POLL Verhoeven

Didn't ever see the results but YAY Robocop/Total Recall split!

― boring movies are the most boring (Eric H.), Wednesday, September 2, 2009 4:01 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Widespread critical appreciation of both of these films make me feel like "taste" is not completely arbitrary, b/c I remember even as an 11/12-year-old watching them feeling like there was something special about them beyond the typical action flick.

http://variety.com/2016/film/global/first-look-paul-verhoevens-elle-trailer-isabelle-huppert-1201699088/

Could be trouble, but at this point I trust him.

oh! i get it! i'm dreaming! this is all part of the delightful vacation your company has sold me.

From the Guardian's Cannes coverage:

“We thought it would be an American movie,” says Verhoeven. “We basically translated the novel into English and I knew a very good American scriptwriter. We were basically replacing Paris with Chicago or Seattle. It was only when we got the reaction of female American stars that we started to realise this kind of story without a revenge was not for the American market.”

Cannot wait

There's a strange cheesiness to this guy's movies that's not like other cheesy movies. It's a kind of uncanny creepy cheese I can't stomach for long.

Poll closed forever ago, but Robocop by far.

seeing Elle next weekend

Might be good except looking at that interview Huppert lends a cred to what could be shabby material. Verhoeven needs something thrashy to make something great or really awful, but always compelling and which sticks.

Slant ranks 'em all

i saw Spetters last night for the first time, which was ooookay except for, say, the rather disturbing portrayal of a character coming out as gay after being gang-raped by some toughs in Rotterdam.

ditto Total Recall which rather massively dumbs down that Dick story, but features all kinds of crazy shit (telepathic Martian rebel leader hanging from a guy's torso, dwarf prostitute firing a machine gun, more punctured human heads than any 'R' movie ever).

oh yeah Elle is the best thing i've seen from this guy. it's quite funny and also a very tough watch.

ditto Total Recall which rather massively dumbs down that Dick story, but features all kinds of crazy shit (telepathic Martian rebel leader hanging from a guy's torso, dwarf prostitute firing a machine gun, more punctured human heads than any 'R' movie ever).

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

I like it but it might be the most violent film I've ever seen: human shields on elevators, pokers sticking out of eyeballs, arms crunched off, Schwarzenegger checking into a Hilton...

Flesh+Blood is ranked way too low in that list, and Basic Instinct way too high.

human shield on an escalator

i found Starship Troopers profoundly stupid; MAD Magazine looks like Swift in its light

I cannot recommend the Troopers commentary track w/ Verhoeven and the cast enough. Let's just say there are some sublime moments of intellectual disconnect.

at the NYC retro PV will be appearing with Casper whatzisDiem at a Troopers screening. Perhaps there'll be a whipping.

Because I saw Total Recall when I was 12, I don't think I realized until just now how truly fucked up it is.

That said--and while I haven't seen either film as an adult--I remember finding the violence in RoboCop more unnerving than that in TR when I was a kid.

Yes, Robocop has a cruel streak that gives its violence a real nastiness. TR is basically expensive splatstick.

robocop has that melting guy who gets hit by a car and explodes, which i guess is funny but disturbed the shit out of me when i was a kid

when i went through a bunch of verhoeven movies a few years ago, i was surprised at how much i still loved total recall, which i watched all the time when i was a kid; i guess it dumbs down its source material but it's so fun and well-constructed and michael ironside

Robocop was on TV last week when I was getting a haircut. The violence really is brutal in that one.

I liked Flesh & Blood a lot; I'm surprised it wasn't higher on that list, in this post-Game of Thrones era.

total recall has stuff in it left over from a cronenberg treatment that doesn't have any reason to be in the film. if you tell verhoeven about three boob lady there's no way he's cutting it.

Sharon Stone's best performance imo

and yes on Michael Ironside

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1FS_vKJl8U

Total Recall is terrible u guys are crazy

Nah, it's the best kind of trash: sustained, well-wrought trash.

I find it joyless and offensive unlike his other, better sustained well-wrought trash tbh

part of it's that I just can't watch Arnold, he's such a painfully terrible actor, I can't get past it. Then there's the relentless misogyny, the butchering of the source material, the willfully stupid plot contrivances, it looks cheap... idk I can't think of anything to recommend it. At least with Robocop and Starship Troopers it feels like something sly and subversive is going on. Showgirls is pure nonsensical camp. But Total Recall is just some reactionary Republican wet dream, it's creepy.

