Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Movie Club #20: Visitor Q and Irreversible

0:00 - 2:10 -- Intro/Roll Call
2:10 - 42:50 -- Visitor Q
42:50 - 1:39:20 -- Irreversible
1:39:20 - 1:44:03 -- Next Month/Outro




» Download MP3 (47 MB)





Visitor Q (2001)
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Starring: Ken'ichi Endô, Shungiku Uchida, Kazushi Watanabe, Jun Mutô, Fujiko, Shôko Nakahara, Ikko Suzuki





















Irreversible (2002)
Directed by: Gasper Noé
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Monica Belucci, Albert Dupontel

11 comments:

antho said...

In my opinion, Audition is Miike's masterpiece.

Kurt Halfyard said...

You'd be right, Antho! Although he has a lot of excellent and interesting films. The Bird People of China, 13 Assassins is amazingly high on craft, the wacky Happiness of The Katikuris, etc. etc. VISITOR Q is more of an experiment than a film at times...and not always the most thought out one, considering the speed at which Miike works...

Anonymous said...

Good show!
But one question remains - what is a "morbot"?

Anonymous said...

"Visitor Q" is just vile and terrible boring. It's like observing a pile of dog poop rotting in the sun.

"Irreversible" is a masterpiece.

I wished you guys and girls would do more shows. Let's just hope we get to hear #21 before next Spring.

And now I need to check out that Norbert movie....

Nat said...

I saw Irreversible in theaters back in 2002 (was the last person standing in the theater, too: Snap!) and disliked it intensely at the time, but after watching A Serbian Film and discussing it with our group on the podcast, I had a renewed appreciation for it--namely for Noe's insistence on keeping the camera rolling and Bellucci's reactions. The violence never seemed exploitative, it was just the nihilism that initially turned me off.

So I think you guys nailed it on this film, and you have two excellent choices for the next podcast. F for Fake is probably my favorite doc of all time, and who doesn't have a lot to say (and argue) about Catfish?

James Gillham said...

Anon - I was searching for the term 'malware.' 'Morbots' was the best I could come up with on such short notice. Whatever they are, they are not good and were giving Matt all sorts of trouble last week.

drewbacca said...

I agree with Gamble's cameo appearance. Irreversible is simply boring. There are the two shock moments and the rest is like watching paint dry as you slowly come down from an acid trip - and actually it's probably not even that fun.

I don't consider the backwards in time thing to be a gimmick, but I do find it really all there is to this movie. It's a nice idea but it needs a story to go along with it. One of you compared this to memento., which I think does memento. a major disservice. That film has interesting characters, story arc and it's not simply just going backwards; there is nuance and deeper meaning to each scene. With Irreversible it's seeing the conclusion of a film first, then seeing what happened earlier in the day and it is dreadfully dull.

Also, I hate the camera work here (from beginning to end). Can't even tell what's going on in the beginning and in the end it's trying so hard to be pretty that it just looks typical (which is worse in my opinion).

After the shock of the rape scene, nothing else really seems to matter.

Yes, after a second viewing, I hate this movie.

drewbacca said...

I watched VQ a few years back and remember very little about it - other than I hated it and was mostly bored.

Anonymous said...

James sounds like Michael Jackson.

Anonymous said...

Love your podcasts! Here's a suggestion, how about Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy?

Anonymous said...

Is this related to this movie club :http://themovieclub.net/podcast-episode-7-season-2
?