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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 9, 2023 21:22:44 GMT
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 11, 2023 9:11:48 GMT
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Post by louise on May 12, 2023 15:48:27 GMT
The Beachcomber (1954). Set on a south sea island under British rule in about 1900. Glynis Johns is a prim missionary, and Robert Newton a drunken British expat always in trouble. So it’s not hard to guess w hat is going to happen. Fairly entertaining comedy-drama.
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Post by gspdude on May 13, 2023 18:21:29 GMT
The Duellists(1977) Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine are French army officers during the time of Napoleon who fight a series of duels over the course of 15 years over an imagined insult. 6½/10.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 13, 2023 23:59:28 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on May 14, 2023 7:04:26 GMT
DIRTY O'NEIL - 1974 -- Starts off as a silly comedy about a cop (Morgan Paul) who spends more time picking up girls than doing any police work. But then it swerves into a gritty hobbo getting beaten and waitress getting gang raped melodrama before it changes gears again to a comedy after he crushes one of the rapists with a bulldozer. Adding to the strangeness is that the setting is so very 70s (we see a fridge sticker that says "Lick Dick in 72) but the score is various stock tracks from as far back as the 30s. I think almost every woman in the film takes her shirt off with the welcome exception of Kate Murtaugh.
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Post by louise on May 15, 2023 14:04:16 GMT
The Last September (1999). set in Ireland in September 1920. Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith are an elderly Anglo-Irish couple living in a decaying country home while Revolution simmers around them. Their niece is involved with both a British soldier (David Tennant) and an Irish republican, and goes in for running about in the woods a good deal. Various people drift in and out and nothing much happens, though someone gets shot now and again. I had hoped something more exciting would occur, but then I saw it is based on a novel by Elizabeth Bowen, who wrote the kind of novels where nothing much happens.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 15, 2023 21:37:18 GMT
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Post by Prime etc. on May 16, 2023 7:12:12 GMT
THE DAY OF THE JACKAL 1973 - I heard that the lack of stars hurt the film's box office but I don't think they could have made the film the same way if they had used familiar people. For one thing, there are scenes with no dialogue and I don't think a big star would go for that--and then they shoot so much guerilla-style--you can see that they are among pedestrians and not actors. They could not do that with Michael Caine etc. My favorite line is not in the book--which is "I am enthralled by carbine harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one as a pet."
Premiered 50 years ago to the day (of the jackal).
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Post by louise on May 16, 2023 13:47:30 GMT
23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). Van Johnson is an American playwright living in London who has lost interest in life since he became blind. While in a pub he overhears a conversation that leads him to believe a crime is going to take place, which intrigues him. He tries to get the police interested, but the evidence is very slim, so he tries to investigate on his own account, helped by his valet Cecil Parker and his ex fiancée Vera Miles. Fairly entertaining mystery with some good shots of 50s London.
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Post by louise on May 16, 2023 15:46:53 GMT
The Suspect (1944). In 1902, Charles Laughton is a mild mannered shopkeeper driven to murder by his shrewish wife. It looks as though he might have got away with it,but then complications arise. Quite entertaining period drama.
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Post by Prime etc. on May 17, 2023 6:24:37 GMT
Out of Sight 1966
A truly awful beach party/spy comedy/musical (is there any that are good though?) and yet interesting as a time capsule and also how it foreshadows certain artistic trends to come. I am going to ramble a bit because I need to use this as therapy to get over the trauma.
One part is a beach party movie—and it is interesting how specific they were in casting for such things back then. I have seen people comment on Youtube when they show a variety show from the 60s--with models or dancers--how surprised a modern viewer can be to discover how uniformly attractive the dancers were in those days. All the women and men have to fit a certain type. The women are usually much smaller in stature than the men--very limited height range. It makes you wonder--did they just not have any taller women back then or did they simply had such strict guidelines for requirements that you had to be a certain height, you had to have a certain nose etc. It's interesting because many of them look like they stepped out of a John Romita soap opera comic.
So that at least was something of interest.
