/culture/ - arts & literature

I don't really have a favorite film, but one I've recently watched and really enjoyed was If Don Juan Was A Woman starring Brigitte Bardot (and featuring Jane Birkin). Apparently this was Bardot's last film before her retirement from acting, and I really, really loved her in this movie. The scene design has a touch of genius to it, with crazy house concepts and a mood that reflects the direction of the plot. The camerawork is also beautiful and sensual, and the story premise is original and daring. It reminded me of a much more recent film, The Love Witch, which seems to try to accomplish a similar sor tof story but with far, far less style. Where The Love Witch has to resort to campiness, Don Juan delivers itself with sheer sexiness and drama. It's like an intoxicating perfume designed for evening wear. I love it.

The man who sleeps

The last episode of Power Corrupts was great and was a n excellent exploration of Christianity and the issues with heaven.

https://youtu.be/GxcyfEcn0fM

Talk Radio by Oliver Stone
Platoon by Oliver Stone
Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone
Nixon by Oliver Stone

I do not think this is everyone's cup of tea but this is mine. Something about this movie feels like it lasts 100 years but in a good way. I recommend watching it at 1am for the best experience.

Maybe I'm a nostalgia victim, but I enjoyed the 30th anniversary Power Rangers special. Kind of dumb and campy as you'd expect, but it was cool seeing a lot of the actors back together.

>>1192
I completely get what you mean. It’s just… something about it. The way movies like this “feel” are special.

>>1192
You gotta watch the longer cut of the film, they left out a lot of good stuff out of the shorter cut, but also the longer cut as-swell, someone needs to make a new cut.

https://youtu.be/HeedSt23l3E?si=hMAuNjai9uxYS-HP
The Leopard by Visconti
call me pseud all you like i don't care, it's a masterpiece

>>1411
I might have hallucinated this but I heard that Lynch had done something like that at one point and left it lying around mostly finished.

The movie I return to rewatch the most is probably The Master from 2012. It just has this nice flow to it.
I also really like >>443 and >>389 too, though they're not ones I rewatch as often for differing reasons.

Jodorosky's El Topo is a really cool movie about a magic gunslinger traveling through mexico to defeat 4 master duelists for a womans love.
Each scene is constructed with amazing composition, it almost feels like watching a really dedicated film adaption of a manga or comic book. Worth a watch if you like the "midnight movies" genre

I just rewatched 'The Taste of Tea', a film from 2004. It remains one of my all-time favorites.

>>1539
i watched the taste of tea with my fren! we had lots of fun. i liked the parts where she has big head and also the ending sequence with the song.

It's too big to upload coz i never had a good source, but i did rip a copy and put it on mediafire. maybe i'll find a nice modern copy and redo it with nice encode one day.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/0ae4iyybdjjoygv/Little_Tempo_-_Cha_no_Aji.mkv/file

>>1540

So great to hear others enjoy it. And thank you for sharing! Can you give any recommendations for similar films that have a peaceful tone with surreal notes?

THE SPIRIT OF AN INDIVIDUAL

REACHES ITS OWN ABSOLUTE

THROUGH INCESSANT NEGATION

"Funeral Parade of Roses" by Toshio Matsumoto released in 1969.

I am really eager to share this one, but it is hard to explain. It could be described as avant-garde or experimental. It is a strange film that investigates the transvestites of Tokyo's underground gay bars. The actor Peter (who was in Ran) is the protagonist as Eddie - an abused child who is in a love affair with one of the operators of the gay bar. There is conflict between Eddie and the other transgender hostesses at the bar. In general, I would say the film touches foremost on identity. It sometimes features meta interviews with the actors about their roles. It's weird, but I love it.

The wikipedia page would spoil everything, so stay away if you intend to watch it.

>>1625
>gay bars
Dropped it right there.

>I would say the film touches foremost on identity.
Genuinely feel this a worn trope in cinema now. Its as overdone as muscleman action movies. Its really tiresome and the movies are all the same.

>>1626
lol. find me a piece of art that isn't the author's expression of identity. what else do you want to see - a bunch of nature photos rolling for 60 minutes..? it's like saying you don't like manga because it has too many pictures and makes you a little upset. aww. do the gay people scare you sushi roll?

