medium rare movies

reviews and ratings at  https://www.letterboxd.com/steakbro/ ; follow me on twitter  https://twitter.com/bifteckfrere

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The Insider

directed by Michael Mann / shot by Dante Spinotti

“The unlimited checkbook. That's how big tobacco wins every time on everything, they spend you to death. Six hundred million a year in outside legal - Chadbourne-Park, uh, Ken Starr's firm, Kirkland & Ellis? Listen, GM and Ford, they get nailed after eleven or twelve pickups blow up, right? These clowns have never, I mean ever...”

“Not even once.”

“... not even with hundreds of thousands dying each year from an illness related to their product, have ever lost a personal injury lawsuit! On this case, they'll issue gag orders, sue for breach, anticipatory breach, enjoin him, you, us, his pet dog, the dog's veterinarian, tie 'em up in litigation for ten or fifteen years, I'm telling you, they bat a thousand every time! He knows that, that's why he's not gonna talk to you.“

/

“I can’t seem to find the criteria to decide. It’s too big a decision to make without being resolved in my own mind.”

“Maybe things have changed.”

“What’s changed?”

“You mean since this morning?”

“No, I mean since whenever.”

/

“And you wish you hadn’t come forward? You wish you hadn’t blown the whistle?”

“Yeah, at times I wish I hadn’t done it. There were times I felt... compelled to do it. If you ask me would I do it again, do I think it’s worth it? Yeah, I think it’s worth it.”

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Election

directed by Johnnie To / shot by Cheng Siu-keung

“After 20 years in the triad, your boss and I call ourselves brothers and uncles. But we’re nothing. We’re only good for gambling and drinking. And now... look what I’ve become. Jimmy, if you stay in the triad, make sure you take absolute power. Otherwise, get out now.”

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Cléo from 5 to 7

directed & written by Agnès Varda / shot by Jean Rabier, Alain Levent, Paul Bonis

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La Point-Courte

directed by Agnès Varda / shot by Louis Soulanes, Paul Soulignac, and Louis Stein

“How did you know when I was coming?”

“I came every morning.”

“For the past 5 days? ...You’re sweet.”

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Birth

directed by Jonathan Glazer / shot by Harris Savides

“Let me say this. If I lost my wife, and the next day, a little bird landed on my windowsill, looked me right in the eye, and in plain English said, ‘Sean, it’s me, Anna, I’m back.’ What could I say? I guess I’d believe her. Or I’d want to.”

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Ash is Purest White

directed by Jia Zhangke / shot by Eric Gautier

“Do you hate me?”

“I have no feelings for you. So I don’t hate you.”

“No feelings at all? Then why did you take me in?”

“In the jianghu, we talk about righteousness. You’re no longer in the jianghu. So you wouldn’t understand.”

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Princess Cyd

directed by Stephen Cone / shot by Zoë White

“Oh, I might have half a piece more of Anna May’s cake. You sure you don’t want some cake?”

”No, thanks. You know, maybe if you had sex once in a while you wouldn’t want to eat all the time. ...I’m really sorry. That came out super nasty.”

“Let me just say something real quick. It’s okay, but I need you to listen to me, okay? Yeah, I wish that I could... I could share with you the utter joy it brings me to spend three hours on a Saturday afternoon reading Emerson or Melville or Virginia Woolf... or discussing T.S. Eliot or James Baldwin with a dear friend until dawn. The fulfillment that I get from going to church, from reading theology, from reading science, from praying. But I can’t, because I’m me and you are you. I can’t relate to you the fulfillment that I get from these things. It’s impossible. And I understand, you’re finding your own joy. You’re engaging your own stuff, that’s great. That’s how it should be and it’s a beautiful thing. But hear me. It is not a handicap to have one thing but not another. To be one way and not another. We are different shapes and ways and our happiness is unique. There are no rules of balance. Don’t be sorry. But I’ve got a quarter of a century on you, Cyd. So let’s just enjoy ourselves. Okay?”

“I wanted to ask you what your greatest pleasure in life is. Like... joy.”

“Cake.”

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The Report

directed by Scott Z. Burns / shot by Eigil Byrld

“Daniel Jones, right?”

“Do I know you?”

“I just wanted to tell you that I think you and that report are garbage. You weren’t there, so you don’t know what worked and what didn’t or what we were up against. You may not realize, but we were trying to protect this country from people who wanted to destroy everything we believe in.”

“You may not realize, but we’re trying to do the exact same thing.”

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The Day He Arrives

directed by Hong Sang-soo / shot by Kim Hyung-koo

“I ran into four people on the street today. A film producer, a director, a music director, and a student of mine. They’re all related to film. It all happened in twenty minutes. Isn’t that so strange?”

“It’s just a coincidence.”

“Nothing happened, but it’s still strange.”

“It happened to me too. Ran into someone three times in a day.”

“I can’t understand why it happens. But it’s very strange. I want to know the reason.”

“There is no reason. Random things happen for no reason in our lives. We choose a few and form a line of thought. Made by all these dots, which we call reason. For example... say I accidentally push this cup off the table. Why was my arm here right then? Why did I move that way? Countless coincidences operate behind this action. But we’re only concerned with the result. We make my clumsiness the reason. I am the reason, but I’m really not.”

