love & adoration
Some excerpts of film reviews for my favorite films...
Oh, just a note, if my obsessiveness bothers you, YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THIS. There is such as thing as FREE WILL.
For kinder and more tolerant souls, I love comments. *hint hint nudge nudge wink wink*
#1: THE LORD OF THE RINGS
From www.OnWisconsin.com
"Even if you're not a fantasy fan, "The Fellowship of the Ring" has everything you could want in almost any kind of film. It is joyous, mythic, elegiac and, most importantly, cinematic."
From www.PaloAltoOnline.com
"The rumor is true -- Jackson and company offered up a year and a half of their lives to film three full-length films in sequence, absorbing their characters with a devotion seldom seen on screen. Wood is an endearing blend of fierce spirit and wide-eyed innocence. Mortenson is every girl's dream of the knight in shining armor (mine, at least), and McKellan deserves an Oscar for parlaying his craft into sheer warmth and wisdom. Jackson masters every nuance of the production, from the wee homes of the hobbit's village, the Shire, to the computer-generated monster wars and the up-close-and-personal moments of his diverse population. The costumes, the energy and the special effects are brilliant, but the bottom line is that this must be respected as an overwhelming achievement. The bar has been raised, and the world of film entertainment will hereinafter be better for it."
From www.AintItCoolNews.com
"For all it’s visual effects wizardry, the scenes and the moments that linger with me are not those moments. I remember Ian McKellen’s Gandalf telling Billy Boyd’s Pippin about the adventure beyond death amidst a battle to decide it all. There’s a serenity to Ian’s face… an impossible calm and resolute ease and anticipation to beginning that final adventure that puts Pippin at peace and calm. Billy Boyd’s face begins with sadness and in the end of the conversation… you see his nerves become calm, though the end is at hand. The scene is brilliant."
#2: KILL BILL
Fromwww.AintItCoolNews.com
"The way it cuts together, the way the music makes it flow… the way this thing breathes and walks and dances on that screen. This isn’t a duck press of Grindhouse filmmaking, that might have been the goal that Quentin was shooting for, but what got up on screen… the results of that “duck press” is something the likes of which we’ve never seen on screen before.
I know the films Quentin pulls inspiration from. I live and breath cult cinema. The money I’ve spent on my DVD and 16mm collection is truly absurd by anyone’s definition… except maybe Quentin’s. I am buying film constantly, watching it incessantly, thinking about it subconsciously - the way you breathe or pump blood to your limbs, that’s how I think about film. And I love it like that. It’s that precious to me. And thinking about KILL BILL after seeing it, I can honestly say that without a doubt there isn’t a moment I felt I’d seen before."
From UDailyNews.com
"Gratuitous in the most passionate, brutal and aesthetically exacting way, this first half of Quentin Tarantino's blood-drenched mash note to the eclectic, disreputable genres he grooved on as a kid is a remarkably pure orchestration of imagery and attitude. The content of those magnificently moving pictures is whatever the opposite of pure might be: an endless orgy of degradation, dismemberment, cruelty and bile. The "Pulp Fiction' auteur has ratcheted it all up into a fantasy realm, and he has a point when he claims that anybody who thinks this disturbing stuff is happening to anything like a real person is crazy -- or, at least, crazier than he is."
From www.SFExaminer.com
"Certainly we can complain about the film's length, but how could anyone cut it down? Even the most worthless five minutes of "Kill Bill" is better than most entire films. Whether you watch the second half first or the first half not at all, or both together, "Kill Bill" is a triumphant achievement in American film, a cut-and-paste epic celebrating the crudest and most noblest human traits."
#3: RESERVOIR DOGS
From "Cinemania"
"We all remember the scene. Here we are, more than a decade removed from the film’s release, and I suspect that, if asked, most people who’ve seen the film only once would cite this as the one scene they remember. It’s the one that appears dead centre of the film, temporally speaking, which I suppose adds some ironic commentary to Tarantino’s choice of song at the moment (Stuck in the Middle With You). But when a straight-blade wielding Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) begins to soft shoe across the warehouse floor and karaoke to the sounds of K-Billy Radio with a twisted smirk on his face, the knot that’s been in your stomach from the moment the opening credits end and a writhing, howling and blood-splattered Tim Roth jumps out at you from the screen, that terrible dead weight in your belly that’s been festering and bubbling takes on new dimensions and gravity as it seizes hold of all your vital organs, taking hostage of your senses and daring you to keep your attention focused on the images before you.
...Whatever the reason, this is the one QT film that always manages to rope a knot in my stomach and, over the course of the film’s 100 minute running time, keep a firm grip, pulling, twisting, tightening and re-tying it."
From www.EFilmCritic.com
"As much as a top-notch script and a clever directorial style, the performances in Reservoir Dogs really sell the package. Keitel's character posesses the most depth, as the thief with a conflicted soul who is unsure of who to trust. Madsen is truly unnerving in the infamous "torture" scene, and Roth gives one of the most unsettling and realistic portrayals ever of a man who's been gutshot and is quickly bleeding out. Steve Buscemi, whose career really took rise after the role of Mr. Pink, gives a perfectly convincing portrayal of an oily but distinctly level-headed crook.
...But while DOGS is probably his most unpolished work, it strongly contends for the distinction of being his best."
