Classic Film : What classics did you watch this week? (5/23-5/29)

What classics did you watch this week? (5/23-5/29)

Please tell us what classics you saw last week. Modern films are welcome, as well.

You know who else was just following orders? HITLER!

Re: May 29th weekly dropping

Nothing again, but I will have time this week, for sure. I'm looking forward to rewatching some of my old faves. No first-time viewings lined up, unfortunately.

Thanks for running these weekly threads!

A friendly suggestion - maybe delete the opening posts of the old weekly threads. Just saying....



~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

Madame More Man Great Spain Gifle Brainstorm Cujo Moonlight Day Love

Madame Butterfly (1932)

A young Japanese girl (Sylvia Sidney) becomes a geisha in order to support her family. An American Naval Lieutenant (Cary Grant) is attracted to her and marries her rather nonchalantly as he knows he must eventually return to America where his fiancee (Sheila Terry) is waiting for him. Based on the 1898 short story by John Luther Long which in turn was dramatized in 1900 for the stage by David Belasco and eventually turned into the acclaimed opera by Giacomo Puccini in 1904, which he revised several times. As directed by Marion Gering, there are important differences from the opera but Puccini's music is incorporated into the film's underscore. The opera is passionate and heartbreaking but here, without Puccini's glorious music, it all seems rather cruel and sordid. I don't think I've ever found Grant as unappealing as he is here though granted his character is shamefully dishonest and cowardly. As usual for films of this period, almost all the major Japanese characters are played by Caucasians. That aside, Sylvia Sidney, she of the liquid eyes, is both lovely and charming and she conveys so much emotionally that it's a pity it's not a stronger film. With Charles Ruggles, Irving Pichel and Louise Carter.

The More The Merrier (1943)

Set in Washington D.C. during WWII, a young woman (Jean Arthur) reluctantly rents a room in her apartment to an elderly businessman (Charles Coburn in his Oscar winning performance) as part of her patriotic duty in alleviating the city's massive housing shortage. But when he rents part of his room to a younger man (Joel McCrea), problems ensue. Directed by George Stevens, it's no great shakes as cinema but it's awfully charming until it loses its way in the last fifteen minutes. I imagine the idea of an unmarried woman living under the same room with two men might have been rather titillating in the 1940s but it all seems rather innocent today. The film is lucky to have three expert farceurs in the leads and there's nary a misstep between them. As always, McCrea's underplaying stands out among the more frenetic performances of Arthur and to a lesser extent Coburn. Remade in 1966 as Walk Don't Run. With Bruce Bennett, Richard Gaines and Ann Doran.

The Man In The White Suit (1951)

An eccentric chemist (Alec Guinness) invents a fiber that never wrinkles, wears out or gets dirty. But when the fabric industry as well as its workers realize that his invention will render them obsolete, he becomes an enemy and must be stopped. I'm not a fan of the popular Ealing studio comedies from Great Britain. Everyone seems to adore them but they leave me indifferent. The Man In The White Suit is an exception, I'm quite fond of it. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick (Sweet Smell Of Success), the film is a pointed satire on big business and the nature of planned obsolescence as well as the power of unions. At the center of all this is Alec Guinness, one of the most acclaimed dramatic actors of his generation that we tend to forget he's a master at comedy too. Add that minx Joan Greenwood to the mix and the film is a real treat. Mackendrick directs at a brisk clip and gets us to the end without wearing out its welcome. With Cecil Parker, Ernest Thesiger, Michael Gough and Vida Hope.

Alexander The Great (1956)

Living in the shadow of his father (Fredric March), the young Alexander (Richard Burton) is torn between his love for his mother (Danielle Darrieux) and proving to his father that he is a worthy heir. When offered the role of Alexander in this film, Charlton Heston turned it down reputedly saying, "Alexander is the easiest kind of picture to make badly". This is a noble attempt but the film was taken away from its director Robert Rossen (All The King's Men) by the producers and cut by an hour. This is problematic among other things in that there is a plethora of supporting characters and we're never quite sure who they are in relation to Alexander. The film is of interest as long as it concentrates on the family dynamics of the rivalry of Alexander's parents as each uses him as pawn for their own political purpose. But once March exits the picture, it becomes just another stodgy epic. Burton provides the kind of overacting he thinks such epics deserve, his performance here similar to his work in The Robe and Cleopatra. Normally, Fredric March is more than happy to chew the scenery too but he's actually quite good here. All in all, one of the weaker Hollywood epics of the 1950s. With Claire Bloom (terribly wasted), Stanley Baker, Harry Andrews, Peter Cushing, Niall MacGinnis, Michael Hordern, Peter Wyngarde and Gustavo Rojo.

Holiday In Spain (aka Scent Of Mystery) (1960)

An Englishman (Denholm Elliott) vacationing in Spain stumbles across a plot to murder a young American girl (Beverly Bentley). With the aid of a reluctant taxi driver (Peter Lorre), he attempts to track her down, tell her she's in danger and protect her. Adapted from the novel Ghost Of A Chance by Audrey Kelley and William Roos (a married couple) and directed by master cinematographer turned director Jack Cardiff (The Red Shoes). Originally released as a roadshow in Cinerama (sort of like 3D without the glasses) as Scent Of Mystery and the first film released in Smell-O-Vision, a process where scents would permeate the theater during certain scenes like fresh bread coming out of the oven. The film (and the process) was not a success and the film was released in Europe as Holiday In Spain without the Smell-O-Vision and cut by about 15 minutes. As to the film itself, its plot is a flimsy excuse for a travelogue on Spain. To that end, it's a handsome looking film as we see Spain from her cities to her countryside, from planes and autos and the panorama no doubt would be impressive in actual Cinerama. It's a harmless lightweight curio and an archival example of showmanship in cinema. With Paul Lukas, Diana Dors, Leo McKern, Peter Arne and Elizabeth Taylor, billed here as Liz Rolyat.

La Gifle (1974)

A geography professor (Lino Ventura) is a strict single father to his daughter (Isabelle Adjani). But she's reached the age where she begins rebelling against his parental authority and wants to strike out on her own. But she's rather immature and has no focus. Directed by Claude Pinoteau, this is essentially a drama laced with some quirky comedic moments. To the film's credit, it doesn't tip the balance toward either the father or the daughter. Each is highly flawed, the father being rather unfeeling and short sighted while the daughter seems drifting without knowing what she really wants. Add to the mix, the ex-wife and mother (Annie Girardot) now living in Australia and one gets a bit more insight on the family dynamics. It's not an especially thought provoking film but Pinoteau (who co-wrote the screenplay) gets an authentic vibe to the father/daughter push and pull relationship. This was only Adjani's third movie but she would really come into her own the next year in Truffaut's Story Of Adele H. There's a very nice score by George Delerue. With Nathalie Baye, Nicole Courcel, Francis Perrin and Jacques Spiesser.

Brainstorm (1983)

A researcher (Louise Fletcher) and her colleague (Christopher Walken) have developed a device that allows the recording of someone's feelings and transferring them to another person via an electronic headset. But they are unaware that their boss (Cliff Robertson) has sold them out to the U.S. government who has plans for the device that were never intended. One of only two films directed by the special effects wizard Douglas Trumball (the other one was Silent Running), most noted for his stunning work on Kubrick's 2001. It's an ambitious film but too much of it is wasted on the domestic problems of Walken and his wife (Natalie Wood) which simply aren't compelling enough to earn our interest. The film's special effects and visuals are excellent but to what end? The film's resolution has a bit of The Black Hole, a bit of Altered States but its new age-ish gibberish makes very little intellectual or artistic sense. It's a double pity because this was Wood's last film (she died during production) and it would have been nice if it had been a stronger swan song. Fletcher's performance is a strong plus as is James Horner's underscore. With Jordan Christopher and Darrell Larson.

Cujo (1983)

A big and friendly St. Bernard dog is bitten on the nose by a rabid bat. A housewife (Dee Wallace) feels trapped in a small town life and is having an affair with a local man (Christopher Stone). But soon the the woman and her son (Danny Pintauro) and the dog will have a fateful encounter. Based on the best seller by Stephen King and directed by Lewis Teague (Alligator). The film opened to mixed reviews but was a huge hit anyway. It has developed a large cult following in the ensuing years and it's easy to see why. Teague and his team of screen writers have done a nice job of starting off with a bang and then alternating between the necessary exposition of the family's problems and the dog's deteriorating condition. The film's lengthy showdown (almost half the film) is between the mother and son and the dog and it falls to Dee Wallace to keep everything grounded in a reality to keep the movie from spilling over into silliness and she does a superb job. The film sticks close to the novel except it gives the movie a somewhat "happy" ending which is understandable as the book's ending was a bummer. The lensing by Jan De Bont (Die Hard) and the score by Charles Bernstein contribute immeasurably. With Daniel Hugh Kelly, Ed Lauter and Kaiulani Lee.

