What movie did YOU just FINISH watching?
May 25, 2020 3:28:03 GMT
Doghouse6, spiderwort, and 1 more like this
Post by Salzmank on May 25, 2020 3:28:03 GMT
Two very different but both very good movies tonight.
The first was Last Passenger (2013, dir. Omid Noosham), which I can’t believe I’d never heard of before. It’s an exceptional British thriller, which apparently made the most of a low budget, for everything about it is first-class.
The script is impeccably written, even Mametesque in how it plays with your mind. You know the movie you’re watching is a thriller, so you know everyone the hero meets isn’t trustworthy. Is this girl hitting on him — or is she in on some as-yet-unknown plot? How about this suspicious Russian? Or that schoolmarmy woman across the way?
To some extent, you can see how the low budget factored into the shot choices, but the directing is fine too, classic-style rather than the cut-a-minute pandemonium you see in most big-budget action movies these days. It also rather brilliantly supports the script: in one shot, for example, we don’t see the hero’s son, so our minds, knowing thriller clichés, get to working…and, as mentioned, that’s exactly what the director wants us to do.
The acting is excellent; I totally believed each person. The character arcs, which could seem cliché in a more formulaic thriller, here feel both inevitable and surprising. The dialogue is naturalistic and as clever as the plotting: everyone talks over each other, especially when stressed, which doesn’t make their dialogue totally clear but greatly boosts realism. And the characters behave as you’d expect real people in this situation to behave, which is uncommon in thrillers, to say the least.
Even the ending doesn’t follow as you’d expect it, and the movie’s stronger for it — and all those small, pleasant surprises without needing a single “big plot twist.” This is the kind of movie Hitchcock would be directing nowadays. It’s a fantastic little flick.
Sadly, first-time writer-director Omid Nooshin committed suicide five years after the movie came out, after suffering from depression for many years. What a promising talent, and what a tragedy.
_______
Also saw Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971, dir. Burt Kennedy), a western spoof and spiritual sequel to the same team’s Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969).
James Garner has a good time as the lead, a ne’er-do-well who escapes a marriage proposal by getting off the train in an Old West town, just to be mistaken for the baddest gunslinger in the west. Meanwhile, we have a drunken doctor whose office is in the donkey stables, a guntotin’ tomboy played by Suzanne Pleshette, two madams, Jack Elam at his silliest, and Harry Morgan and John Dehner as rival mine owners who regularly set off charges throughout town.
It’s not exactly a spoof in the way that, say, Spaceballs is a spoof: If you’re comparing it to a Mel Brooks movie, it’s closest to Young Frankenstein, which parodies the genre but still wants us to care about the characters. The script does go in unexpected directions; you wouldn’t expect a spoof to be this complex (in a good way). Mostly, though, it’s just super-funny.
While watching, by the way, I kept thinking it would make for a superb Broadway musical comedy. Some moments practically seem written for songs. If any Broadway producers not named Bialystock or Bloom are reading this, let me know, OK?
The first was Last Passenger (2013, dir. Omid Noosham), which I can’t believe I’d never heard of before. It’s an exceptional British thriller, which apparently made the most of a low budget, for everything about it is first-class.
The script is impeccably written, even Mametesque in how it plays with your mind. You know the movie you’re watching is a thriller, so you know everyone the hero meets isn’t trustworthy. Is this girl hitting on him — or is she in on some as-yet-unknown plot? How about this suspicious Russian? Or that schoolmarmy woman across the way?
To some extent, you can see how the low budget factored into the shot choices, but the directing is fine too, classic-style rather than the cut-a-minute pandemonium you see in most big-budget action movies these days. It also rather brilliantly supports the script: in one shot, for example, we don’t see the hero’s son, so our minds, knowing thriller clichés, get to working…and, as mentioned, that’s exactly what the director wants us to do.
The acting is excellent; I totally believed each person. The character arcs, which could seem cliché in a more formulaic thriller, here feel both inevitable and surprising. The dialogue is naturalistic and as clever as the plotting: everyone talks over each other, especially when stressed, which doesn’t make their dialogue totally clear but greatly boosts realism. And the characters behave as you’d expect real people in this situation to behave, which is uncommon in thrillers, to say the least.
Even the ending doesn’t follow as you’d expect it, and the movie’s stronger for it — and all those small, pleasant surprises without needing a single “big plot twist.” This is the kind of movie Hitchcock would be directing nowadays. It’s a fantastic little flick.
Sadly, first-time writer-director Omid Nooshin committed suicide five years after the movie came out, after suffering from depression for many years. What a promising talent, and what a tragedy.
_______
Also saw Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971, dir. Burt Kennedy), a western spoof and spiritual sequel to the same team’s Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969).
James Garner has a good time as the lead, a ne’er-do-well who escapes a marriage proposal by getting off the train in an Old West town, just to be mistaken for the baddest gunslinger in the west. Meanwhile, we have a drunken doctor whose office is in the donkey stables, a guntotin’ tomboy played by Suzanne Pleshette, two madams, Jack Elam at his silliest, and Harry Morgan and John Dehner as rival mine owners who regularly set off charges throughout town.
It’s not exactly a spoof in the way that, say, Spaceballs is a spoof: If you’re comparing it to a Mel Brooks movie, it’s closest to Young Frankenstein, which parodies the genre but still wants us to care about the characters. The script does go in unexpected directions; you wouldn’t expect a spoof to be this complex (in a good way). Mostly, though, it’s just super-funny.
While watching, by the way, I kept thinking it would make for a superb Broadway musical comedy. Some moments practically seem written for songs. If any Broadway producers not named Bialystock or Bloom are reading this, let me know, OK?