Mmm, too tired. Will do others later.
Oh, just a note, if my obsessiveness bothers you, YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THIS. There is such as thing as FREE WILL.
For kinder and more tolerant souls, I love comments. *hint hint nudge nudge wink wink*
#1: THE LORD OF THE RINGS
From www.OnWisconsin.com
"Even if you're not a fantasy fan, "The Fellowship of the Ring" has everything you could want in almost any kind of film. It is joyous, mythic, elegiac and, most importantly, cinematic."
From www.PaloAltoOnline.com
"The rumor is true -- Jackson and company offered up a year and a half of their lives to film three full-length films in sequence, absorbing their characters with a devotion seldom seen on screen. Wood is an endearing blend of fierce spirit and wide-eyed innocence. Mortenson is every girl's dream of the knight in shining armor (mine, at least), and McKellan deserves an Oscar for parlaying his craft into sheer warmth and wisdom. Jackson masters every nuance of the production, from the wee homes of the hobbit's village, the Shire, to the computer-generated monster wars and the up-close-and-personal moments of his diverse population. The costumes, the energy and the special effects are brilliant, but the bottom line is that this must be respected as an overwhelming achievement. The bar has been raised, and the world of film entertainment will hereinafter be better for it."
From www.AintItCoolNews.com
"For all it’s visual effects wizardry, the scenes and the moments that linger with me are not those moments. I remember Ian McKellen’s Gandalf telling Billy Boyd’s Pippin about the adventure beyond death amidst a battle to decide it all. There’s a serenity to Ian’s face… an impossible calm and resolute ease and anticipation to beginning that final adventure that puts Pippin at peace and calm. Billy Boyd’s face begins with sadness and in the end of the conversation… you see his nerves become calm, though the end is at hand. The scene is brilliant."
#2: KILL BILL
Fromwww.AintItCoolNews.com
"The way it cuts together, the way the music makes it flow… the way this thing breathes and walks and dances on that screen. This isn’t a duck press of Grindhouse filmmaking, that might have been the goal that Quentin was shooting for, but what got up on screen… the results of that “duck press” is something the likes of which we’ve never seen on screen before.
I know the films Quentin pulls inspiration from. I live and breath cult cinema. The money I’ve spent on my DVD and 16mm collection is truly absurd by anyone’s definition… except maybe Quentin’s. I am buying film constantly, watching it incessantly, thinking about it subconsciously - the way you breathe or pump blood to your limbs, that’s how I think about film. And I love it like that. It’s that precious to me. And thinking about KILL BILL after seeing it, I can honestly say that without a doubt there isn’t a moment I felt I’d seen before."
From UDailyNews.com
"Gratuitous in the most passionate, brutal and aesthetically exacting way, this first half of Quentin Tarantino's blood-drenched mash note to the eclectic, disreputable genres he grooved on as a kid is a remarkably pure orchestration of imagery and attitude. The content of those magnificently moving pictures is whatever the opposite of pure might be: an endless orgy of degradation, dismemberment, cruelty and bile. The "Pulp Fiction' auteur has ratcheted it all up into a fantasy realm, and he has a point when he claims that anybody who thinks this disturbing stuff is happening to anything like a real person is crazy -- or, at least, crazier than he is."
From www.SFExaminer.com
"Certainly we can complain about the film's length, but how could anyone cut it down? Even the most worthless five minutes of "Kill Bill" is better than most entire films. Whether you watch the second half first or the first half not at all, or both together, "Kill Bill" is a triumphant achievement in American film, a cut-and-paste epic celebrating the crudest and most noblest human traits."
#3: RESERVOIR DOGS
From "Cinemania"
"We all remember the scene. Here we are, more than a decade removed from the film’s release, and I suspect that, if asked, most people who’ve seen the film only once would cite this as the one scene they remember. It’s the one that appears dead centre of the film, temporally speaking, which I suppose adds some ironic commentary to Tarantino’s choice of song at the moment (Stuck in the Middle With You). But when a straight-blade wielding Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) begins to soft shoe across the warehouse floor and karaoke to the sounds of K-Billy Radio with a twisted smirk on his face, the knot that’s been in your stomach from the moment the opening credits end and a writhing, howling and blood-splattered Tim Roth jumps out at you from the screen, that terrible dead weight in your belly that’s been festering and bubbling takes on new dimensions and gravity as it seizes hold of all your vital organs, taking hostage of your senses and daring you to keep your attention focused on the images before you.
...Whatever the reason, this is the one QT film that always manages to rope a knot in my stomach and, over the course of the film’s 100 minute running time, keep a firm grip, pulling, twisting, tightening and re-tying it."
From www.EFilmCritic.com
"As much as a top-notch script and a clever directorial style, the performances in Reservoir Dogs really sell the package. Keitel's character posesses the most depth, as the thief with a conflicted soul who is unsure of who to trust. Madsen is truly unnerving in the infamous "torture" scene, and Roth gives one of the most unsettling and realistic portrayals ever of a man who's been gutshot and is quickly bleeding out. Steve Buscemi, whose career really took rise after the role of Mr. Pink, gives a perfectly convincing portrayal of an oily but distinctly level-headed crook.
...But while DOGS is probably his most unpolished work, it strongly contends for the distinction of being his best."
Mmm, too tired. Will do others later.