Letterboxd — Your life in film

There are so many unique and wonderful things about this film. Everything about Mendoza’s direction is engaging and involving. The colours are sublime.

Cannot express how much this film makes me want long white wizard hair

One of the most brilliant things about this film is the affective power of the prison. It takes over you like the overlook hotel takes over you. The cinematography is gorgeous and each performance is crushing as obsessive in its own way. Fantastic.

Truly one of the best films ever made. Falconetti and Artaud’s performances are still, to this day, some of the most expressive and moving examples of emotional dejection committed to film. And, throughout, the lighting a camera work is immaculate. So impressive for a film made close to 100 years ago.

I am a dear lover of shit body horror films, and this had been a gap for many years, but It was virtually unwatchable. Frustratingly poor storytelling and direction, and pretty despicably exploitative even by 70s/80s exploitation movie standards.

Always creeps me out how ~American dream~ films are so terrified of including women with any kind of agency, and someone had clearly been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy when they put the screenplay together, but I still enjoyed the movie. Clark Duke is always surprisingly good and the scenes with the three main cast members together are the brightest parts - like you really get a sense that they’re lost in something together.

Will never forgive Jacko for cutting out the Sharkey narrative but these films are perfect fantasy. Always get a buzz for how immaculately Sean Astin plays Samwise and honestly the landscape shots and detail in the locations and mise-en-scenes is just unmatched.

I cannot understand why so many people had a wide on for this film. Twee, rhythmless, obvious, nonsense.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Absurdly good. Every stupid one liner has me on the floor every time I watch.

There is no greater force in this world than Camp.

I watched this again because my sister’s boyfriend looks exactly like Brian Blessed at the moment. My thoughts are as follows:

How the fuck did I never realise Ming is Max Von Sidow? Why did nobody murder the person who wrote the dialogue? Does anybody actually know what Freddy Mercury sings in the verses or is it just one of life’s mysteries?

Noomi Rapace is a hugely underrated actor. She shines in this brutal, fairly tawdry, and yet undeniably interesting film. It is not even slightly an easy watch, but it’s a spectacle.