Moonlight And Valentino (1995)

When her husband is suddenly killed in an accident, a woman (Elizabeth Perkins) must deal with the aftermath and things left unspoken. Her sister (Gwyneth Paltrow), stepmother (Kathleen Turner) and best friend (Whoopi Goldberg) attempt to help her but they all have baggage of their own. Based on the 1989 play by Ellen Simon (Neil's daughter) which is semi-autobiographical. At its worst, it's the kind of movie that gives "chick flicks" a bad reputation. The dialogue is contrived and weighted down with psycho babble and homilies. On its own terms, I suppose one could call it a superior example of a Lifetime movie. On the plus side, and it's a big plus, the four lead actresses often do some amazing things with the material, giving it better than it deserves. But isn't that what a good actor is supposed to do? Paltrow comes across the least but to be fair, her character is almost impossible to play. Turner has the best moment in the film, a small speech that doesn't come till the very end. If you require more from a film than good acting, you can safely skip it but there's a thrill about seeing good actors overcoming weak material and finding some truth. Directed by David Anspaugh (Hoosiers). With Jon Bon Jovi, Peter Coyote, Jeremy Sisto and Josef Sommer.

Another Day In Paradise (1998)

A teenage petty thief and junkie (Vincent Kartheiser, TV's Mad Men) and his girlfriend (Natasha Gregson Wagner) are befriended by an older couple, a small time thief (James Woods) and his junkie girlfriend (Melanie Griffith). The four of them hit the road with plans to steal drugs from a pharmacy and make a financial killing on the street. But, of course, things go horribly wrong. The director Larry Clark is best known for his debut feature Kids and this was his follow up film. In spite of having a "seen it all before" patina, it works fairly well for the most part. When your four main characters are drug dealers, junkies, alcoholics and thieves, you know it's not going to end well. The acting is uniformly good though I would have been more impressed with James Woods' out of control psychotic if I didn't know it was a role he could do in his sleep. More impressive were Griffith's maternal junkie and especially Kartheiser's baby faced wannabe tough guy. Clark's direction is often uneven, scenes that should crackle with tension fall flat and his use of music during certain scenes derails the effectiveness. With Peter Sarsgaard, Lou Diamond Phillips and James Otis.

Love & Frienship (2016)

Forced to live on the kindness of relations and friends, an impoverished widow (Kate Beckinsale) in 1790s England schemes, plots and manipulates her way into a profitable marriage. Based on an unfinished book by Jane Austen and directed by Whit Stillman (Last Days Of Disco). It may be from the pen of Jane Austen but if you're expecting a stuffy BBC Masterpiece Theater presentation or a tasteful Merchant Ivory production, you'll be surprised. Stillman tweaks the conventions of these period films and it has more in common with, say, Tom Jones (1963) than A Room With A View. Smart and witty but with an acidic bite, the film is anchored by a terrific lead performance by Kate Beckinsale. Her Lady Susan is an amoral, self centered schemer but so assured in her drive that you can't help but like her. The rest of the ensemble are impeccable though I found Tom Bennett's doofus more annoying than amusing though my audience seemed to adore him. Even if costume period films aren't your cup of tea, I think you'll find much to savor. With Chloe Sevigny, Stephen Fry, Xavier Samuel, Emma Greenwell, Morfydd Clark, James Fleet and Jemma Redgrave.

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this

Re: The More the Merrier; Walk Don't Run

The More the Merrier: 👍

Walk Don't Run: 👍👍

I would like The More the Merrier better if it weren't for Jean Arthur's extensive crying scene. In Walk Don't Run, Samantha Eggar had the decency to tone it down a bit. Frankly, I think that neither of them should have cried at all. Totally unnecessary. Also, Charles Coburn's constant use of that one phrase (I forget it now) was kind of silly. Otherwise, The More the Merrier is a very charming movie.

Walk Don't Run is a fun romantic comedy.

In each film, a hot young man was cast.

Joel McCrea - hot.

Jim Hutton - hotter.


~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

The Man In The White Suit (1951)

I remember going though a stage of watching those Ealing studio comedies from the late 40s and early 50s with Alec Guinness.
The Man In In White Suit was great!

Re: The Man In The White Suit (1951)

As I said, I'm not big on those Ealing comedies and I've seen the major ones like The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts And Coronets etc. but The Man In The White Suit is the only one that worked for me. As a rule, I'm not big on British humor in general. Monty Python for example leaves me cold.

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this

Re: Madame More Man Great Spain Gifle Brainstorm Cujo Moonlight Day Love


I'm not a fan of the popular Ealing studio comedies from Great Britain. Everyone seems to adore them but they leave me indifferent.


You do know that I have recently taken up rifle sports? And that I own a gun and I'm pretty handy with it?



The Spikeopath - Hospital Number 217

Re: Madame More Man Great Spain Gifle Brainstorm Cujo Moonlight Day Love

I'm not worried. I'm protected by two vicious demon cats who will rip your face off!

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this

Re: Madame More Man Great Spain Gifle Brainstorm Cujo Moonlight Day Love

Well I would never mess with cats! God's cunning beauties

Ah, well I know Brit comedy is a chore for you, your complete rotten reaction to Will Hay left both Trevor and myself wanting to stick your head in a microwave oven and defrost for 2 hours.

However, I'm not a Python fan either, something which utterly bemuses my father, who is a monster fan. So there's hope for us yet.

Oh BTW, I saw a great Western the other day called The Searchers, I think you would like it

Enjoy the rest of your weekend



The Spikeopath - Hospital Number 217

Re: Madame More Man Great Spain Gifle Brainstorm Cujo Moonlight Day Love

Of course, the whole issue of "whitewashing" has become a hot topic today, but the 1930s was a riot of such casting. It's a tough call, because so much of it remains egregious, yet it should be said that sometimes, the performance (as a performance) was impressive. That's certainly the case with Luise Rainer in THE GOOD EARTH (listen, if there's any performance that justified Rainer's peculiar stardom, it was her Olan in THE GOOD EARTH), and it's also the case with Sylvia Sidney in MADAME BUTTERFLY. But (unfortunately) Paramount was top-heavy with (as Variety used to say) femme talent in the 1930s (under contract: Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, etc.) and Sidney had a hard time fighting for roles so many of her vehicles wound up at the low-end of the chain. MADAME BUTTERFLY is typical: it's such an obvious backlot job, and the sets are on the tacky side, and the cast is rather blah (people who don't think Cary Grant can be bad should check this out), but as a star vehicle for Sylvia Sidney, it works.

Jean Arthur was nearing the end of her reign as Columbia's leading lady (Rita Hayworth was on the cusp, and would finally overtake Arthur with GILDA) and she couldn't wait: of all the movie stars in the Hollywood Golden Age, she definitely ranks as the most reluctant. She's starred in some movies with the younger leading men at Columbia, such as William Holden (ARIZONA) and she was skittish: insecure about her looks to begin with, she felt she looked like their mother. So when George Stevens asked her to be in the two comedies he did during the war years (TALK OF THE TOWN and THE MORE THE MERRIER), she was relieved: Cary Grant and Ronald Colman (TALK) and Joel McCrea (MERRIER) were at least her age! Joel McCrea talked about the making of this movie: he was simply offered the role because Jean Arthur had insisted (they were friends and had worked together in the 1930s). One last thing: it was such a huge box office hit that it wound up nominated for several Oscars, including Arthur for Best Actress. She's charming but it's far from her best performance, but it shows how difficult it was to get nominated for comedy.

The most famous story about Alec Guinness is the one where he met a child who had seen STAR WARS over 100 times, and Guinness said, promise me you won't see STAR WARS again! (Fanboys always use this story to show how "insensitive" Guinness was, but the upshot is that the boy has since written about this - he understood what Guinness was trying to say, that he shouldn't just obsess over this one film, and the boy did - he didn't see STAR WARS again. Also: the story fanboys tell always has the boy bursting into tears; well, the boy didn't cry, he simply asked, what should i see instead?) Alec Guinness was right: idiot Americans are too limited in their knowledge of anything, and so he's known for STAR WARS, as if decades of work in film and theater, where he played in Shakespeare, Dickens, Graham Greene, etc. mean nothing. But he became one of the most unlikely movie stars (and he was) in the 1950s: he became the face of the Ealing comedies. And THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT is just about perfect of its type. People forget: these movies were so popular that they were successes in the US, and Guinness became a movie star in the US based on his English movies.

Robert Rossen is a director who was never comfortable working in a period setting: his best work always dealt with contemporary American themes, as in BODY AND SOUL, ALL THE KING'S MEN, and THE HUSTLER. ALEXANDER THE GREAT is a slog: it's the kind of movie where the dialogue seems dubbed, no matter who's speaking. And the oddity of international casting: Fredric March, Danielle Darrieux and Richard Burton don't make a convincing family.

When i saw HOLIDAY IN SPAIN, i wasn't aware of its Smell-O-Vision roots, and it seemed a minor mystery enhanced by some really spectacular scenery.

