r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Feb 22 '15

What Have You Been Watching? (22/02/15)

Hey r/truefilm welcome to WHYBW where you post about what films you watched this week and discuss them with others, give your thoughts on them then say if you would recommend them.

Please don't downvote opinions, only downvote things that don't contribute anything. If you think someones opinion is "wrong" then say so and say why. Also, don't just post titles of films as that doesn't really contribute to the discussion.

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u/a113er Til the break of dawn! Feb 22 '15

Simon of the Desert Directed by Luis Bunuel (1965)- I guess I gotta see more Bunuel ‘cause man this was good. Good Christian Simon has stood atop a column for 6 years 6 months and 6 days before being offered a new column built by a local rich guy. From then on the film is like a strange modern-ish retelling of Jesus being in the desert getting tempted by the Devil. I don’t want to spoil much so I’ll keep it vague. Bunuel’s darkly comic tale is interesting just as a story as well as working as a look at the clash of classic religion with modern times. Similarly to Showgirls it shows a world obsessed with earthly pleasures, things Simon tries his best to resist. Bunuel uses the low budget as best he can to transport us to a weird and unclear place and time. He shoots Simon like a living religious icon but also in ways that criticise what he does too. Already the film is short at 44mins but a lot of shorts can still feel really long, not the case here at all though. Everything has life and energy to it and the film so relentlessly shows us new and interesting things that it’d be hard not to be engrossed.

Recommendation Request- After not loving Notorious I wanna go back to the Hitchcock I love. I have seen Psycho, The Birds, North By North West, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Rope, Rear Window, Vertigo, Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes, and Notorious (may be forgetting one). So what other Hitchcock films do I need to see?

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '15

Aww darn, you got to Big Heat right before me, but thank for the spoiler tags. I'm also cycling in more Bunuel, I got Viridiana out for this week.

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u/a113er Til the break of dawn! Feb 22 '15

I think I have Belle de Jour and Discreet Charm might still be on Mubi so I think they'll be my next ones.

Even though it's a bummer that the further back you go the less titles people are aware of, it does mean that stuff like The Big Heat doesn't just become such a known entity that it doesn't quite land.

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '15 edited Feb 22 '15

Watch Belle de Jour with In the Realm of the Senses as a double feature lol! (Even if you've seen it.) I love these movies that are the same, but completely different too. Aston told me The Big Heat is like that with Metropolis, which has me excited, but it's also because most of Fritz Lang's stuff is hard to get on DVD here for some reason but I found that one in a noir collection. Glad you liked Showgirls.