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- 1234 December 2010
- Clever_girl December 2010
- curt December 2010
- Death October 2011
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- Log_Gary December 2010
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- Nick December 2010
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- zin December 2010
good suggestions
love
Comments
2001
Indiana Jones
Ghostbusters
Back to the Future
They are man, and they do bust stuff, but it's not really about machismo is it?
Some of them are total weiners.
Cool Hand Luke
The French Connection
the Outlaw Josey Wales
Straw Dogs
Rocky
Rounders
The Wild Bunch
Any Sam Peckinpah movie
"Frank: Look, in what I do there are sometimes pressures. What the hell do you think that I do? Come on. Come on, every morning I walk in for five months, say hi - what the hell do you think that I do?
Jessie: You sell little fucking cars, that's what you do.
Frank: I wear $150 slacks, I wear silk shirts, I wear $800 suits, I wear a gold watch, I wear a perfect, D-flawless three carat ring. I change cars like other guys change their fucking shoes. I'm a thief. I've been in prison, all right?
Jessie: So what, I don't care.
Frank: So what?
Jessie: Don't tell me.
Frank: So what? I never even told my wife that...
Jessie: I don't care.
Frank: Who is now gone. Did I ever come on to you?
Jessie: No.
Frank: Well you see.
Jessie: See? See what?
Frank: See, I - I am a straight arrow. I am a true blue kind of a guy. I've been cool. I am now unmarried. So let's cut the mini-moves and the bullshit, and get on with this big romance.
Jessie: ...What? I don't believe it. Do you think that I've been waiting for you to come along? What is this shit.
Frank: You think I'm kidding, I can tell. This is strictly on the up and up. "
I also submit: Lethal Weapon. So good! You've forgotten how good it is.
Die Hard and Wall Street are also mostly okay. ghostbusters is totally wrong!!!! Back to the Future is TOTALLY WRONG!!!
I would add:
The Searchers
Cape Fear
The Departed
Really any Scorcese film actually, I mean, Goodfellas? PLEASE
Oh man, I mean, really, RAGING BULL???? Doesn't get manlier than that, with all manliness's inherent problematics and face-punchings and inabilities to deal with the ladies
Early Godard, what a chauvy
There is this other type of manly that is like wiener-manly, like you couldn't shoot a deer but you still think you are a badass. Manly if "manly" means mostly "thinking you are the greatest person on the earth and girls are dumb." Hipster movies. Wall Street!
JEREMIAH JOHNSON, traditional manly (shooting indians and wearing bearskin only)
Fight Club
Point Break
Rambo
Bad Boys
Sebastien (Derek Jarman movie full of muscular army dudes with boners and men doing it to other men and then shooting each other full of arrows: doesn't get much manlier than that)
Ben Hur (same as the Jarman, but subtextually (heston doesn't get it))
TOP GUN, another famously subtextual homoerotic romance
Sherlock Holmes (the new one, with the muscles and the homo love)
the "Angry Young Man" films of the 60's in Britain (Lindsey Anderson, Nicholas Roeg)
Apocalypse Now??
Anything made by Werner Herzog
Anything made by that idiot Brian DePalma
Kurosawa: Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai
Bruce Lee
The Wrestler!!
Reservoir Dogs
Excuse me I could go on all day
other manly movies:
Point Blank (with Lee Marvin) or its Mel Gibson remake, Payback
The Rock
Slap Shot
Also, while trying to remember the name of Point Blank, I found the Wikipedia entry for The Sons Of Lee Marvin. It's a secret society of people who look kinda like Lee Marvin. I'd heard Jim Jarmusch talk about this in an interview once, but I had no idea it was a real thing (kinda).
there is definitely an archetypal male character out there: misunderstood / from humble upbringing / the underdog / yet strong and virtuous (and very handsome). the flawed reluctant hero. basically the guy most guys wish they were or like to pretend they are. there are many, many examples out there of this character, so many it's kind of pathetic. perhaps none are more painfully obvious than the character Will Hunting (Matt Damon / Good Will Hunting).
CRIME ~ Bob The Gambler
EPIC ~ Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
MANLY + MANLY PROBLEMATICS + MANLY ANGST ALL ROLLED UP
PLUS THAT EMO SCENE WITH THE HORSE
Mel Gibson has pretty much played that character over and over again (Braveheart makes me gag). Bruce Willis qualifies, and definitely Sly Stalone. who else?
And then there is Denzel Washington, who is just so much more manly than all the other manly men that he needs his own catagory.
I also imagine the Mark Walhburg flick 'The Fighter' would be of interest.
I'm also interested in the phenomenon of Man Caves, where these films are supposed to be watched. You know, it's said that men prefer the company of other men. And the man cave is heavily defined by its absenting of a feminine presence. As if the rest of the house were the woman cave and oppressive in some way that demands that the man of the house get a Room of His Own.
