now is time for the Brian De Palma's best film

Carrie >>>> Scarface

the ceiling-hanging scene in M:I was stolen from jules dassin's topkapi

finale stolen from The Great Train Robbery iirc

wouldve voted body double

mission 2 mars is really great, i think.

mission to mars is horrible! it's not even an interesting failure, it's just stupid.

woulda voted Blow Out, but Body Double is some awesome shit.

I love Body Double. Watched it the other night, in fact!

I think Obsession is my favorite.

mission to mars is horrible! it's not even an interesting failure, it's just stupid.

― latebloomer, Saturday, September 11, 2010 7:41 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no wai the part where hes working out in the spaceship to van halen, also i mean the ending come on

I'll always be mystified as to how anyone considers Scarface anything but laughably bad.

im vaguely mystified that people take scarface at face value

im vaguely mystified that people take scarface at face value

OTM. can be applied to a lot of De Palma stuff.

no wai the part where hes working out in the spaceship to van halen, also i mean the ending come on

― ice cr?m, Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

the van halen thing was stupid (mind-boggling to me how that's been help up by some De Palma stans as some kind of "pure joyous expression of cinema"--uuggghhhh stupid). the m&m's were stupid. the dialog was stupid. the alien hologram thingie was reeeeeaaallly stupid. especially when they showed dinosaurs evolving into wooly mammoths and shit (stupid!). the crying alien---beyond stupid---like "this is what stupid is" picture-in-the dictionary stupid. the ending is stupid.

i've seen this movie three times by now (stupid me). i love de palma as much as the next guy but "m2m" (stupid abreviation) is just a failure. stupid, stupid, stupid.

So people like Scarface because it's like Plan 9 from Outer Space? You're right, I didn't pick up on that. Did someone tell Pacino? It's hard to tell if he's in on the joke or not.

crying_alien.gif

I will give "M2M" that it has decent effects (except for the alien hologram crap) and a couple of okay-ish setpieces but the last act ruins any goodwill I had toward the movie by that point.

it is an exceptionally silly movie, i know

*opens hidden door in palm tree sunset wall, walks through*

heh

I get Mission to Mars mixed up with John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (full title) in my memory but both are awesomely, very entertainingly bad iIrc--should have called it Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars.

rewatched scarface last year and it was such a plodding, dull film. barely saved by pacino's hamming. my friend says carlito's way is the best de palma, haven't seen it yet. love mission impossible though

The first half hour of Scarface is timelessly great IMO. The rest is a haywire Oliver Stone metaphor for America or whatever. I'm scared to rewatch Carrie or Blow Out because The Fury was so ridiculously bad on re-viewing a couple years ago--maybe whatever meta games he's playing were really vital cinema at some point, but now they just look cheesy. Casualties of War was the first Kael review where I was like, "Oh, come ON." Her review of Body Double is equally true-blue insane (for how mildly she pans it). Carlito's Way has good scenes and Al Pacino, and a vaguely persuasive love relationship. Did Blow Out have that?

Scarface is great when you can't hear Oliver Stone speaking

Ha, and when is that? I should say, I gave the book of the script to a high-school kid into the movie and just getting going on reading. As haywire metaphors for America go, there are ones with fewer classic lines or scenes of excess.

Ha, and when is that?

When there's gunfire or a buzzsaw.

I thought Kael was way off on a few films towards the end of her tenure (and in some of her post-retirement pronouncements in various interviews--including her continued attachment to De Palma), but I think she was exactly right about how great Casualties of War is. (And, as I remember it, she was one of the few critics who didn't lose sight of it in the wake of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and the late-'80s wave of Vietnam films, none of which I think is as good.) That would have got my vote in this poll, followed, in order, by Blow Out, Carrie, and Dressed to Kill.

o dude u know what we do to people who dont like full metal jacket around here

Gouge out my eyeballs and skull-fuck me? I do like it, especially (obviously) the first 40 minutes. But I think COW is better.

lol was gonna go w/unscrew yr head and shit down yr neck

Carlito's WAy is sooooooooooooo much better than Scarface. It actually has an anti-hero that you don't think is a complete piece of shit, for one.

Fuck you all, The Fury is fucking great.

