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Obscure movies Movies we may have missed

#61 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-March-01, 20:33

From A. O. Scott's review of Winter's Bone:

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Even before the real trouble starts — with suspicious lawmen on one side and a clan of violent drug dealers on the other — Ree Dolly faces more than the usual litany of adolescent worries. Her father, locally renowned for his skill at cooking methamphetamine, has vanished, and her emotionally hollowed-out mother has long since abandoned basic parental duties, leaving Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) to run the household and care for her two younger siblings. The family lives in southwestern Missouri, a stretch of the Ozarks that is both desolate and picturesque, words that might also suit “Winter’s Bone,” Debra Granik’s tender and flinty adaptation of a novel of the same title by Daniel Woodrell.

“Winter’s Bone,” warmly embraced at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, belongs, at least at first glance, to one of that festival’s familiar genres: the regional-realist morality tale. These days, American independent cinema abounds in earnest stories of hard-bitten people living in impoverished corners of the country, their moral and emotional struggles accompanied by acoustic guitars and evocative landscape shots and generally uninflected by humor.

The faces in “Winter’s Bone” are certainly mirthless — not only Ree’s, but also those of the relatives she turns to for advice and protection when her predicament becomes desperate. The topography of chilly hollows and ragged forests is filmed in a way that emphasizes its bleakness. There are banjos and fiddles, as well as guitars, and some beautiful old mountain ballads are performed on camera. Some of the cast members are nonprofessional actors, and nearly all are wary, watchful and taciturn, speaking their few words in faultless regional accents.

What distinguishes Ms. Granik’s film from, say, Courtney Hunt’s “Frozen River” — to cite another recent Sundance favorite with cold weather in its title and grim Americana on its mind — is that this harshness is not there to illuminate a sociological condition. Something more primal, almost Greek in its archaic power, is at stake in “Winter’s Bone,” and its visual and emotional starkness do not feel like simple badges of authenticity.

This is not a story about drugs and family life in a particular region of the United States, even though it displays some impressive local knowledge (much of it derived from Mr. Woodrell’s book). It is more deeply about tribal ties and individual choices, about a stubborn girl’s sense of justice coming into sharp and dangerous conflict with deep and intractable customs.

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#62 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-March-08, 19:25

"Silver Lining Playbook" with Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver. De Niro is such a scene stealer and super likable old white guy.
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#63 User is offline   ggwhiz 

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Posted 2018-March-09, 11:09

Not that obscure? but watched Icarus on Netflix, the Academy Award winning documentary.

A very chilling look at how the old KGB guys are still running amok.
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#64 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2018-September-22, 16:29

Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders (1984) based on a screenplay by Sam Shepard. Got mixed reviews. My wife and I enjoyed it.
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#65 User is offline   ggwhiz 

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Posted 2018-September-29, 14:48

Found a British film on Netflix, Death at a Funeral.

The imdb rating of 7.4 is unusually high for a comedy but MAN! it was laugh out loud hilarious.

Zombieland was very good and got a 7.7 rating but this was better.
When a deaf person goes to court is it still called a hearing?
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#66 User is offline   Al_U_Card 

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Posted 2018-October-13, 20:47

"A little chaos" with Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet. A period piece set in Louis XIV's France during the construction of Versailles. Despite one minor incongruity in the plot line, a fine romantic drama produced and directed by Rickman. 8.5 / 10.
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#67 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2018-October-15, 09:24

Mark Perez wrote a quirky and amusing script for Game Night. 2018, WB
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#68 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2018-October-15, 19:54

Poi E

https://www.nzfilm.c...-story-our-song

A cute film that gives a window into contemporary Maori culture.
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#69 User is offline   Al_U_Card 

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Posted 2018-October-28, 14:38

Just watched "La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes". (The little girl who was too fond of matches.) My wife loved the book and it had 5 stars so ... at least I didn't fall asleep despite it being fairly late in the evening. Moody and somewhat scattered, it contains a sort of gothic 2.0 horror that was somewhat appealing. Not highly recommended but an easy watch.
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#70 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2019-April-03, 18:36

24 City by Jia Zhang-ke:

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An experimental fiction-nonfiction hybrid, it takes place in the southwest city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. (It was shot before last year’s catastrophic earthquake.) The focus is a state-owned factory building, a ruined monument to precapitalist China, or rather to its workers, who helped turn the country into a global power. Mr. Jia managed to catch the sprawling, colloquially named Factory 420 — which originally manufactured fighter aircraft engines before branching out to refrigerators and the like — as it was being demolished to make room for a mixed-use development that will spread across 3.3 million square feet, house 60,000 residents and include an eight-screen multiplex that is unlikely to show his work.

That might change, though it’s hard to believe that his movies, with their lengthy takes and generous silences, will ever attract a popular audience of any nationality. Given his rarefied style, it was instructive to read in a recent New Yorker profile that Mr. Jia has been criticized by some Chinese intellectuals for “abandoning his most subversive themes.” This criticism might be due to the fact that Mr. Jia, who once flew under the government’s radar, now shoots his movies with its official approval. Or that the state-owned company that redeveloped the factory also helped pay for “24 City.” Whatever the case, Mr. Jia doesn’t seem to have sold out for the state’s blessing, at least as far as this Westerner can tell. -- Manohla Dargis NYT 2009

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#71 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2019-April-03, 19:18

The Big Bus, an early disaster comedy movie that predated the Airplane movies. A giant, nuclear powered bus that makes a cross country trip dodging natural disasters and sabotage.