Because of the vagaries of distribution, it's hard for American audiences to know what's happening in other countries. Though Isabelle Adjani had been developing a reputation for her stage work while she was still a teenager, it wasn't until THE STORY OF ADELE H. that she became known here. Though she'd done challenging work on stage, she'd been cast in the French version of "teen movies" (she once said, "I was the French Sandra Dee") and LA GIFLE was typical. It was also a huge box office it in France.

There are some movies which come burdened with too-much-information, and BRAINSTORM is one of them. It's hard to know what the film could have been because the shoot was shut down when Natalie Wood died, and then, when they resumed, they rushed through what they had to shoot, and changes were made so that Wood's part wouldn't seem truncated. It's a mess, but it does have some wonderful special effects (as it should since Douglas Trumball was the director). It's also sad because Louise Fletcher is excellent, but few people noticed because the focus was on Natalie Wood.

CUJO was one scary movie: for anyone who has ever been phobic about animals, it's really nightmarish! I'm glad you made a note of Dee Wallace's performance, because it's a rarity in horror: an excellent performance which helps to give the movie some dimensions, because she makes the terror believable.

It's hard to remember how careers have changed: when MOONLIGHT AND VALENTINO opened, Gwyneth Paltrow was on the rise, Kathleen Turner had been out of the public eye for a while, Elizabeth Perkins was somebody that was getting excellent reviews but she hadn't found the role that would make her popular (she got it with her outrageous character in the TV show WEEDS), and Whoopi Goldberg was in the rut of playing the "black best friend" of the heroine (SOAPDISH, BOYS ON THE SIDE, etc.). I think i did see MOONLIGHT AND VALENTINO when it was on Lifetime (or was it the Hallmark Channel?) and it was a perfect fit.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE was an anomaly in Larry Clark's career, because it is (for him, anyway) a "professional" production, with a crew that was mostly industry professionals, and actual actors. The "problems" in most of his work (the lackadaisical approach to continuity, the scenes that run on too long, the absence of pacing) haven't exactly vanished, but ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE is a little better than his other work in terms of its craft. And it also shows that good actors really do bring something to a movie: Melanie Griffith and James Woods frequently surprise, because they're finding things in their roles that might not be obvious.

LOVE & FRIENDSHIP is another movie that i hope is remembered during award season! I think Kate Beckinsale shows you what someone with talent can do when they get a truly good role. After decades in the UNDERWORLD series and a lot of performances based on stunt doubles, she's back! The actress who was so charming in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, COLD COMFORT FARM and THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO reminds us that she always had superb comic timing, and she adds to it a haughty quality that's hilarious. Whit Stillman's return to filmmaking (after decades) hasn't been easy (DAMSELS IN DISTRESS was uneven, and his attempts at TV work, like THE COSMOPOLITANS, were flat), but here, it all works.

Re: Madame More Man Great Spain Gifle Brainstorm Cujo Moonlight Day Love

Yes, I hope that Love & Friendship doesn't get lost in the glut of Oscar bait movies during award season. They can't possibly ignore Beckinsale's delicious performance (or can they?)

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this

Lobster Racket off the Cape

The Racket (1951, John Cromwell) is an urban corruption story told as a dry, heavy-handed police procedural. Robert Mitchum plays the tough, honest police chief and Robert Ryan the organized crime boss, but their antagonism and personal history aren't well developed. Much of the movie's dialogue, though often amusing, sounds forced and didactic, while characters sloppily undergo transformations to develop the plot. Despite his supposed incorruptibility, Mitchum shows no ethical concerns about bending the law to ensnare his prey, and in this sense his character arguably displays a shade of ambiguity that touches on noir, but visually it's all pretty bright and flat and the movie itself has a cheeky disposition about his abuse of power, which shows its age. It's awkward and mediocre. (35mm http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043955/) (Second Viewing)


While watching Cape Fear (1962, J. Lee Thompson) – which, unaccountably, I had never seen before – I was convinced that it was working on a subtextual level, regardless of how much it pretended to be a surface thriller. It's a movie that seems to have grown out of the “psycho noir” trend of the 1950s, but displays a far grittier brutality, a predatory sexuality that marks the twilight of the classic Hollywood system. Because of its unexpected coarseness, the lascivious camerawork and racy dialogue, it delivers a continual shock as it transitions out from the sanitized studio movie into a bold, scary, modern vision. But watching it in 2016, it feels as if it were channeling problems like police brutality and white privilege through the veneer of the suspense movie. The dominant reading would be to view this story as that of a dangerous, undesirable man prowling around a nice neighborhood -- and on the surface, the movie seems to play into that. But looked at another way, it's the story of a privileged family fearful of the Other, yet able to draw upon significant resources -- the police, the law -- to terrorize the Other into leaving this privileged neighborhood, which has been created for the exclusive use of a certain type of people. It's still ensnared in the trappings of genre and, for 1962, wasn't quite out in the open, but all you have to do is imagine Robert Mitchum's character as Black to see this as an exposé -- unintentional though it may be -- on how systemic racism operates. Of course, the film buys into the idea that the Other really is a nasty predator, as most any psycho-thriller would, subtextually endorsing that racism (i.e., discrimination + power), and so becomes a vehicle for right-wing feelings. But it's a fascinating display of this power: so blatant and clear. It's also pretty good as a surface thriller. (35mm http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055824/) (First Viewing)


The Lobster (2015, Yorgos Lanthimos) is an imaginative, Orwellian vision of a socially oppressive society that outlaws single-ness with absurd, torturous consequences. Like Orwell, it imagines the repercussions of such a totalitarian society in great detail, though unlike Orwell, it frequently turns it all into a joke, reverting from a nuanced world with its own rules into a kind of forced one-dimensionality that does a disservice to its imaginative quality for the sake of a laugh. Of course, even with the comic tone, it's hard not to read this as an abstract response to the forced austerity measures that have been afflicted upon Greece, and there's a biting cynicism in the portrayal of the forest-dwelling rebels, whose forced single-ness is reactionary and no less oppressive than the forced co-habitation of the society-at-large, leaving the hapless protagonist only the most dire options. I don't mean to sound too critical here; it's uncommon enough to find a movie with a fairly developed dystopian vision that unravels before you piece by piece, especially one designed to ask timeless questions about the nature of love and happiness. I do wonder, though, why it was necessary for Colin Farrell to play the lead role, since it required such a physical transformation (i.e., weight gain) and yet consisted of mostly flat line deliveries where many non-professionals could probably have sufficed. (Commerce, probably.) (DCP http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902/) (First Viewing)

Re: The Racket

I've given The Racket a couple of fair chances. Despite the excellent cast, I've never been able to finish it.

~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

Re: The Racket

Yeah. You're not missing much.

Re: Lobster Racket off the Cape


and yet consisted of mostly flat line deliveries where many non-professionals could probably have sufficed.
Oh no no no no no!
Anyone can do flat line readings, it takes great actors to make them funny and infuse them with meaning.


You are alive and living now.
Now is the envy of all of the dead

Re: Lobster Racket off the Cape

Ignoring the sarcasm there....the role seems intentionally muted, not far from the sort of model-performance Bresson created through his performers. I'm not trying to suggest any blanket generalization about subdued performances not requiring skill; this particular role, however, isn't very demanding. And I find the practice of radically altering one's body (in an unhealthy way) for a role, especially a non-demanding role such as this, a pretty weird by-product of the industrial system.

Re: Lobster Racket off the Cape

No sarcasm, I think Farrell and he's great as the everyman in The Lobster. I also think you underestimate how demanding the role is especially because he's restricted to flat line readings.
It's like running a race with one hand tied behind your back.


You are alive and living now.
Now is the envy of all of the dead

Litvak, Naruse, Clement, Klein, Leterrier, Sono, Egoyan, Mazer, Eggers

Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak, 1951) - Well made WWII film, but, frankly, I'm bored with anything having to do with that conflict so I kind of got bored halfway through. Oskar Werner plays a captured German soldier who agrees to work as a spy for the Allied forces (Richard Basehart is the most recognizable American in the movie). It was nominated for Best Picture. Recommended to those who like war films. 7/10. yes/mixed.

Flowing (Mikio Naruse, 1956) - Naruse has become one of my favorite classic Japanese directors, but this one didn't do a whole lot for me. It's the story of an aging modern geisha (Isuzu Yamada) who owns her own business, but business isn't good. Other major characters include the new maid (Kinuyo Tanaka) and Yamada's daughter (Hideko Takamine). I didn't find a lot of the characters especially interesting, and the side characters are plentiful and sort of easy to confuse. Still, it's nice and gentle and has good performances. Perhaps a second viewing in the distant future would win me over, as has worked for at least one other Naruse film (Late Chrysanthemums, the first one I ever saw). 7/10. yes.

