Seriously.

Though everyone is interested on everyone else's opinion I suppose ...

C ... mostly (and interestingly) because you give your own tastes a C .... though I'd probably give it slightly higher if it weren't solely based on your opinion of Ghost in the Shell. That particular film I credit for having given any number of future films material for thought. It's a reference point. Now Gits II is another story...

How the hell can you rate someones collection? Do you look at ALL the titles? Even if that person has over 400 DVDs? Should take alot of time just to sift through all those titles no?

Wuss ....

well I'm aware that I rate movies a lot harsher than most people, but that's just because every second 'good' film these days is called great.

Anyway, a very good film in my book is 6.5-7/10, an excellent but not great film is around 7.5-8, a great film being 8.5-9, and a classic being 9-9.5.

Nice enough, but little to no silent, experimental, or documentary, and you're missing most of the great directors presently working abroad. I'd give it a B-.

yakuza,

I'd be interested in some recommendations of the great current foreign directors.

Anh Hung Tran, Hou Hsiao-hsien (of whom you have one), Ming-liang Tsai, Aleksandr Sokurov, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano (of whom you have one), Shinya Tsukamoto, Hirokazu Koreeda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Yoji Yamada, Wong Kar-Wai, Béla Tarr, The Dardenne Brothers, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, and Lars Von Trier (who I know you have some of).

Don't be baby, you should join in it more!

cheers.

I've been meaning to get some kiarostami actually, and some more haneke and von trier (once I actually see the titles of theirs I do have). Kitano I'm not sold on from what I've seen and I havent liked any of yoji yamada's stuff.

I do have pleny of wong kar wai though, I think I'm missing As Tears Go By, which I plan to get at some stage, and Ashes of Time as its not available on any worthwhile dvd.

Nice collection nitin. Have a little bit for everyone there so when you have guests it won't be hard to pull something out and watch. Also, while you have films I wouldn't own they are still solid viewing material, and you own little to no crap films so that makes the collection that more impressive.

Sorry, I give it a C because you have tons of movies I dont' want to watch or never heard of. I give it a C because I know on these boards your collection is nice because of the so many old movies.

hehe, yeah but considering you gave...

7.1 to Italian Job (the remake), 6.4 to Depalma's Black Daliha, 6.4 to Equilibrium, 6.7 to High Tension, 7.0 to Ice Harvest, 6.3 to In Good Company, 6.3 to Intolerable Cruelty, 7.8 to Kingdom of Heaven, 6.3 to The Missing, 7.3 to The New World, 6.6 to The Score, 7.2 to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 7.0 to Starship Troopers and 6.7 to Sum of All Fears..

and actually didn't give better marks to 8½, Autumn Sonata, Cinema Paradiso, Dead Man, La Dolce Vita, Fanny & Alexander, Heaven Can wait, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, The Searchers, The Shining, Shoot the Piano Player, Sullivan's travels, Throne of Blood...that made me feel weird ;p

The Prosecution rests.

Several of the directors I mentioned are fine contemporary figures, but they won't have much lasting impact on cinema. Kiarostami is one of those truely rare master filmmakers whose impact will only grow with time. I think most R1 viewers are introduced to his work though Criterion's release of Taste of Cherry, but I'd recommend starting with his earlier film Close-up which is not only an incredibly fascinating film in its own right, but also readies the viewer to better appreciate the otherwise potentially baffling ending of Taste of Cherry (an ending so baffling that it was cut from the Italian theatrical release by distributors that claimed they were acting in Kiarostami's best interests).

For Hanek I recommend his made-for-television version of Kafka's The Castle, which is good no matter what, but is especially rewarding if you're a fan of the book. For von Trier, I like all his films despite their flaws, but I most recommend one of his least seen films Medea based on a script by Carl Th. Dreyer.

For Kitano I'd especially recommend Violent Cop and Fireworks, and for Yamada The Twilight Samurai. If you've seen any of the films listed above and didn't like them, I'd be interested in hearing why not.

thanks for the replies guys. I like a bit of discussion so feel free to be as honest as you want.

THFM,

no problems, I posted to actually get a few suggestions on titles I should get which is what yakuza's done


yakuza/frenzal,

what you listed may seem like anomalies to you, but personally I think those lowly rated "great" films dont quite work. I have plenty of Bergman and Kurosawa that I love, but Autumn Sonata and Throne of Blood are not their strongest films IMHO.

