This film is how you use Rebecca Ferguson. Overall, Dr. Sleep was only ok. However, Rebecca as Rose the Hat…très magnifique. Also, “Rose the Hat” is one of the best character names ever.
As I noted about the weirdo in Les chambres rouges, it’s hard for a beautiful woman to read as creepy. Our girl Rebecca has no problem with this, though. She’s demented and ghoulish and a real scumbag.
I love this entire set of scenes; a masterclass in filmmaking. And it’s all so nasty. You feel kind of dirty after watching it. Which is, of course, the point.
But it’s all so perfect. Juliette Gariépy just nails the creepy psycho vibe (very hard to do for an exceptionally beautiful woman, by the way!) and the music intensifies the feeling of dread that is and dread to be. I also like it because the director (et al.) made sonic and blocking choices I never would’ve considered — and these made the scene so much better than my tendencies here would have. (And yes, the entire film is in 4:3 format. It’s not some YouTube upload issue.)
Apologies, this is all in French with no subtitles and I’m too tired to translate, but the visuals, music and non-speech here are what really matter anyway.
I loved Constantine and might watch it again one day (I rarely re-watch anything). It’s such a beautifully-shot film. And not surprisingly, at least part of the reason it looks so gorgeous is because it was shot on those unmatched Panavision Panaflex Platinum cameras with Panavision Primo lenses.
The video hints at it, but I think the reason the movie flopped is it does not hold your hand. It kicks you into the world and lets you sink or swim. Most sink because they want their thinking done for them. And Constantine is just not that kind of film.
Great analysis of that scene. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is such an excellent film and that scene is perfect. One of my favorites of any film made in the last decade. I missed on first watch that it is James Dean in the mural in the background when the girls are dumpster diving.
The thing about a Tarantino film (and really most films to a somewhat lesser extent) is that nothing is accidental.
One film where I disagreed with Roger Ebert pretty strongly is the bathtub drowning scene in Constantine. He disliked it (and the film) for the same reasons that I love it: the scene is horrible and beautiful. It’s nasty, and not in the sense of any gore or even anything sexual. It’s horrifying what Constantine does to Angela — both his direct actions of bringing her to the edge of death by drowning and what you find out she’s witnessing immediately after. Weisz’s acting when Angela realizes Constantine does not intend to let her up is perfect.
It’s all just so wrong. And that’s what makes it a great scene.
Ebert was not a fan of horror. And it shows in his misassessment of the scene and film.
I love this fight scene; one of the more realistic ever put to film. She’s absolutely getting trounced by a guy twice as big and strong as she is (and who is equally well-trained) until she gets some help and then gets the upper hand.
That’s from Soderbergh’s Haywire — an underrated film that is endlessly entertaining.
I think Steven Spielberg’s best movie is Munich. Just such a tense nasty little beast.
I’m not sure how to put this exactly without sounding dismissive as I think Spielberg is a great director, but Munich is his only film that feels fully adult.
That scene really speaks to how closely delusion and aspiration dwell together in the human heart. The entire film is just as good.
I wish this video weren’t true. But it is. And it’s a microcosm of all that’s wrong with contemporary filmmaking in general (not just trailers).
The 1963 Cleopatra movie itself was only ok, but the entrance scene into Rome is great. That’s not even the whole thing. It used ~10,000 extras and nearly bankrupted the studio. It’s not all that historically accurate, but it still captures something real about how those times differed from our own.
There are very few actually sexy scenes in films. And that’s because it is incredibly hard to do. This is one, from Death Proof, but you need the lead-up too.
Vanessa Ferlito is so great here. I love that she does the scene in flip-flops. That really helps sell it. And just how tight the blocking is, how cohesive the scene is, and just the entire mixture of threat, dread, enticement and strangeness. Nothing else quite like it.
And “I ain’t stalking y’all but I didn’t say I wasn’t a wolf” is such an iconic line.
One of the best monologues in cinema; Zelda Rubinstein was such a powerful actor. The below is also a favorite. And it features just exceptional writing and blocking.
Such a great scene. “….I am. I just don’t like trick answers.” What a boss. Every line of hers is iconic without being out of place or tonally jarring — that’s quite an achievement.
Just such a great, tight action sequence. It’s perfect. It’s dramatic, funny, doesn’t have crazy cuts and it is its own little story. The half-silent argument via CCTV is just so well-done. What I love about the entire setpiece is that there is nothing you can add or take away to make it any better. The amount of artistry, great editing, actor talent and painstaking direction that it takes to create something like this is staggering to think about.
Most of these are not true, or are not true in the way expressed. Sometimes there are actual blooper takes included in films, but it’s rare. Even if there is a blooper and it turns out to be better, the director gets the actors to recreate the superior-by-accident blooper for many takes for better camera position or to really nail it.
This is mostly lies and is not the way high-budget films work. Even “improvised” lines and scenes are re-shot many times almost without exception.
I wish it were higher res on the ‘tube, but this is such a beautiful, heartbreaking, perfect vignette. All show and no tell. Extremely hard to do. And Across the Universe is such a great, underrated film — probably because it was a musical.
Evan Rachel Wood and Carol Woods (the lead female singer) were just perfect in this bit, and Evan gave (IMO) her career-best performance in the film in toto. Also, the line that Carol Woods’ sings starting at 2:43 might be the best single phrase in music history. Just brilliant direction by Julie Taymor and editing by Françoise Bonnot.
Such a lovely, real film. I like how it shows without telling that Sandie is disassociating from all the being used and abused, and that the scene brackets that with the puerile, platitudinous insincerities from men who do not at all care about her as a person.
And because I’ve watched the behind-the-scenes footage, I know at 2:13 when Sandie looks down and starts to move a little awkwardly, it’s because she (rather, the actor Anya Taylor-Joy) has been told not to run into the ornate horizontal ring-light that she’s standing in the middle of. This works in the context of the film as Sandie’s mental state is deteriorating — but it’s also fun having that deeper knowledge of the constraints the actual actor is working under to make the scene.
It’s just such a good film. Love all the color — very unlike most modern films. Highly recommended.