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Post by sostie on Jul 30, 2020 12:40:34 GMT
The Admirable Crichton (1957)
Light, fun and thoroughly entertaining.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jul 31, 2020 2:23:13 GMT
Irrational Man (2015).
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Post by kijii on Jul 31, 2020 4:54:33 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on Jul 31, 2020 7:26:55 GMT
JULIUS CAESAR 1970 - I suppose in some ways this might be a train wreck but it was a fascinating one. For starters, despite the horrendous fashion sense of Marc Antony, I think Heston did a pretty job doing Shakespeare. He really got into it and I didn't get distracted by his lack of an English accent, which often happens when I see Americans performing it. The same cannot be said for Jason Robards. While he did better once he started to raise his voice, in the moments where he speaks quietly it felt like he was in a different movie from all the Shakespeare veterans like Richard Johnson and Diana Rigg. They seemed to be on different planets in performance style and voice projection. I noticed Richard Chamberlain adopted an English accent for his part!
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Post by teleadm on Jul 31, 2020 18:50:12 GMT
Payroll aka I Promised to Pay (in USA) 1961 a surprising good and at times brutal British Crime heist movies, somehow I must have skipped over it over the years, since "Payroll" isn't a very exciting name. Carefully layed plans are destroyed when a payroll van has suddenly been changed to a more secure one. but the robbers still pursue with an even more violent plan, crashing the payroll van from both sides, back and front. and they do, killing one of their owns and the driver of the Security van. Thieves falls out, police searching clues, and a widow searching revenge, in the British way, not with automatics and handguns, but making guilty people sweat with insinuating poison pen letters....there is even a French femme fatale involved. A very pleasant surprise.
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Post by kijii on Aug 1, 2020 4:46:40 GMT
The Killer Elite (1975) / Sam Peckinpah
This is a pretty good movie with several career Oscared actors: James Caan, Robert Duvall, Mako, Burt Young, Gig Young (no relation to Burt).
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Post by jeffersoncody on Aug 1, 2020 5:49:28 GMT
The Killer Elite (1975) / Sam Peckinpah
This is a pretty good movie with several career Oscared actors: James Caan, Robert Duvall, Mako, Burt Young, Gig Young (no relation to Burt).
Gosh, this an awful film - even worse than THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND and almost as bad as CONVOY. Saw it on the big screen back in the day, and on DVD. Hell, I still have the DVD, but no desire to watch it again. Good cast, though.
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Post by Prime etc. on Aug 1, 2020 7:26:10 GMT
There's so much Peckinpah mentioned here I have to repost this funny LQ Jones quote:
"if he was alive today he would be committed, sad but true, because he had so many boogers, because he picked on anybody, Bill Holden, biggest man in our business, Chuck Heston, didn't make any difference, treated them like they were trash...we got along fine because the second picture I did with him,..I told him "Peckinpah, you ain't got enough talent to direct me to the Men's room." Everything came to a halt for about three or four minutes while he decided what bus I was going to be on....but that's the way you had to deal with Sam. If you didn't, Heston almost killed him. And he told us, there's a scene in Major Dundee where he's sitting on a horse and he's got his sabre out, and Sam was riding him so hard, you can see it on film, he damn near cut Peckinpah in two. That's just the way he was. Sam was an ass."
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Post by Prime etc. on Aug 1, 2020 7:45:55 GMT
I watched FIRE IN THE SKY 1993 -- been a long time since I watched it but in doing so I was reminded how much the X-Files owes in debt to this film-which came out several months before the X-Files premiered. I don't recall alien abductions getting much traction prior to this--it had been good alien Close encounters-ET-type stuff for a few years and this brought us back to evil aliens and the abduction is very creepy/disturbing. Looking at the cast, I am reminded how little I have seen of the people in it. Other than the X-Files and the Sopranos I haven't come across Robert Patrick in anything else. I am sure he's been busy without checking his IMDB. Ditto for DB Sweeney. I remember Strange Luck. Craig Sheffer who leaves a strong impression--nothing--haven't seen him anything else and he's been busy too. Not as busy as Kathleen Wilhoite. Only have seen her in two other things--a star-making turn in Murphy's Law and the Edge--and I can't remember her in that one. The other main actress Georgia Emelin I have only noticed in Space Cowboys in the hard to believe role as Donald Sutherland's girlfriend. I notice she quit acting 20 years ago despite having a family tie to theater. Peter Berg--lost track of him too after the 90s. James Garner does not have much to do unfortunately, though his exchanges with Sheffer made me think they could have played father and son to good effect.