I loved it too much as a kid to let it go forever, but is there something to the idea that transgressive shifts of tone and over-the-top slow-mo and otherwise toying with audience expectations in a new way have a shelf life? Because once I rejected those things, I just saw one-dimensional characters and Penthouse cinematography.

Still haven't seen Snake Eyes. Should I?

Why did you reject "toying with audience expectations in a new way"?

xpost Snake Eyes is pretty silly, esp the third act, but a lot of fun DePalma stuff in it - one of his best opening long takes and NICOLAS CAGE

The Fury is a deeply silly movie and yeah, if you "reject" all the bells and whistles and weirdness you're left with a pretty generic Carrie-government-conspiracy movie.

lol didn't even realize I wrote "silly" two posts in a row - now three!

I'd watch every De Palma I've seen again (Snake Eyes included) except The Black Dahlia, but then I avoided Bonfire (the book was fun for its descriptions, not its "ideas"). I rejected the De Palma-isms of The Fury the second time around because they seemed dated and indulgent. I sometimes think there's this De Palma switch where you're either in the palm of his hand or laughing at the hand, and he seems to want both reactions at once sometimes, except it's a true binary. And so much of his horror is hysterical, like the treatment of pretty much any real-life phenomena (mental illness, anonymous hook-ups) in Dressed to Kill.

Casualties of War, I don't know. It's been 20 years, but I felt as if the film was lurid, and about a crime that could happen in any war. The great movie about Vietnam crimes remains the documentary Winter Soldier, which was about how policy changed the way war was waged.

Sorry to put ideas in scare quotes, I just can't imagine a good movie of that book being made.

Taglines:
What kind of guys gamble with the boss's money, swipe a killer's Cadillac, and party on the mob's credit card?

Memorable quotes
Harry Valentini: [in the bathroom at the racetrack] Golden brown Knishes. Mmmmmmm. Can you smell 'em Moe, huh? Can you? Can you smell 'em?
Moe Dickstein: [a toilet flushes] It's the guy in the next stall Harry!

Carlito's WAy is sooooooooooooo much better than Scarface. It actually has an anti-hero that you don't think is a complete piece of shit, for one.

Yeah I love John Leguizamo too.

there's this De Palma switch where you're either in the palm of his hand or laughing at the hand

That's De Palma, right there.

i saw him on the street on his birthday!

No one should be homeless on their 70th birthday.

I'll always be mystified as to how anyone considers Scarface anything but laughably bad.

― clemenza, Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:49 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im vaguely mystified that people take scarface at face value

― ice cr?m, Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:57 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

veer wildly btwn both but it doesn't stop me enjoying it nonetheless.

Casualties of War, I don't know. It's been 20 years, but I felt as if the film was lurid, and about a crime that could happen in any war. The great movie about Vietnam crimes remains the documentary Winter Soldier, which was about how policy changed the way war was waged.

I felt like this was a problem in Redacted, but Casualties Of War didn't feel as aggressive about extrapolating something about that specific war from the crime. I felt like the earlier film dealt more with the lead's guilt and complicity as a witness (BIIIIG DePalma subject) where Redacted got really shrill and WAKE UP AMERICA WAKE UP about it in comparison.

I saw Winter Soldier a couple of years ago. Someone spoke that night--maybe someone from the film, I can't remember. I thought it was good, but it didn't hit me like Casualties of War, and I find it difficult to compare them anyway.

not to mention that Casualties Of War (which isn't any more lurid than any of his Nancy Allen movies, though arguably more uncomfortable because it's not set in an updated Hitchockville) really uses the breadth of DePalma's visual gifts (those rack focuses!) while a lot of Redacted consists of guys screaming at each other beneath security cams.

xpost based on that comparison, did people at the time see Casualties Of War as DePalma's attempt to outdo Platoon or something? Because I think its more impressive as DePalma's taking on something heavier than serial killers than his EXPLAINING VIETNAM

I forget if I already said it in this thread, but the first 1/3 of Redacted is pretty outstanding, more like if DePalma had made a Hi Mom! about Iraq. It only melts down when it tries to throw Casualties into the mix and winds up doing a disservice to both.

Both that and Black Dahlia had just enough great stuff among the bad bad bad ideas that I still get excited for his next film even if I can't actually recommend the previous ones to anyone other than hardcore DePalma fans.

I can't bring myself to defend Redacted. Parts of it were "worst movie ever" territory.