Quote:
Originally Posted by rhett
I'm not really in the "Hitchcock is great" camp. He's introduced cinema to many great themes and techniques, but its taken more experimental filmmakers, with greater freedom and creativity to make great films from his great concepts. THE TENANT and BODY DOUBLE are, by comparison, much more interesting films than Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW. Had Hitch more freedom from studio sterility, then perhaps his works would age better, but to me many of them seem too reserved to really leave an impact. That said, I still enjoyed NOTORIOUS, but not quite the way I'd hoped.
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I like De Palma as much as the next guy, but
Body Double is just hilarious, I can't compare it to Hitchcock with a straight face at all. Most of De Palma's thrillers are just taken from Hitchcock blueprints, with a few modern camera techniques thrown in. Polanski, on the other hand, is brilliant, and many of his earlier films could be deemed as modern-day Hitch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhett
I'm not a Del Toro fan. At all. The man has an eye for creature design, but really, whether he's making horror sequels, comic book extravaganzas or Important Statements About Franco's Regime, he's still just one big horror geek. What he's essentially done with PAN'S LABYRINTH is take all the subtleties of great anti-Franco Spanish works like THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE and ANNA AND THE WOLVES and transformed it into obvious, critic-friendly allegory. It is this attempt to pander to the mainstream that makes this weaker than usual for Del Toro.
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I'm not a big fan either, outside of
Cronos, but I loved
Pan's Labyrinth. I can see the parallels with
The Spirit of the Beehive, but I'd say
Beehive is a more alienating experience, one that is probably MUCH more personal to the director and to people who lived in that era than someone who didn't. I'm sure most people, myself included, can identify with
PL much easier, as even without the setting, one can reminisce on being a child in a bad situation where imagination lets you escape.