Is Paris Burning? (Rene Clement, 1966) - An epic WWII film about the French Resistance and the liberation of Paris. I'm not big on WWII films in general, and found this to be an overlong slog. It has a ton of great actors in it, from France and America, mostly appearing for a couple minutes each. I kind of stopped paying attention to it after a while, so I missed the likes of Kirk Douglas and Glenn Ford. The film has a lot more in common with American WWII films than French ones - it almost feels like every copy should have been destroyed once Melville's Army of Shadows came out. The version I saw was almost entirely dubbed in English, except hilariously when Hitler appears. All the other Nazis speak English, Hitler must speak German. 5/10. no.

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (William Klein, 1966) - Lesser known French New Wave filmmaker (lesser known probably because he was actually an American directing movies in France) William Klein directs this crazy film about model Polly Maggoo (Dorothy McGowan). The film is narratively insane - it goes everywhere and anywhere on a whim without too much of a clear story. It's reminiscent of Godard's more fun films, or maybe even some of the stuff Richard Lester was doing at the time like Help! and The Knack. It satirizes both the fashion world and filmmaking (Maggoo is besieged by a filmmaking crew doing a doc on her). A lot of cool images here. Not for those who insist on a strong narrative, but I enjoyed it a lot. 8/10. yes.

Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2013) - Big, shiny and dumb. It's also moderately entertaining. Four great magicians are chosen by a mysterious benefactor to become the Four Horsemen. Their goal: to astonish with spectacular tricks and, Robin Hood-like, rip off the criminally rich. Their first big trick involves robbing a Parisian bank from a Las Vegas stage. This puts detectives Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent on their tails, along with famous magic debunker Morgan Freeman. Very little in this film makes much sense, and I think it makes zero sense after the huge twist it ends with. It moves along so fast it's hard to care too much. Director Leterrier is a very good action director, but this isn't really an action movie. The movie's best sequence, though, is an action sequence and involves Dave Franco, one of the Horsemen, using his magic to dodge and trick the cops who are after him. The Horsemen (besides Franco there are Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Isla Fisher) get very little characterization and they probably have less screentime than Ruffalo, Laurent or Freeman. Michael Caine also co-stars. There's a lot of talent here and it's all wasted. Still, not a bad time waster. I saw it because I thought the trailer for the sequel looked even better. I'm not convinced by the first installment, but if reviews are good enough I may partake. I'll probably do so on video at any rate. 7/10. yes/mixed.

Why Don't You Play in Hell? (Sion Sono, 2013) - Nutty yakuza comedy from Sion Sono. It's overlong, particularly with an interminable set-up, but once we get to the big action set piece you'll find it well worth the wait. A group of amateur filmmakers calling themselves the F Bombers (led by Hiroki Hasegawa) has spent a decade looking for the opportunity to make a real movie. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for them, a yakuza gang is looking for someone to make a feature starring the boss's daughter (Jun Kunimura is the boss, Fumi Nikaido the daughter). Hasegawa proposes that they film the real-life gang war that is bound to happen with the rival gang (led by Shin'ichi Tsutsumi). Sono really could have shortened the film considerably had he realized the character played by Gen Hoshino, the love interest of Nikaido, was worthless and jettisoned him. Or, more obviously, he should have been combined with Hasegawa's character. As it is, Hoshino plays a shy, ineffectual character and he pretty much gets shoved to the background anytime the more lively Hasegawa is on screen. I can't imagine anyone caring about his burgeoning relationship with the drop-dead gorgeous Nikaido. None of this really matters once we get to the blood-soaked finale, which is about as fun as any movie I've seen in recent memory. 7/10. yes.

Remember (Atom Egoyan, 2015) - Atom Egoyan may never reach the heights of Exotica or The Sweet Hereafter again, but he's definitely made some solid films since then. Here's another one. I don't even remember hearing about it when it came out (late last year in Canada and March in the US), but it's a pretty good little revenge thriller. Think Memento but with a very old Holocaust survivor out looking for long hidden Nazis. Christopher Plummer plays Zev, who is spurred on by fellow Holocaust survivor and roommate Martin Landau to search for and kill a rumored Auschwitz worker. 90 years old, Plummer has lost a lot of his memory, but Landau remembers and guides him. Dean Norris also co-stars as the son of that possible Nazi. It's a small thriller (obviously not super thrilling given the ages of those involved), but it's good with a fine central performance. Definitely worth a look. 7/10. yes.

Dirty Grandpa (Dan Mazer, 2016) - Awful, awful comedy, but I love some of the actors in it so I had a morbid curiosity. Honestly, the script just plain sucks. I have no clue why Robert De Niro (whom I didn't watch it for, by the way - his judgement has been so bad for the past 20+ years you can just assume his movies are going to suck) would sign onto this. You have to admire his commitment, but the whole old-person-has-potty-mouth act was old decades ago. Plus, it's not just that he's dirty, he's mostly unlikable. The biggest problem with the film is that it's saddled with the hoary "dude is marrying a bitch" trope, which is always lame and fairly sexist. Funny thing is, the other girl Zac Efron falls for in the film, Zoey Deutch (the cutey from Everybody Wants Some!!), is every bit as boring as the girl he's engaged to (Julianna Hough). Efron himself isn't too bad as the straight man, but he works better in goofier roles. I saw this mainly for Aubrey Plaza. She's hot as Hell in this movie, and has some funny line readings, but I'm just too squicked out by her lust for Robert De Niro. I almost threw up in my mouth a couple of times. So yeah, almost everything here sucks, but there are two big exceptions: Jason Mantzoukas and Adam Pally. Mantzoukas plays a nutty drug dealer named Pam ("it's a nickname. It's short for Pamela") and he brings a lot of life to the picture whenever he pops up. Pally (Happy Endings, The Mindy Project) doesn't get as much to do, but he gets a laugh even with the smallest line, and he has the movie's best gag as he has to act as a messenger between Efron and Hough at their wedding. I'd almost say it's worth watching just for Mantzoukas and Pally if you're a fan of either of them. The rest of it is bad, but I've seen far worse. 4/10. no.

Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, 2016) - Whit Stillman adapts Jane Austen, staying very much in his dialogue-heavy wheelhouse. It also shares themes with some of his earlier films, like class, pretension, manipulativeness. And it also re-unites the stars of perhaps his best film, The Last Days of Disco: Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny. Sevigny's role is supporting. This is Beckinsale's movie all the way. She stars as master manipulatrix Lady Susan Vernon, a young-ish widow who strives to survive on her own terms, "visiting" friends and relations until her welcome is worn, hoping maybe to land herself a husband. She also hopes to find a husband for her teenage daughter (Morfydd Clark), and to accomplish both tasks she must juggle a couple of different men. Her main target is the younger brother-in-law (Xavier Samuel) of her own sister-in-law (Emma Greenwell), with whom she is staying. Another man (Tom Bennett), a rich idiot, waits in the wings as second prize. I'm no reader of Jane Austen, and I found the plot and dialogue at times difficult to follow (of course, Lady Susan Vernon is both manipulative and changes her intentions frequently, so it's somewhat easy to get lost in her machinations), but I eventually got it, and by the very end it was all easy enough to understand. It's an amusing movie, if not laugh-out-loud funny (Tom Bennett, though, is hysterical). It might play better on a second viewing when I have the plot all pinned down. It might be my least favorite Stillman film on first viewing, but it's very nice to see him back in the game so relatively soon after Damsels in Distress. 7/10. yes.

Re-watches

The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015) (second viewing) - I wasn't quite sure I liked the ending the first time around, but I was convinced entirely the second time through: this is a masterpiece, probably the best horror film in forever, and one of the best directorial debuts of the past 10 years. It's by far my favorite film so far released in 2016, and it might not be beat. 10/10 (from 9). YES.

You know who else was just following orders? HITLER!

Re: Dirty Grandpa

What????

Dirty Grandpa doesn't get a 10/10???? What's going on?



Just kidding.

~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

Re: Dirty Grandpa

You should do a thread about it

The Spikeopath - Hospital Number 217

Re: Dirty Grandpa



I had a thread about this film going when the film was released. Not sure if my thread is still around. I should bump it up with a complaint that someone gave it less than 10/10.

~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

Re: Dirty Grandpa

Since you have not seen any movie for a month (?) you should make DG your first watch (since you like murder-mysteries,you can watch De Nero murder his career.)

Re: two murder mysteries

I haven't seen any films for about two weeks, but I did watch two of my favourite murder mysteries just now:

The Black Camel (1931)

and

Eran Trece (1931 Spanish language).

~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

Decision Before Dawn

Take away the war but leave the story and it could be a movie about undercover cops infiltrating a criminal gang. A couple of new recruits might have divided loyalties, so the career cops grill them with some pointed questions. One of the 'rats' becomes a gang member, serves a fatalistic boss, and has an identity crisis. A couple of women get involved. Turns out one of the undercover cops couldn't be trusted. "The Departed" (Scorsese, 2006)

Re: Decision Before Dawn

I would have to elaborate more, but one thing I'm really sick of, given both Decision and Is Paris Burning? are characters speaking accented English instead of their own language. It starts to drive me crazy. I understand the convention, but it really bugs me.

You know who else was just following orders? HITLER!

