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Post by kijii on May 19, 2020 5:23:53 GMT
3 Women (1977) / Robert Altman This movie is bizarre and haunting. I really didn't know what to make of it other than that its title implies a relationship (or sameness) among these three women: played by Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule. After viewing the movie, I did read some of the user reviews on the IMDb, but only after I had formed my own opinion about what it might be about. The movie is heavy on symbolic imagery and atmosphere (with a musical background that only enhances the fact that it is about something going on that is bizarre). The thing I noticed is that none of the three women seemed to know (or care) much about their past..or future. What that "set up" my mind was that these three women were easily manipulated by the present,inventing it as they go along without benefit of a past or a future. Without a past or future, how easy could be for them to manipulate each other about who they really are.... Putting it another way, these women seemed to be all id without much ego or superego. Dr. Maas : No. I do not think this was a simple mistake. The chances of her making up a Social Security number exactly the same as yours are very slim. Ms. Bunweil : She maliciously gave me your number when she filled out her W-4. Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) : How could she have? I didn't even know her then. Ms. Bunweil : Don't get smart with me, Lammoreaux. You can't fool me. She told me she couldn't remember her number and was gonna write home for it, and, like a fool, I believed her. Millie Lammoreaux : So maybe she forgot to do it and just gave you mine instead. She didn't mean anything bad by it. I don't know what makes it such a big deal. She's just a little kid. Dr. Maas : I'll tell you what makes it such a big deal. I do not want any discrepancies in these records. I do not want government people coming in here going through these books. I think Rose did this on purpose. Ms. Bunweil : I didn't trust her from the very minute I first laid eyes on her. Millie Lammoreaux : She never did anything wrong on purpose. She's just scared of you, that's all. Then she almost died, and nobody even cared around here. You're the bad ones, not Pinky. All you care about's your time clock, your money and your dumb books. Well, you don't have to worry about any Social Security numbers anymore, because I quit. It's a horrible job. And we don't need it. Neither of us. Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) : I wonder what it's like to be twins. Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) : Huh? Pinky Rose : Twins. Bet it'd be weird. Do you think they know which ones they are?
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 19, 2020 9:23:05 GMT
Upgrade (2018).
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Post by Nalkarj on May 19, 2020 15:52:40 GMT
Rewatched Adventures of Don Juan (1948) last night. I agree with most of what blogger Jaime Weinman, a perceptive critic whose work I like, wrote here. As Weinman noted, producer Jerry Wald and writers George Oppenheimer and Harry Kurnitz seemed to approach the movie as a semi-parody of Flynn’s earlier swashbucklers, with callbacks (Alan Hale, Una O’Connor, Flynn climbing balconies, cost-saving stock footage from Robin Hood and Elizabeth and Essex) and in-jokes (Don Juan keeps mentioning he’s not as young as he used to be, and has to be talked into becoming a swashbuckler again). While I enjoyed the movie just as much as I did the first time I saw it, though, Vincent Sherman’s direction was pretty blasé — not half as colorful or interesting as Michael Curtiz’s Flynn collaborations. He didn’t seem to be in on the in-joke. As Weinman noted, too, Flynn’s leading lady, the beautiful Viveca Lindfors as Queen Margaret, turns in a solid performance but doesn’t have the star quality Olivia de Havilland had. (Similarly, the part of the king seems like it was meant for Claude Rains and the part of the villain for Basil Rathbone.) To be fair, that might just because it is an underwritten part. And the ending felt anticlimactic to me on both viewings: Sure, they weren’t going to have the married queen run off with Flynn in 1948, but they should have squared that circle somehow. On both viewings, I was expecting the prime minister to kill the king before Flynn kills the PM, which, in some complicated Gilbertian legality, would make Margaret queen regnant. Not historical, of course, but then neither was Don Juan himself. Poor Margaret, too, left with a milquetoast of a husband who can’t govern his country while her lover Don Juan gets to roam the countryside looking for girls again. I loved Max Steiner’s Korngoldesque main theme, but it’s repeated too often — and, what with the flamenco influences, sounds more Spanish than the movie actually is! So, in other words, not as good as Captain Blood, Robin Hood, or The Sea Hawk, but still fun and clever.
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Post by Prime etc. on May 19, 2020 17:21:40 GMT
THE TIGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS 1962 - Gianna Maria Canale, not to be confused with Gian Maria Volontè, stars as the daughter of a pirate who has to leave his ship to one of his crew since he has no son. The top contender is her fiancee, but after he wins the ship, she challenges him to duel and ambiguity being what it is, either she successfully defeats him and spares his life, or he allowed himself to get defeated--whatever the case, he is publicly humiliated and leaves angrily, and she is distraught. Soon her father shows up stabbed and she and the pirates assume it is her boyfriend, then the Spanish appear and break up their lynching party. She is convinced he did kill her father after all since he took their ship--so she hijacks another one and goes on a piracy campaign, building a reputation for herself. Eventually the boyfriend learns of her deeds and seeks her out, and convinces her that he wasn't her father's killer. They hatch a plan to expose the real killer but he gets captured so she has to attend a masquerade ball to free him and confront the bad guy.
