be a reason for Frank's escape. But was he bad? "No good"? Penn knows it's not for him to answer that, directly, not only because in life people never are simply good or bad, but because no one would want to be labeled, i.e. jugded in a single word, and so when we see Frank driving off for good, Penn cuts original line from Springsteen's song: "Frank just ain't no good" leaving only "Frank just...", and it's gracious. Cassavetes would be proud.
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I recommend you see...
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
by edwinposted 4 hours ago -
I recommend you see...
Dead Man's Shoes
by xGaryThis bleak tale of revenge set in a small English town sees Paddy Considine leaving the army and returning home to extract brutal revenge on a group of small time drug dealers who abused his retarded younger brother while he was away. This is an unusual revenge thriller as it often looks more like a slasher flick; Considine is obviously an unstable murderer who has been trained to kill and he systematically executes each of his victims in a very horror film style way. Except in this case his victims are a bunch of unsympathetic scum bags who you can't help feeling probably deserve their fate. In this way the film throws up many mixed emotions as you're never quite sure who you are supposed to be rooting for! But the real kick in the gut is provided by Shane Meadows; he directs very much like a documentary photographer cataloging the grim reality of working class small town life. The actors involved are ugly. They have bad hair and cheap clothes. In other words they look like REAL people, not Hollywood's glamorized, sanitized version of them. As such you feel you are right there in the thick of it, actually witnessing these gruesome events rather than just watching a piece of entertainment. It won't be to everyone's tastes as it's quite a tough movie to sit through because of its extremely grim subject matter, but ultimately it's a very powerful piece of work.
"You were supposed to be a monster. I'M the monster."
posted 14 hours ago -
I recommend you see...
Dear Frankie
by MarkUtterly charming, family drama about a mother who, out of love for her 9 year old son, maintains a deception designed to protect him from the truth about his father. Bittersweet and touching, this film tugs at your emotions, not in a manipulative way, but genuinely, with a heartwarming story. British Shona Auerbach is a director to watch.
I rarely give 4 stars, so believe me when I say this is a great movie!
posted 16 hours ago -
I recommend you see...
The Butcher Boy
by El HombreNeil Jordan's 1997 film The Butcher Boy has striking similarities to Truffaut's The 400 Blows as well as Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, though with much more satire if that's possible. Even if it's nowhere close to being as brilliant as those mentioned, Jordan's film is very good.
Possibly the most cheerful film ever made about abusive childhoods, alienation, sexual abuse, madness and murder and should be noted for the simple fact of being the first film in the renaissance of Irish cinema during the 1990s not to be centered around sectarian violence.
From the director of The Crying Game, The Good Thief and Breakfast On Pluto.
posted 1 day ago -
I recommend you see...
Hangover Square
by Stellaa great little known gothic thriller with a pretty neat plot device: discordant sounds send a composer into a homicidal trance! with laird cregar, george sanders and linda darnell as the femme fatale. shot in gorgeous noir style with a wonderful score by bernard hermann
please to remember the 5th of november...
posted 1 day ago -
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I recommend you see...
Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier)
by El HombreAn early Jean-Luc Godard film that was made on a shoestring budget about a young revolutionary, Bruno, living in Geneva who is fighting against French involvement in the war in Algeria, only to run into Veronica (Anna Karina).
Shot like a newsreel, much of the film is photographed with a hand-held camera, with sound post-synchronized. A moody, often violent film, complete with sequences of torture modeled after the actions of occupying French forces in Algeria. These scenes resulted in the movie being banned by the French government for some time.
Photography is truth. And cinema is truth 24 frames a second
posted 1 day ago -
I recommend you see...
Grosse Pointe Blank
by xGaryProfessional contract killer Martin Blank decides to stop off at his high school reunion while out on a job and rekindles an old flame in the shape of Minnie Driver. Part romantic comedy, part post-Tarantino noir, this is the kind of cinematic hybrid that can sometimes go disastrously wrong (Gigli anyone? Thought not....) but this brilliantly written example is not one of them. The dialogue is witty, snappy and insightful, it has likeable characters played by a great cast headed by John Cusack at his most charming and who shares a real chemistry with his co-star. There are also some great supporting performances by Dan Aykroyd as a rival hitman, Alan Arkin as Blank's unwilling psychiatrist and Joan Cusak as his kind of post-modern old school noir style secretary. Add brisk no nonsense pacing and well handled set pieces and you have a smart and funny black comedy that works on every level.
If you liked Lucky Number Slevin, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Shoot 'Em Up check this out. It's better than all of them.
posted 1 day ago -
I recommend you see...
Frozen River
by MichaelA gritty independant gem. FROZEN RIVER feels almost like a documentary, with it's shoe-string budget, HD shakey cam photography, and very believeable performances. A gripping story and lush snow-covered locales reminded me a little of Fargo, but there is no dark comedy, or comedy of any kind here! Expect to be saddened and a little depressed, and you may be truely surprised.