Re: Decision Before Dawn

Well there was an international version of Is Paris Burning? where everybody spoke their own languages - French, German, English, etc - but the Paramount DVD release in the US only offers a full French dub or the English soundtrack while their international DVD only offers the English. I'm not sure if that multi-lingual version ever played in the US but it used to turn up on European TV decades ago, though I'm guessing Paramount only had a panned-and-scanned master for it and had to pick just one version to remaster when they did the widescreen DVD.


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: Decision Before Dawn

Think 'dramatic license' and Shakespeare's Italian and Danish settings. If used by the best, it doesn't necessarily bug me. I can find plenty of language dramatic license in my 9s and 10s, such as Schindler's List which gets 10s from us.

Re: Decision Before Dawn

I know I love plenty of art that is like this, but for some reason these movies were particularly bothering me last week. I guess it's the goofy German accents with the silly Nazi accents. It makes them more into cartoons. Schindler's List doesn't sound so silly.

You know who else was just following orders? HITLER!

Re: Litvak, Naruse, Clement, Klein, Leterrier, Sono, Egoyan, Mazer, Egge

Glad to see your remarks on The Witch, a film which I believe has been broadly misunderstood.

jj

"I can't BELIEEEEEVE you're such a geese!"

Re: Litvak, Naruse, Clement, Klein, Leterrier, Sono, Egoyan, Mazer, Egge

Isn't that Hitler thing weird? It's as if he can have no other language, or perhaps that even a Hitler-impersonator can't sully French or English?

I sympathise, Is Paris Burning? iS definitely a slog, although it does repay close attention if you're interested in the period and subsequent representations of it. I've finally got a French copy which is in stock for when I next want to watch it, though I think I might even miss ze funny accents now ...

If they organise the revolution like they did this meeting, what'll happen?

Re: What classics did you watch this week? (5/23-5/29)

First, some old reviews of mine for movies from 1966

Persona (1966)
The Criterion DVD is great! Not only is there the usual subtitles but there are also three soundtracks. A commentary in English, the original Swedish soundtrack , and a dubbed English soundtrack. This not only gave me an opportunity to effortlessly watch the movie (without having to read the subtitles at the same time), but it also gave me an opportunity to read English subtitles and hear the dubbed English and find out how different the one is from the other. Finally, I did watch it in Swedish with English subtitles as I usually do with foreign movies.

Even though I have only recently become a Bergman fan, it is better late than never. This Bergman film was riveting for me from beginning to end. Though the story seems straight forward, I can interpret layer upon layer of possible meaning to the movie and would enjoy some conversation about it here.

The basic story is that a stage actress (played by Liv Ullmann) who is suddenly struck dumb while performing Electra. After being sent to a mental hospital, her doctor decides that she is well enough to leave and sends the her and her nurse (played by Bibi Andersson) to a seaside home together. The two become not only patient and nurse, but also trusted friends. Since the patient never talks, the resulting pregnant silence allows (or compels) the nurse to talk more and more, opening up secrets about herself.

At times, we feel that the roles of patient and nurse become reversed.
At other times, we feel that the roles of the actress and HER audience (the nurse) become reversed.
Then there is the positions of voyeur and performer. Which is which—and when?
What about OUR roles as the audience? Don't WE feel that we, too, are looking into this relationship as voyeurs?

But, whatever roles are being played here, the participants seem willing to play the role, until the nurse reads a letter from the actress to her psychiatrist in which she talks about what the nurse has relayed to her in confidence. When the nurse becomes upset, she confronts and reproaches her own patient to shift the "spotlight" back on the patient (the actress).

About the time we realize how complex this movie might be, Bergman starts to blend and morph one person's face into the other's (sort of a half Ullmann and half Adnersson shot). NOW, I begin to wonder if we are seeing two sides (or multi-faceted sides) of the SAME person.0

The film is resplendent with multi-faceted interpretations. Here's yet another: A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role, or a character played by an actor. The word derives from the Latin for "mask" or "character", derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning. (From Wikipedia).

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The Family Way (1966)
Based on Bill Naughton's play, this film is definitely my Great New Discovery of the Week. I was drawn to its Kitchen Sink Realism (set in the working-class town of Bolton) and to the chance to see John and Hayley Mills working in yet another film together. John Mills seemed to love co-starring (or co-appearing in films with his two daughters: Juliet and Hayley. This can be traced back even to the daughters' infancies and ‘toddlerhoods' when all three of them appeared in So Well Remembered (1947)—where Hayley played a baby and Juliet played a toddler. OR, in the Noel Coward--David Lean classic, Which In Which We Serve (1942), where Juliet was Freda's baby. Briefly, on this general subject, does anyone know when—OR IF—Chalk Garden (1964) will ever be restored?

The film opens on the wedding day of the 20-year-old virgin, Jenny Piper (Hayley Mills), and the boy she has been going steady with for two years, Arthur Fitton (Hywel Bennett), also a virgin. Both families are preparing themselves for the big day. Jenny—who works in a record shop--and Arthur—who is an assistant projectionist at the movie theater--have both chipped in to pay for their honeymoon in Spain. As planned Jenny and Arthur spend their first night as a married couple at the Fitton house. But, their bed breaks down (rigged as a plank by friends) and Arthur can't imagine having sex with Jenny in his own house, with his parents in the next room. So, nothing happens. The next day, they go to the travel agency to start their honeymoon, only to find out that the ‘agent' had skipped town with the money, leaving a crowd of people there wanting the police to help them get their money back.

With no more money saved up, the two return to the Fitton bedroom and their old jobs. While Arthur and Jenny get kidded about their new married status, nothing happens for days, and then weeks. Arthur is working nights, Jenny is working days, and the two barely see each other, especially alone. Nada… Worst of all, due to small clues, both sets of parents start to wonder and worry about Arthur and Jenny and if they are having marital problems. Arthur goes to a therapist for help. (The fact that the therapist is a woman doesn't make him too happy either). When the cleaning woman sees him enter the therapist's office, she gets word around town. On the other hand, Jenny goes to her Uncle Fred (Wilfred Pickles), who is only a physical therapist-- not a medical man. He can only give her loving general advice—and refer to anecdotes about his rabbits and how they had to be encouraged sexually.

Finally, Arthur decides he just HAS to get out of his house to be alone with Jenny. When the two apply for public assistance, they run into red tape at the public assistance housing office: they have NO children, NO physical disabilities; and they are NOT crowded--in fact, they are told, that they are lucky to have a room of their own!!

With everyone watching them things only get worse until the two sets of in-laws get together and discuss the situation. Although this is a comedy, it is also often bittersweet, heart warming, and poignant. When Arthur's father and mother talk about their own early marriage days with Jenny's parents, they remember that it wasn't always clear sailing for them either. At this point, the life-long competition between father and son, Ezra and Arthur, is broken, and the heart-warming ending comes off perfectly.

This film is a great ensemble work since, there were so many great performances in it. For example, John Mills practically steals the show as the comical and clueless father of the groom. Marjorie Rhodes, who plays John Mills' wife, is great with her comic sidelines and lovable verbal jabs on the situation, in general, and her husband's observations, in particular. Also, Hayley's new husband's younger brother, Geoffrey (Murray Head, Sunday Bloody Sunday) was great here as the hormonally challenged dirt biker.

---------------------------------------------

Now, the new reviews:

The Blue Max (1966)
This is an interesting story revolving around the heavier-than-aircraft of World War I (about 100 years ago). But, this movie is really about more than just WW I pilots and aircraft. It is a drama about German classism (during the period) and the difference between how the upper class and the lower class viewed their roles as war pilots.

The movie opens in 1916 with Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) trapped in German trenches at the Western Front. We watch him as he marvels at the aircraft flying overhead, free to maneuver at will.

After he is promoted and takes his pilot training, in 1918 he reports to the Air Corps only to find that he is not from the right social class:

His colleagues aren't happy with him, not only because he isn't an aristocrat like they are, but also because he's extremely ambitious. He will do anything to win him his country's most honoured medal, the Blue Max. But to win it, he'll have to shoot down 20 enemy aircrafts, which will all have to be confirmed by his comrades, without getting killed himself. And while being hated by his fellow pilots, he's seen as the people's hero and perfect propaganda material by the general and as the ideal lust object by the general's wife...

"The Blue Max" shows very well how the pilots during WWI were almost always noblemen (I guess the most famous one of them all was Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as the Red Barron), who considered the concept of an honourable death at the hands of a "worthy" opponent still as one of the most important things during their fights. Even at the end of the war in 1918, while on the ground troops had been anonymously slaughtered by the thousands with machine guns and gas, they still considered chivalry as one of the highest goods.-- Philip Van der Veken from Tessenderlo, Belgium 13 May 2005.
I think that some of the photography, here, is remarkable, but the story with it intrigue of people using people for their own selfish gains is also quite good.

This is one of those movies that has a great ending. So, if you get into it, don't leave your seat until the final fad out comes....

