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| billyweeds |
 Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:21 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Saw London Boulevard, which I'd never heard of until reading about it here. Colin Farrell adds to his growing list of good performances as an ex-con who "they keep dragging back" (apologies to Pacino) into the mob scene. It's a little ragged around the edges, but with David Thewlis, Ben Chaplin, and Ray Winstone in the cast, it serves. No great shakes, but worth checking out. Keira Knightley is the female lead but she's largely wasted. The director is William Monahan, who won the Oscar for his screenplay for The Departed, and he acquits himself fairly well. The movie is sometimes witty and sometimes bloody but not witty or bloody enough to be memorable. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:17 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6954
Location: Black Hills
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| I had a similar reaction. When I commented on it here, I didn't even mention Knightley's role, for the reason you mention. The problem with her role is, with amusing irony, precisely what her character, as an actress, complains about. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:22 am |
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Speaking of Couch With A View, I think this movie went straight to video in the States. It would have been released at the time that 9/11 occurred so they held it back. Taking my afternoon rest period while flicking through the channels I came across it. I missed the first part and came in as Jeremy Irons was arranging a plan with a CIA agent that would get rid of some terrorists. Ones that had killed his family when they, I made a mistake they didn't blow up the plane, they slaughtered a bunch of people on the plane (though Irons and his son survived) which is in the part of the movie that I didn't see. The movie is called The Fourth Angel, referring to a part of the bible, (Revelations).
Irons, Forest Whitaker and Jason Priestly are all very good. And I found this action packed movie extremely entertaining. I couldn't wait to see what would happen next and whatever did happen next was exciting. After seeing it I looked it up on the net. That's where I found out about it's history. The reviews were terrible, and they even panned Irons and Whitaker, saying things like, they must have been dying to get out of this picture etc.
Well, that's not the movie I saw. Get the video and tell me what you think. I can't imagine anyone not really liking it. [/i] |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:42 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6954
Location: Black Hills
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| Funny, it's showing this week on a UHF channel in Omaha that runs mostly cheeseball films from the 80s and 90s. Might have a look. This past weekend they ran "Making Mr. Right," a 1987 cheeseball sci-fi comedy starring Malkovich and Ann Magnuson (with an amusing supp from Laurie Metcalfe). Watching, I could see how Malkovich did well enough with his dual role (scientist, and the android he creates in his own image) to go on to better things....but was surprised at how well Magnuson held her own and yet returned to relative obscurity. A sweet movie, with some moments, in spite of its extreme cheesiness. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:46 am |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:57 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:03 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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Finally caught "Carnage," which had mixed responses here. I liked it as an Albee-esque comedy, using the standard trope of the truth coming out as gentility falters, in approaching the theme of what is normal childhood conflict and the reach of parental responsibility. Some of the recurring comic devices, like the use of a blow-dryer to deal with mishaps, or Chris Waltz's rudeness with his cellphone, worked pretty well. It's not for everybody, and it feels sort of incomplete at the end - a writer's decision that can maybe be defended intellectually, but still somehow felt lacking. Fights wind down, people pick themselves up, shake hands, and go home. Not letting this happen in "Carnage" leaves things on a sour and cynical note. I know, this is Polanski, but the abrupt curtain drop was just a tad bitter for my taste.
[post moved from between-pages crack, where things get lost...] |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| shannon |
| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:04 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1628
Location: NC
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| The American Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is better than the Swedish version by leaps and bounds, and more true to the novel. And Rooney Mara is a better Lisbeth. That said, if you didn't like the Swedish version, you won't like this one either. It's less David Fincher-like than I'd hoped for, but it's expected considering he's basically filming the murder mystery version of the Harry Potter books; he's not allowed to fuck with it too much. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 12:34 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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Watched The Dam Busters (1955), a WWII flick about bombing German dams to disrupt their industrial production. It's fairly long and much of the film is spent on the scientist who comes up with the idea of flying planes low and basically skipping the bombs along the water to get them next to the dams. He has trouble getting the idea approved and then getting it to work. But since he's Micheal Redgrave, it all works out.
Then the second hour is getting the squad together and training and the mission. The special effects -- toy shop models and whatnot -- are fairly cheesy. But the biggest distraction is the commander's black labrador named Nigger, and who is repeatedly called by its name. Man, that was startling and grating. And then one of the three code words -- the one which means that the primary target dam has been breached is ... you guessed it, Nigger. That might have been in tribute to the dog who mercifully gets run over by a car, putting it out of our misery.
It's an interesting minor chapter from WWII, and the film is watchable if a bit plodding.
Edit: just read up a little on Barnes Wallis, the engineer/inventor who came up with the idea of the bouncing bomb. One of his later proposed ideas was to use large cargo submarines to transport oil and such.
Quote: In the 1960s, Wallis proposed using large cargo submarines to transport oil and other goods, thus avoiding surface weather conditions. Moreover, Wallis's calculations indicated, the power requirements for an underwater vessel are lower than for a comparable conventional ship and they can be made to travel at a much higher speed.