>>1627
I typed out a long ass post as a reply but I'm just gonna say this. I'm not interested in an artist's identity or self-expression. The exploration of identity, self purpose, and the meaning of life are fatigued and worn out themes in literature and film. They have been done to death at this point. As for gay people, no I don't like them. I don't think movies about them are especially interesting because most revolve around those worn themes I mentioned. In an age where the idea of being closeted is functionally dead, we have to stage it in moving pictures to feed our egotistical need to be taboo and underground and it probably never was radical and underground to be gay back then anyway. Sure, I guess this is all a bit unfair to friendly lady about a movie I've never seen so I'll go ahead and watch it.

>>1629
> it probably never was radical and underground to be gay back then anyway

acknowledging that you don't need to be closeted anymore but then saying it was never underground back then too. wtf is it then? friendly lady about a time you don't understand either, fucking lmbo

>>1625
I was dumb for writing this off. This movie is hilarious. There seems to be an fascination with artificiality, fakeness, masks etc. Even the Madame's flowers are artificial. Transvestites appear as warped characters but so does everyone else like that weirdo who larps as Che Guevara with his stick on beard and random quotes. The interviews were interesting in how the idea of being gay has changed. The ending really made me chuckle. It wasn't what I was expecting so I apologize for going ape shit over it. It's also interesting that they use English words for these terms, like "gay" and "homo."

>>1630
Homosexuals need to reenact the myth of the closet and the myth of oppression for their identity to stay appealing and coherent. This passion play is staged over and over again in queer media with the endless slew of movies about coming to terms with your true identity blah blah blah. Gay people need stories about being oppressed and in the closet to convince themselves their identities are real. Movies like that are the equivalent of a Catholic passion play. Self-inflicted tragedy. Boring, lame, another movie about self-discovery? Been there, done that.

>>1631
this might sound cliche but of course just because society has agreed upon a certain label to label someone, in reality that does not automatically and accurately define all the characteristics of all individuals who may fall under that perceived label

>>1631
>I apologize for going ape shit

Lol its okay. My response was pretty bitter too. I think my description of the film was pretty poor and didn't convey what I was trying to say, so instead I said something easy like "uhhh self-discovery".

I understand your other points regarding sexuality, though. Take care.

>>1634
Labels don't obscure, they substitute the things they are tagged onto with the images carried by the label. Homosexuality is artificial and so is heterosexuality (its Siamese twin), both are tied together by narcissism. The average gay man is just a clone of a socially produced image larping his authentic self. His body is just a vessel for a grab bag of images, signs, feelings, and pop culture products circulated through mass media and the entertainment industry. Homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality etc. obliterate a person's uniqueness and replace it with something else.

Now I will shill this mediocre movie Cruising by William Friedkin released 1980. Its about an undercover cop investigating a serial killer who prowls NYC's seedy gay S&M underground. The film was denounced as homophobic by gay activists upon release. Friedkin thought the clubs were too tame so he ordered the production crew to amp up the dark and gritty look and replaced the club music with a rock/punk soundtrack. The movie's dark aesthetic, fashion, and music have since been copied by reproduction gay BDSM bars complete with patrons who mimic the film's extras, mausoleums to a world that probably never existed (at least not the way people imagine it).

Without spoiling anything, the straight cop's sexuality and sense of self blurs as he spends more time in the clubs but he never comes out as gay or leaves his gf. Is he a repressed homo or is he straight? It disturbs the dichotomy. That's probably what made the gay activists so mad.

>>25
Really loved Hana-bi at the time, really comfy >>762 I wasn't a big fan of Mary and Max at the time because of the animation but i ended to really love the epistolary approach of the movie and all the fun anecdotes of Max's life
I don't have favorite movies but I recently liked Once were warriors, really good movie from New Zealand with a great direction

>>1636
I can't say I disagree with what you are saying, at least I can't say it is not true. There is certainly truth in that and it sounds reminiscent of what I have heard some sociologists say.

Also, the body is subject to one's biology of course. A person with COPD is not going to identify as a fervent jogger because they are limited by the fact that they don't have the lungs for it. That person could still say, "In the past, I was a jogger."

I will say that for the sake of truth, if the soul exists then there is more that constitutes the individual rather than just an amalgamation of external influences and learned behaviors. The existence of the soul does not negate sociology or materialism of course, since we are still stuck in the material universe seemingly. My personal persuasion on individuals tends towards the supremacy of the soul over the character that the world or your parents have made you. As in we have intrinsic being, despite nature or nurture.

Ahhhhhhh, great nostalgia I've actually seen that movie. Definitely a classic of hardcore masculine homosexuality, but I remember it being kinda dirty and grimey lol. Another good Al Pacino film of that ilk is Dog Day Afternoon. He's robbing a bank to pay for his transgender partner's sex change.