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Post by kijii on Aug 1, 2020 16:12:45 GMT
The Killer Elite (1975) / Sam Peckinpah
This is a pretty good movie with several career Oscared actors: James Caan, Robert Duvall, Mako, Burt Young, Gig Young (no relation to Burt).
Gosh, this an awful film - even worse than THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND and almost as bad as CONVOY. Saw it on the big screen back in the day, and on DVD. Hell, I still have the DVD, but no desire to watch it again. Good cast, though. I hear ya... I'm just clipping through as many of his films as possible. Many movies that I stream or watch on TV are movies I'm glad I didn't pay full theater admission for. As I started to watch The Killer Elite, I thought I might be a "buddy movie"--boy was I wrong about that....... I did think it interesting that Peckinpah attracted five Oscared actors for this movie. Convoy might have had some audience appeal back in the late 70s as an anti-hero movie and the use of truck divers as the last breed of the old west cowboy...many of his movies seem to use the theme of "the death of the Old Western hero," We see hints of this in movies like: Ride the High Country (1962) -Two old cowboys who look back on their past while dong their last job. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)--Once friends...now forced to be enemies, working different sides of the law. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) which seems to be a comical fable of some sort. Even in The Wild Bunch (1969) we start to see new machines (cars, etc.) destroying the the Old West I'm just clipping through as many of his films as possible. I just received DVDs of: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) Junior Bonner (1972) and Straw Dogs (1971) which I have seen many years ago. This one is actually a Blu-Ray. What's the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray? This is new to me, but my Blu-Ray player will play either of them. I am starting to notice that Sam Peckinpah had his favorite actors..ones that appear over and over again in his films..but, I guess this is true of many directors.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Aug 2, 2020 4:02:10 GMT
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).
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Post by kijii on Aug 2, 2020 5:05:33 GMT
Straw Dogs (1971) / Sam Peckinpah
I hadn't seen this movie in years--make that decades. But, it is as a remember it: chilling and thrilling. It starts with harbingers of things to come. Then it builds and builds as the crescendo of something evil comes ever closer to realization. The film music is often in a minor key, even atonal at times which enhances the wonderfully drawn characters that unfold in the small rural--isolated--town in modern England.
Amy Sumner (Susan George): David, give Niles to them. That's what they want. They just want him. Give them Niles, David! David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) : They'll beat him to death. Amy Sumner : I don't care! Get him out! David Sumner : You really don't care, do you? Amy Sumner : No, I don't. David Sumner : No. I care. This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house.
Henry Niles (David Warner) : I don't know my way home. David Sumner : That's okay. I don't either. Yes, this is a masterpiece!! Wikipedia Plot summary with SPOILERS:After securing a grant to study stellar structures, American applied mathematician David Sumner moves with his glamorous young English wife Amy to her home village of Wakely in the Cornish countryside. Amy's ex-boyfriend Charlie Venner, along with his cronies Norman Scutt, Chris Cawsey, and Phil Riddaway, immediately resent that the meek outsider has married one of their own. Scutt, a former convict, confides in Cawsey of his jealousy of Venner's past relationship with Amy. David meets Venner's uncle, Tom Hedden, a violent drunkard whose flirtatious teenage daughter Janice seems attracted to Henry Niles, a mentally deficient man despised by the entire town.
The Sumners have taken an isolated farmhouse, Trenchers Farm, that once belonged to Amy's father, and still contains his furniture. They hire Scutt and Cawsey to re-roof its garage, and when impatient with lack of progress add Venner and his cousin Bobby. Tensions in their marriage soon become apparent. Amy criticizes David's condescension towards her and his escape from the volatile, politicized campus, suggesting that cowardice was his true reason for leaving America. He responds by withdrawing deeper into his studies, ignoring both the hostility of the locals and Amy's dissatisfaction. His aloofness results in Amy's attention-gathering pranks and provocative demeanor towards the workmen, particularly Venner. David even struggles to be accepted by the educated locals, as shown in conversation with the vicar, Reverend Barney Hood, and the local magistrate, Major John Scott.