Basic Instinct is the Hollywood effort I take no joy in, despite the Jan de Bont factor

i don't see a whole lot that's 'Republican' about TR, unless all their divorces are done w/ a bullet. Agreed that Stone is a blast in it. It is dense, entertaining trash (with a brain, sort of).

Once the Schwarz came on board, it was apparently rewritten to his "strengths." In the previous incarnation they'd been considering Matthew Broderick for the lead.

She looks smashing in period Madonna suits too.

i get bored w/ Ironside's deadeye shtick after 10 mins. He even did it in a Charles Burnett film.

Total Recall is just some reactionary Republican wet dream, it's creepy.

― Οὖτις, Monday, November 14, 2016 6:01 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd argue that it's knowingly so, as opposed to 90% of the other action movies released from like '80-'92.

it fades to white at the end, suggesting Ahnuld has gotten a long-overdue lobotomy

i also love the scene where the head of Rekall (?) comes in and explains why everything is a dream, before A.S. sees a bead of sweat and offs him. Nice narrative jerk.

SWALLOW IT

certainly more 'eventful' than The Matrix. And the climax is a hologram rip of Lady from Shanghai.

but really, check out that gang rape in Spetters sometime. So fucked up.

Total Recall >> Robocop

Blasphemy. I do enjoy the TR >>> Blade Runner challops from earlier itt though

It's not that hard to imagine Broderick in a Cronenberg version of TR, really

i believe spetters was his attempt at being as offensive as possible -- not only with the rape but also with the suicide of the guy who lost his legs being treated positively.

didn't find that positively presented

According to the Dutch filmmaker, the reason Hollywood’s remakes (“Total Recall,” “Robocop”) and sequels (“Basic Instinct,” “Robocop,” “Starship Troopers) of his films fail is “the studios always wanted not to have a layer of lightness, a layer of irony, sarcasm, satire.”

Referring to the announcement that the new “Starship Troopers” reboot would go back to science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein’s original novel was particularly troubling to Verhoeven.

“It said in the article [that] the production team of that movie of the remake, that they would go back more and more towards the novel. And of course, we really, really tried to get away from the novel, because we felt that the novel was fascistic and militaristic,” said Verhoeven. “You feel that going back to the novel would fit very much in a Trump Presidency.”

http://www.indiewire.com/2016/11/paul-verhoeven-slams-starship-troopers-remake-fascist-update-perfect-trump-presidency-1201747155/

but really, check out that gang rape in Spetters sometime. So fucked up.

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 15 November 2016 02:44

Pretty nasty gang rape in Flesh + Blood too.

"nasty" is the main descriptor for that movie really, though it's also pretty funny. it's the only movie set in medieval times that I've seen that feels as gross as it must have actually been

I was going to say I couldn't imagine a big film being made like that now but it was probably an oddity at the time too.
I read that Verhoeven originally didn't intend there to be a female love interest and regretted including that. It would have been a totally different film without it.

i believe spetters was his attempt at being as offensive as possible

well, i saw Turkish Delight ('73) last night, based on a big Dutch bestselling novel, and hoo boy! The missing link among Love Story, Last Tango in Paris, and Judd Apatow.

PV did a Q&A after, chalked up the whole nudity/every-bodily-fluid vibe to the unleashing of the Dutch sexual revolution etc.

or as simonabrams wrote on L'boxd, "A sophomore film. Also sophomoric!"

going back to what shakey said a couple of days ago on total recall

Then there's the relentless misogyny, the butchering of the source material, the willfully stupid plot contrivances, it looks cheap... idk I can't think of anything to recommend it.

part of the reason i like total recall a lot is that the stupid plot contrivances and the cheapness actually kinda work in its favour when you take the view that everything after arnold goes for the procedure at rekall is his implanted memory, which is supported by the fact that the rekall team summarise the entire plot of the movie before it happens. quaid is supposed to be paying for the memory of a trashy numbskull spy adventure on mars, which is exactly what he gets, and so do we.

i'm still kinda bummed that verhoeven and schwarzenegger never got to make their megabudget crusades movie :(

Yeah the pulpy ridiculousness of Total Recall is what makes it work.