Random 10: Random Films for Comment - Week 13

Never seen Teorema, but being a Pasolini fan, it's high on my to-do list. Same for Repulsion.

Cinderella is I guess one of the peaks of the really classic golden age Disney features, right? Coming as it does at the start of the 50's it presages the squeaky clean image the decade projects for itself in pop culture. I don't know what else to say, although some critical breakdown would be great for something so...reflexively embedded in our heads.

Bang the Drum Slowly is a great film in my mind, partially bc it doesn't try to be sentimental for the most part. Greed, understanding, reflection - these are all elements of it, but fundamentally it's a human story in all the best and worst forms, and it doesn't lose sight of that. I wish more sports films were like this in that the sport itself comes more as a backdrop than as a means in and of itself.

Bullitt - can't seem to remember much about this now except for a cranky McQueen and the legendary car chase which...honestly, doesn't really mean too much when you're raised on 80's and 90's staples. Shit, The Italian Job and Smokey and the Bandit had already raised the bar before I was even born.

The Shinning, boy! Do you 'ya want to git sooooed? Wonderful. I remember getting chills at the ending with the photograph. Oneiric potentials of fluids (blood, bathwater, semen, snow), disjunction, doubling, intersection, labyrinthine. While this certainly is not the Stephen King novel (see the still entertaining TV movie for that), had this been a slavish adaptation of a novel, I could only describe such a novel as "Borges does horror".

i have seen none of these save point of order. and cinderella of course.

Teorema is so ridiculously high on my "to see" list. It's easily in the top 25, along with stuff like L'Eclisse and Far from Vietnam.

Repulsion is aces, but I actually prefer The Tenant.

Cinderella... I agree that it's definately one of the better Disney full-lengthers, right up there with Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland and, on my better days, Fantasia.

The Shining = perfection.

(xpost) Tell me about Point of Order, man. I know nothing of it.

i love the shining but have nothing to say about it really. one of a very small number of movies that manages to disturb me.

cinderella reminds me that my 4 year old niece has a rather disturbing obsession with sleeping beauty (a almost identical story thematically)--passive female redeemed by attention of male suitor, ick.

zilch, otherwise.

Great pull.

I've been wanting to see "Teorema" forever, but it's one of those movies I always end up passing over at the video store for some reason...I guess I ought to be thankful for having a video store with a good enough selection that I can do that.

I have to give Satyajit Ray another chance. I watched Pather Panchali (sp) when I was really not in the mood for it, and it's kind of spoiled his entire oevre on me now. Time to give it another shot.

"Repulsion" is one of the creepiest flicks I've ever seen. It almost seems like Polanski was subconsciously anticipating the Manson killings in the late 60's with his string of twisted films.

"Cinderella" is Disney at it's peak--beautiful animation, wonderful songs. It's absolutely true that Disney movies single-handedly destroyed an entire generation of women as ryan pointed out (and they're also responsible for thousands of failed relationship because of women cursed with "Disney princess syndrome" of expecting "happily ever after" yet with now indication of how that's done, because the movie ends after the first kiss--but that's a different debate)

"Bullitt". Here's a can of worms I'm willing to open. Screw "Fast and the Furious", "Gone in 60 seconds", "The French Connection", etc. This is still the greatest car chase in movie history. The cars, the San Francisco streets, the legendary f-ups in continuity--gotta love it.

"The Shining" still creeps me out. The kid on the big wheel riding through the halls while the dolly follows him with that fish-eye extreme low angle shot--incredible.

Bullitt deserves better than the "best car chase ever" curio bin it's forever being consigned to – McQueen is great in it, the Schifrin score is totally peppy and weird, it contains the one of the most perfect and touching lonely-cop sequences EVER FILMED [wherein McQ parks, enters corner store, buys himself some frozen tv dinners] – in fact the car chase is about the only thing that's been consistently improved upon action-movie-wise!!

The Man Who Would Be King -- VERY underrated, probably the best film Connery has ever been in (and up there for Caine). Adapts Kipling while being unmistakeably anti-imperialist. Huston never hit that height again save Prizzi's Honor.

Liked Bullitt and Point of Order (Army-McCarthy hearings doc) when I saw them ages ago. Teorema is cute and clever.

The Shining bored me when I saw it with my high school buddies in 1980, and I still think it's the least significant Kubrick film of his last 45 years. (Pauline Kael's pan is a memorable one: "The first pompous haunted-house movie.) Great Steadicam behind the Big Wheel, and I kinda like Jack's scene with the racist ghost in the red bathroom... that's about it.