I love the abruptness of the endings to many of Jackie's films (especially the Police Story series) when I first saw Robocop 2 a friend and myself both turned to each other and said, "Jackie Chan ending".
Had a Darren Aronofsky double bill the other night.
Starting with Black Swan (2010).
Nice nods to Argento movies, Jacob's Ladder (1990) and The Red Shoes (1948) with some fantastically freaky moments.
I'm still not convinced that Portman is an actor though.
She is more like a well made prop.
She delivers pretty much the same performance she does in the PT during her white swan sequences and seems to channel Hayden in the black swan sequences.
It works but only because she is surrounded by a team of people that compliment what she is doing.
Sadly with the PT her jigsaw piece like most of the others seemed to come from a different set.
I still flick this film three beans for the refreshing oddness.
Next up was The Fountain (2006).
This became a point of much heated debate in the Chateau.
The better half hated it and called it, "pretentious Buddhist crap" and yet he loved The Tree Of Life (2011) with a passion.
I liked both films.
Neither offer the meaning of life on a plate but both in their way are allegories about time, mortality, love etc.
They both have strong performances, beautiful photography and production values.
But where Malick's film depicts his allegorical imagery with an eye towards the traditions of still photography (you could take almost any image from the film and hang it in a photographic gallery), the allegorical imagery in The Fountain is more painterly.
At times I was reminded of Vincent Ward's choices in What Dreams May Come (1998). I was also reminded of some of his ideas for his lost version of Alien 3.
In Malick's film the religious imagery is purely Christian (because the character doing all tht reflecting was brought up as a Christian), where as in The Fountain the influences come from religions all over the world (including Buddhism but not exclusively so by any means).
I give this one four shrubs.