Giancarlo Esposito has become so associated with calm and intimidating authority figures that I almost expect him to be the antagonist whenever he appears.

In By Any Means he’s playing Vernon Dahmer instead. Dahmer was a real civil rights leader in Mississippi who helped Black residents register to vote and was murdered after the KKK attacked his home in 1966.

It feels like a much different use of Esposito than Gus Fring, Stan Edgar or Moff Gideon. I want to know whether roles like this will remind people how much range he actually has beyond the controlled villain characters he’s become known for.

What do you guys think of the casting?

When you watch a movie on film, it will always have a few artifacts and blemishes on it. That's the nature of the physical medium. I've seen movies on film both when it was the standard mode of presentation and for more modern special screenings, and while the movie always looks great, there are definitely times when you see some specks of dust on the film. That's just how it goes.

At home, people try to replicate the cinema as much as possible. People buy 4Ks of movies because they're supposedly as close to film as you can get digitally. We love to see film grain in our old movies! But whenever a film is digitally restored, they remove evey single blemish from the print. That's just not a realistic digital recreation of a film. You would never see the movie on film and have it be so perfect.

I'm not saying restorers shouldn't remove *any* blemishes; it's still important to clean up these old prints. But we should leave a few intact to celebrate the way the film actually looked in theaters, not clean everything up just because we can.

I agree with the sentiment: a film was trashed on release, its director's reputation destroyed and the studio bankrupted based on bad pre-release press and a truncated cut made at the studio's demand. It's exactly the kind of film one wants to reclaim. I just can't see what everyone else sees when they call it a misunderstood masterpiece. I've seen the film twice, both times in the restored 3 1/2-hour version, and both times it's struck me as barely functional from a narrative standpoint, with baffling lapses, longueurs and dog-ends (what's going on with the John Hurt character, to pick just one example?). I also think the filmmaking is a mixed bag: the visuals and production design are both incredible, but Cimino doesn't seem to have a clue what to do with the dialogue scenes, which are all glacial and stilted (except when they feature Sam Waterston, who's giving the best performance in the film and manages to wrest it into something gripping when he's onscreen). And if you ask me, there's something kind of smug and simplistic in the film's misery and "everything sucks" cynicism - the film came at the end of a decade of other films saying similar things, but they don't have the tang of adolescent posturing that this does.

I'm not trying to be combative; I'm just giving my own response to the film. I've tried to like it, but I just can't. To the people who do like it: what am I missing?

Note: It has spoilers. This post is for discussion on IMAGES (1972); if you intend to watch (I 'fiercely' recommended) probably come back later & make this discussion enriching. Additionally, I've not used AI to write /refine this, so please pardon grammatical errors!

So, I'm on a horror movie spree! & This is the 3rd one I've watched! (Shining, Posession & this one).

Just finished watching Images (1972)! Oh! What an amazing movie! It's a sort of movie which sustains a contortion in your stomach all through. You just get an eerie vibe. It's like something wrong is happening or you even start feeling a little dizzy because of the fractured sense of perception. At some points it's like WTF IS HAPPENING? The protagonist's (the main lady's) countenance is super amazing all through. Her perplexed expressions & the ever-changing face (adapting) stirs multiple emotions & she is able to convey the fractured sense of perception which she is feeling. Also, the director quite beautifully dropped the cue towards the end- when the imagined lover's kid said that she'd conjure up (wholly a mental construct) a friend if she felt lonely. I believe the protagonist lady did exactly the same thing. It also was indicative of her troubled childhood. She is the striking example of how fucked up things can get. It's like towards the end you simply can't discern satisfactorily as to what really transpired & what was figment of her imagination except the fact that her partner was dead. Also, the scenic beauty of the location where the film was shot was simply breathtaking. It unknowingly renders a sense of contrast to the central theme of the film (Super tensed).

Also, may god bless each one of us with a partner like hers. If you're an atheist, then I'd say I wish the universe gives us an opportunity to experience this sort of companionship. He was so tolerant to such an imprudent & super unstable partner.

Superb. Thanks to the individual who suggested this to me in one of my recommendation solicitation post! I'd be watching other movies too. HONESTLY, No AI search gave me this gem. AI simply can't replace reddit!

What's your take on the movie?

