Movies with great dialogue

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Pickpocket
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Pickpocket »

500 Days of Summer was way too cheesy to have great dialogue. It seemed like a movie for 13-19 year olds.

Some of my favorites:
Before Sunrise/Sunset
Most of Tarantino's shit
Chinatown
Most of Woody Allen's shit.
Five Easy Pieces
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Godfather 1/2
Glengarry Glen Ross


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Groovy!

Scottathon
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Scottathon »

Everything by Eric Rohmer has fantastic dialogue.

omgfridge
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by omgfridge »

Tarantino's catalogue.

Pickpocket
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Pickpocket »

Network needs to be mentioned as well.

ShogunRua
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by ShogunRua »

Pickpocket wrote:Most of Tarantino's shit


OMGFridge wrote:Tarantino's catalogue.


Absolutely not. Sure, if the topic was called "movies with obnoxious, juvenile, frequently retarded dialogue", he would be the reigning champion. It's like people forget "The Man from Hollywood" in "4 Rooms", "Death Proof" in "Grindhouse", "Jackie Brown", and the ridiculously stupid quotes in both "Kill Bill" movies.

The dialogue was pretty good for most of "Inglorious Basterds" and "Pulp Fiction", which gives him a 2 out of 7 success rate.

However,

Pickpocket wrote:Network needs to be mentioned as well.


Multiple People wrote:12 Angry Men


ShogunRua wrote:Find me Guilty


Sidney Lumet films have consistently great dialogue.
Last edited by ShogunRua on Thu Jun 03, 2010 5:59 am, edited 2 times in total.

Stewball
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Stewball »

Pickpocket wrote:500 Days of Summer was way too cheesy to have great dialogue. It seemed like a movie for 13-19 year olds.


Not according to a large majority of the R/T critics who reviewed it. I found the comment in bold near the end particularly edifying:

The anti-love story, (500) Days of Summer, is supported by a clever script and some superior acting by Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
SUPPLIED PHOTO

Bruce DeMara entertainment reporter

(500) Days of Summer

(3 1/2 out of 4)

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel. Directed by Marc Webb. 95 minutes. At the Varsity. PG

It's a topsy-turvy world in (500) Days of Summer, one in which the guy falls in love but it's the girl who doesn't want anything beyond sex and friendship, or anything that hints at emotional commitment.

When Summer (Zooey Deschanel) explains to boyfriend Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) that they've recently been "fighting like Sid and Nancy" – a reference to Sex Pistols punk rocker Sid Vicious who savagely murdered girlfriend Nancy Spungen in 1978 – she makes it clear that she's Sid and he's Nancy.

Early in the film when Summer drops the bomb on Tom, and his two friends prove hopeless at alleviating his terrible grief, they turn to his younger sister, Rachel, to deliver some bracing and comforting words of wisdom.

The script by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber is marvelous throughout as well as unexpectedly witty and wise, considering their previous collaboration was – yikes! – The Pink Panther 2.

Director Marc Webb adeptly uses Los Angeles as a backdrop to send the audience back and forth in time over the 500 days from when Tom first lays eyes on Summer until he's finally able to wash that girl right out of his hair.

But it's the performance by Gordon-Levitt as the initially happy-go-lucky twentysomething slacker Tom – a trained architect who's content to write greeting cards – that makes this offbeat not-really-a-love story work so well.

Best known for his role as the youngest alien on the TV series, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Gordon-Levitt displays a depth and breadth of skill in making his character believable and likeable, proof that his role in earlier films, such as the teen film noir murder mystery, Brick, was no fluke. This guy has got the chops.

Deschanel is very good as the enigmatic blue-eyed siren, whom a narrator tells us from the outset possesses the "Summer Effect," the ability to induce young men to buy record amounts of ice cream and landlords to offer substantially reduced rents.

There's loads of pop love songs throughout – including Patrick Swayze's sappy "She's Like the Wind" – scads of great dialogue, a soupçon of social satire aimed at consumerism and a nice poke of French surrealist filmmaking that is sublime.

Falling in love or falling out? This film offers a helpful tonic for either condition.


Cheesy is way overplaying your need to stick by your original defective assessment.

shalev
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by shalev »

Stewball wrote:Dialogue doesn't have to be dramatic, just pointed. There are jillion classic quotes in O Brother, but you wouldn't used any of them as examples of the King's English.

