Kevin's Watch

Matrixman wrote:I can't quite make up my mind about A Clockwork Orange - and maybe that's the point. Kubrick wanted the movie to challenge and disturb, not just be filed away under a convenient label. I can see how this movie could offend many women, and it would be understandable. I can't distance myself from Clockwork the way I can pull back from Natural Born Killers and just look at the visual pyrotechnics. NBK's graphic violence eclipses anything in Clockwork, but Kubrick's film is still more subversive in my mind.

The violence in A Clockwork Orange is disturbing for a young female teen, which is when I saw it, but that's not what stayed with me. The whole plot about the mind control and programming a reaction into someone, without changing their basic true feelings about such actions, is what disturb me about the movie from the get go.

Lucimay wrote:

variol son wrote:I find it hard to believe that none of you have seen The Passion of the Christ - was it really that controversial in the US?

Wait, what a silly question. Of course it was. Do normal US citizens get tired of all the controversy?

Last Temptation was the last temptation for me.

hell scorsese couldn't do it. did you think MEL COULD? pft. the controversy is not a good enough reason to make me go to see a movie.
*shrug*

I didn't see Last Temptation, because I was uninterested in seeing this particular piece of fiction. I'll see Passion when I get the dvd. I don't think these two films have as much in common as it might seem on the surface.

why? they are both based on biblical reality. Temptation just suggests what Christ could have been tempted with. i never did get the controversy.

sgtnull wrote:why? they are both based on biblical reality. Temptation just suggests what Christ could have been tempted with. i never did get the controversy.

The controversy in Last Temptation is scenes depicting Jesus using marijuana.

I have a post somewhere about biblical anthropologist types suggesting that part of the oil used to annoint people in the times (Messiah, Meshiach = annointed one) was hashish oil.

if anybody cares...the BOOK, The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis is really GREAT. scorese BOMBED as far as attempting to ADAPT Kazantzakis to the screen. miserably.

(the usual disclaimer applies: not carved in granite)

Heh, I just remembered I saw the Deerhunter.

Wow, dAN. You were just sitting there, and all of a sudden ... hey, I saw Deerhunter ?

You're getting flashbacks of a movie about guys getting flashbacks of Nam...

I tried watching The Deer Hunter when it aired on a local station couple of years ago, but the first half-hour or so bored me so much that I didn't stick around for the rest.

Same thing happened with Heaven's Gate. Is it a trademark of Michael Cimino's style? Does he always try to find the most boring way to begin his movies?

I did tune back into Heaven's Gate around the mid-point and towards the end, with the climactic shootout. Unbelievably tedious. I feel sorry for all the unwitting patrons who actually paid to see this turkey when it came out. Is it any wonder this movie single-handedly ruined United Artists? It was because of the movie's notorious reputation that I bothered to watch it at all.

Disclaimer: my dismissal of The Deer Hunter is not in any way a rebuke of Vietnam vets. As far as Vietnam movies are concerned, I just prefer Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Platoon was also powerful, although strictly in terms of directorial panache, I don't think Stone's film is in the same class as Coppola's and Kubrick's. Again, this is not about my feelings toward Vietnam, I'm just commenting on the aesthetics of the films themselves.

Good posts MM. Agree about Apocalypse Now being better, and NBK has always been one of my favourites. I've seen 11 of those, but I gues that controversy is subjective. Enough outcry automatically makes one.

--A

I tried watching The Deer Hunter when it aired on a local station couple of years ago, but the first half-hour or so bored me so much that I didn't stick around for the rest.

The whole damn movie is that boring. Be glad you spared yourself.

Dlb.

--A

dlbpharmd wrote:

I tried watching The Deer Hunter when it aired on a local station couple of years ago, but the first half-hour or so bored me so much that I didn't stick around for the rest.

The whole damn movie is that boring. Be glad you spared yourself.

I really enjoyed it.