De Palma ruined a truly great movie when he tried to modernize it.

Brian De Palma - I really haven't seen many of his movies, but

Carrie
The Untouchables
Scarface
Mission Impossible
Bruce Springsteen: Dancing in the Dark video
The Black Dahlia

In that order. I think that's all I've seen.

You haven't done DePalma until you've done

Sisters
Obsession
Body Double
Dressed To Kill

Courtney Cox - I haven't seen all her movies or tv shows, but

Dancing in the Dark video
Family Ties
Friends
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

In that order. I think that's all I've seen.

Body Double is probably my favorite De Palma movie. I think The Fury is somewhat underrated.

Evidently he really hated Cliff Robertson while they were making Obsession. Also I'd forgotten that De Niro was in several of his early movies before either of them were famous.

What is this list without Blow Out?


Love love Scarface and 70-80's DePalma. Phantom of the Paradise was a top 3 terror inducing movie for me as a kid. The whole mood of the movie is in itself terrifying. Kubrickesque if I might say. For reference the kid snatcher in Chitty Bang Bang is always #1 on this list.

No Escape with Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan

edit: damn, did not see that trailer posted

Yeah, I meant to include Blow Out!

this is word for word how i felt.

wtfffffffff ace ventura was ****ing incredible how on earth is that below family ties and friends????????

Laughed.

Didn't find Phantom scary I don't think, although I don't know if much of any film scares me anymore after having become immune to Lynch.

I just can't imagine that the guy who made all the films we're discussing is going to make a film like Scarface that's on the surface entertaining but also really cheesy and bad, without being completely intentional in doing so and therefore having some purpose (like, idk, mocking our love for gangster culture while almost simultaneously creating the modern version of it - granted, I tend to look unfavorably on that type of thing). Really just speculating though, haven't seen it in something like 15 years.

I enjoyed Locke. Great commercial for BMW, plus I learned more about concrete than I ever thought I would. Tom Hardy IMO was riveting. Every man has issues with his father, with his lack of emotion, with dealing with the consequences of his selfishness.
Locke dealt with all of those and more.

The Handmaiden:

Holy crap, I had no idea this movies was going to be so....kinky. Great cinematography, great fractured narrative/double-crossing story, and even tentacle porn. I mean, I've seen my share of lesbo scissoring, but I want's expecting it to show up here...

Denial:

Rachel Weisz plays a Holocaust historian who is sued for libel after calling a Holocaust denier a liar. Timothy Spall and Tom Wilkinson also star. Interesting story and well done...but it's really ****ed up that if someone sues you for libel in England, it's up to the defense to prove what they said, and that the burden of proof is not on the one bringing the suit. Wacky Brits.

"but I want's expecting it to show up here"

Freudian slip? :-)

FWIW, I thought Handmaiden was beyond awful. An excuse for medium-core porn and a sophomoric feminist "message." The ending where the two villains got their comeuppance was unwatchable. I agree with you about the cinematography. And that was a helluvan octopus.

yeah, but where else do you get a shot ostensibly from a vagina's POV?

Locke is one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. The banality of the dialogue was like nails on a chalkboard; I only managed to finish it because I was constantly expecting something interesting to happen.

edit: what I wrote at the time about Locke

"This would have been better purposed as a podcast, or actually scrapped entirely since it is plotless and excruciatingly boring. I look forward to Locke 2: The Drive Back. Or maybe that'll be the third film, and part 2 can be riveting conversations in "Hospital Hallway." The drunk foreman has one final crisis..."Ivan, what comes after 5?" "Eddie, didn't you learn numbers? Are you really asking me a question? Eddie, look at the white board. Eddie, it is 6!" *Dramatic Call Waiting Beeps*"

Jason Bourne:

Rewatch because I forgot how bad this movie is. Damon does a fine job, as do Stiles and Jones. Cassel is wonderful in everything he does, and this is no exception. Vikander is terrible to the point of being distracting. Going to give her a pass this time, given the quality of her body of work and assume her performance is Greenglass' fault, but wow is her character poorly done.