I guess it would also discourage pirate attacks off of Somalia. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:31 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
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The Greatest is a 1977 biopic of Muhammad Ali. They have a young actor play the 18 year old Cassius Clay fresh off an Olympic gold, and struggling with racism and the professional boxing business. But then in the run-up to getting a title shot against Sonny Liston, Ali plays Ali. It's a bit jarring seeing 1977 Ali playing 1963 Ali (that is, 35 year old Ali playing 21 year old Ali). But one virtue is that the film uses clips of Ali's real fights, which then of course match up with the Ali in the film, because they are both really Ali, and not some actor playing him.
Ernest Borgnine plays Angelo Dundee. Drew Bundini Brown, kind of Ali's alter ego, plays himself. James Earl Jones is Malcolm X. And as the film creeps into the 70's, the age difference fades away. I wish the film either chose to focus more on his corner and entourage or his family, instead of trying to do both. I did like some of the Nation of Islam scenes, especially Herbert Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad's son, as Ali's manager, since I wasn't very familiar with his role.
Ali gets to have some fun re-enacting some of his famous moments of inspired public relations. There's a great scene where he's been baiting the "big ugly bear" Sonny Liston, and he calls a newspaper using a woman's voice and provides the scoop that Ali and his busload of followers are outside Liston's house and it looks like trouble. Then he gets off the phone and they drove to Liston's suburban home to harangue him and toss a bear trap on his lawn.
It's an interesting film. I wish the fight clips were a little longer, though we do get more of them as Ali fights Frazier and then Foreman in Zaire. It's a little sad to see Ali's relatives and Borgnine worry about his long-term health after he loses a fight in 1973. And apparently 1977 Ali not being worried. The film was released at the time of a 1977 title fight. After that Ali would win one more rough decision against hard-punching Earnie Shavers later that year. Then instead of retiring on top, Ali would lose 3 of his next 4 fights from age 36-39. Who knows if retiring in 1977 at 36 (with only two losses), would have avoided the neurological damage he's had to suffer with, but those extra fights against big punchers certainly couldn't have helped.
An interesting time capsule film. Not too many people become famous young enough to star as themselves in their life story. And it's one of the last glimpses of brash articulate Ali, just at the end of his run of glory. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 12:53 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Time Limit, from 1957, is the only movie ever directed by Karl Malden, and while I won't go so far as to say the directing world lost a potential great, Malden did a good job--certainly as good as actors-turned-directors-who-beat-Scorsese-for-the-Oscar Redford and Costner.
The movie is a Manchurian Candidate-type military melodrama, not nearly as good as Manchurian, yet watchable and interesting. Set a few years after the Korean war, it traces the pre-court-martial investigation of an accused traitor. Surprises ensue. Richards Widmark and Basehart play investigator and accused respectively, with Rip Torn and Martin Balsam prominent in support, and everyone looks strangely young, which they sort of were. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 1:07 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| The Pope's Toilet (2007) is set in a small border village in Uruguay. The occasion is a brief visit by the Pope, which gives the indigent village folks a chance to make a buck vending snacks and drinks. It is a sad story, touchingly told. Won 12 international awards. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:22 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Lymelife is a well-worth-seeing American Beauty/The Ice Storm wannabe, but I liked it better than either of those overrated "masterpieces." Alec Baldwin, Cynthia Nixon, Jill Hennessy, and Timothy Hutton play two couples living in some sort of misery on Long Island, but it's a dramedy rather than a drama. Rory Culkin and Emma Roberts play the offspring, who get together in bed. It's wonderfully well acted by all concerned, especially RC, who is probably the most talented of the Culkin clan. Starting with Signs, continuing through You Can Count on Me, and now this, he has proved himself no fluke, no prodigy. He is the real deal, and I hope his career extends well into middle age and beyond. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:27 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Revisited The Third Man for the umpteenth time, but this time saw it from beginning to end for the first time in years. Is there a more perfect motion picture? Every frame, every performance is sublime. But I was particularly taken this time around with the lead performance by Joseph Cotten. There is no other actor to my knowledge who can make dullness so charismatic. You never cease believing that Valli would prefer Harry Lime (Orson Welles), whose suavity and sex appeal help mask his totally evil soul, to the honest, plodding, often drunk Holly Martins (Cotten). It's no mean feat, and Carol Reed the director must get the lion's share of credit.
But Cotten definitely is the man. One cannot even imagine the damage that would have been done if the original choices for Holly (Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart) had been cast. Here is definitely a case of less is more.
This is not even to mention the stunning photography, great zither music, evocative Viennese locations, astonishingly fast pace , etc. And of course the most gob-smacking fadeout in cinema history. I am once again blown away. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:10 am |
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I never saw The Ice Storm. Back in the NYTFF days I wrote a scathing review of American Beauty. The only scene I liked in the whole film was the sexual adultery one with the real estate KING. Now that was funny. The whole film should have been a comedy instead of an attempt to be a serious intellectual drama. So many scenes were so ridiculous that they were laughable. The wind blown plastic bag scene that was supposed to be some sort of artistic epiphany should have had Jacque Tati chasing it with his pipe in his mouth.
The first and only time I saw The Third Man on the big screen was in Paris. Great film. I caught up on all the movie classics I'd missed when I lived there. Merci Paris. |
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