When David finds their missing cat hanging dead in their bedroom closet, Amy reckons Cawsey or Scutt is responsible. She presses David to confront the workmen, but he is too intimidated to accuse them. The men invite David to go hunting the following day. They take him to a remote location and leave him there with the promise of driving birds towards him. With David away, Venner goes to Trenchers Farm where he attempts to initiate sex with Amy. She resists at first, then submits. After, Norman Scutt enters silently, motions Venner to move away at gunpoint and rapes Amy while Venner reluctantly holds her down. David returns much later, smarting from the practical joke the men pulled on him. Amy, though clearly upset, says nothing about the intruders and what they did to her, apart from a cryptic comment that escapes his attention.
The next day, David fires the workmen, ostensibly for their slow progress. Later, the Sumners attend a church social where Amy becomes distraught on seeing her rapists. They leave the social early, driving through thick fog, and accidentally hit Henry Niles. They take him to their home and David phones the local pub to report the accident, not knowing that Niles had just killed Janice, strangling her in a panic when she tried to seduce him. Hedden, now searching for her, learns that she was last seen with Niles, and from David's phone call is alerted to Niles's whereabouts. Soon, Hedden, Scutt, Venner, Cawsey and Riddaway are drunkenly pounding on the Sumners' door. Inferring their intention to lynch Niles, David refuses to let them take him despite Amy's pleas. The standoff seems to unlock a territorial instinct in David: "I will not allow violence against this house."
Major Scott arrives to defuse the situation, but is accidentally shot dead by Hedden during a struggle. Realizing the danger in witnessing this homicide, David improvises various makeshift traps and weapons, including boiling oil, to fend off the siege. David inadvertently forces Hedden to shoot his own foot, knocks Riddaway temporarily unconscious and bludgeons Cawsey to death with a poker. Venner holds him at gunpoint, but Amy's screams alert both men when Scutt assaults her. Scutt suggests Venner join him in another gang rape, but Venner shoots him dead. David disarms Venner and in the ensuing fight snaps an ornamental mantrap around Venner's neck, killing him. Watching the mayhem around him and surprised by his own violence, David mutters to himself, "Jesus, I got 'em all." An awakened Riddaway then brutally attacks him, but is shot by Amy as he tries to break David's spine.
David gets into his car to drive Niles back to the village. Niles says he does not know his way home. David says he does not either.
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Post by Prime etc. on Aug 2, 2020 8:12:19 GMT
THE HUMANOID 1979 - A Star Wars rip-off that is amusing for it's boldness--they directly copy the Star Destroyer design as well as Darth Vader's helmet. In fact, it looked to me like the helmet fabrication was more streamlined than that of Star Wars. And the spaceship effects were very good for 1979. Flash Gordon should have used the same personnel. Instead of light sabers we have laser arrows and glowing hands. The movie is actually bad, laughably so at times, but with better than expected effects and Corrine Clery, Arthur Kennedy hamming it up as a bad guy, Barbara Bach, and Richard Kiel it is at least watchable.
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Post by kijii on Aug 2, 2020 23:16:18 GMT
Junior Bonner (1972) / Sam Peckinpah
Not much of a movie--just a long boring rodeo parade and rodeo with a few movie stars thrown into a very weak plot..
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Aug 3, 2020 22:13:21 GMT
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on Aug 4, 2020 2:54:27 GMT
The Castaway Cowboy (1974)
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Post by jeffersoncody on Aug 4, 2020 3:22:56 GMT
Gosh, this an awful film - even worse than THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND and almost as bad as CONVOY. Saw it on the big screen back in the day, and on DVD. Hell, I still have the DVD, but no desire to watch it again. Good cast, though. I hear ya... I'm just clipping through as many of his films as possible. Many movies that I stream or watch on TV are movies I'm glad I didn't pay full theater admission for. As I started to watch The Killer Elite, I thought I might be a "buddy movie"--boy was I wrong about that....... I did think it interesting that Peckinpah attracted five Oscared actors for this movie. Convoy might have had some audience appeal back in the late 70s as an anti-hero movie and the use of truck divers as the last breed of the old west cowboy...many of his movies seem to use the theme of "the death of the Old Western hero," If memory serves, CONVOY was actually a rare box office hit for Sam, and the most financially successful of his films - despite its mediocrity.
