Man, that took a lot longer than I had planned, but after a year and a half, I’m done with the Kitchen Sink blog (wherein I attempt to read all comics published by Kitchen Sink Press and then natter on a bit about them).
And it’s not like it’s the first time I’vedonesomethinglikethis, but it was the hardest one to do. And I was surprised by that, because I do like a lot of what Kitchen Sink published. But, for instance, with the Eclipse Comics blog, there were a lot of surprises — stuff I only had a vague idea existed, and turned out to be pretty entertaining — while there were few surprises (for me) doing this one.
So it got to be a bit of a slog for me towards the end, and I apologise for the sometimes brash tone that crept into some of the posts. (Old Man Shouts At Old Comics isn’t that much fun to read.)
But, hey, Kitchen Sink did publish a lot of great stuff! And it’s got a quite interesting history, I think. So there you go.
So, this is a movie about watching movies? It’s a very, very popular genre among directors (Cinema Paradiso etc etc).
No, that was a fake-out… doesn’t seem to be about that at all…
I was going to say that this seemed like an outlier among the new movies on the list this year. I think that all the movies I’ve watched so far have been either 1) made by a woman director, or 2) made outside Western Europe/US, or 4) both.
But… there’s only one other Spanish movie on the list, so I guess this is another movie from an underrepresented country?
Hm… half the votes are from the British Isles…
Heh. I like Aki Kaurismäki’s list — only a single movie he voted for made the Sight & Sound top 100s. That’s pretty unique. And I’ve seen very few of these films myself. I think I’ve seen the Buñuel… and I’ve got the Walsh on bluray, but haven’t seen it yet. And everybody’s seen the Chaplin. I’m sure the rest of the films on the list are spiffy, too.
I dunno… This is a pretty good movie, but there’s also something a bit cloying about it. Like the sountrack bit that seemed to come out of nowhere in this scene, coupled with the foley “wind is blowing” throughout. It’s gilding the lily a bit (or doesn’t trust the viewer).
The film was Erice’s debut and is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema.
It has that feel — “a masterpiece of <country> cinema” — which means that it’s inoffensive, sentimental and “”says something deeply meaningful about <country>””. These movies usually suck, but this is kinda good. But not… you know… fantastic.
Of course, this movie the added attraction that it was made during the Franco years, but managed to work around the repressive censorship of the time. That always adds some caché.
Hey! It’s a Kurosawa movie without samurais? Hm! I’m wondering whether I’ve seen anything like this before… Yeah, like No Regrets For Our Youth. Which wasn’t particularly good.
I read a tweet the other day that panned some well-liked movie and there was a reply from somebody that said something like “it takes a lot of guts to criticise something so famous”, which just blew my mind. Like… guts how? In my opinion, there’s little point in reiterating a consensus opinion — that’s just tedious. And it’s way scarier to slate something non-famous, because then your (probably wrong) opinion is the only one out there.
So here goes: Kurosawa sucks.
There. I said it. Let the healing begin.
And as usual with Kurosawa, nothing’s particularly wrong about the movie, but everything is solidly pedestrian: The cinematography seems to consist of… well, just having the camera guy take random shots, without much thought for framing or mise-en-scène.
The plot (a guy who is dying from cancer and partying/coming to terms with his wasted life) is a huge cliché.
The acting is as subtle as cement mixer.
So who voted for this?
Mostly younger directors? Huh. (And Martin Scorsese.) And it’s not in the critics’ top 100.
If you compare with Ozu’s movies from around the same time (dealing with many of the same themes), this is just embarrassing.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse… it does!
Up until the guy dies (oops spoilers) the movie is tolerable, but then there’s another hour of bureaucrats arguing about stuff, and it’s just distilled tedium. Kurosawa probably meant for this to be a biting commentary of bureaucracy, I guess, but it’s just… awful.
Hey! There’s one single negative review on Rottentomatoes.
The last seven hours of this are risibly awful (⚀), but the first nine hours were just normal dopey stuff (⚂), so let’s even that out to:
