Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.
What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?
Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.
TopCat G wrote:beenieman wrote:Next I watched Touch of Evil, another from the BCB Top 100.
At least this was watchable. It's a well made movie and if I was doing my list in 1960 I would have included it. The opening shot ios superbly set. But this is not an intellectual exercise. In today's terms the movie is overacted. Name a movie of the last 20 years where the characters shout at each other for most of the movie? Keep it down people! And the plot's implausibilities are too much. Quinlan is a cop who is driven to ensure the guilty go to jail regardless of any lack of evidence to enable that to happen. Surprisingly though he lets Grandis and his family run rampant in the town. Can't he frame them? He's good investigator so he only puts the guilty away, we are never led to think anything else, but his turn against Vargas has no basis in his character. In no time at all he is committing murder himself and framing an innocent woman for the fcrime. After 30 years following his rigorous moral code?
It's well acted for the time & i enjoyed it but top 100? Nope.
It's no Con Air.
TopCat G wrote:Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.
What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?
beenieman wrote:TopCat G wrote:Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.
What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?
Glorifying, or at least tolerating, a bully & misogynist?
beenieman wrote:Matt Wilson wrote:Geez, Beanie - all three of those movies are classics.
Maybe you need a film studies class to appreciate them.
So I can have the same opinions as you do? I don't think so.
I knew they were pathetic characters at the start whereas it seemingly took you 2 hours to find out.
It would have been better if you hadn't gone to film studies class.
Matt Wilson wrote:beenieman wrote:Matt Wilson wrote:Geez, Beanie - all three of those movies are classics.
Maybe you need a film studies class to appreciate them.
So I can have the same opinions as you do? I don't think so.
I knew they were pathetic characters at the start whereas it seemingly took you 2 hours to find out.
It would have been better if you hadn't gone to film studies class.
So every character study is only worth your time if the characters aren't pathetic?
What do you think of Raging Bull or Citizen Kane (I don't know that Charles Foster Kane is "pathetic", but I don't really think of the character as great either). Or how about literature? I mentioned the Upkide novel earlier but what about Jay Gatsby or the main character in Ulysses? Oh, I can think of more finely drawn portraits of less-than-admirable characers than that but I've already been at the whiskey and my mind, while never the most sharp thing on the best of days, is incredibly muddy under the influence.
I'm rambling, forget about it...
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.
beenieman wrote:In today's terms the movie is overacted. Name a movie of the last 20 years where the characters shout at each other for most of the movie? Keep it down people!
beenieman wrote:And the plot's implausibilities are too much. Quinlan is a cop who is driven to ensure the guilty go to jail regardless of any lack of evidence to enable that to happen. Surprisingly though he lets Grandis and his family run rampant in the town. Can't he frame them? He's good investigator so he only puts the guilty away, we are never led to think anything else, but his turn against Vargas has no basis in his character. In no time at all he is committing murder himself and framing an innocent woman for the fcrime. After 30 years following his rigorous moral code?
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.
beenieman wrote:TopCat G wrote:Owen wrote:
That said I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, but I think the cultural things he raises about the 70s in that and Five Easy Pieces are true and are pretty reprehensibe.
What's "reprehensible" about Five Easy Pieces?
Glorifying, or at least tolerating, a bully & misogynist?
take5_d_shorterer wrote:If John Bonham simply didn't listen to enough Tommy Johnson or Blind Willie Mctell, that's his doing.
beenieman wrote:Matt Wilson wrote:
So every character study is only worth your time if the characters aren't pathetic?
What do you think of Raging Bull or Citizen Kane (I don't know that Charles Foster Kane is "pathetic", but I don't really think of the character as great either). Or how about literature? I mentioned the Upkide novel earlier but what about Jay Gatsby or the main character in Ulysses? Oh, I can think of more finely drawn portraits of less-than-admirable characers than that but I've already been at the whiskey and my mind, while never the most sharp thing on the best of days, is incredibly muddy under the influence.
I'm rambling, forget about it...
Forgotten.
Matt Wilson wrote:Nicholson didn't physically abuse Black and Beatty didn't hit any women either in the Altman picture.
Now ya see, this is how rumors start!
the science eel wrote:Good to see someone not echoing the conclusions of the chin-rubbing herd with some of these so-called classics.
Altho' it would help if you watched them to the end, Beenieman!
beenieman wrote:Matt Wilson wrote:Nicholson didn't physically abuse Black and Beatty didn't hit any women either in the Altman picture.
Now ya see, this is how rumors start!
He abused Black from the get go. You know abuse doesn't have to be physical right? And who said Beatty hit women in McCabe? Not me. He bought & sold them.
Matt Wilson wrote:Yeah, but you can say that about virtually anything. Read Huck Finn lately? The world 'Nigger' is used throughout the novel and almost always casually. Does that mean it's not a masterpiece? If you're going to judge art by current politically correct standards then you'll be dissapointed far more than pleased. Most of the current world is sexist in its regard to women. Japan, Italy, Mexico, China, the Middle Eastern countries... I could go on and on.
Davey Avon FatBoy wrote:Yeah - I think there are two different ideas here being lumped together. On one hand you have beenie essentially arguing that he doesn't much like ambiguity in movies. He wants to know from the beginning that the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good and that the moral universe he is visiting is one that he feels comfortable in. He has that right of course, I don't judge him for it. it simply doesn't work for me. it is telling that he liked Touch of Evil most of the three films he viewed. That film hews closest to unambiguity. It is my least favorite of the three for the very same reasons.
But as G rightly argues, a film can portray complex or flawed moral ecosystems without actually "celebrating" them. The Godfather isn't celebrating mob culture. It is exploring organized, and using the story of its rise to tell a larger story about America. McCabe and Mrs. Miller covers similar ground, revising the myth that success in America (especially young America) was the province of the hard-working and the worthy. Five Easy Pieces isn't glorifying Dupea's womanizing or his inability to function in a world where anybody makes demands of him, it is exploring his methods of evasion and asking us to see ourselves in them.
All of these films challenge history and challenge the viewer to examine their own lives and foibles. Not that everybody ought to love them, or be in the mood to be challenged. these films aren't for everybody. But if they don't work for you, the problem isn't that they are somehow morally inferior films. It is simply that you have no appreciation for the moral ambiguity they do offer.