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Last Active 09-26-19 3:01 pm
Joined 01-26-17
Review Comments 9,464
| Nine Semi-obscure Movies..
Nine movies that aren't horribly known but are nevertheless quite fucking amazing, at least in this humble butcher's opinion.. rec me stuff you think i might like.. | | 1 |  | Richard Hell and The Voidoids
Blank Generation
Chinese Coffee - this movie is based on a one-act play by Ira Lewis, was directed by Al Pacino in the mid-90's, and then shelved for years.. it was finally released as part of a package of three forgotten Pacino movies.. The play revolves almost entirely around a tense conversation between Pacino and Jerry Orbach, two failed Greenwich Village writers, packed full of disappointment and grievances.. the dialogue is golden, and it has long since been my writer's block cure.. | | 2 |  | Tom Waits
Bad As Me
La Grande Bellezza - this doesn't quite qualify as an obscure movie, since it won Best Foreign Film a few years back, but it doesn't get nearly enough attention for how lush and brilliant it is.. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, The Great Beauty is essentially a beatific and philosophical look at Milan socialites in their twilight years, a group of elegant wasters who have made all the right conclusions all too late.. Sleazy, botoxed, broken and causally talented, they sit around bored and talk about how there isn't time or strength to do anything anymore.. once again, the dialogue is incredible, and the movie is sliced up by gauzy dream sequences.. Unfortunately, Sorrentino parlayed all his newfound goodwill into Youth, a staggeringly dull and pretentious English-speaking film with Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel.. but this one is all gold! | | 3 |  | Pavement
Watery, Domestic
You Can't Take It With You - another Oscar winner, this one from 1938, this Frank Capra movie often gets lost in the shuffle, which is a shame, because it is perhaps one of the first truly nihilistic calls engineered in Hollywood.. the set-up is basic enough, a banker tycoon is trying to squeeze the little guy, all the while his son is falling in love with a girl from the Sycamore family, who are essentially an anarchic version of the Von Trapps.. mannered overacting and violent gesticulating ensues.. it's brilliant.. | | 4 |  | Fever Ray
Fever Ray
Kiss of the Spider Woman - another 'classic' that nevertheless often slips through the cracks of its era.. A Brazilian-American collaboration, and based on a novel by the great Manuel Puig, the film is set in a Brazilian prison during the despotic marshal law that took over Brazil in the 60's.. Another conversational piece, this one between a bright-eyed leftist ideologist and a pederast caught having sex with a young boy (played brilliantly by Raul Julia).. Intrigue, existentialism and a dissecting look into morality and oppression, both sociopolitical and sexual.. | | 5 |  | The Smiths
Hatful of Hollow
Time of the Gypsies - Before he made Arizona Dream (D), Underground (C+) or Black Cat/White Cat (A++), Emir Kusturica used to make movies that were so subtly phantasmagorical, you could hardly tell why you felt so unsettled watching them..Time of the Gypsies, which is actually called A House for Hanging, is the coming of age of a romani Yugo kid with telekinetic powers, as he leaves Sarajevo for Milan, getting jaded and beaten along the way.. it's hazy and grimly funny, and typically of Kusturica, sports a fucking lovely Central European score.. | | 6 |  | Horace Andy
Dance Hall Style
Jauja - An Argentinian film about a Danish officer who goes on a trek to find his young daughter who'd run away with a soldier.. slow, contemplative, filled with sepia-toned visuals, this little-known Viggo Mortensen picture looks like a sustained hour and a half poem of images.. it's beautiful and pessimistic and everything that makes good art.. | | 7 |  | Sonic Youth
Sonic Nurse
Children of Don Quixote - this film is somewhat of a classic in Soviet comedy, though it is incredibly difficult to find with subtitles.. A melancholic-ally funny story of a patient and incredibly kind gynecologist with three sons, all of whom are coming to forming moments in their lives.. Anatoli Papanov, a giant of Russian cinema, plays the doctor, who tries to navigate his sons' misgivings, all the while trying to convince a young mother at the hospital not to abandon her newborn.. this one is all childhood nostalgia.. | | 8 |  | Nick Drake
Pink Moon