You comletely misunderstood me here, for example Woolf has suberb dailogue, or FIght Club, just to name a couple and they certainly weren't "King's English". (Maybe specacular wasn't the right word here :oops: )

Stewball wrote:I think we may differ in that I consider myself a romantic cynic. I want to expose romance, or love, for what it really is, but correct me if I'm wrong, you're cynical about the whole idea of romance/love--which is sort of the way the movie started out, but not where it ended up. She was the cynic about the whole concept of love, she was Sid Vicious, yet she was turned around as he eventually was from his initial approach, by reality. We can't deny love, but we certainly can, and must, deny any cosmic imperative attributed to it--which is certainly anti- 99.8% of today's romantic comedies. But most people don't pick up on the difference, or at least the importance of the difference.


I really don't want to argue whether that's a great movie or not (or whether it's anti-anything), I think it's quite pointless. This is supposed to be about the dialogue, anyway. There should be another thread for "500DOS - cheesy rom com or groundbreaking philosophical statement on the modern concept of love?" (or maybe there already is such a thread?)

Stewball wrote:Or we could go back to arranged marriages. :shock:

What does that have to do with anything? :?
Is your statement "anyone who don't love/worship this movie must have primitive ideas about love and hasn't adapted to the modern way of life"? :shock: :shock:
----------------

Harakiri - It's a bit hard to appreciate dialogue in a language you completely don't understand but even through the subtitles it was very powerful.

Pickpocket
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Pickpocket »

ShogunRua wrote:Absolutely not. Sure, if the topic was called "movies with obnoxious, juvenile, frequently retarded dialogue", he would be the reigning champion. It's like people forget "The Man from Hollywood" in "4 Rooms", "Death Proof" in "Grindhouse", "Jackie Brown", and the ridiculously stupid quotes in both "Kill Bill" movies.

Yeah, he has had some misses, hence why I said "most." The dialogue in Death Proof was particularly awful. His part in 4 Rooms wasn't that bad, the only one worth watching really. Kill Bill's dialogue is supposed to be dumb, and it works.

Stewball wrote:Not according to a large majority of the R/T critics who reviewed it. I found the comment in bold near the end particularly edifying:

Well, I'm glad that the critics can verify your wrong opinion. I believe they also said Juno had great dialogue. I don't think they know what great is, home skillet.

PS average imdb score for people under 18 is 8.6. Over 45 is a 7.0.

Stewball
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Stewball »

Pickpocket wrote:PS average imdb score for people under 18 is 8.6. Over 45 is a 7.0.


Which is exactly what mine is, now that you mention it. In fact, I've labeled it (for me) "Hollywood average".


shalev wrote:I really don't want to argue whether that's a great movie or not (or whether it's anti-anything),


Too late. 8-)

I think a lot of the problems some here have with the movie is that it's a rom-com, which by default can't be great, be it pro-, anti- or whatever; and therefore the dialogue can't be great (or even interesting) either. It's like you say the word "musical", and people run screaming for the doors and jumping off the balconies--"musical" being categorized by many people as a sub-genre of the rom-com. I see it as a clash of the currently dominant (whatever the adjective for the muse for film is) concept of (masculine) "cool", with that of the (feminine) "romantic". Most well balanced people come close to balancing the two IMNTBHO.

Spunkie
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Re: Movies with great dialogue

Post by Spunkie »

Stewball wrote:
Pickpocket wrote:PS average imdb score for people under 18 is 8.6. Over 45 is a 7.0.


Which is exactly what mine is, now that you mention it. In fact, I've labeled it (for me) "Hollywood average".


shalev wrote:I really don't want to argue whether that's a great movie or not (or whether it's anti-anything),


Too late. 8-)

I think a lot of the problems some here have with the movie is that it's a rom-com, which by default can't be great, be it pro-, anti- or whatever; and therefore the dialogue can't be great (or even interesting) either. It's like you say the word "musical", and people run screaming for the doors and jumping off the balconies--"musical" being categorized by many people as a sub-genre of the rom-com. I see it as a clash of the currently dominant (whatever the adjective for the muse for film is) concept of (masculine) "cool", with that of the (feminine) "romantic". Most well balanced people come close to balancing the two IMNTBHO.


I think you're too stuck up with the film's antiness and probably your boredom of the norms of romcom is misguiding you to overestimate/appreciate 500 Days. The film's main aim is giving the usual audience of the genre a bend around the edge, standart indie sensibilities dialogue and techniquewise, cliche start, reverse loop in the middle section, the guy doesn't get the girl and that's it. It's as obsessed about the general belief of -the fated one- as much as any romcom. The candy ending is a proof for that, not Summer, maybe Autumn.

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