“True. Too many coincidences behind it. And more are behind those.”

“We can’t help but make up reasons, but many untraceable forces are at work in reality. That’s probably why our actions are fallible and sometimes lead to disaster. I’m talking too much.”

“Not at all. You put a lot of thought into it.”“

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The Social Network

directed by David Fincher / shot by Jeff Cronenweth

“I was your only friend. You had one friend.”

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The Long Goodbye

directed by Robert Altman / shot by Vilmos Zsigmond

“You didn’t have much choice, huh? So you used me.”

“Well, hell, that’s what friends are for! I was in a jam! C’mon, have a drink. I had a dead wife, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that doesn’t belong to me. I had to get out! Simple as that.”

“Simple as that.”

“Goddamn simple!  Cops have me legally dead. Augustine has his money, so he’s not looking for me anymore. I got a girl that loves me, and she’s got more money than Sylvia and Augustine put together! What the hell, nobody cares!”

“Nobody cares but me.”

“Well, that’s you, Marlowe. You’re a born loser.”

“Yeah. I even lost my cat.”

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Killing

directed by Shinya Tsukamoto / shot by Satoshi Hayashi and Shinya Tsukamoto

“You’ll soon bleed to death, so reflect on your life.”

“When you come to hell, I’ll give you time to reflect on your damn life.”

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The Wild Bunch

directed by Sam Peckinpah / shot by Lucien Ballard

“It ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do.”

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Kiki’s Delivery Service

directed by Hayao Miyazaki

“When I was about your age, I decided I wanted to draw. I loved to draw so much, I’d never want to stop, even to sleep. And then one day, all of a sudden, I couldn’t draw anything. I drew and drew, but never liked what I’d done. Up to that point, my drawings were... unoriginal. Things I had seen before. I knew I had to draw something from myself.” 

“Was it difficult?”

“It’s still difficult. But then, the results... They seem to be a little better than before. To fly, you don’t chant a spell or anything, right?”

“They say you fly by your gifts.”

“Witch gifts. I like that. Witch gifts, artist’s gifts, and baker’s gifts. It’s a power given to you by God, or something like that. Though thanks to it, we do have to suffer at times.”

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Too Old to Die Young

Volume V - The Fool

directed by Nicolas Winding Refn / shot by Diego Garcia

“In every puritan country, you will always find a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. But I say, that sin which is unpardonable, unforgivable, is the knowing rejection of truth! The fear of knowledge. And black magic is not a myth. This is knowledge. Magic is the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will. The Nazis knew this! This is why they used the swastika, that powerful and ancient symbol of magic, and they nearly conquered the world! Now we live out here in what’s called a flyover region. The elite fly over us and they can’t even see us out the window of their jet aircraft, and they laugh at us and make fun of us, everything else, claim that we cling to our God and our guns. Well maybe we do. But what do they cling to? Perversion, degeneracy, and every kind of ill you can think of, and they’re gonna laugh at us? There’s another kind of creature that lives out here called a rattlesnake, and it’s got two fangs loaded with poison. You leave it be, it’s fine. Won’t harm anyone. But if you step on it, you’re gonna feel its fangs! Well, I got two fangs too, and I won’t be stepped on. My fangs are Smith & Wesson, revolver and semiautomatic."

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Too Old to Die Young

Volume IV - The Tower

directed by Nicolas Winding Refn / shot by Darius Khondji

“Once there was just man and nature. Then men came bearing crosses. We used to believe that we were the center of the universe, that the sun and the stars all revolved around us. And we spent the last 500 years since Copernicus in this slow crawl to where we are now. To this pinnacle of human achievement. Where we finally bent nature to our will. We split the atom. We broke the fabric of reality. That’s how far we’ve come. Now the lights of our cities stretch further than the stars in the sky. But the more perfect society gets, the more psychotic we become. We evolved through brutality. That’s why we had teeth, and claws. Self preservation was the highest law. But as time went on, the pack began to provide for us, and we abandoned our violent nature. But it never went away. Laid beside us, in our sleep. Waiting. And as it waited, we became slaves to the systems we built. Now it’s all falling apart. Soon our cities will be washed away by floods. Buried in sand. Burned to the ground. That’s why you found me. Because you’re no longer blind to all this. When I was in the bureau, I got shot in the head. I lost my eye. My body deteriorated, and I died for three minutes. But when I came back from the other side, everything was clear to me. It was like I’d been given a gift. As the world fractures, someone... someone has to be there to protect innocence.”

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Lifeforce

directed by Tobe Hooper / shot by Alan Hume

“It was the hardest thing I ever did.”

“We understand. It must have taken great courage to try and-”

“No, you don’t understand. Part of me didn’t want to leave. She killed all my friends and I still didn’t want to leave. Leaving her was the hardest thing I ever did.”

“Tell me again how the girl overpowered you.”

“She was the most overwhelmingly feminine presence I have ever encountered. I was drawn to her on a level…”

“Was it sexual?”

“Yes. Overwhelmingly so, and horrible. Total loss of control.”

“I did it… or she did it. I couldn’t help myself. I’ve never experienced such… I was in love on a level you’ve never known.”