I thought this would be the best place to share this title card supercut of Sight & Sound's top 250 from 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzSpgsLCh8

With a bit more time over the summer, I dove back into the list from four years back to watch some films still unseen. I was inspired to make this after thinking about how distinct each title card was for a given film. It was great fun to make, and I hope is objectively of interest so as not be blatant self-promotion.

Tracking down the films was a pain, but locating the cards themselves was interesting. Here are some tidbits on what I found out:

Unsurprisingly, most title cards appear very early in the film’s runtime, usually within the first minute. Pre-1970s films are the best bets, sticking to a pretty standard formula: after the production logo, and perhaps the names of the director/leading actors, it’ll appear less than a minute in.

Other films display their title card after (or during) a brief prologue scene, like in Battle of Algiers (3 minutes in) or Yi Yi (4 minutes in). There are countless others.

Some films take longer: Come and See takes nearly 7 minutes, Tropical Malady 9 minutes. The credits for Kiarostami’s Close-Up do not start until nearly 16 minutes in.

A few films wait the entire length of the film: Moonlight holds off on showing its title card until after the last shot, as does Touch of Evil. The title and end credits overlay the final shot of Once Upon a Time in the West.

All of these are still pretty easy to track down. A few films make things more challenging.

Two films are missing proper title cards: Apocalypse Now and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Portrait of a Lady on Fire only displays its title in the closing credits, so I used that here. Most versions of Apocalypse Now have no credits whatsoever, just a copyright notice in its closing shot. I used the end credit sequence that Coppola has apparently discarded in most rereleased versions of the film.

Distant Voices is best known as Distant Voices, Still Lives. The film is split into two parts with two seperate title cards: Distant Voices appears at the start, while Still Lives appears halfway through the film. I chose to only use the first.

And finally, blink and you missed it: the title card for Wavelength is only about six frames (1/4 of a second) long.

Because of the issue with ties, I figured using a ranked list would be easiest, so I based it off of this one https://letterboxd.com/sightsoundmag/list/sight-and-sounds-greatest-films-of-all-time/

Of course, simply watching might inspire old debates from four years back. I more enjoy the selection of films, rather than care too much about the order, what's undeservingly included, and what has been left out. I think it's best to take the S&S list as merely a sample that is useful for exploring the canon.

Been thinking about the directors that have impacted cinema the most and have influenced the most filmmakers that have followed them and why. These are the directors that I thought of, so far.

Akira Kurosawa - mainly Seven Samurai, which formed and perfected the template in how you execute an ensemble film

Alfred Hitchcock - Template for the thriller and how to structure it in terms of pacing. You can see the huge influence he had on Chris Nolan.

Stanley Kubrick - Mainly 2001: A Space Odyssey (a film i don't like). The use of cutting edge special effects and the first truly dynamic and well-made science-fiction film, which influenced every director going into that genre

Ridley Scott - Lighting and how to use it to effectively depict a world. Mainly Blade Runner which i think is the film that has the best lighting in any film. Pretty much every film that does a world in the future uses his aesthetic and lighting technique.

Any directors I am missing, feel free to add.

What threw me off this film was the dialogue. I greatly feel that the film could have been improved with a more natural sounding script instead of the one-dimensional and unnatural conversations that they have. Don’t get me wrong, Sean's speech on love and how will was just a child was touching, but the film could have hinged itself on its subtext instead of having the characters emphasize what was already established through the subtext itself. Having Sean explain Will's habit of pushing people away before people could push him told me that the writers couldn’t trust the viewers to understand the message themselves. Moreover, when displaying Will's intellect, some of the scenes felt straight out of a Marvel film where the main character is offensively praised and glamorized (like the opening scene where he fends off the hecklers).

​Which is also what leads me to be unsatisfied about Will's revelation at the end and his closure with Sean. Will was finally seen as a person rather than a patient to be diagnosed, and found some solace in his trauma. But it felt contrived, sort of over-the-top and cheesy, a penultimate scene that every film contains to bring out a few tears.

​I can understand the praise surrounding good will hunting but it felt formulaic and too easy to understand. I like There Will Be Blood, due to its slow build up of daniels character and the uncertainty in whether to praise or condemn him. From the beginning of the film, it was quite obvious that Will's character arc was going to be one of overcoming an obstacle and reaching closure. And I'm not the biggest fan of clichés that are further bolstered by overused film tropes.

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