Concerning the philosophical nuance in that movie, I am not sure it is easily explained. Common sense says he very well just may be bisexual, but to truly analyze it would require behavioral biology and psychology and all that fun stuff.

>>1638
Thanks. Dog Day Afternoon is great. Much better than Cruising but a very different breed of film. Its absurd but doesn't descend into silliness, the lighthearted moments are set within a realist world that never loses that air of tension and desperation. Pacino's acting was stellar. His lead is bizarre but ultimately a banal and ordinary guy caught up events that snowball out of his control. He's a bank robber but doesn't like to hurt others. He's a Catholic with a wife and kids but has a transgender 'wife.' All of these are seen as contradictory by today's standards, but he clearly loves both his wives despite the relationship problems. He's somebody who's difficult to pin down. Cookie cutter LGBT slop isn't this nuanced. You wouldn't see a character written like this today. The gays would probably lynch you anyway.

Cruising is more surreal and experimental. It has this confusing dreamlike quality that undermines your sense of reality, especially the way Friedkin reuses the same actors in different roles or dubs over one character with the voice of another.

>Concerning the philosophical nuance in that movie, I am not sure it is easily explained. Common sense says he very well just may be bisexual, but to truly analyze it would require behavioral biology and psychology and all that fun stuff.
It was accidental. It's pretty clear that Friedkin didn't have a clear direction for where the movie would go and wanted it to be ambiguous and vague purely for the aesthetic value. He presents these S&M bars without judgement and tries to shrink the distance between the patrons and the audience, basically they are just like us. That vagueness makes the main character's identity equally as vague and difficult to pin down. If a straight man like Burns can be drawn into the world of sadomasochistic homosexuality, then what's stopping us? The line between hetero and homo is washed away in the surf. If the difference between these sexualities is just a line in the sand, then the whole culture is radically challenged. Idk anything about bisexuality. Idk about that but the word wasn't commonly used when the film was released back in 1980.

>>1640
I highly doubt the concept of 'bisexual' (including the literal word) was not already part of public consciousness in 1980, including prior in history and well before the era of "lol-woke ideology-internet-trans mutilation-viral-tradwife" that we all get to hear about today on our smart phones and influencing platforms.

>>1642
>>1641
Originally, sexologists borrowed the word bisexual from botany and used it for hermaphrodites. In the 60s and 70s, people attracted to multiple genders were not welcome in the gay movement so they began using the word bisexual for themselves with the support of the Quakers. At the time, bisexual was shunned by gays who saw them as homos in denial or degenerate straights trying to infiltrate the gay scene. It was only in the mid-80s with the rapid spread of AIDS that the word became commonly used in the media. You can see in Dog Day Afternoon, Pacino's bank robber is described as homosexual even though he's married to a woman and has two kids. Gay activists still saw bisexuals as fake posers and some even blamed them for spreading AIDS. Even 90s era queer theorists seemed to be lowkey hostile to it. Of course, now it has a convenient use. Whenever something challenges the line between straight and gay, bisexuality is wheeled out to paper over the cracks and keep the hype train rolling.

>>1643
My friend from the 60's says he doesn't quite remember hearing that term very often back then.

Remember the McCarthy era was not only a Communist scare but also a gay scare because…..this is a strange story….well, for some reason the people hunting Communists came to the conclusion that Communism and homosexuality were somehow connected, so there was not only a campaign against Communists but a campaign against teh gays. For some reason, many of the people doing this campaign, it turned out that they themselves were gay in some form or fashion.

The Kinsey Scale came out post-WW2 but anyone who studies Nazi Germany knows that prior to the Nazi's, Germany was an epicenter of research into homosexuality and had no lack of what you might call a "proto-LGBT era culture". Ernst Röhm was one of the original Nazi higher-ups, a gay nymphomaniac it's said he was. The story goes that Hitler personally shot him after they decided to ban homosexuality.

>>1645
>for some reason the people hunting Communists came to the conclusion that Communism and homosexuality were somehow connected
It wasn't because homosexuals were communists, but they were seen as vulnerable to seduction and manipulation by communist infiltrators and Soviet spies. Homosexuals had to be purged to safeguard society (and homos themselves) from communism. Fear of one group led to the suspicion of another.

