Overall I must say I find your writing impressive and am glad your LJ was recommended to me. As I've seen a few of these myself I will touch just some points.
I love that you get J.F. Sebastian that way. I'm not even vaguely as competent to speak about noir as yourself but I recognized him instantly. To me he's an eloquent parallel to the talked-about tortoise early in the film. That is, he's a visible demonstration that the replicants are NOT human, and do not have human emotions. Yes, he's going to die at the hands of the beings he's been kind to, in just the way that Leon has no idea how to be kind to a helpless creature, even a hypothetical one. Sebasian's death starts the string of emotional responses and non-responses that I think make Roy's final speech so powerful. Because all along we (the viewers) have been pushed to believe these replicants have no feelings, but yet maybe? Maybe they do. It's one of the great unanswered questions of this film.
I'm not familiar with the Bluebeard you reference and so saw it as a retelling of "Frankenstein's Monster" instead. And not a good one, at that.
Pitch Black in particular, and all the Riddick movies in general, I loved. When I first heard of it I expected it to be some kind of Alien clone/rip-off but it is very much its own thing and though I don't generally like sci-fi/horror I agree with you that this film picks up some of the best elements of both genres.
Finally, I should say that I've watched Man Who Fell To Earth three times now, and I'm still not sure I can say I enjoyed or understood the film any of those times. I can't tell if there's something there that I'm just not getting or if I'm trying to project my own preconceptions about what an alien-visits-Earth film should be like onto a film that is not any of those preconceptions. I wonder what you think of Rip Torn in general (if anything) or him here. I don't think he's ever made a mark as big as this film.
Wow
I love that you get J.F. Sebastian that way. I'm not even vaguely as competent to speak about noir as yourself but I recognized him instantly. To me he's an eloquent parallel to the talked-about tortoise early in the film. That is, he's a visible demonstration that the replicants are NOT human, and do not have human emotions. Yes, he's going to die at the hands of the beings he's been kind to, in just the way that Leon has no idea how to be kind to a helpless creature, even a hypothetical one. Sebasian's death starts the string of emotional responses and non-responses that I think make Roy's final speech so powerful. Because all along we (the viewers) have been pushed to believe these replicants have no feelings, but yet maybe? Maybe they do. It's one of the great unanswered questions of this film.
I was really bored by Ex Machina - wrote about it here: http://drwex.livejournal.com/565386.html
I'm not familiar with the Bluebeard you reference and so saw it as a retelling of "Frankenstein's Monster" instead. And not a good one, at that.
Pitch Black in particular, and all the Riddick movies in general, I loved. When I first heard of it I expected it to be some kind of Alien clone/rip-off but it is very much its own thing and though I don't generally like sci-fi/horror I agree with you that this film picks up some of the best elements of both genres.
Finally, I should say that I've watched Man Who Fell To Earth three times now, and I'm still not sure I can say I enjoyed or understood the film any of those times. I can't tell if there's something there that I'm just not getting or if I'm trying to project my own preconceptions about what an alien-visits-Earth film should be like onto a film that is not any of those preconceptions. I wonder what you think of Rip Torn in general (if anything) or him here. I don't think he's ever made a mark as big as this film.