Topic: The Movie Thread

@TheFrenchiestFry @nessisonett It Comes at Night does this too, with dream sequences appearing in a different ratio to the rest of the film. Thought it worked to really good effect in the film. The below is a extract from an interview with the director.

"Why were the different aspect ratios in the film so important to your story?

So the bulk of the movie is in 2.40:1, with spherical lenses. That’s our reality approach. What always interested me in the movie is, along the way, there are these nightmares. Film-grammar-wise, how do you play with that? You could go so many different routes. You could make a full nightmare, just announce it. But once again, taking it to the character, I want to experience it like Travis does. So our film grammar and how we shoot it doesn’t change, and the lighting doesn’t change. But we subtly use different lenses. We use anamorphic lenses for all the nightmares, and we subtly change aspect ratio, either through a fade, or slowly compressing. The bars at the top and bottom close in, and it goes from 2.40:1 to 2.75:1. And the climax is when reality has become a nightmare. The music side, the aspect ratio, and the lenses converge. Over a prolonged sequence, the bars are slowly closing in, getting more and more claustrophobic, until they’re stuck in 3.0:1 for the rest of the movie. We also go handheld as reality truly becomes nightmare, once a certain line has been crossed. We’re handheld, tight in, so it’s nauseous."

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/8/15762548/it-comes-at-night-...

@nessisonett @JohnnyShoulder @TheFrenchiestFry

I really enjoyed It Comes at Night and though it's been awhile I remember liking Grand Budapest Hotel but I don't recall any off-putting aspect ratios which leads me to the conclusion that The Lighthouse just overdoes it a bit. For me.

Also I had planned to rewatch It Comes at Night at some point but had kinda forgotten about it so thanks for bringing it up. This is as good a time as any.

lol

Midsommar, Hereditary, and The Lighthouse are easily my favorite "horror" films of the last decade (of the three, only Hereditary is played as a straightforward horror flick; The Lighthouse is an arthouse oddity, and Midsommar uses the tropes of horror for other purporses), but I can also understand people not liking them. Anything that veers hard away from mainstream expectations is going to limit its appeal, and that's fine.

Not sure what the deal is with The Lighthouse's odd aspect ratio, either, since the majority of old films were in 4:3, not that square shape. I didn't have an issue with it, though, since the actual imagery and cinematography was mesmerizing. Also, the insane interactions between Pattinson and DaFoe later in the film and the overt homoeroticism of the entire affair made it a consistently enjoyable watch for me.

Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of Midsommar but it just isn’t to my tastes at all. For whatever reason it just wasn’t for me. The Lighthouse on the other hand is incredible and easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. It nails both style and substance while having deep rooted themes. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was studied by film students in a year or two and was the subject of many a dissertation.

@Ralizah I'll add The Witch onto that list, which I slightly preffered to The Lighthouse. I known you weren't a huge fan, but I also liked Get Out and Us too, the former for having a bit of a sense of humour about it. Which is tricky to get right in horror films. Mind you I found the scene when they are all tied down in the original The Thing funny, so I have a weird sense of humour at times.

The Witch and Hereditary were really really good, until they weren't. I prefer eerieness over jump scares but movies like these, that seem to do eerie so well, have the worst payoffs. I want someone to couple that overarching feeling of dread and concern with an ending that recreates the absolute holy crap moment I had when Samara crawled out of the TV. But that's just me.

@JohnnyShoulder I actually don't dislike Jordan Peele's horror films. Get Out was a clever race satire (hardly the masterpiece critics made it out to be, but I guess that just reflects how rare it is to see a film about black consciousness and culture get that sort of mainstream attention), and Us... was interesting. It's certainly better than The Conjuring 52 or whatever, but it felt like a message film with a supremely confused script. Part of why Get Out worked is because its central metaphor for black cultural alienation ("the sunken place") and attack on smug white liberalism and cultural appropriation were both intuitive. Us lacks the same focus and intuitiveness, so it just ended up feeling weird.

On the subject of humor, I also found the extreme tonal shifts from horror to comedy in Us to be jarring. It didn't feel like a horror-comedy, really. It just doesn't feel like it knows what it wants to be.