I'll admit to not really liking Fellini, John Ford and Preston Sturges much at all, I've only really liked Fellini's earlier stuff like Nights of Cabiria and La Strada, Grapes of Wrath by Ford and The Lady Eve by Preston Sturges.

But, that's not to say that I cant appeciate aspects of all those films. 8 1/2 has some terrific imagery, camerawork and editing, Autumn Sonata looks great and has terriic acting, Dead Man looks and sounds great and has some wicked black humour, La Dolce Vita also looks great and has some excellent sequences (e the fountain bit), Fanny and Alexander has some of Bergman's most potent emotional scenes, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away have excellent animation, The Serachers looks phenomenal and has some great scenes and Wayne is also excellent, The Shining has tons of atmosphere, Sullivans Travels has some killer dilagoue in the first 20 min or so and Throne of Blood looks great and is a very efficient Macbeth adaptation.

Similarly, in relation to the higher rated films that you lited as comparison, alhough they may not be as ambitious, I think they achieve to a reasonable extent what they set out to do. And I see no reason why they cant be rated favorably if they do that when other obviously more ambitious films fail to hit the mark (in my view).

also yakuza, I had no idea Haneke did a version of The Castle. What dvd do you have of this?

I've seen Twilight Samurai and the followup The Hidden Blade. I personally didnt care much for either of them. Some of it may have been due to the fact that I saw them right after having seen a whole lot of Kurosawa.

Either way, I found them thoroughly uninvolving and cliched (in terms of its characters anyway).

Of all the Bergman and Kurosawa that one could find problems with, those two would not be the ones I’d have guessed. Both directors produced films that didn’t work for me, but I love those two.

I can understand your positions here, but I don’t share it with regard to late Fellini.

You didn’t find Equilibrium to be a dull mish-mash of a half dozen better films, and the characters and dialogue worked for you?

This is available from Kino separately and as part of the Haneke box set.

Interesting. I found The Twilight Samurai to be refreshing. It provided a much more developed view of the closing of the Edo period and the transformation of samurai from knights to bureaucrats than has appeared in any prior Jidaigeki film (or in the horrible Hollywood flick The Last Samurai).

yakuza,

"Of all the Bergman and Kurosawa that one could find problems with, those two would not be the ones I’d have guessed. Both directors produced films that didn’t work for me, but I love those two."

Each to his own I guess, those are two of the weaker ones for me

"You didn’t find Equilibrium to be a dull mish-mash of a half dozen better films, and the characters and dialogue worked for you?"

It sure is a mismash of many better films but I never think of it as anything more than a dumb action film and it delivers on that level IMHO.

Also, cheers on the Haneke tip.

And I agree with you on The Last Samurai.

Your praise reminds me of those blubs you see on the cover of bad films in which a qualified (as in limited) endorsement is cut down into an unqualified quote:

nitin77 of dvdtalk.com says "It delivers!"

That's what separates my taste in films from most of those I gave low marks to in this thread, and those like them. I can rarely say, "oh well, its just a dumb action flick so it's enough that it moves along fast enough that I don't have to stop and think about whether there's any substance to it." In fact, I've seen the standard artifices of action-movies (e.g., swelling music, quick cutting, and purposeless violence) abused so often that I'm now predisposed to disliking any film which deploys them. I can still be won over, but these films have to work twice as hard.

first of all, I think its pretty obvious from what I have that dumb action films are not what I am into. I like the odd one, and Equilibrium is one of them, because they get the action part right which most of the current ones dont.


I dont really understand why my liking Equilbrium makes my not liking something like 8 1/2 silly. I have a lot of time for arthouse european cinema but I found that I couldn’t connect with it on any level. It almost felt like you had to know Fellini, the person, to really get into it. Either way, it was an admirable effort but not something for me.

I didn't mean to suggest that Equilibrium was representative of the genre or quality of titles in your collection generally. We all have our titles that strike others as questionable.

I assume that comment is not directed at anything I said since I stated that I could understand not likely late Felini.

"I assume that comment is not directed at anything I said since I stated that I could understand not likely late Felini."

no it wasnt, I was just stating my reasosn for not liking one of the examples. I picked 8 1/2 as it was something that I'd seen recently.

Anyway, had a look through your stuff, picked and noted a few that seem interestin that I dont already have

This thread's title needs to be changed to:

"Yakuza Bengoshi, Rate My DVD Collection"


hahaha

You're sweet.

Fixed LOL