The first show of 2013!! Max is joined by Harold Hill (Michael Kirchhoff). Reviews of LES MISERABLES, DJANGO UNCHAINED, ZERO DARK THIRTY, MONSTERS INC 3-D, THE IMPOSSIBLE, RUST AND BONE, ON THE ROAD, JACK REACHER, THIS IS 40 and the Billy Crystal horror film, PARENTAL GUIDANCE. A look at the overall 2012 box-office, the winners from the National Society of Film Critics, and the Fustians will each offer their individual 6 selections for THE BEST FILMS OF 2012.
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Film Fustians, 1/8/136 comments to Film Fustians, 1/8/13Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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Welcome back, Fustians.’saw “Django Unchained” over the holidays. It did not disappoint. Everything you’d expect in a Quentin Tarantino film, his signature violence, wide shots and philosophical monologues made this tribute to Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns a whole lotta fun. There is one scene, though, (spoiler alert!) where Big Daddy rounds up a posse resembling an early incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan to hunt down Django which looked more like it belonged in Walt Disney’s “The Apple Dumpling Gang” than in a Tarantino picture. But despite its occasional dipping into too silly a tone for its own good and the verbal diarrhea from its use of the “N” word, I enjoyed “Django” very much.
Does DJANGO UNCHAINED have the long conversations that Tarantino now has in his movies?
MONSTERS INC 3-D removed the Oscar winning song at the end.
Will one of Max’s choices for THE BEST FILMS OF 2012 result in a few gunshots from Justin?
Your topic of under-rated films, and Harold Hill’s comments, inspire me to rant. I got the sense that Mr. Hill was intrigued by films that touched on the transcendental, and he mentioned the Coen Brothers’ THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE.
We all agree that the Coens are superb filmmakers, and I appreciate that one of their recurring themes is the need for Man to seek something larger than life. Here are their works that come to my mind.
First, RAISING ARIZONA, about a sympathetic transgressor who opens the door to the personification of an evil spirit. I might make a contrast with EYES WIDE SHUT (another great film), in that both explore the consequences of straying from the righteous path, but EWS draws on the concept of political power rather than supernatural or philosophical power. But both are powerful cautionary tales; one pragmatic and the other spiritual. Do you agree, or would you phrase it differently? (Or do you think the contrast makes no sense?)
Anyway, continuing…There’s O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU (the title came out of the old screwball comedy, SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS), in which George Clooney represents the Modern Man, the Rational Man, who struggles to deny the supernatural even as it engulfs him.
Then THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, which touches on the question of whether reality is objective, or whether things become real simply because people believe in them. That Billy Bob Thornton ultimately inhabits a reality that he knows to be false is the final irony; the resolution of the film makes it necessary that the false become true. The lawyer character in the courtroom scene even touches on the shadowy world of quantum physics, and I’m sure it was this bit of weird-but-true science that inspired the screenwriter. In quantum physics, events happen without cause or definition, and reality remains undefined or subject to revision.
A SERIOUS MAN gets even more explicit with respect to quantum physics and God; Google on “Schrödinger’s cat” (referenced in the film) to get a better sense of the technical background. In a nutshell, the quantum world is very weird, and Schrödinger’s cat is what they call a “thought experiment” (meaning you can’t actually do the experiment, you just contemplate it) in order to consider the connection between the murky foundation of our material reality and the (apparently!) solid and reliable world we inhabit. If quantum events are merely probability waves, then can we make a connection between a macro event (such as the life of a cat) and a quantum probability vector? A cat is either alive or dead; it’s life can’t be in an indeterminate state of possibly-alive — or can it? The answer is: Maybe. Consider that these elusive quantum particles and waves are the building blocks out of which the entire universe is constructed. How can the totality of space-time rest upon a foundation that is not only unstable but unreal? That’s a paradox of both science and philosophy.
So…What is Man? A human being has a material body that either does or does not have a spiritual/supernatural component animating it (that is, a “soul”). Which is the case? Soul or no soul? Material plus spirit, or pure material? I find the question extremely important, and powerful arguments can be made on either side. I think the discussion is worth having, and I see the films of the Coens as, among other things, their wonderful addition to this dialogue.
My guess for the movie quiz: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.
Martin Freeman’s performance as Bilbo is highly underrated. To prove my point, Harold Hill never mentioned his name even once when he talked about the film. I thought Freeman brought a lot of personality and humor to the character. Actually, I like Bilbo in the film better than in the book.
There seemed to be a theory developing on the show that only people who had read Cloud Atlas liked the film. I’m here to say I haven’t read the book and I really enjoyed the movie. It hooked me in emotionally.
Not that anyone cares, but I’d like to mention some films I really liked this past year that weren’t mentioned on the show: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Secret World of Arrietty, and probably most controversially, Wanderlust. A couple documentaries I liked were Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Marley.
I can’t put together a list of the worst movies of 2012 because I try to stay away from shit (thanks in large part to the Fustians’ recommendations), but I’ll just note that I tried watching Chronicle on cable and changed the channel halfway through because I couldn’t stand it any longer. I hated the characters and that amateur shaky cam crap.
I agree with ClevelandPhil’s pick for the movie quiz, “Close Encounters.” But how does the coffee fit in?
Mike Ackerman