The VVitch... unpopular opinion, probably, but that movie practically bored me to death. I'm sure it's a good film, but it did nothing for me.

On the horror-comedy front, I really, really liked Ready or Not. Perfect mix of paranoia, comedy, and some truly horrific violence. And the ending is just the best thing ever. There's probably some satirical class warfare stuff in there, too, but I think the film can be enjoyed purely on a superficial level.

@zupertramp Interesting. I thought Hereditary's climactic twist was a great shock that managed to pull the experience together. It felt really out of left field at first, but upon rewatching it, it helps to contextualize the nightmarish events that occur.

EDIT: I lied. I thought The Babadook was older than it is. I'm kicking The Lighthouse off my top 3 horror films of the decade, then.

Really sad to hear about Sean Connery, he’s easily one of the most iconic actors to come out Scotland. I love his absolute lack of accent in every film he did, especially Highlander where he was ‘Spanish’ and The Hunt For Red October where he’s ‘Russian’. Lord, even in The Untouchables he’s ‘Irish’ but just sounds like Sean Connery. Only he could pull it off.

Yeah, so sad about Connery. Truly an icon in the industry.

Sean Connery’s such a legend that Limmy didn’t even do his charity do patter. First celebrity I’ve seen him not do it for.

@nessisonett is that guy any good? I've seen an ad for his stuff but never watched anything.

Just finished watching Colour out of Space on Amazon Prime, great movie for Halloween. Making me want to re-read H. P Lovecraft again!

@MightyDemon82 I’m a big fan of his stuff going all the way back to Limmy’s Show on BBC 2 but he’s mostly a streamer now, playing Untitled Goose Game and saying things like ‘honk if Thatcher’s deed’. My favourites of his sketches are either the phone-in RPG spoofs or the TV psychic spoofs. Here’s one of my favourite ones!

@nessisonett haha that was pretty funny, I'll have to look him up, barely watch any terrestrial t. v. these days so apart from seeing him in the odd clip never watched a full sketch.

@nessisonett he reitred it at the start of the year or maybe end of last year (all of time and space is one big blur now!) There were a couple of big names that went, and he'd tweet something like "I'M NAE F*CKING SAYING IT" haha.

I've started watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and just got to the part where they are aboard the spaceship and discussing business. seems good so far. It may be, however, perhaps a bit over-hyped.

@Draco_V_Ecliptic I feel like 2001 and Citizen Kane are legit those kinds of films you have to go into completely blind because once you hear all the hype talk about it and people praising it to high heaven, it's never going to live up to the expectations built in your head. You should really just judge it by your own merits.

Both 2001 and Citizen Kane lived up to the hype for me anyway. People said they’re great movies and I watched them and decided that indeed, they were great movies. I think that’s all you can really do.

@nessisonett I've run into a lot of people who thought Kane was boring and extremely slow paced. I can definitely understand their viewpoint especially given what they were typically used to seeing, but you really can't deny people didn't really make films like Citizen Kane before that point in cinematic history. It's immaculately shot and shares a lot of qualities production wise that I'd equate with modern filmmaking or what was to come from similar aueteurs like Scorcese, Sidney Lumet or even nowadays with Robert Eggers or Bong Joon-ho

@TheFrenchiestFry Yeah, Citizen Kane is definitely more impressive when you look at the context surrounding it. I dunno, there’s plenty films that I didn’t like that many people do and there’s ones I like that barely anyone does. I don’t measure the worth of a movie based on how many people like it. I’ve been working my way through movies that are in the National Film Registry and since they can be put in there for both being acclaimed and for technical or cultural impact, you get a wide variety of movies in there. I didn’t really like Ace in the Hole which is considered a classic of noir cinema but I loved 42nd Street which is a classic musical. My tastes are so eclectic that I like what I like and I dislike what I dislike.

@nessisonett @TheFrenchiestFry @Draco_V_Ecliptic Some films really aren’t entertaining at face-value unless you are in the mood to break them down and analyze them as art. If I just sat down and tried to watch 2001 then I’d get bored. But if I really critique it’s use of sound, cinematography, and symbolism, then it’s brilliant.

I guess it’s like reading Hemingway vs. reading Tom Clancy. One is more exciting, but the other has a deeper more profound effect if you give it the time it deserves.