--------------------------------------------------

How to Steal a Million (1966)
Why would anyone want to steal a priceless statue, the Cellini Venus, from a Paris art museum IF you had been the one to loan it to the museum in the first place? Therein lies the riddle that makes up the story of this movie.

When you first look at the cast of this William Wyler movie, it looks like there are three—maybe four--Oscar winners. Well, that is true and not true: Audrey Hepburn and Hugh Griffith won performance Oscars, but Peter O'Toole and Charles Boyer—while receiving several nominations each—ended up with only Honorary Oscars.

Once you have seen a few art heist movies, you know what pains that a museum or bank goes through to protect the priceless objet d'art in their possession. There all sorts of bells and whistles, secret codes, and infrared sensors around the art, not to mention the 24/7 personnel used to respond to this plethora of mechanical-electrical gimmicks.
The fun of the movie is watching O'Toole help Hepburn try to steal the statue. This is a bit like watching the old Mission Impossible TV show.

-----------------------------------------------------

Now, a word about Judy Holliday and her movies---

Judy Holliday had a short but successful career. She died--after a five year battle with breast cancer--in 1965 when she was only 44. Therefore, she stopped making movies at the age of 39.
I used to hate her in movies. But now, I love her voice and style. She was an original. Some of her movies were quite good. But, at least one was very pedestrian: I speak of Phfft (1954) here.

Like so many actors, she probably would have been limited in the range of characters she could have played, but we will never know for sure. I used to hate her in movies.
Here are some quotes from her IMDb bio:

To help build up Holliday's image, particularly in the eyes of Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn, Katharine Hepburn deliberately leaked stories to the gossip columns suggesting that her performance in Adam's Rib (1949) was so good that it had stolen the spotlight from Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. This got Cohn's attention and Holliday won the part in Born Yesterday (1950).

Despite her image as a "dumb blond", she had an IQ of 172. She often said that it took a lot of smarts to convince people that her characters were stupid.

According to biographer Gary Carey, in its search for subversives in the film industry, the House Un-American Activities Committee was flummoxed by Holliday. She essentially playing her Billie Dawn character on the witness stand. She ended up being the only person ever called before HUAC who was neither blacklisted nor compelled to name names.

Won Broadway's 1957 Tony Award as best actress in a musical for Bells Are Ringing, a role that she recreated in the film version of Bells Are Ringing (1960).

Was the 35th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for Born Yesterday (1950) at The 23rd Academy Awards on March 29, 1951.

Long story short, even though the was only 44 when she died, she had been 1) a self-promoter 2) an won an Oscar winner, 3) a Tony Award winner, and 4) a Golden Globe winner--one of 14 actresses to have won both the Best Actress Academy Award and the Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical Golden Globe for the same performance.

-------------------------------------------

Born Yesterday (1950)
This is Judy's most famous movie with a great cast, and it is also the one that she won an Oscar for. Yes, Broderick Crawford and Judy Holliday are a bit over-the-top, playing one of the most famous mobsters-moll couples in the movies. And, you would probably never have thought of putting William Holden in such a bookishly idealistic role. But, this is a feel-good movie with a post-war patriotic sub-theme.
I personally loved the Washington, D.C. tour, especially the Jefferson Memorial which was dedicated, by FDR, on the exact day I was born. And, I personally met and talked one-on-one to Broderick Crawford, even though it was only in an elevator for 2 minutes. (It's kind of nice to know that you once had a private, but brief, conversation with a Best Actor Oscar winner.)

--------------------------------------------------------

The Marrying Kind (1952)
I already recently reviewed this a movie:

The combination of George Cukor directing movies written by Ruth Gordon and/or Garson Kanin--who, in real life, were married to each other--and featuring Judy Holliday and/or Aldo Ray seems to have been a winning team in the late 40s and early 50s. Adam's Rib (1949), It Should Happen to You (1954), Born Yesterday (1950), and Pat and Mike (1952) all seem to fit this bill. I have seen all of the above EXCEPT the one I am reviewing here, and this one now seems to be one of my favourites of the group.

These movies--like Marty which would follow later--seem to capture the daily lives of middle-class New Yorkers at a time before the world got so complicated with digital media. I was only about 9 at the time these movies were made, but it is nice to see and hear the styles, cars, life and lingo of that period again.

Both Aldo Ray and Judy Holliday (as Chet and Florrie Keefer) capture our hearts because they seem to be so serious about their lives, as they screech at each other with those funny, but winning voices. Some of the problems of their young marriage—like the accidental death of their son or a long-term disability--are serious, but others just don't seem that serious. Many of us can relate to in-law problems being blown out of proportion and who did what to whom and when. In a way, when we laugh at this movie, we are laughing at ourselves at some points of our marriage. So, the movie is both cathartic and funny at the same time.

As the judge in their divorce case (played by Madge Kennedy) says, (to paraphrase)--there are three sides to every marriage: his side, her side, and the truth. It is fun to hear Chet and Florrie each telling their side of the story while, at the same time, watching the truth playing out on the screen.


-------------------------------

It Should Happen to You (1954)

--------------------------------

Phffft (1954)

----------------------------------

The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956)
Paul Douglas and Judy Holliday make a perfect couple.
You might remember Paul Douglas from A Letter to Three Wives (1949).
He was great as a cop, a businessman, or the loud but shy guy who always seemed incapable of being loved for just for himself.

-----------------------------------

Bells Are Ringing (1960)
This is a disjoined musical that had been a great Broadway play. It is hard to imagine why. Maybe the play turned out better than the movie because the idea is promising, but the result is still disjointed. One would think a musical directed by Vincente Minnelli and written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green to be better. The best thing I can say about it is that it produced two (maybe three) hit songs that have lasted the test of time.
Here they are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbsTk3g-vQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SdMra6u2Ow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVEOg_ZW1Zw

Scorsese Depp Buzz and Woody

Scorsese Blu-ray box set

Goodfellas (1990) 4th view 8/10
The Aviator (2004) 4th view 8/10
The Departed (2006) 4th view 8/10 As much as I enjoy this one, it's just plain wrong that this is his oscar.

Black Mass (2015) 1st view 7/10 Depp actually acts again in what amounts to just another real life crime movie.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) 1st view 2/10

Toy Story (1995) 3rd view 7.5/10
Toy Story 2 (1999) 3rd view 7.5/10



"He was a poet, a scholar and a mighty warrior."

Re: Toy Story

Have you seen Toy Story 3?

