Rank Brian DePalma's Films

I'm incredibly flattered to be used in that NYT article, Morbs, but I think it's amusing he picked one of the most stilted things I wrote in that feature. Only the Casualties of War review was more dour than those excerpts.

No matter, my parents are thrilled all the same.

To the extent that I actually don't understand the intellectual value of "objective" film criticism. To the extent that it is supposed to be fun and to give you someone else's point of view.

I'd rather be neither, frankly.

Whenever that line was used, I kept thinking "Snake Plissken, I thought you were dead..."

We couldn't be more different.

Still unseen: Murder a la Mod, Get To Know Your Rabbit, Home Movies, Wise Guys

The Fury
Femme Fatale
Carrie
Dressed to Kill
Hi, Mom!
Body Double
Casualties of War
Carlito's Way
Mission to Mars
Raising Cain
Sisters
Phantom of the Paradise
Blow Out
Greetings
The Black Dahlia
Dionysus
Mission: Impossible
Snake Eyes
The Wedding Party
Scarface
The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Untouchables

Well, maybe I do. A lot of my favorite movies are less than 10 minutes long, but I don't take issue with films' inability to sustain for two hours or more, otherwise I wouldn't be interested in movies, much less list A Grin without a Cat as one of my very favorites.

Dressed To Kill
Blow Out
Casualties Of War
The Fury
Carrie
The Wedding Party
Femme Fatale
Hi, Mom!
Phantom Of The Paradise
The Untouchables
Snake Eyes
Mission: Impossible
Sisters
Carlito's Way
Greetings
Body Double
Scarface
Black Dahlia
Raising Cain
Mission To Mars
Bonfire Of The Vanities

(I'm probably buying Home Movies next month, too)

I just rescreened Internal Affairs. He's so much more interesting when not called upon to "act."

Alex, what exactly is so "awful" about the climax of Femme Fatale? It's ludicrous and funny in exactly the appropriate way, just as many of Hitchcock's or Cronenberg's are.

Maybe Sidney Poitier was just miscast his entire career.

Remember that remark of Pauline Kael's about Meryl Streep -- that she's made a career out of being miscast?

I just got that anthology of US film critics from the library, and skimmed the long famous P.K. essay "Trash, Art and the Movies" or whatever the hell it's called... and given the way she makes clear that the "trash" she finds pleasurable (eg, The Thomas Crown Affair and Wild in the Streets) is NOT ART, it's amazing she could consider De Palma an artist, rather than a giddy trashmaker. (Oh, also "not art": 2001.)

otm

Poitier's status as an icon for his times is fine with me, even worth celebrating. But he was an awful actor. (Indeed, I'm surprised I don't like him more because of it.)

For all her perception the collaborative and serendipitous nature of film, plus the inevitable compromises, repelled her, and why she was given to creating these polarities. I'd be uncomfortable comparing Citizen Kane directly with any modernist novel, but she couldn't accept the picture as anything other than an extremely well-acted and shot newspaper comedy a la Ben Hecht.

Once baseball is over I want to get to Casualties of War, Body Double and maybe Obsession.

wish this thread would've continued...

Watched Dressed to Kill last night -- there's an awful lot to like about it, but that Pino Donaggio score is nails-on-blackboard horrible, imo.

That's cool.