If you are even remotely technical, the portrayal of technology in this movie is even more distracting. From the "Enhance" yes-they-really-did-that scene to the USB drive with "ENCRYPTED" written in big bold letters on the side, it's difficult to assume this isn't a deliberate parody of some kind.

Shaky cam is even worse than usual here, rendering some action scenes borderline incomprehensible. Letting imagination compensate for some degree of shaky cam is fine, but Greenglass has no sense of finesse, it's strictly a more-is-better error.

Lots of failure within the story itself, the most egregious of which is probably making the asset be the guy who whacked Bourne's father, even though he already has a perfectly reasonable motivation to take Bourne down due to being tortured for years as a result of Bourne's actions. So unnecessary.




The Huntsman: Winter's War:

For those who say there is nothing good about this movie, it did pass the Bechdel Test with flying colors. Hemsworth plays himself as usual, this time with a bad accent. Theron and Chastain are fine, Blunt is sadly constrained by how her character is written to not have much to work with. She does ride around on a polar bear which is pretty sweet, tho.

As a fairy tale movie, this endeavor is absolutely fine. The outlandish ideas and execution work perfectly well within that frame, and it's not really fair to critique the story given that the movie unabashedly owns its niche. It definitely got a bum rap for this, incorrectly being held to standard fantasy criteria by most critics.

god everytime someone brings up bourne i have to start purging all memory of that abortion from my brain all over again.

it's so brutal cuz if they would have just brought back the gilroys we would've had another epic installment but greengrass and damon are bitter jealous little bitches holding a stupid grudge cuz god forbid they had the nerve to make a bourne film without them.

Carlito's Way is enjoyable if generic. Sean Penn is fantastic.

Filmstruck/Criterion is now live on Roku and the associated devices...

victoria/one take.
kinda spoilery!!!




one question for the filmmakers in here: at the end, some of the guys have bleeding wounds after a shoot out.
how did they put the fake blood on them? did they carry it all the way or when the camera moves away from them, do some make up guys run up there and put the fake blood on the guys?

Mystic River:

Do not read the wiki entry if you haven't seen it, there are spoilers that will materially affect your enjoyment of the movie.


Rewatch.

Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon play three childhood friends. When they were kids, Robbins was kidnapped and abused, changing him forever. Now they are adults who have grown apart.

Penn's daughter is murdered, which brings them back together. Bacon is a cop trying to find the murderer before Penn does, while trying to reconnect with his non-responsive wife who has left him while pregnant. Penn is grief-stricken ex-con who has mostly gone legit, trying to find the murderer for revenge with the help of his not-legit associates. Robbins is trying to support Penn and reconnect while struggling with the impact of his childhood trauma and its impact on his family life.

This is a messy movie with imperfect people making poor decisions and dealing with the consequences. All of the decisions are reasonable ones for the characters to make, and it is easy to empathize and immerse.

Clint Eastwood directed. Not sure if this or Unforgiven is my favorite Eastwood-directed movie.

Penn and Robbins both won oscars for their performances, and both of them deserved to win. That was the year that LOTR:RoTK won all 11 it was nominated for. Penn didn't really have any competition (Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean was one of his fellow nominees) but he still deserved it. Robbins had far more competition. Eastwood should have won best director over Jackson, but both should have lost to Meirelles for City of God.

If you haven't seen this and enjoy strong performances in adult relationship dramas focused on flawed characters, it's pretty much a lock you'll appreciate this.

I don't know the answer but Sonne, the male lead, started visibly bleeding shortly after Victoria went to the hotel toilet to do her makeup so surely that's when crew came in & fixed him up.

I love Mystic River, nice write up. I remember being really moved by Robbins acceptance speech.

Yeh good review of a great movie. All of the performances are excellent and it's one of the rare mysteries where the end is just as good as the build up.

Just watched that acceptance speech - he's very appreciative and his tribute to victims of sexual abuse was touching.

I picked this movie on my third date with my gf trying to show off my superior tastes. I did not think that one through...

The Brand New Testament (subtitles) is a 2015 highly imaginative off-the-wall dark comedy where God is a bitter and angry Belgian who enjoys devising ways to torment humans while living in a block of flats.

We found it highly enjoyable.