Man films create worlds that are playgrounds for our concept of masculine virtue, and a a lot of the substance of that virtue is defined negatively against what we fear of as feminine power. Sitting in a man room watching a man movie gives a modern guy a feeling of being in some sort of tree fort where we're allowed for a few hours to let our ids off the chain and in some way we need this to fly in the face of womankind. In the same way that it's important for experimental and avant-garde art be agressive and incomprehensible to the Bourgeoisie, manly films are actually directly concerned with repulsing what are seen as feminine values (e.g. feelin's). We like see see men behaving badly. Men in manly films have apartments that are totally trashed, as a rule.
Manly films do carry certain strong emotions, but they don't often have to do with the feelings of others. Or at least the good ones don't. They're about the drive to enact one's own personal will, or be killed trying to. And the character doesn't have to struggle to become this person; there's very little character development entailed. It's just a question of mechanics: will he or won't he?
I gotta say, these are some of my favorite kinds of movies. Also, has anyone read Harold Robbins?
What about Clash of the Titans!? Perseus definitely fits that manly man character.
Modern Manly can take into consideration other areas of being macho or a pig or "mastering" or "conquering." Conquering money, the stock market, can equal a new kind of manly, although there are also plenty of film tropes involving one of these types encountering a John Wayne type and being humiliated/emasculated by him. CITY BOY ETC.
"They take into consideration the modern dilemma of masculinity"
This is why I included such films in my list....they are manly in that they interrogate manliness and are concerned with what it might mean to be manly. That very anxiety seems wound up in manliness, for me. Even old school manly films with Steve McQueen in them have this anxiety deep inside. Like how can Paul Newman be so manly when he is also so sensitive and pretty and smart? THE CONUNDRUM OF FILMIC MANLINESS
Like even in old cowboy movies where a man must turn his face away so that he may not show his tears
The confident, martini-drinking womanizer who can also kick some ass when called upon (even if it's using crazy gadgets that someone else -Q- came up with).
I mean, what other secret agent will give you his real name?
but i think the angle i am taking is perhaps the more mature(?) version of that. i am interested in these characters that adult men almost look to as role models, or egotistically "see a little bit of themselves" in. these characters almost have a checklist of traits: humble, quiet outcast, coming from some sort of disadvantage, secretly gifted but carrying some great burden, reluctant to be the hero, but then something happens that gives them no choice but to be the hero, etc etc. I don't think these characters necessarily have to do with a fear or resistance to feminine power, i think it is more about an eternal male struggle about living up to one's boyhood ideal of the father/hero figure. these films offer a fantasy world where we can vicariously live up to these ideals through these characters; as viewers we can save the people from the burning building, be heroic on the battlefield, and save south africa from apartheid WITHOUT EVERY HAVING TO GET OFF THE COUCH!!!
Sam Worthington (Clash of the Titans, Avatar) is definitely falling into this category. perhaps he is the next MEL GIBSON!!! but to say Denzel is not manly??!!?? THAT IS CRAZY TALK!!
"That's the only possible explanation."
I just don't like him, okay?
i remember in high school having a huge fight with one of my teachers about whether it counts as rape because she shows her boobs to the guys that time. The world is fucked up mon
I think we are supposed to see the townies as terrifying--manliness as terrifying. Right? But then it's unavoidable that we, the audience, also can't help viewing Hoffmann as pathetic. He's so fucking pathetic.
It's like that episode of Louis C.K.'s show when he's on the date and the teen boys intimidate and abuse him and make him say shameful things or else they'll beat him up, and then his date is grossed out by it, even though she also knows logically that for him to have gotten in a fist fight would have been equally lame. But his submission is a "turn off" for her.
Is Straw Dogs really about how we are all slaves to the patriarchy? I don't know. Peckinpah just likes to show a lot of blood and boobies, that's for sure.
What do you think? I haven't seen it in a long time, too, DISCLAIMER
but so, is every man in the film ultimately manly? maybe so, and then that's just the way the world goes round.
I had forgotten that the dude saves her from his friend....how does he? I remembered him letting the second rape happen. Isn't she like "Nooo!" and he's like "shush?" when his buddy goes for it? My memory of the film is hazy
It follows "David Mann," a business man driving in CA to make a big meeting, when a big rig suddenly tries to run him off the road.
David Mann's a salesman who can't seem to climb above his co workers, or co-operate with his wife who nags him about failing to defend her honor from the drunken pass his friend makes at her. On the car radio he listens to a DJ make a prank call to the census, posing as a man who wonders whether he can check the "Head of Household" box if his wife is really the head of the household?
Then a big, bad truck comes up, for no reason, maybe because Mann gets a little "cocky" behind the wheel of his little red family sedan. It endangers him by exploiting his very manliness... he can't ask for help. If he does, people think he is "hysterical."
This relates to an advertisement I heard on the radio today selling trucks. "More power... relentless durability... unsurpassed drive."
the manly man CAN NOT ASK FOR HELP
Very intrigued you guys!
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