Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Besides being one of my favorite thrillers, Wargames is a textbook example of how to perfectly combine character with theme, and provide enough thrills in the process to captivate audiences. Check out the latest in my Better Than You Remember series.

 

Ryan Schaddelee and I talk movie makeup, plus the decline of physical FX for computer generated imagery in the latest installment of Under The Hood.

 

Your title is so accurate: I barely remember seeing WARGAMES. It made no real impression on me; I really didn't take it seriously. But watching this video, I realize how prescient it was, covering ground that later films returned to over and over again; also how it tied to past great films that were equally prescient

I had no recollection of Michael Madsen being in this film. Just checked his IMDB page and learn WARGAMES was his 1st film role. He looks so young, but never innocent. Just 6 years later in John Dahl's KILL ME AGAIN, he pioneered the violent psychopath role he would play repeatedly (with numerous variations).

Thanks for another intriguing & informative video.

 

Last night I finished re-watching HARD EIGHT and was amazed again by the assurance and depth of this strange little indie. The film's queasy, perverse moral undercurrents are perfectly illustrated by this sequence near the end:

• John calls Sydney from a payphone on the road during the "honeymoon trip" (actually, flight from a crime committed by John & Clementine) that Sydney suggested. Sydney has a lot on his mind--none of which he'll ever reveal to John. Near the end of the otherwise routine call, Sydney very directly professes his fatherly love for John. The long take of John's tearful reaction is masterful, deeply moving--the high point of this film in which emotions and motives are almost entirely opaque.
• Afterward, Sydney sets out to methodically restore the balance of his compulsively arranged, ordered world. He stalks & brutally kills Jimmy, who represents an existential threat to the Sydney's ordered existence and faux-fatherly relationship with John. The film ends as it began--with the camera regarding the unknowable character of Sydney, with order restored in his well-defended Reno mileau.

Something I love about this film is that P.T. Anderson gives the viewer no easy way to understand this plot--no generic backstory of Sydney as an aging, cold-eyed assassin who (briefly) must return to violent form to protect his safety. Though Sydney is dead-center in the film at all times, we have no real insight into his nature; "Back East" backstory notwithstanding, Sydney's motives & P.O.V. remain obscure. The tearful epiphany John experiences from Sydney's statement of love doesn't connect to anything else...Sydney seems to exist in a series of hermetically sealed (safe & interlocking) defensive realities.

My nagging question about this film is the same today as it was in 1996: how did Sydney come to "encounter" John outside that coffee shop in the first scene? How can that possibly be a coincidence?

It's a great film.

 

Besides being infinitely quotable, Pulp Fiction also has a strange morality running through it. Something I explore in my latest essay.

 

I have to think over your central thesis: that a particularly Tarantio-esque morality underpins the extreme violence of PULP FICTION. I'm not so sure about that, though you make a compelling case.

Side-note: I'm enjoying BOSCH on Prime Video (mid-way through Season-4). An actor whose intensity & acting chops I keep admiring is Paul Calderon. He looks so familiar: older now, grizzled. I've seen him before, but where?

In PULP FICTION (+ any number of TV cop shows).

 

Been a while since I did a scene breakdown. This time it's the "oner" in Robocop, which is a great example of how to shoot a long continuous take while advancing story, character and foreshadowing future events. I think people would be surprised just how much visual information can be contained in a single scene.

 

Today I examine the granddaddy of the slasher film. Psycho laid the groundwork for modern horror, but not quite in the way people think. It's approach to the heroine and antagonist was unique and linked the two in a way that would come to define the genre going forward.

 

Digital cinema has come a long way since Attack of the Clones, the first major Hollywood movie to be shot with digital cameras. Since then the quality has steadily improved to the point where film is no longer seen as the superior format... but there are still issues with digital that I think need addressing...

 

Enjoyed the Wargames and Pulp Fiction reviews ColtMrFire. On this one you forgot to include the stair step graph of digital Your thesis had me thinking of the 'motion smoothing' setting on modern TV's. I wonder how much of the "soap opera" effect of digital movies is a sin of commission similar to this and not something inherent in the digital cameras themselves.

 

I think film is superior, but if someone decides to make a good digital movie then film isn't worth the hassle. With Tarantino, PTA etc., it's more of a mind comfort thing. Even if film was 1% better they would still have it on their mind trying to make best movie possible. It's similar to ds and r2r dacs although I don't believe the latter is superior. With R2r you had to build I/V and put external filter or go NOS. DS just made most people lazy where all they needed is to put buffer so there was dropoff in quality overall. I remember like 10 years ago there was some movie where a director tried to mimic film look digitally and in home it looked great. I don't remember the name of the movie, but it wasn't big one. I honestly don't mind that polished look of digital, but I hate when movie looks fake. It just puts you out of the fantasy realm. I want to feel like I am inside the world created in the movie. Digital has problem in capturing actors emotions. When you watch bad digital it feels like you are on the movie set and after scene you would hear "Cut!". Sin City is a movie made entirely digitally with green screens and I had great fun. Sequel has same people behind it and magic is gone, i turned it off after 10-15 mins.