We see hints of this in movies like: Ride the High Country (1962) -Two old cowboys who look back on their past while dong their last job. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)--Once friends...now forced to be enemies, working different sides of the law. The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) which seems to be a comical fable of some sort. Even in The Wild Bunch (1969) we start to see new machines (cars, etc.) destroying the the Old West I'm just clipping through as many of his films as possible. I just received DVDs of: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) Junior Bonner (1972) and Straw Dogs (1971) which I have seen many years ago. This one is actually a Blu-Ray. What's the difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray? This is new to me, but my Blu-Ray player will play either of them. You will quickly see the difference in quality between a DVD and a Blu Ray when you pop STRAW DOGS on. I am starting to notice that Sam Peckinpah had his favorite actors..ones that appear over and over again in his films..but, I guess this is true of many directors. Indeed, and the likes of Kris Kristofferson, William Holden et al made great drinking buddies for Peckinpah - if any of those DVDS you have acquired feature the commentaries by Peckinpah scholars Nick Redman, Garner Simmons and David Weddle I urge you to listen to them, they are fascinating and go into details about Sam's drinking and the loss of the family's vast acres of land; which broke the great director's heart. One of my favorite pieces on the special features of the DVD of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID is Harry Dean Stanton's heartfelt tribute to Sam: "He was a poet and a visionary, and my friend, I loved him, really." Here are two extract from a Roger Ebert interview with James Coburn - who volunteered to be a paid guinea pig in early US government LSD trials. You might find them interesting Kijii.
PS. The old-fashioned Sam did not know who Bob Dylan was and had to be persuaded - by Kris Kristofferson, to use Bob in PAT GARRET AND BILLY THE KID. Sam never became a fan of Dylan's music - which is why "Knocking on Heaven's" isn't used over Slim Pickens' death scene in the first restored "Peckinpah cut" of the film - the 1988 Turner Preview version, and only plays over the end credits. Here is a Peckinpah related extract from the Roger Ebert interview; A bottle of scotch with Kris Kristofferson.
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Post by jeffersoncody on Aug 4, 2020 3:27:17 GMT
Junior Bonner (1972) / Sam Peckinpah
Not much of a movie--just a long boring rodeo parade and rodeo with a few movie stars thrown into a very weak plot..
I'm sad you didn't enjoy this one kijii. It''s a dusty, character driven modern western drama with wonderful, lived-in performances by McQueen, Ben Johnson, Ida Lupino and Joe Don Baker. I don't look at the overall narrative arc when I watch JUNIOR BONNER, I live in the individual scenes. It's a somewhat rowdy mood piece, and it works for me.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Aug 4, 2020 4:13:31 GMT
The King's Speech (2010).
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Post by kijii on Aug 4, 2020 5:23:02 GMT
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) / Sam PeckinpahThis is a strange odyssey for one man. For me, the best way of understanding this movie is as an odyssey. Everything in this movie is strange, which only makes you try to understand what Benny was trying to accomplish in the story. It is better after the second viewing, but one can't help but wonder why Benny has to overcome so many layers of characters along the way.
It is clear to him that his receiving $10K for the head of Al Garcia is only part of a bigger deal. He wants to get the bigger deal, so he knocks off layers of characters along the way like some mythical hero meeting and killing monsters and overcoming obstacles in an epic odyssey. In the end, before he finally meets El Jefe (Emilio Fernandez) he says 16 people had to be killed. More would come...
Another thing I noticed throughout the movie is the strange intersection between the sacred and the profane:
El Jefe (Emilio Fernández) : Quien es el padre? Who is the father?
El Jefe: I will pay one million dollars. Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!
Bennie (Warren Oates): Listen. The church cuts off the feet, fingers, any other goddamn thing from the saints, don't they? Well, what the hell? Alfredo's our saint. He's the saint of our money, and I'm gonna borrow a piece of him.. Bennie : There ain't nothing sacred about a hole in the ground or the man that's in it. Or you. Or me.
(after his grandson is baptized) El Jefe (Emilio Fernández): Please, drink with me. I am a very happy man.
Bennie : Nah, I've got nothing to celebrate. Wikipedia's full plot summary with SPOILERS:
Teresa, the pregnant teenage daughter of a powerful Mexican crime lord known only as El Jefe (Spanish for ''The Boss''), is summoned before her father and interrogated as to the identity of her unborn child's father. Under torture, she identifies the father as Alfredo Garcia, whom El Jefe had been grooming to be his successor. Infuriated, El Jefe offers a $1 million bounty to whoever will "bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia".
