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List of Shame REVIEWS
Author Topic: List of Shame REVIEWS (Read 127614 times)
MartinTeller
martinteller.wordpress.com
Post your reviews from your List of Shame dictations.
Watched 2021
As every colour illuminates, we are shining...
Re: List of Shame REVIEWS
Yowza Bill! I just got a great big dose of film history today.
Thanks for sending me to Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. At first, I thought, "This is crazy town!" And then I remembered it was a Murnau film. As soon as I realized I was looking through the lens of Expressionism, I was able to really appreciate what I was watching. The angles and shadows were terrific. The "in the camera" work of superimposing provided some of the best scenes. The minimal use of inter title cards was perfect and I absolutely was in awe of the Movietones soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film was a product of bad timing. Because it opened a month after The Jazz Singer, its groundbreaking system was overshadowed by the first talkie.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2020, 03:40:09 PM by Sandy »
Sam the Cinema Snob
"Anime is for jerks."
Yea, and while that whole bit is so fantastic, I love the surprising turn the rest of the movie takes. So good. I find myself in tears every time I watch it.
"It's all research." -roujin
Bill Thompson
DOOM!!!!
Glad you liked it Sandy, it's one of my favorites. Murnau was the man, I have yet to see a movie about romance that handled the pure idea of romance better than Sunrise.
I really wanted to be able to immerse myself in the brilliant portrayal of forgiveness and redemption. I'm afraid my preservation instinct kicked in and I wasn't able to completely shed it. Maybe as a woman I'm more skittish or maybe the Wife is just a better person than I.
This reminds me that Sunrise has to be added to my ever more imposing "need to revisit" list. I liked it somewhat but according to my extremely brief review, thought it "gets a bit too silly in the middle". This was early in my cinematic self-education.
Quote from: MartinTeller on April 05, 2011, 12:14:04 PM
That's a complaint a lot of people voice actually. I love the silliness though, it's so much fun watching those two people rediscover the love in their relationship through being silly.
oldkid
Hi there! Feed me worlds!
I'm so glad you got to see that classic movie, Sandy. There are so many older films that we ignore because, I guess, we think we wouldn't like them. But many of them are just as human and powerful as many of our modern films.
And it's great you appreciated Schindler's List so much, Verbals. Great review.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky
Quote from: oldkid on April 05, 2011, 04:56:44 PM
Yes. The amount of movie buffs who don't watch silent films is saddening.
It is fitting that I watched this a day after Moonrise. Both films essentially ask a nature vs. nurture question. Moonrise shows a man whose dad is executed for murder and is raised being in equal parts teased and feared that his dad's violence runs in his blood. Frankenstein establishes this in a lecture early at a medical school where the Doctor contrasts a normal brain and the brain of a criminal that he claims is physically deficient. When the latter is put into the monster, the assumption is that he will be violent and is treated as such from the start. The question in both cases is, is the violence that follows a product of the physical characteristics alleged or a result of societally induced self-fulfilling prophecy.
Frankenstein is a more stripped down version of this. Using a simple monster removes a lot of the potential for problematic social interaction that I critiqued in Moonrise. Frankenstein is a dumb brute, instinctually reacting to things he fears or things that threaten him. The scene with the girl is perhaps a tip toward the innocence aspect but the result muddles the message, though is not conclusive in either direction.
I can't claim to have found Frankenstein a tremendous film. I never had any sense of dread because the short run time doesn't really leave room for the atmosphere to develop. It rushes from action to action. I may claim to favor plot to character or mood, but that presupposes the existence of character and mood. This film seems like an exercise in plot absent more than the basic level of the others (though I still find it better than films that have character and/or mood with no more than the basic level of plot so I stand by my preference of story). Since pretty much everyone basically knows the Frankenstein plot at this point, without even reading the book or watching any film version, I wouldn't consider this film very essential.
Much of Bride of Frankenstein is stuff that I wish there was more of in the first film. Signs of Frankenstein's humanity when presented with kindness. Room to breath. Yet it feels really odd here. This film in contrast to the first seems almost entirely without plot. I mean, it is called Bride of Frankenstein and we finally meet the titular character at the end. It isn't like the journey there was anything interesting (though you got to give Dr. Frankenstein credit for being just as excited at creating life as the first time). Just a big meh. I think between the two you could have made one recommendable film and saved "Bride of Frankenstein" for a sequel that actually featured the Bride as an active character.