It was also a musical and that was at times fascinating for the historical capsule. Either they were groups that I had never heard of or never had seen pictures of or songs that I never heard of (since I am more of a Bach and Beethoven man).
Freddy and the Dreamers—what a geeky lead singer but good voice.
The Turtles?
The Knickerbockers? They sang It's Not Unusual—weird to hear a version other than the Tom Jones one but this sounded virtually the same.
Jerry Lewis's son Gary was one of the singers too--they got him out of the way in the first five minutes.
The Astronauts. I never heard of them before.
The comedy was horrendous—just horrible.
Most of the cast are second tier people like the neighbor on Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie—Robert Pine from CHiPs was in it. I was thinking that this made Munster, Go Home! seem good and who pops in for a moment just like he did in that movie? Richard Dawson. He doesn't help.
Jamie Farr is listed in the IMDB credits but lord knows where he was.
The story (if we can be so generous) has a butler for a James Bond-type spy impersonating him, and he refers to some fantasy enemy as Dr. Evil. Later, a midget shows up as a bad guy and made me wonder if Mike Myers was a fan of this.
The comedy is so horrible--and yet, just as a butterfly might flutter past the wreckage of a grotesque and tragic car crash, there is one individual in the film who somehow manages to maintain some dignity. Not much--but she at least seems to be on page for how to perform in a comedy. Carolyn Barry--I do not know who she is--she wore Austin Powers-style glasses for the whole film (probably glad to be incognito) but another interesting feature of those days--when they wanted someone to play a nerd woman--they picked someone attractive, confident, and with charm. Her character was named Marvin and she couldn't get a date among the beach boys crowd--she eventually chooses the butler--but he gets blown up into the air and ends up in the passenger seat of a two rider motorcycle. The driver is a woman but she then speaks to him in the male voice of his boss. It ends on a gender bender joke which seems so today.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 17, 2023 22:06:09 GMT
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Post by london777 on May 19, 2023 15:48:54 GMT
Quartet (1981) dir: James Ivory Watched it on MUBI T hread on MUBIBeautifully made and acted but not at all involving. I was halfway through a detailed review on my MUBI thread then the power went down for the second time here and I lost the lot. First time this board saved my work but not the second time. Two strikes and out?
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Post by Prime etc. on May 19, 2023 17:31:41 GMT
I assume this is the Fast and the Furious? I haven't seen a single one of these movies.
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Post by louise on May 20, 2023 12:29:15 GMT
The Tuttles of Tahiti (1942). Whimsical comedy about a feckless family who I think are meant to be endearing, but I just found them irritating.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 20, 2023 13:52:11 GMT
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Post by louise on May 20, 2023 14:01:01 GMT
Great Expectations (1946). Generally very good version of Dickens’s novel, with a strong cast. I particularly like Jean Simmons as the young Estella, she is delightfully haughty.
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Post by louise on May 21, 2023 7:45:40 GMT
Remains of the Day (1993). It is 1956 and Anthony Hopkins is a butler in a stately home which now belongs to an American diplomat (Christopher Reeve). He is going to visit the former housekeeper, Emma Thompson, who is now married and who he hasn’t seen for years. As he travels to meet her we get flashbacks of his life in the 1930s, when the house belonged to a lord (James Fox) who has Nazi sympathies and invites a lot of Germans to stay. We see the emotionally repressed Hopkins whose whole life is devoted to being the perfect butler and running the household, and who, for some mysterious reason, Emma Thompson seems to find attractive. He repels all her attempts to get closer to him, so at last she gets fed up with it an accepts an offer of marriage from someone else. Now (in 1956) he seems to be vaguely regretful that he didn’t seize the opportunity of a relationship with Emma Thompson, and we wonder if anything interesting will happen when they meet. Don’t get your hopes up though. It’s not the kind of film where anything much happens.
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Post by gspdude on May 21, 2023 14:03:10 GMT
Dirty Grandpa(2016) Raunchy comedy that wasn't as funny as I hoped. At least De Niro and Aubrey Plaza seemed to be having fun. 5/10.
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