Rank Brian DePalma's Films

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.

blow out is his best but people should rank sister way highter

+s

sisters is great. have yet to be able to watch the Fury unfortunately.

Saw Sisters once, meh, some good stuff but probably his first and most blatant Hitchcock rip. But has this great scoring story related by BdP... Bernard Herrmann complained,

"Nothing happens in this movie for forty minutes!" And I said, "Yes, that's the idea. There is a slow beginning—you know, like Psycho, where the murder doesn't happen until about 40 minutes into the picture." And he shouted at me, "YOU are not Hitchcock; for Hitchcock they will WAIT!"

I'm not a fan of Sisters either. He's way too uneven for me, but I respond to the good stuff.

iirc De Palma doesn't so really diss The Fury in the doc, but he does kind of whisk by it to get to his other films. It's possible I'm forgetting something specific he said, but I believe his attitude was basically that, after the huge success of Carrie, that was the next project that was available to him, so he did it. De Palma does say that Cassavetes didn't like being in the movie, and thought the exploding scene was ridiculous.

The documentary is definitely worth seeing, De Palma tells pretty great stories and has a pretty even-handed, dispassionate view of his own work, though he tends to overrate his major commercial successes (The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible) His wry sense of humor comes through, and the doc moves briskly through all of his films without seeming too rushed.

he comes of as a sweet uncle type who happens to love film and can discuss it – and a s someone too old to adjust to Marvel.

I should re-watch Body Double.

I held off watching that for a long time for some stupid reason, then when I saw it last year I was chuckling all the way through it, really entertaining.

I didn't like it all, largely because Craig Wasson was unbearable to watch.