All three films are very enjoyable, IMHO.

~~~~~
Jim Hutton (1934-79) & Ellery Queen

Re: Toy Story

Should be catching Toy Story 3 this week. Haven't seen it yet.


"He was a poet, a scholar and a mighty warrior."

Re: Toy Story

I have never seen Toy Story.
But, it is so highly rated, I must see it.

News Flash: It will be on the Disney Channel at 6:25 (ET) on June 3rd.
SET TO BE RECORDED

Re: What classics did you watch this week? (5/23-5/29)

Sound?? (Dick Fontaine, 1966) 8/10
Philosophizing about music with John Cage ("Is music - the word - music?") while jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk plays three saxophones simultaneously on stage and asks a big part of the audience to jam with him using toy flutes which he distributed during the show, and afterwards Kirk goes to the zoo and jams with the animals.

Op Hop/Hop Op (Pierre Hébert, 1966) 7/10
What Hip Hop ought to be.

Da Vinci (Yuri Ancarani, 2012) 8/10
Shot inside a human body.
The setting: Intestines.
The cast: Sharp metal objects and surgeons.
For fans of Leviathan (2012).

Moby: Shot in the Back of the Head (David Lynch, 2009) (rewatch) 6/10

Si j'avais quatre dromadaires / If I Had Four Dromedaries (Chris Marker, 1966) 5/10

Kinatay (Brillante Mendoza, 2009) 7/10
On Earth no one can hear your screams of anguish (unless you make them heard). A different kind of morality play.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: "Zombie Nightmare" (1987) 7/10
Zombie Nightmare (Jack Bravman, 1987) 1/10

Take Me Naked (Michael Findlay & Roberta Findlay, 1966) 3/10
Super low budget New York porn poetry with avant-garde aspirations, all-voice-over, all-cheap-grating-music. It is about as sophisticated as it sounds, but isn't total crap, just dull like porn tends to be. Fans of gloomy softcore sleaze could do worse than 'Take Me Naked'.

Hold Me While I'm Naked (George Kuchar, 1966) 5/10
Why directors make erotic films.

La muerte de un burócrata (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966) 8-/10
The only treatment that bureaucracy deserves; an absurdist one.

Pacific 231 (Jean Mitry, 1949) 5/10

Meet Me, Jesus (Walter Ungerer, 1966) 6/10
All is striving for eternity under one sun that is itself not eternal.

殺破狼2 / Kill Zone 2 / SPL II: A Time for Consequences (Pou-Soi Cheang, 2015) 6/10

Freiheit (the Star Wars guy, 1966) (rewatch) 3+/10

The Killers: Here with Me (Tim Burton, 2012) 3/10
Tim Burton remakes himself for this non-passion project.

The Cut Ups (Antony Balch, 1966) 6/10
Made me grind my teeth down to my gums...and then I ground my gums.

Tung (Bruce Baillie, 1966) 7+/10
Memory layers.

Tung (Bruce Baillie, 1966) (rewatch) 7+/10

Rebus Film Nr. 1 (Paul Leni, 1925) 4/10

Dangerous Game / Snake Eyes (Abel Ferrara, 1993) 6+/10
On High In Blue Tomorrows

Particles in Space (Len Lye, 1966) 7/10

Where to Invade Next (Michael Moore, 2015) 7/10

Turn Turn Turn (Jud Yalkut, 1966) 6/10
Turn Turn Turn (Jud Yalkut, 1966) (rewatch) 6/10

Beatles Electroniques (Jud Yalkut, 1969) 6/10

Us Down By The Riverside (Jud Yalkut, 1965-1969) 5/10

Der lachende Mann - Bekenntnisse eines Mörders (Walter Heynowski & Gerhard Scheumann, 1966) 7/10

Death of the Gorilla (Peter Mays, 1966) 6/10
Multi-track visuals (several superimpositions at once) made comprehensible by assigning a different color filter to each track. Good idea.

Breath Death / Breathdeath: A Trageede in Masks (Stan Vanderbeek, 1964) (rewatch) 8/10

What, Who, How (Stan Vanderbeek, 1957) 5+/10

Science Friction (Stan Vanderbeek, 1959) 7/10

Free Radicals (Len Lye, 1958) 7/10
Scratch that.

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (Pip Chodorov, 2011) 6/10

Free Radicals (Len Lye, 1958) (rewatch) 7/10

Symphonie diagonale (rewatch) (Viking Eggeling, 1924) 6/10

Rainbow Dance (Len Lye, 1936) (rewatch) 6/10

Arrière-saison / Late Autumn / Backward Season (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1950) 2/10

Louder Than Bombs (A. Tad Chamberlain, 2005) 6/10

Louder Than Bombs (Joachim Trier, 2015) 5+/10

The Magic Sun (Phill Niblock, 1966) 7+/10
The demented jazz version of 'Begotten' (but not really).

Aleph (Wallace Berman, 1966) 5/10

Ming Green (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1966) 8/10
Images that see both the surface and the thought they evoke.

Ming Green (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1966) (rewatch) 8/10

Urzad / The Office (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1966) 6/10

Faster, Pussycat! KILL! KILL! (Russ Meyer, 1965) (rewatch) 5/10 (from 6)

Jazz Dance (Roger Tilton, 1954) 5/10
Early example of directly cinema/cinema variety. Primitivisimo.

Varieté (Ewald André Dupont, 1925) 8/10
Emil Jannings... holy f-ck!

various Sally Cruikshank works


- Notable Online Media -

A Beginners Guide to Lucid Dreaming
Intertextuality: Hollywood's New Currency
THE NEON DEMON - Press Conference - EV - Cannes 2016
GIMME DANGER - Interview - EV - Cannes 2016
GIMME DANGER - Press Conference - EV - Cannes 2016
THE BLOOD FATHER - Interview - EV - Cannes 2016
First and last Appearance of Quentin Tarantino films.
Badlands and the Art of the Voiceover
Top 5:
MC5 at Tartar Field, Wayne State University, Detroit on July 19th
Kaili Blues Trailer | SGIFF 2015
KAILI BLUES Bande Annonce (2016)
Michel Chion: The Complete Jacques Tati
JURY - Press conference - EV - Cannes 2016


- just another film blog -
http://perception-de-ambiguity.tumblr.com

Dark Desires

Diary of a Chambermaid (France-1964) dir. Luis Buñuel
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058249/
Buñuel's version of Octave Mirbeau's novel sees a new maid in a country house (Jeanne Moreau) expertly navigating a world full of sexual predators, with the cool detachment of a zoologist observing a pack of lions in the Serengeti, knowing exactly how close she can allow them to get before they become dangerous, and while most other women in the film end up destroyed by the powerful men around them, she remains unscathed.
When she does decide to have sex, on her own terms, it appears part of a strategy, a means to an end, but she chooses the most perverted character in the film, ostensibly as part of some amateur detective work to uncover his dark secret, but her sleuthing doesn't quite necessitate going to bed with him, it seems that, to her, that's just a bonus. Is the man then right to say that him and her are both alike, both equal in their perversions?
And who is she anyway? She is certainly no stranger to the workings of a big mansion, but her expensive clothes and perfume suggest she may not always have been a maid.
All this against the backdrop of the rise of fascism in the thirties, Buñuel and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière have created a masterclass in ambiguous storytelling.
***1/2


A Study in Terror (UK-1965) dir. James Hill
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059764/
Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper, round 1.
There's some padding (two musical numbers I could have done without), and John Scott's jazz-influenced score manages to be at once oddly anachronistic, yet utterly generic, but overall, this is an enjoyable Sherlock Holmes adventure, with John Neville making a solid Sherlock, fine art-direction, and fog machines working on overdrive to create the right mood.
***


Elle (France-2016) dir. Paul Verhoeven
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3716530/
Dark, twisted, yet surprisingly funny, with an electrifying Isabelle Hupert, who seems born to play this very part, this is Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece.
****


You are alive and living now.
Now is the envy of all of the dead

Re: Dark Desires

One of the musical numbers in A Study in Terror is the best thing in the film and should be in the standard edgy-folk repertoire ;p

The strangeness of Miss Cool Moreau ... Wonderful film.

If they organise the revolution like they did this meeting, what'll happen?

Re: Dark Desires


should be in the standard edgy-folk repertoire
...though not necessarily in a Sherlock Holmes mystery.


You are alive and living now.
Now is the envy of all of the dead

Re: Dark Desires

I think perchance you're taking Mr. Holmes too seriously.

If they organise the revolution like they did this meeting, what'll happen?

Re: Dark Desires

One critic called Elle the best film at Cannes this year. It's good to see Paul Verhoeven return to form. Unfortunately, a U.S. release date has not been set yet so we might have to wait awhile to see it. Can't wait.

In ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this

Re: Dark Desires

I'd be surprised if there were many better films than Elle in the Cannes line-up - or many better female performances than Huppert's.
I get the feeling the jury played it a bit safe this year, rewarding well-meaning social dramas, but staying clear of anything remotely controversial.


You are alive and living now.
Now is the envy of all of the dead

French Robert Duvall.

French fest 3:

Rififi (1955) 10/10

The Heist (1970) (Robert Hossein) 7/10

Student Services (2010) 7/10

A Kiss for a Killer (1957) 10/10

A Matter of Resistance (1966) ( Catherine Deneuve) 7/10

The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) (Catherine Deneuve) 7/10

The Devil's Hand (1943) (Maurice Tourneur) 10/10

Non-French movies:

Get Low (2009):9/10

It's a Disaster (2012):7/10

Re: What classics did you watch this week? (5/23-5/29)


Fish Tank (2009, Andrea Arnold)
. Hard hitting coming-of-age drama, that is guilty of checking off every poverty cliche in the book but is undeniably powerful. I live in England, and while I didn't have an upbringing like Mia there were many girls just like her at my school. Katie Jarvis captured her brilliantly. An ugly film really, but that's the point. It will stay with me. 8/10

White Material (2009, Claire Denis)
. This has a very interesting setting - an unnamed post-colonial African country descending into civil war - and benefits further from Denis's beautiful, elliptical direction and a reliably effective performance from Isabelle Hupert. Mysterious and quite disturbing. 8.5/10

Yesterday Girl (1966, Alexander Kluge)
. I had high hopes for this one, which I only read about last week and immediately watched. It's about a woman from East Germany who tries to build a life in the West, but keeps encountering obstacles. It's basically a Godard film in German; it's shamelessly derivative. I usually love Godard, so that shouldn't be a problem, but Kluge made this way too disjointed (and less fun) to be fully engaging. Not worthless but a bit disappointing. 6/10

Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter) - rewatch
. I thoroughly enjoyed this the first time I saw it, but I think I was also picking holes unnecessarily. This time, I fully embraced every element and just loved it. Wonderfully creative and hilarious in a very witty way. It's not a kids film! 9/10, up from 8.5.

Il Divo (2008, Paolo Sorrentino)
. Another super stylish film from Sorrentino, who has become one of my very favourite directors. This one is a sort of biopic of the controversial politician Giulio Andreotti, but focussing on the 1980s and '90s (I think!). We're given some background at the start, but otherwise the film races through the issues with little exposition or context, and without an understanding of the history (like me) it can be tricky to follow. It hardly matters much though, because Sorrentino's plethora of visual tricks keeps things engaging enough, and the great Toni Servillo brings gravitas with a superb, transformative performance. 8.5/10

