General Movie Thread

[Chris L]

Recommedations on where to start with Ingmar Bergman?  I've never seen any of his work and feel a little daunted by scope of his body of work. 

Wild Strawberries is good and fairly accessible. I've only ever seen that and The Seventh Seal, which kinda stunk.

Wild Strawberries is a good starting point.  It's representative of, but warmer than, a lot of his stuff.   Seventh Seal hardly stinks but it's probably not one of my top 10 Bergmans.  It's one everyone should see though. 

Shame is an underrated (?) one I highly recommend.  It also might be his only film with a notable action sequence.

[Martin]

Bergman - start here:

Summer with Monika
Smiles of a Summer Night
Wild Strawberries
Fanny & Alexander
The Seventh Seal

These are not only essential, but in my opinion very accessible and entertaining.

Then you can move on to the heavier stuff:

Persona
The Silence
Scenes from a Marriage
Winter Light
Autumn Sonata
Cries and Whispers

etc.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Fanny & Alexander is my favorite Bergman.

Re: Marley & Me - I was expecting it to be totally unwatchable, but it turned out to be a decent enough way to pass a couple of hours with the in-laws.  Believe me, I would have chosen something else, had there been something that looked even remotely better at the Jasper, Indiana's Jasper 8 Theaters.  What was I supposed to watch?  The Spirit?

[Dan B]

The first and only Bergman film I've seen was Scenes From a Marriage. I'm pretty sure I'm not at all mature enough for that movie.  That's grown-up stuff.

[<<<<<]

Thanks for the recommendations!  Helps a lot.  Considering how prolific and heady his work is, having a short list of key titles makes it seem less imposing.

[dave from knoxville]

am i crazy finding the dramatizations in man on wire terrible?

Ummm, maybe. Any specific examples?

[Kid Pain]

Just in general. It just seems that docs have become more sophisticated with footage, or rather using animation or after effects to get around a lack of footage that you don't see live action dramatizations in high profile documentaries anymore. The subject was fascinating, but at times it felt like I was watching Unsolved Mysteries.

[jbissell]

Saw Wendy and Lucy and The Wrestler over the weekend and liked them both a lot.  Michelle Williams/Mickey Rourke give the best performances I've seen all year.  The end of W&L is really heartbreaking.  The Wrestler has some pretty cliched sports movie moments but most of them worked for me.  I loved all the little backstage stuff, when their plotting out the matches and we follow Randy's daily routine.  The love story/daughter reconnection stuff didn't work quite as well but it's definitely worth seeing Rourke's performance.

[Trotskie]

The subject was fascinating, but at times it felt like I was watching Unsolved Mysteries.

Regrettably, I agree.  If ever a subject deserved better.

[Martin]

This is our general movie thread now, right? Alright.

This story about the American rights to Svensk Filmindustri's vast back catalogue of films going to a company in Aspen, after SF's neglect of the matter for years, is all kinds of nuts. This quote in particular is amazing:

Isis attorney Jack Smith of Denver's Holland and Hart said: "Svensk's willingness to let this resource go is very difficult to understand. We believe that these films will be of interest to distributors and the general film audience. This is without a doubt an unprecedented event in the history of cinema, and the level of arrogance and indifference it took on the part of Svensk to get here is astonishing."

On the one hand, I feel a certain amount of schadenfreude towards SF for not being on top of this, since it's a monolith of a company that's been living off the backs of great artists for a century while still treating them poorly, and I sort of want to go Nelson-ha-ha at them for allowing this to happen; on the other hand, I hate SF for acting so indifferent towards the whole matter, and to neglect their own history in such a bizarre way.

[crumbum]

Shame is an underrated (?) one I highly recommend.  It also might be his only film with a notable action sequence.

Is this available on DVD? I've heard great things but can't seem to track down a copy.

[crumbum]

Just in general. It just seems that docs have become more sophisticated with footage, or rather using animation or after effects to get around a lack of footage that you don't see live action dramatizations in high profile documentaries anymore. The subject was fascinating, but at times it felt like I was watching Unsolved Mysteries.

Back in the spring I saw Man on Wire at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, and the director was on hand. He discussed the live footage a bit and it turned out a lot of people in the audience were confused about what was restaged and what was original. Are you guys talking only about the black and white reenactments in the WTC? Because I'm fairly certain he said the color 16mm(?) footage of the group rehearsing in France and of their travels around the world (to Sydney etc) was all original.

Then again, maybe that's obvious to everyone already.

Anyhow, this discussion reminded me of two other incredible documentaries I saw at that festival: The Betrayal, about a Laotian family that was forced to move to the States in the 1970s after a CIA-supported military coup in their country. It was the most emotionally wrenching documentary I've ever seen -- the director, Ellen Kuras (who is a very respected cinematographer who has worked with Michel Gondry and Martin Scorsese a lot), followed the family for about 25 years so we see these children grow up and the parents become elderly, and you begin to understand how unpredictable global forces shape and often ruin people's lives -- but you understand it in a way that seems purely personal, not political.

The other one was called The English Doctor, and it's about a neurosurgeon who travels regularly to the Ukraine from London to treat people for free. We see him perform brain surgeries and follow him to meet with the family of a young girl who, years before, died a horrible death because of a mistake he made (the scene where they serve him dinner at their house is the kind of drama that no fictional movie could ever pull off). The score is by Nick Cave, and as depressing as it sounds the whole thing is actually uplifting because this guy makes a huge impact on the people he works with.

[Chris L]

Shame is an underrated (?) one I highly recommend.  It also might be his only film with a notable action sequence.

Is this available on DVD? I've heard great things but can't seem to track down a copy.

Yeah, MGM released it.  Netflix doesn't have it anymore for some reason but it should be easily available online. 

RE: That bizarre court decision Martin posted, I don't know what this means for the Bergman dvds in print from Criterion or others but if you've been hesistating in buying/renting any of his films in the US I'd advise moving fast. 

[buffcoat]

Heaven help me, I'm almost interested in seeing "Taken."  I like Liam Neeson and it seems like it's just going to be him chewing scenery and techno-gadgets, which seems like more fun.

Please, somebody s-s-s-s-s-s-s-top me.

[Martin]

I've seen Taken. It's horrible and racist and ridiculous, but almost in a Steven Seagal kind of way. Basically it's Liam Neeson going to Paris and murdering everybody in sight. He looks pretty bored throughout. Not a whole lot of gadgets though. I wouldn't pay to go see it.

(I did find the depiction of the "Easterners" quite troubling and, unfortunately, very in line with France today. (That most Frenchmen in the film are also portrayed as assholes redeems it somewhat, but not completely.))