IntenseDebate - ChaseKahn

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - This Week in Blu (11/3... · 1 reply · +1 points

Picking up "North By Northwest" today, can't wait. I'll wait on "Howards End" and "Wings of Desire"...not for a lack of interest, mind you, but lack of money.

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'Bad Lieutenant: Port ... · 0 replies · +1 points

Yeah, the docu-camera lighting and compositions are meant to be accurately grimy and unsightly (I think), but it's an ugly film nonetheless. Not exactly David Fincher's vision of New Orleans.

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - DiCaprio and Maguire o... · 0 replies · +1 points

Dang it, I'm already falling into the trap, but I just had a vision of Marion Cotillard playing the Alida Valli role. If -- and once again, I hope not -- the film has to be remade, she fits the part to a "T".

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - DiCaprio and Maguire o... · 1 reply · +1 points

Ahhh! One of my all-time favorites (I've worn out my 2-disc Criterion case) that does not need to be remade. It's movie perfection: the zither score, the cuckoo clock/ferris wheel scene, the crazy lighting of postwar Vienna, the tilted camera angles, the painfully long final frame, etc.

You just can't touch it -- it was a been there, done that movie miracle where everything just came together.

And there's also no question that it would be Maquire for Cotten/DiCaprio for Lime, but it's so anti-religious in a film sense to even question it. I'm covering my ears...

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'The Baader Meinhof Co... · 0 replies · +1 points

Agreed. It does a great job in the first half of portraying the global climate as a time of budding and inevitable conflict, making it easier for us to relate to these terrorists, essentially. Then, in the second half, it asks more questions like, were these founding RAF members impulsively selfish, righteously adamant, or victims of their own countries' misdeeds and inescapable history? To its credit, it doesn't take sides.

There is also the eluding to of the future generations of RAF members in the end and how the original cause seems to be culminating into something even worse, but the film, ending with a gunshot, doesn't seem to completely ring the way it could have. Still a very good film.

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'Where the Wild Things... · 0 replies · +1 points

"Overall, the movie made me feel like I was watching mom and dad fight. If mom and dad were big, hairy, wild monsters, course. I was disappointed at the very least--I was so looking forward to it. "

To each his [her] own, but that's pretty much the point of the film. You could look at the wild things as an interpretation of Max's own parents, with Carol as the elusive father figure.

"no one to universally connect with"

I thought it was incredibly resonant for the way it depicted the complexity and confounding nature of childhood emotions. I remember being a kid and going through the same emotional tantrums, issues and feelings without ever knowing why.

There's also the scene where KW brings her new "friends" to the fort and Max and Carol can't understand them, literally. How many people HAVEN'T felt upstaged or relegated to old news by a new third-party only to not understand what everyone sees in them. I know I have.

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'Where the Wild Things... · 0 replies · +1 points

This would be the second movie in two weeks that I would have given 4 Nests to, and it came completely out of nowhere for me. I think this is Spike Jonze's best film -- it surpasses everything that's come before it about childhood and growing up because it speaks the truth: that children are often hopelessly selfish, unconsiously cruel and emotionally confused.

Sure the trip to the imaginary island has its payoff. It allows Max to see the fundamentals of human emotion from a different perspective in a way that's more relatable to him. It's not about solving his problems, it's about understanding them. Instead of a celebration of youthful innocence, it's a bleak, scathing look at it's troubles, and I absolutely love the film for that.

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'Toy Story / Toy Story... · 0 replies · +1 points

I've already ranted about 3D enough, but it's just troubling to me. If it stays with schlocky horror films and cg and stop-motion animation, I'm fine with it, but talks of "Iron Man 2" in 3D and the format being pushed by Katzenberg and Cameron as the standard is unsettling.

Most of the time, the 3D acts as a glossy sheen of "immersiveness" that covers up an otherwise unimpressive film. (The exception being "Coraline"). Plus, with talk of 3D being the lifesaver for studios who feel threatened by dwindling DVD sales and giant home theaters...the box-office seems to be chuggin' along pretty good from where I'm sitting. Did we not just have a record-breaking summer?

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'A Serious Man' Review · 0 replies · +1 points

...Like Larry and his disgruntled Korean student, it's like taking a test without any right answers when questioning this fact could prove fatal. It's like the dead cat analogy -- the film is a existential fable and the town depicted is a sandbox illustration of this entire philosophy and what happens when one person stands up and questions it. "What does it all mean?"

After the film is over, you'll have the same questions, but like Larry, you'll find that the answers are hard to come by.

14 years ago @ The Film Nest - 'A Serious Man' Review · 0 replies · +1 points

All right, I've seen "A Serious Man" twice now since it opened yesterday and I fully believe this is a genuine work of art and probably the most fully-formed and resonant film I've seen in the last two years - I say this as someone whose never really chugged the Coen kool-aid before.

This is a scathing, black-hearted take-down of every passive, "let it be" noncombatant follower of the philosphical fundamentals of faith, destiny and truth. It's not just about "Hashem" and 1960's Jewish suburban Minnesota, it applies to everyone who's ever had the cards stacked against them, who's ever tredged through a bad situation, a bad day, or a bad week and wondered, "why me?"

Continued on next comment....

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