Art As Action

ckam

Make America Great For Who?
Oct 8, 2008
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I'm trying to think of another movie and all that comes up as "pretentious" action movie is Advent Children. Not exactly art, but the animation style and whatnot really was interesting.
 

anian

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Sep 10, 2008
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Hmm, exactly, many more movies here, but I just can't remember any right now.

Although slow paced, Bob mentioned The Fall, it was ok and kind of actiony, yet very dreamlike and stylish.

I watched Strings in a festival some years ago, basically I watched it because the other movie (Land of plenty) was late. It's a rather good movie, I thin it deserves a watchover.

Mars attacks is an example of where Burton actually shinces, when he's kind of limited to some kind of "realistic" settings (Big fish, Beetlejuice, Batman) and not when he's cut loose (Charlie, Alice) and he ends up meandering and going into some weird uninteresting and unoriginal childish fantasy.

Oh, and Excalibur, damn it I have loved that film since I was a kid, back then it freaked me the hell out, but now it's a brilliant imagining of the Merlin legend that has all the blood, shining armours, hallucinations and magic and of course with that point of the Merlin legend - no magic can ever save people from their own corruption and greed.

Golden flower looks interesting.
 

castlewise

Lord Fancypants
Jul 18, 2010
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Yeesh. Just reading these things makes me feel like a movie geek.

OT: I liked House of Flying Daggers and Hero. I should give Golden Flower a try.
 

Smurf McSmurfington

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Jun 24, 2010
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Ooh, another one of these lists, thank you, Bob!
(P.S. if that sounded in any way ironic or sarcastic, know it was meant to be completely, and utterly sincere)

These are films I absolutely must watch... and also Immortals.

Moar of these lists please.
 

rayen020

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May 20, 2009
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I'm not going to name anything specifically, but alot of anime action movies would fall into this category. I think here you're mostly refering to live action movies instead of stylistic approaches to animated movies which is the norm. just throwing it in there.
 

Sylocat

Sci-Fi & Shakespeare
Nov 13, 2007
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castlewise said:
OT: I liked House of Flying Daggers and Hero. I should give Golden Flower a try.
I honestly would advise just doing a Google image search and checking out the beautiful art direction, rather than watching the movie.

I'm honestly surprised that it gets recommended at all by the "arty" crowd, given that I failed to detect any sort of character arc or emotional journey, at least one that wasn't negated by the godawful ending.
 

Sylocat

Sci-Fi & Shakespeare
Nov 13, 2007
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OT: Although almost all the "action" takes place in an MMORPG, I'd add Summer Wars to the list (I don't know if Bob's seen it, though... it's a very recent film). It delves into a contrast between old tradition and new culture, and the epic fantasy-action serves as a great metaphor.
 

LordBojangles

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Feb 25, 2009
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I loved Curse of the Golden Flower, but I recommend the subtitled version; my friend tried to watch the English dub and couldn't finish it.
 

octafish

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Apr 23, 2010
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Curse of the Golden Flower, that's the one about the invention of the push up bra in ancient China isn't it? Jesus that film had more fanservice tits than Mass Effect 2.

Do Takeshi Kitano's films count as action films?

EDIT: Just kidding, very few things have more fanservice than ME2.
 

Falseprophet

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Jan 13, 2009
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octafish said:
Do Takeshi Kitano's films count as action films?
Surely his remake of Zatoichi counts--gotta love the musical number at the end. Taboo was a really artsy samurai flick as well.
 

maxben

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Jun 9, 2010
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LordBojangles said:
I loved Curse of the Golden Flower, but I recommend the subtitled version; my friend tried to watch the English dub and couldn't finish it.
That's ALWAYS good advice regardless of the language, genre, or particular movie.
 

gorfias

Unrealistic but happy
Legacy
May 13, 2009
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anian said:
Oh, and Excalibur, damn it I have loved that film since I was a kid, back then it freaked me the hell out, but now it's a brilliant imagining of the Merlin legend that has all the blood, shining armours, hallucinations and magic and of course with that point of the Merlin legend - no magic can ever save people from their own corruption and greed.
You wanna really freak out, read the original stuff. I didn't until years after loving this movie. The original stuff sounds a lot like the fantasys of a guy from the period and telling of the mores of the time. Example: Unlike the chaste love of Gwenivere and Lancelot in modern telling, Gwen was his woman in the original, and she would happily have him kill anyone that might expose their affair. As far as I can tell, it was understood the Queen screwed around, but it was to be kept discrete.
 

Actual

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Jun 24, 2008
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The Japanese don't seem to have the same problem with arty action movies that the west does.

Another one I feel worth mentioning is Casshern. It's like a 2 hour rock music video with super powered ninjas and robots. It's amazing but it builds very slowly, the first half is all scene setting and tension building.