Melissa Leo gives easily one of the best performances this year. Lets see if she's remembered come Oscar time.Here's one worth looking for. A great first effort from director Courtney Hunt, featuring one of the year's best performances.
posted 2 days ago -
I recommend you see...
The Girl on the Bridge (La Fille sur le pont)
by El HombreThis is a great movie. A very touching story of Adele, a sad young woman with a uncontrollable tendency to run away with men who inevitably hurt her, and Gabor, a knife thrower with a sorrowful past. Filmed in black and white, The Girl on the Bridge is beautiful, but its narrative is just as engaging as its' images.
The adventures of Adele and Gabor are consistently quirky and entertaining. As they move from one locale to the next, they encounter a variety of distinctive individuals, including a contortionist, a decadent newlywed, and a woman who had previously been Gabor's assistant and lover. For anyone who realizes how happy sadness can be, the movie is a sure shot.
This unusual love story brings together a suicidal young woman and a much-older knife-thrower who’s looking for a new assistant.
posted 2 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
by DanielleIt is the tale of two post-college 20-somethings and their attempt to satisfy some pot-induced late-night munchies. They are the Korean-American Harold (John Cho), a responsible type with much work to do for his investment-banker job this particular Friday night; and Kumar, an Indian-American with great MCAT scores who refuses to go to medical school because he'd rather loaf around, smoke weed, and live off his father's money. They are residents of Hoboken, N.J., and they realize in order to sate their cravings for White Castle hamburgers, they will have to drive to a nearby town. Thus begins a series of adventures, sidetracks and distractions. White Castle is stocked with priceless cameos, one-liners, and running jokes. Every single scene is more surreal than the last, and filled with more randomly funny situations than you can imagine. White Castle relies on creating surreal situations for incredible laughs. It carves a niche by being one of the first mass-market films to portray Indians and Koreans as people rather than stereotypes. Cho and Penn's easy-going work as well as their palpable chemistry with one another tends to carry the film through its admittedly hit-and-miss structure. And as funny as some of the more over-the-top moments are when Harold and Kumar's run-in with a creepy mountain man aptly named Freakshow (Christopher Meloni) there's no denying that the movie's most entertaining interludes are generally its simplest.
Hey, you should really see this!
posted 2 days ago -
I recommend you see...
The Tracey Fragments
by QuintoThe visual style is interesting and under the right hands, could potentially make a great film. The problem is, this is not that film. Every character is annoyingly one-dimensional thanks to Tracey's emo-bullshit mind.
To everyone who likes Ellen Page: Avoid like a Tijuana hooker if you want to keep that love.
posted 2 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Leatherheads
by QuintoThe film is never really sure of what story it's trying to tell or how, the football only being bookends in the movie, but the cast is fun, funny and has great chemistry together, especially Clooney and Zellweger screwballing, as well as the 1920's setting being absolutely beautiful.
A complete departure for Georgle Clooney the director from his previous work, but it's still a very enjoyable film thanks to its cast.
posted 2 days ago -
I recommend you see...posted 3 days ago -
I recommend you see...
Radiant City
by Harry"80% of everything ever built in North America has been built in the last 50 years. And most of it is brutal, depressing, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading."
"Suburbia is really kind of a monofunctional environment where people sleep and then they have to travel to work. You can literally get into your suv in your garage, travel all the way through the city in these new highways that join suburban communities with a center where people work, enter the garage of the office tower where you work, come up in a mechanical elevator and enter into your own office cubicle without ever coming face to face with one other individual. So a city that propagates a suburban model is a city that in some ways propagates pure private space as opposed to any notion of public space. And when you have a city and you only advocate private space, you get to the point where people cannot tolerate one another because we don't understand each other's views. We no longer have a perspective on what other people think, we only have an investment in the way we think. And so in some ways a suburban city can be understood as an intolerant city."Hey, you should really see this!
posted 3 days ago -
I recommend you see...
The Other Boleyn Girl
by QuintoThe film has its fair share of problems, yes, but like a bad soap opera, it just kept me glued to screen; much of this, of course, was thanks to Natalie Portman's wicked little schemes and fantastic performance. Ana Torrent was underused, though, and what the hell happened to Scarlett Johansson? This has got to be her worst performance.
Complaining about the film's historical inaccuracies is like when they complained about Marie-Antoiette's soundtrack: Completely pointless! Just get past all that and enjoy Natalie Portman's performance and all the pretty costumes.
posted 3 days ago -
I recommend you see...
The Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Voyage du ballon rouge)
by HarrySimon's mother Suzanne and babysitter Song get pleasure in concentrating on their passions and from Simon who brings them happiness in still getting his from simple everyday things, things that will gradually fade away as adult life hits him. To me the red balloon represented happiness, how it comes and goes and children are better at holding it. "Are you coming back to my place or not? No answer. So that's a 'No.' " I was absorbed from the beginning till the end and felt as weightless as the balloon, it's relief cinema.
Hey, you should really see this!
posted 5 days ago
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