Rank Brian DePalma's Films

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.

can't believe I waited so long to watch Body Double

what an enjoyably ridiculous film

1. Scarface
2. Carrie
3. Phantom of the Paradise

the rest are terrible

^^^posts I regret

"Enjoyably ridiculous"--good description. Kael ripped it apart, but I think it's well worth watching. The villain's make-up job when in disguise is of course atrocious.

no one ever told me about the Frankie Goes to Hollywood bit, or the driller-killer bite, or the lolz closing credits sequence

DePalma's range is limited but there is something audaciously brazen in it that is compelling

Melanie Griffith's really good, and I kind of like Craig Wasson, even though it's possibly a terrible performance...I find it hard to separate the character's annoying helplessness from the quality of the performance.

Someone persuade me I should see Raising Cain in 35mm tonight. I do like Lithgow, it's apparently lacking in any attempt at depth whatsoever, and runs only 91 minutes.

Lithgow is good and Steven Bauer is hot but it's even more preposterous than usual.

well my fave film of his might be Femme Fatale so that wdn't figure to bother me.

I couldnt make it through Raising Cain fwiw. "Preposterous" is an apt description.

Femme Fatale has way less dialogue and "acting."

wasn't sure if Femme Fatale was worth seeing, I will check it out. post mid-80s De Palma seems really hit or miss.

Anyone seen the De Palma documentary? I was harassing s1ocki about it on twitter, since I think it opened at the TIFF Lightbox right after I left Toronto

I'm planning on seeing it eventually

"wasn't sure if Femme Fatale was worth seeing, I will check it out. post mid-80s De Palma seems really hit or miss."

I like it. Snake Eyes is also good (starts really strong, kinda flames out halfway through).

My memory is more forgiving of these films than my post of 2005 would suggest hah.

I think I started watching Snake Eyes and turned it off after the long opening shot ended lol

wasn't sure if Femme Fatale was worth seeing

it's incredible, though you do have to put up with some brain-gouging "sexy" biz. morbs otm.

Saw somewhere that BdP disses The Fury in the doc, which is the best thing i've read about a minor artist since the Soul Coughing guy said those records were crap.

I like Fury too.