 

I touched on this in my video but wish I emphasized it more.... shooting on film is an entirely different mindset. You have no idea what the finished image will look like until you view it in "dailies", often a day or two later after it was processed in the lab. This made cinematographers extraordinarily careful about how they lit and framed shots (since so much money was on the line - big films can spend $10,000/hour). And this in effect forced filmmakers to rethink shots entirely. I think that mindset bled into the work. With digital, you know exactly what it will look like on the set, since there are big flat screen monitors giving you exactly what's being photographed through the lens... even though there would be color grading later, the instant results gave cinematographers and filmmakers a more relaxed attitude, and I honestly believe it similarly affects the work... and not necessarily in a positive way. Of course this is a generalization, I'm sure some filmmakers thrive on it, but I get the feeling digital causes more laziness, not less, and laziness is kind of death for creativity. Pretty but shallow imagery seems way more common than not these days.

Anyway, I meant to sing the praises of an Amazon Prime show called The Expanse. I'd heard hype about it and gave it a shot, but couldn't get past the quite boring first few episodes. I tried three times, because I kept wanting some decent sci-fi, which seems in short supply these days.... and on the third try I was able to make it past the first few episodes and was rewarded with one of the best sci-fi shows I've ever seen. Wonderful character development, political intrigue that doesn't put me to sleep, intelligent realistic approach to the actual science, big dramatic story arcs that feel vital. Just an amazing run of television I highly recommend.

 

Recently I heard the Coen brothers interviewed by Teri Gross on "Fresh Air," and they made points similar to yours about the relative ease & relaxation digital shooting brings into film making (no waiting/no dailies needed). As one of them said (a typically droll comment), "With digital, the D.P. gets to sleep at night." They weren't concerned in the least about loss of quality & focus--nor should they be. They're the Coen brothers; they don't lose focus or settle for inferior quality.

But unfortunately not every director or D.P. operates on their level...thus the qualitative wobbliness of digital vs film.

 

(I'm late getting to this video)

I appreciate your shot by shot dissections of the intersection of visual content, narrative, and characterization. You did something similar with JAWS and it makes me look at that film in different ways. Same here.

This makes me wonder what subtleties I may be missing because I don't experience films analytically like this.. Certain shots & sequences of shots do make me feel something (foreboding; emphasis/highlighting; velocity/anticipation), but I couldn't explain why that feeling.

Please do more of these. It might be a PITA to do (or not--don't know), but viewers like me benefit...

 

Thanks!

Yeah, everything in a film is designed to work you on a subconscious level. The color of a lampshade, the wallpaper, how close someone is to the camera, editing.... you're not really supposed to be all that aware of it. It's also why often people don't know why they don't like a movie, or can't get that specific about it... those subconscious creative choices somehow didn't synthesize well enough. Or could be as simple as the film being edited badly. For me the fascination comes from breaking these elements down to understand why and how they were utilized.

 

Your videos have been educational for me fur sur. Watching the Mandalorian series for example I noticed things about the camera work I would not have before (at least consciously) and I can see the difference between what the Mandalorian did right and for example what the latest big budget SW trilogy did wrong.

 

Yes, the subconscious. All the visual arts "go there" to one degree or other. I used to be heavily into photography. The act of filtering my subconscious into images was mysterious & unpredictable. But whenever I managed it, the images made the viewer feel something.

Back to cinema: in the mid-'70s, in a 2 week period I saw every film Ingmar Bergman had made up to that time (some twice). He was a master of wordless visual communication, with countless examples in all those films. Later I did the same with Satyajit Ray's films--again, countless examples there. Later it was Hitchcock--same result. The cumulative effect on one's psyche is significant.

 

Boogie Night was pretty important to my filmmaking life when I saw it a year or two after release. It was one of my first DVDs, and to this day has the best director's commentary track I've heard. It's also one of the best films of the 90s. I look at it and Pulp Fiction as an important double feature that shaped my sensibilities as a film lover and maker during my formative years. Today's video is dedicated to this awesome film.

 

I was pleasantly surprised last night when I hopped on Netflix and season 3 of The Sinner appeared. Season 1 was something of a shock, as I expected it to be some Lifetime network schlock, but it turned out to be a nuanced, layered, complex portrayal. Season 2 was also really well done. I highly recommend The Sinner to anyone after good television.

 

I couldn't agree more. There is nothing especially familiar here--and much to like. People think quality episodic series only live on Prime or Netflix, but this is one of the exceptions.

I liked all 3 seasons...was actually relieved when the borderline wacko S&M subplot involving the main character somehow got lost in Seasons 1 & 2. He's already straight-up damaged: we didn't need S&M to get the message.