Among the memorable quotes,

"You eat one lousy foot - they call you a cannibal!"

"I ate the seat cushions like they told us to in training!"
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#72 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2019-April-03, 19:39

Saw a couple of obscure films recently at the Hamilton Film Society

Intersexion, a documentary about intersex people, gave a nice varied perspective on the intersex phenomena by interviewing a lot of intersexed people with very different stories. Technically it was a bit amateuristic, though.

https://www.intersexionfilm.com/

Western, a German film about a German construction team in Bulgaria and their conflicts with the nearby village was a kind of film that would be interesting if based on a true story, but it isn't, so I am not sure what's the point. It is technically reasonably and the actors are believable, albeit with superficially described personalities. Not a film that made me excited, though.

https://en.wikipedia...tern_(2017_film)
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#73 User is offline   barmar 

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Posted 2019-April-04, 09:48

View Postjohnu, on 2019-April-03, 19:18, said:

The Big Bus, an early disaster comedy movie that predated the Airplane movies. A giant, nuclear powered bus that makes a cross country trip dodging natural disasters and sabotage.

I remember that, it was intended to be the ultimate spoof of movies like "Airport" and "The Towering Inferno".

I thought it was considered notoriously bad, but Rotten Tomatoes has it at 78% from reviewers (but only 9 reviews, they're not from when the movie originally came out, and they're just mildly positive or negative) and 58% from the audience.

#74 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2019-April-21, 15:05

I'm on a David Lynch kick after taking his new Master Class which blew me away. I recently watched "The Elephant Man" which also blew me away as did Vincent Canby's perceptive review. It really is a small world. There was Merrick talking about how beautiful his mother was and how he "must have been a disappointment to her" which are words that Lynch has used when talking about his mother. And there was Anne Bancroft giving Merrick a book of Shakespeare's plays, the same Anne Bancroft who took it upon herself to teach her dyslexic son Max how to read and, whose husband, the producer, who doubted that Lynch was the right guy for the film, was instantly persuaded when they first met in a Bob's Big Boy "way out in the valley." The acting by John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins was so good.
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#75 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2019-May-06, 17:20

Blood Simple by the Coen brothers. Not obscure perhaps. Hard to believe this was their first film.

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[opening voice-over plays against dissolving Texas landscapes--broad, bare, and lifeless]

The world is full of complainers. But the fact is, nothing comes with a guarantee. I don't care if you're the Pope of Rome, President of the United States, or even Man of the Year--something can always go wrong. And go ahead, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help--watch him fly. Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else-- that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas...

[cut to headlights rushing down rain-swept country road at night, tires swishing on wet asphalt]

And down here... you're on your own.

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#76 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2019-June-30, 21:49

Taipei Story by Edward Yang.

In an intro on the Criterion Channel, Martin Scorsese says "his pictures were like nothing I'd ever seen before and they represented a truly unique approach to film making. This is one of those great moments that come along every so often in the cinema when people band together, pick up cameras and find new ways of telling stories about the world around them and how they see it and express it."

In a discussion by filmmakers Hou Hsiao-hsien, who plays the main character, and Edmond Wong, Hou says that when Yang came back to Taiwan after studying and working in the U.S. "he saw the meaning in everything and had a penetrating vision of the meaning behind the city of Taipei. .. Before that, we saw movies as extensions of the theater. Emotional relationships, falling in love. We made purely commercial films. It was all about box office. It was never a penetrating look at something like Taipei laid out before our eyes. Taipei was changing completely. That's why it's called Taipei Story. There were all these different people living there with different backgrounds and other cultural influences like Japan and the Japanese language. He saw all that."

Edit: Also watched (over 2 days) A Brighter Summer Day by Yang. Film buffs with 6 hours to spare will enjoy both movies.
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#77 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2019-August-08, 19:33

We watched a couple of movies directed by Susanne Bier: Open Hearts (2002) and After the Wedding (2006) both starring Mads Mikkelsen. Both movies felt somewhat contrived but we enjoyed them anyway. All of the performances in Open Hearts and Mickkelsen's performances in both films were quite good. In Danish with subtitles.

Roger Ebert believed movies are like a machine that generates empathy by helping us see things from other points of view. If this was Bier's goal in Open Hearts, I would say she nailed it.
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#78 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2019-August-15, 05:40

https://en.wikipedia...per_(2018_film)

The Keeper is the true story about a German prisoner of war who married an English woman and became a professional football player. A very beautiful film, and very close to the true story.
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#79 User is offline   shyams 

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Posted 2019-August-29, 15:43

Clouds of Sils Maria. Saw it on TV while on vacation earlier this month.

Wikipedia says "the screenplay was written with Binoche in mind and incorporates elements from her life into the plot" but in my opinion it was Kristen Stewart who outshone her illustrious colleague.
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#80 User is offline   helene_t 

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Posted 2019-September-29, 17:38

It is Latin American Film Festival in New Zealand at the moment.

Friday we saw a brilliant Brazilian film, "A little secret". It starts with two parallel, somewhat dull stories: One about a young Brazilian woman who falls in love with a traveler from New Zealand. And one about a Brazilian puberty girl who has some health problem and is insecure because of her small breasts. One wonders what the two stories have to do with each other, and why someone bothered to make a film about them. Then the plot thickens .....

It's a true story, by the way.
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