There is an amusing subplot involving the young wife of the colony governor who flatters him while actually being the one in charge. I felt that Geena Davis was miscast for Cutthroat Island and Lucy Lawless would have been more appropriate--well Canale does resemble Lawless so this may be the closest we get to seeing how that could have gone. Since the Italians didn't bother with onset sound they could shoot outdoors on ships so the scenes of the pirate queen sword fighting is more visually exciting than what I recall from the few 1950s Hollywood pirate queen films I have seen.
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Post by kijii on May 20, 2020 3:01:18 GMT
The Late Show (1977) / Robert Benton Robert Benton wrote--receiving an Oscar nomination for his Original screenplay--and directed this modern color film filled with comedy and fun. Art Carney plays an over-the-hill private investigator whose old friend literally dies at his doorway. This sets him off to get the guy who killed him. When he teams up with Lily Tomlin, whose lifestyle and personality are almost opposite to his, this leads us into the twisted path of solving the murder case and making the murder pay for knocking off his old friend. Carney did do some entertaining stuff and this is yet another example of his style. The combination of Carney and Tomlin make for an entertaining movie. One also recognizes other actors for the 70s TV shows such as Bill Macy, who played Bea Arthur's husband, Walter. on that TV show, Maude. Margo Sperling (Lily Tomlin) : I'm gonna' go down to the police station and get a private detective's license. If we teamed up, we'd be great together. Ira (Art Carney) : That's just what this town has been waiting for. A broken-down old private eye with a bum leg and a hearing aid, and a fruitcake like you.
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Post by Nalkarj on May 20, 2020 3:58:46 GMT
Didn’t mention this before, but over the weekend I rewatched Unknown (2011). I loved it when I saw it in theaters, and it holds up as one of the strongest mystery-thrillers of recent years; not sure why the reviews were so mixed. It’s a largely unpretentious b-movie (if anything can be said to be a b-movie these days) with an exceptional performance by Bruno Ganz and a few Hitchcockian touches (even if the art museum sequence more recalls De Palma’s Hitchcock imitations than genuine Hitchcock). Weaker than Polanski’s Frantic (1988), from which it borrows a lot, but still tons of fun. I have a somewhat inexplicable fondness for Liam-Neeson-starring b-thrillers, even when they’re bad ( The Commuter); I’ve enjoyed them a lot more than many a-movies over the last few years. Watching it again, I appreciated the cleverness of its plot (the opening sequence is effective misdirection), was again dazzled by January Jones’ beauty (OK, she’s no great actress, but she has oodles of screen presence) — and noticed a few flaws I hadn’t on first viewing. For one thing, the movie looks so ugly, with a palette of mostly grays against a gray Berlin. Of all the places in the world to shoot a thriller, why Berlin? It’s not the most photogenic city, certainly, and director Jaume Collet-Serra makes it look like a garbage dump. Perhaps Paris would make the Frantic connection too obvious, but why not shoot in, say, Florence? Or at least make Berlin look nicer? Hitchcock, and De Palma, would have done that. The ugliness serves no aesthetic purpose, either: we’re supposed to imagine a storybook, if May-December, romance before the first twist. For another, the script is so committed to thrills that it doesn’t bother to delve on the existential shock of the central plot twist. Suffice it to say Neeson’s character would need years of counseling after the events of this movie. The flick ends too quickly, too. All in all, though, this is great fun. Can we please get more movies like this, preferably also starring the always-likable Neeson? And can Hollywood put January Jones in more movies? Please?
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 20, 2020 14:05:49 GMT
The Girl in the Book (2015).
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Post by kijii on May 20, 2020 18:04:05 GMT
Elliott Gould was very big in the early 70s. I first saw him in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice then in Robert Altman's 3rd feature film, MASH. This movie is a modern-day color film noir film.
Here, Gould plays a new type of character as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. This one, unlike the Marlowe that Borgart played in The Big Sleep (1946), is a little more laid back, as he gets up in the middle of an LA night to get some special cat food for his cat at an all-night grocery store. Only to be visited by an old friend of his who wants Marlowe to drive him to Mexico...Marlowe sleepily complies...