The search progresses for two months. In Mexico City, a pair of business suit-clad, dispassionate hit men, Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young), enter a saloon and encounter Bennie (Warren Oates), a retired U.S. Army officer who makes a meager living as a piano player and bar manager. The men ask about Garcia, believing they will have more luck getting answers out of a fellow American. Bennie plays dumb, saying the name is familiar but he doesn't know who Garcia is.
It turns out that everyone in the bar knows who Garcia is; they simply don't know where he is. Bennie goes to meet his girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega), a maid at a ghetto motel. Elita admits to having cheated on Bennie with Garcia, who had professed his love for her, something Bennie refuses to do. Elita informs him that Garcia died in a drunk-driving accident the previous week.
Excited by the possibility of making money by simply digging up the body, Bennie goes to Sappensly and Quill in the hotel room of the man who hired them, El Jefe's business associate Max (Helmut Dantine), and makes a deal for US$10,000 for Garcia's head, plus a US$200 advance for expenses. Bennie convinces Elita to go on a road trip with him to visit Garcia's grave, claiming that he only wants proof that Garcia is in fact dead and no longer a threat to their relationship.
En route, Bennie proposes, promising that their future will soon change, and she can retire from her cleaning job. Elita warns Bennie against trying to upset their status quo. While having a picnic, Bennie and Elita are accosted by two bikers, who pull guns and decide to rape Elita. Bennie seems unsure how to react. Elita agrees to have sex with the bikers if they spare Bennie's life, then goes off with one of them (Kris Kristofferson). He rips off her shirt, lets her slap him twice, slaps her back, then walks away; she follows. Bennie knocks the second biker (Donnie Fritts) unconscious, takes his gun and finds Elita about to have sex with the first biker. Bennie shoots him dead and kills the second biker as well.
Bennie confesses to Elita his plan to decapitate Garcia's corpse and sell the head for money. A disgusted Elita, still shaken from what has just happened, begs Bennie to give up this quest and return to Mexico City, where they can be married and live a modest life of relative peace. Bennie again refuses, although he agrees to marry Elita in the church of the town where Garcia is buried. They find Garcia's grave, but when he opens the coffin, Bennie is struck from behind with his shovel by an unseen assailant. He wakes up to find himself half-buried in the grave with Elita, who is dead. The corpse of Garcia has been decapitated.
Bennie learns from villagers that his assailants are driving a station wagon. He catches up with the men after they blow out a tire. Bennie shoots them, searches their car, and claims Garcia's head. Stopping at a roadside restaurant, he packs the sack containing the head with ice to preserve it for the journey home. Bennie begins addressing the head as if Garcia were still alive, first blaming Alfredo for Elita's death and then conceding that both of them probably loved her equally.
Bennie is ambushed by members of Garcia's family. They reclaim the head and are about to kill Bennie when they are interrupted by the arrival of Sappensly and Quill. The hit men pretend to ask for directions. Quill produces a sub-machine gun and murders most of the family, but is fatally shot by one of them. As Sappensly sorrowfully looks at Quill's corpse, Bennie asks: "Do I get paid?" Sappensly turns to shoot, but Bennie kills him. Bennie returns to Mexico City, "arguing" with Garcia's head all the while.
At his apartment, Bennie gives Garcia's head a shower and then brings it to Max's hotel room. Feigning willingness to surrender the head for his $10,000, Bennie reveals he is no longer motivated by money; he says Alfredo was a friend of his and demands to know why Max and the others want his head so badly. He also blames Elita's death on the bounty and intends to kill everyone involved. Several men pull guns, but Bennie manages to evade fire and kill them all. He takes a business card from the desk with El Jefe's address on it.
After attending the baptism for his new grandchild, El Jefe greets Bennie as a hero in his hacienda and gives him a briefcase containing the promised million-dollar bounty. Bennie calmly relates how many people died for Garcia's head, including his beloved. El Jefe responds apathetically, telling Bennie to take his money and throw the head to the pigs on the way out. Infuriated that the object responsible for Elita's death is viewed as nothing more than garbage, Bennie guns down all of El Jefe's bodyguards.
Teresa enters with her newborn son, causing Bennie to hesitate shooting El Jefe. She tersely urges Bennie to kill her father. Bennie obliges and leaves El Jefe's hacienda together with Teresa, taking along Garcia's head. They approach the entrance gate and Bennie says goodbye to Teresa, departing the scene with the words: "You take care of the boy. And I'll take care of the father". Bennie drives away, only to be killed by El Jefe's men, their machine guns tearing him to pieces.
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