>Germany was an epicenter of research into homosexuality and had no lack of what you might call a "proto-LGBT era culture".
Magnus Hirschfeld laid the groundwork for modern gay rights. He was also a eugenicist and a believer in race science. Magnus believed homosexuals were like a race, a separate subspecies almost. Where his opponents disagreed was what to do with these sex races. The post-Stonewall gay movement took up the idea that homosexuals were a separate people from heterosexuals, who had oppressed them throughout history the way the French oppressed the Algerians (gay liberation front being inspired by Algeria's FLN). This created an inhospitable environment for people attracted to both sexes. They were cast inauthentically gay, they were sleeping with the enemy, and their existence challenged the idea that homos were biologically different from heteros. The hostility to transsexuals had a similar origin. Homophobes and LGBT activists are covert allies they love to hate each other but are joined at the hip.

I don't like this idea of proto this and proto that, as if every instance of two guys holding hands was LGBT culture in vitro. What's more interesting are the accidents, the weird twists of history, and the roads not taken.

Now what does this have to do with movies? Give me movie reccs dammit!

>>1646
words are different from thoughts. I think sexuality is plainly obvious that it is just what humans do, it doesn't have to be diced up into little categories and put on display by political influences.

This is a movies thread, talk about movies.

>>1648
Shut up. Discussion of sexuality in cinema is movie discussion. Foolish mod.(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

>>735
Second for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

>>735
I feel like this was the only Wes Anderson film I actually enjoyed. I liked Fantastic Mr. Fox because I appreciate the animation but man the rest of them were a struggle for me.

Watched the Book of Eli, it was pretty good

a movie i really enjoyed recently was postal. i honestly didn't expect much from a video game movie with such terrible reviews but if you like crude humor and badass guys shooting badass guns it's pretty much 10 out of 10. also it's on youtube in full, somehow

Some of the movies I enjoyed recently:

Leon the Professional, The Orphan, Lolita 1997, Lamb, Moonrise Kingdom, Innocence, Hanna, Mustang, Pretty Baby, Yulenka, Curfew, Show Me Love, Alice in the Cities, A Little Princess, Water Lillies, F-Report, The Blue Lagoon, Laurin(89), Sleepwalking, Matilda, You Were Never Really Here, Lawn Dogs, Take Me to the River, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Stray Dogs, Spirit of the Beehive, Stephanie, The Taste of Tea, Hounddog, Bridge to Terabithia, The Beguiled, God Bless America, Somewhere, Alice(88), City of lost children, Cape Fear(62), Arcadia, Tomorrowland, Christiane F, Walkabout, The Florida Project, My Girl(91), Addams Family Value, Young Aphrodites, The Ice Palace, Swing vote, Tideland, Bad Seed, Cocoon, Annabele: Creation, the opening scene of Desire, Phoebe in Wonderland, Gifted, Spark, Caspe, Because of Winn-dixie, Zazie dans le metro, Amanda, Waterworld, What Maisie Knew, Paper Moon, Sundays and Cybele, Hideous Kinky, Svanurinn, Miss Violence, the Troop Zero, Ana, Tuck Everlasting, System Crasher, Angela 1995, Alice Sweet Alice, Romys Salon, The Trouble with Being Born, Midnight Sky, Jeanne d'Arc, News of the world, Ich liebe Victor, Eyes of an Angel, the Secret Garden 1993, Usagi Drop, The Tree of Knowledge, A Mother’s Heart, Luiz de Mana, Little Lips, Malodelacenza, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, Push, The Gray Man, Arabella the Pirate's Daughter, Adventures of The Yellow Suitcase, The Quiet Girl, Logan, Aftersun, M3gan and L'immoralita

Persepolis is trash and all the people who like it are demented

>>1680
Did you like Waterworld? I was talking about it with some friends recently. I thought it was ass ngl but the premise was interesting, the film itself wasn't.

>>1682
Wait, I just realized the trend of these films they listed. sushi roll is a troll.

>>1683
I am sorry, it was funny. I did watch Waterworld long time ago, and almost slept through it.

Current favorite kino - there's a lot of movies I can say are better, but this one is my personal favorite. I find the editing unlike any other movie I've ever watched, not just in form but in it's unique relationship to the narrative, themes, etc. Starring and (nicely) scored by it's director who's a douchebag allegedly. It's Eternal Sunshine for schizophrenics.

>>1680
you missed Hard Candy or is it because hes a dude now

>System Crasher

10/10 KINO

>>1683
what is the trend? is it just a big list of movies other sushis have already mentioned?

>>1697
They are all about little girls