As Marlowe moves through this movie, he is always mumbling to himself. The movie is very good as it takes us from one setting to another in that serpentine fashion so familiar to us from other Marlowe movies...I'm now thinking of Dick Powell's Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (1944). As usual, this movie is full of twists and turns. But, I liked the flow and look of this movie.
Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould): Nobody cares but me. Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) : Well that's you, Marlowe. You'll never learn, you're a born loser. Philip Marlowe : Yeah, I even lost my cat.
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Post by kijii on May 21, 2020 4:24:40 GMT
Countdown (1967) / Robert Altman
This was Altman's first feature film. While it doesn't yet have "the Altman touch," it is fairly exciting. The 60s were a time when America was in a cold war race with "the Russians" to be the first to have a maned landing on the moon. (We didn't actually accomplish this until July of 1969. So, while this story may seen unoriginal now. it was still a mission that had yet to be accomplished when the movie was released.)
Another thing to consider when viewing this movie today is that neither, Robert Duvall nor James Caan were well-known actors when this movie was released. Robert Duvall first played the nonspeaking role as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird and later appeared in Altman's MASH as Maj. Frank Burns in 1970. Caan and Duvall first appeared together in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969) and again in The Godfather (1972).
Chiz (Robert Duvall) : All right, now, listen. A week before Pilgrim goes, we send up a shelter stocked with food, oxygen, all life support systems on the same type of bird. Everything's in here. There's systems, communications, trajectories and Dunc is my backup. Now, the shelter has a flashing beacon and a radar signal. And Surveyor will probably spot it too. Now, if I don't locate it with all that, I complete a figure eight around the moon, swing back, and reenter behind a beefed up heat shield. Now, three days later I'm getting stoned on a carrier as the band plays. Rick (Michael Murphy) : Who thought it up? An LSD research team?
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 21, 2020 17:51:35 GMT
Hannibal (2001).
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Post by Prime etc. on May 21, 2020 18:10:22 GMT
Can never think of an offer to have a flat-tasting Coke the same way again either.
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Post by kijii on May 22, 2020 4:18:07 GMT
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Post by teleadm on May 22, 2020 17:15:11 GMT
A revisit:
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Post by persistenceofvision on May 22, 2020 21:10:42 GMT
The Duellists. I've read for years that this was the best-looking film ever made but that the story was flimsy and pointless. It does look fantastic in HD, and the story is more involving and the end more moving than I expected.
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Post by kijii on May 23, 2020 4:30:28 GMT
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Post by kijii on May 24, 2020 19:51:27 GMT
Avalon (1990) / Barry Levinson
This is beautiful movie, set in Baltimore--as many of Levinson's movies are--it relates the story of a Polish Immigrant who enters the country in 1914 and traces it forward until his death. The movie demonstrates how an extended family evolves over time, through petty arguments and real family tragedies. I just sank into the movie and loved it. I was especially impressed with the cinematography as it tries to capture the mood of the times it is following..... Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) : I came to America in 1914 - by way of Philadelphia. That's where I got off the boat. And then I came to Baltimore. It was the most beautiful place you ever seen in your life. There were lights everywhere! What lights they had! It was a celebration of lights! I thought they were for me, Sam, who was in America. Sam was in America! I didn't know what holiday it was, but there were lights. And I walked under them. The sky exploded, people cheered, there were fireworks! What a welcome it was, what a welcome!
Michael Kaye (Elijah Wood): I don't want you to leave! Sam Krichinsky : One way or the other,we all have to leave.
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Post by Nalkarj 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?
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Post by kijii on May 25, 2020 4:39:32 GMT
Liberty Heights (1999) / Barry Levinson
Here is yet another entertaining movie written and directed by Barry Levinson and set in Baltimore. Levinson is one year older than me and this movie may have been how he saw the mid 50s. However, to me--a goy, born and raised in Colorado--they did not seem nearly as interesting or complicated in terms of social taboos and racial demarcations. The movie is set at a time well before the civil rights movement began on a national level. Nevertheless, the movie is very good, filled with all sorts of fun (but improbable) things to explore, surreptitiously through a movie.
When three Jewish boys from the Liberty Heights area of Baltimore, go outside of their world into "the other" areas of Baltimore, they explore and expose racism and anti-Semitism as only movie characters could:
Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster): [voice-over at the end] Life is made up of a few big moments, and a lot of little ones. I still remember the first time I kissed Sylvia, or the last time I hugged my father before he died. And I still remember that white-bread sandwich and that blonde dancing girl with the cigarette pack on her thigh. But a lot of images fade, and no matter how hard I try, I can't get them back. I had a relative once who said that if I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 25, 2020 9:23:35 GMT
Miss Fisher & the Crypt of Tears (2020).
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 26, 2020 12:35:49 GMT
Like Crazy (2011).
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