Don't Despair - this is very easily in my Top 5 Movies of all time, though it will make little sense to most Westerners, as it never made it out of the Soviet cinema circles, or gotten a translation into any other language except Russian.. A Georgian movie starring Vakhtang Kikibidze, who is now an anti-Putin politician, Don't Despair is part-comedy, part-musical; the story of a young surgeon who was educated in Moscow, and then returns to the ragged small village where he grew up in the Georgian mountains.. an unabashedly honest man who can't get ahead in life because he can't bring himself to being an ambitious sycophant, he wallows and withers slowly, drinking plenty along the way.. The movie is fantastic, a show of tremendous understanding of life and country - a nation that have been shoved into dirt their whole history, and the only ones who still manage to sing and dance through it, instead of miring themselves in utter misery, the way most post-Soviet nations have.. | | 9 |  | Protomartyr
No Passion All Technique
Barney's Version - based on Mordecai Richler's brilliant book about the life of a Jewish Montreal bureaucrat, one who'd spent his youth as an expat in Europe, trying to be an artist in the face of the deeply-set pragmatism that's been instilled into him.. An unhappy and profoundly intelligent person who thinks weakness maketh the man, the movie tracks him through Italy and into old age and dementia, and being plagued by the demons of his best friend dying under suspicious circumstances.. Richler's book was long and detailed, and so the two and a half hour movie can't really do all of it justice.. nevertheless, it's a very funny and introspective think-piece about the failings of a civilized man, and the struggle of a modernist Jew who has to contend with his community's condescension towards more primeval bends.. Paul Giamatti with an airtight perm.. | |
butcherboy
07.16.17 | yep.. | Papa Universe
07.17.17 | While we're on this topic, I'll just leave this here:
Mænd & høns
Perfetti sconosciuti
Brimstone
Borgman
Toni Erdmann
Relatos salvajes
Dom Heminghway
Les grands moyens
Taxidermie
Grbavica
The Conspiracy
Masculin féminin
Alphaville
Loveless (2017)
The Tribe (2014)
Joven y Alocada
Nocturama
L'écume des jours | butcherboy
07.17.17 | knew I could count on you.. don't know a bunch of these, will be checking them through the week.. though I think Dom Hemingway is a one-watch movie.. | Winesburgohio
07.17.17 | Loveless is film of the year agreed
I LOVE Chinese Coffee. I will pursue the films i haven't seen here accordingly, despite my grievances with 9 and 2 | Papa Universe
07.17.17 | Oh well. The movies, though, their levels of oddity may vary, from subtly weird to fuck nuts bonkers. | butcherboy
07.17.17 | I'm kind of apprehensive about Loveless.. i've been hearing nothing but amazing things about it, but it was the same way with Leviathan, and not to sound like a dick, but from a Russian's perspective, Leviathan was such a dull, pointless slog, it was unbelievable..
that being said, I like and trust both your tastes, so that will be the next one.. | Papa Universe
07.17.17 | I'm not a fan of Leviathan either, but Loveless was quite an exhilarating emotional trip. Не пожалеешь. | zoso33
07.17.17 | awesome list will check these out, also 3, 4, and 7 rule great jams | butcherboy
07.17.17 | cheers, zoso..
Unique, i'm sold.. tomorrow night.. i will go through all of your recs though, i've been slacking on movies this year.. so thanks! | Winesburgohio
07.17.17 | yeah i thought Leviathan was plodding misery porn but Loveless... | butcherboy
07.17.17 | alright, i'm excited then! also Wine, write some more, I enjoy your reviews!!~ | yanquiuxo
07.17.17 | mmmmmmmh
-Salò o Le 120 Giornate di Sodoma (and some other Pasolini films like Porcile are quite not nominated)
-Hakuchi (Kurosawa's most underrated film imo)
-Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Elio petri. For some reason, it seems we italians shamefully forgot about him)
-Russian Ark
These ones came to my mind at the moment | butcherboy
07.17.17 | beautiful.. added to the queue.. thanks very much.. | Papa Universe
07.17.17 | Just watched Jordan Peele's Get Out, which is another must see for this list. | butcherboy
07.17.17 | I watched it a few weeks back, and loved it.. fantastic premise!! Young Adam should be on this list as well.. and Herzog's Even Dwarves Start Out Small.. | Papa Universe
07.17.17 | While on the topic of Herzog, Fitzcarraldo was quite a trip.
Also Fritz Lang's M is a hell to watch. | butcherboy
07.17.17 | haven't watched Fitzcarraldo, but I will.. Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams doc is also quite brilliant..
M is a goddamn masterpiece!! |
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