Streetwise (1984, Martin Bell)
. Documentary about teenagers living and working on the streets of Seattle - apparently named America's "best city to live in" but the director wanted to show that it nevertheless has the problems of teenage prostitution, addiction, drug dealing, and homelessness. The style is completely observational, just filming the kids go about their lives, and makes no judgements nor provides any answers. The interactions with their parents were the most interesting to me, and often completely maddening. The ending is a heartbreaker. 8/10

American Heart (1992, Martin Bell)
. The same people who worked on Streetwise decided to make a fictional film about poverty in Seattle, loosely inspired by the people they met. It stars Jeff Bridges as an ex-convict, who is tracked down by his estranged teenage son (Edward Furlong) as soon as he is released from prison. It mostly has a nice, unsentimental tone to it, and the performances are strong. The last 15 minutes annoyed me though. 7/10 (just)



I'll be waiting, with a gun and a pack of sandwiches.

Inside Out (2015)


Inside Out (2015, Pete Docter) - rewatch. I thoroughly enjoyed this the first time I saw it, but I think I was also picking holes unnecessarily. This time, I fully embraced every element and just loved it. Wonderfully creative and hilarious in a very witty way. It's not a kids film! 9/10, up from 8.5.
I totally agree with everything you said.
I think it might be the best overall movie of the year!!

Parole italiane

Two films which function on Italian texts as well as innovative imagery. Now I don't want to bore you with my linguistic nerdery, but also: two films made by non-Italians (well, more or less) with serious investment in the significance of the texts in question; two films which contrary to all possible appearances are officially French; two films in which the Italian language of the Italian texts was not straightforward, because the production in different ways got in the way ...

Dalla nube alla resistenza, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1979 enchanted me long ago with the pagan strangeness of its dialogues - written by Pavese as poetic/philosophical essays on changing visions of an old world - and the extraordinary scintillating beauty of the place in which it is quietly, thoughtfully shot. Its two parts are drawn from two different Pavese texts: the first is a series of shorter sequences, in which, in a notional classical world, pairs of characters, some well-known, some anonymous, talk about their experience of old gods and new. The takes are long, fixed on the speakers, individually or together, face-on or, in the case of Oedipus and Tiresias, staring at the backs of their necks as they jog along a country road behind the oxen on their cart. A nymph warns a headstrong young man of how much will be lost now that the wood-gods have been superseded by distant Olympians; a middle-aged peasant puzzles over the crazy state of his aged, once-heroic father who considers himself abandoned by the gods; a young stranger is marked for ritual sacrifice in a local fertility ritual and (unlike Sergeant Howie, I can't resist saying) manages to theologise his way into convincing the king that the only possible candidate for sacrifice is - himself; two hunters discuss metamorphosis over the body of the old wolf they have killed, who they are sure was once a man. Subjects as far from modern experience as can be imagined, but which chime with the Sicilian landscapes they are framed in and raise great questions of destiny and determination, nature, how we frame it, authority and how we recognise it .... In the second part an ex-partisan returns from exile in America to reconnect with the village where he fought during the war and to discover what has been gained, what has been lost, what became of his friends of the time. Sombre and sunlit, far from any certainties about the future or the past; in both parts stories are told by words only - you have to listen every second -: the images don't really need searching, they accompany the words and the ideas edge into their corners, shiver their leaves, cast shadows on the sun-drenched grass outside the bars.

An extraordinarily beautiful film about Sicily, in particular, and the old Mediterranean more generally - and perhaps about the land everywhere. Straub and Huillet, notoriously international filmmakers who already lived in Rome in 1979, decided nevertheless for whatever reason that French channels were best to prepare this film, and found themselves running foul of the French cultural language policy which requires (or certainly required at the time) that French-funded films be in French. Straub and Huillet refused outright, the authorities had recourse to special pleading .. maybe they could film in Corsica, Corsican was a 'French' language, wouldn't that do. Possibly an argument for the universal Mediterranean could have justified that, but S and H stuck to their guns - you don't get more stubborn than Straub and Huillet - and so we have the Italian film this always should have been.

YES YES

As was, notoriously, not the case with Pasolini, Abel Ferrara, 2014. It's taken me two years to even persuade myself I wanted to see it, and that, in part, was a linguistic sulk. Hadn't Ferrara released a film in which Pasolini spoke English - sometimes? What sort of capitulation was that? I should point out from the start then that this isn't the version I saw: I bought the 'Italian dub' to avoid it, and since it's not so much a dub but a proper version, where the two voice-actors required are eminent and credited (even on the IMDb, I see), I observe that this is probably the definitive form of the film and the one which should circulate.

Having seen the film, though, I can see some possible more creditable justifications for the presence of a little English, because Ferrara was braver than I expected, and this is definitely not, at any point, realist reconstruction, thank heaven. Ferrara works through evocation in glimpses, with great reliance on shadows from which moments emerge. He uses texts to supply dialogue, not quite to the extent that Straub and Huillet do - he isn't that independent of the narrative expectation - but in considered, sober sequences which are the substance and structure of the film. He casts for significance, relying on the audience receiving the message - I don't mean Dafoe, obviously, but Ninetto, Asti or de Medeiros. He flits between his own imagination and Pasolini's, both flickering hesitantly out of darkness (in very unPasolinian style, even when in principle these images are from a projected film: the contrasting aesthetic in the one brief sequence of this film-dream-within-the-film which takes place at a tatty station in daylight, hesitating on the brink of dusty reality like the later scenes of Edipo, only draws attention to how very Ferrarese is every other vision here.) Despite the narrative concentration on 1 November 1975, (is there really no alternative), he delivers a tight, nervous essay with genuine commitment, and sidelong glances at biography. It's not all about death, and certainly not about plot - despite some cynical pre-release publicity. It is all about the end; the only texts, images, statements that count are the last, without a dialogue with what came before .. except that the end of that film-script, the last text possible, back-heels the disaster into play again, and Ferrara notices, and almost stops on cue ...

And so, at least in Italian, it was convincing and it had something to say. The possible acceptable reasons for English? Well, maybe to offer a bit of truth to the actor; after all the actors' realities are significant elsewhere, and Dafoe, especially when filmed in high-key, shadowed, close-up which hides his height, can look so like/unlike the subject as to wander in the vales of the uncanny. A little aural Brechtian distance might be no bad thing (but then, of course, de Medeiros should have spoken Portuguese, or at least her own, accented Italian). More seriously, assuming English was used only for published texts (and not, as one review I saw suggested, according to who Pasolini was speaking to) I can see an argument for offering those texts as texts to the immediate audience, and distinguishing them from 'dialogue'. But no Anglophone reviews that I saw picked that up; which might reflect on another rather unexpected potential issue which is that a hell of a lot of the best things Ferrara does, from referential casting to quick film-translation of memorable texts, only work if you know ... Or at least, it would read very differently if you haven't the faintest idea that the skinny guy in the literary salon who looks (brilliantly) like a younger version of the Magistrate in Salò is a fictional character, and you don't know who Ninetto is in present reality or who Sandro was in 1975 or why a French version of Salò starts the film (I assume that was also the case in the 'English' version, otherwise it would make no sense whatever...) or etc. etc. From my point of view it's a good problem to have but I can understand the slightly bemused reviews that cropped up here and there. But yes, maybe even tending to YES, which I really didn't expect.

REVISION SECTION
LAST WEEK
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/aliinwonderland/may23I_zpsqgatsssh.jpg
You Western aficionados, you really need to see this. You never get it, no matter how many times I post it. Requiescant.

II was Anzio: it looked like a generic two-soldiers-in-a-ditch shot to me, Mitchum didn't even look much like Mitchum, but it went to OldAussie so congratulations.

THIS WEEK.
Revision I. The very last shot of a very weird, uncomfortable, dislikeable film, I think this is exceptionally hard:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/aliinwonderland/may30I_zpscvarv1u2.jpg

Revision II. Still quite obscure, but the man should be recognisable
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/aliinwonderland/may30II_zpsc7bupqiv.jpg
And he was, to OldAle: it's Ben Gazzara in La Ragazza di Trieste

Revision III. I can't call this one. I suspect one person on here knows it intimately. Otherwise, possibly quite hard
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/aliinwonderland/may30III_zps0j6yfvdm.jpg

Revision IV. You're on easy street now..
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/aliinwonderland/may30IV_zpsktfofdrm.jpg
OldAussie said it: Godfather II

Revision V. And this shouldn't be hard either, though I didn't want to be too obvious:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b99/aliinwonderland/may30V_zpsgidbh3at.jpg



If they organise the revolution like they did this meeting, what'll happen?

Re: Parole italiane

II. is definitely Ben Gazarra; the film I think is La ragazza di Trieste (1982) but I won't be surprised if I'm wrong.

Be true, Unbeliever.

Re: Parole italiane

You're right. A fairly inexcusable piece of tilm, frankly.

If they organise the revolution like they did this meeting, what'll happen?

Revision IV

Godfather II

"He was a poet, a scholar and a mighty warrior."

Re: Revision IV

Yeah!

If they organise the revolution like they did this meeting, what'll happen?
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