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Post by Longtallsally on Jul 29, 2020 18:22:39 GMT
Vertigo (re-watch) - 8/10
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 29, 2020 18:24:07 GMT
A Murder of Quality (1991) 6/10 TVM starring Denholm Elliott as George Smiley investigating a murder at an all-boys school, Glenda Jackson as his old friend who is sort of his Dr Watson by the end, Christian Bale as a curiously nervous student, and best-of-cast Joss Ackland as the candid, creepy headmaster. Almost every character at this esteemed school is crashing under their own scores of guilt. John Le Carré screenwriting here which he only did three times in his career.
Last lead perf for Denholm, who Ebert called "the most dependable of all British character actors."
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 29, 2020 22:35:10 GMT
Punishment Park (1971). When you see videos of police shooting protesters in the face with rubber bullets and hear accounts of others being abducted in unmarked vans, it's sickening how fresh this pseudo-documentary still feels. And so much of the language is still the same, and the rationale behind these tactics framed in the same kind of frightening american exceptionalism and hatred (esp of youth and minorities) who dare to criticize it. Peter Watkins was a genius.
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 29, 2020 23:16:04 GMT
Yes, God, Yes (2020).
Karen Maine’s directorial debut, she wrote this as well as Obvious Child. While this isn’t nearly as fresh and amusing as the latter, it hit very close to home and was light and enjoyable enough.
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 29, 2020 23:16:42 GMT
Punishment Park (1971). When you see videos of police shooting protesters in the face with rubber bullets and hear accounts of others being abducted in unmarked vans, it's sickening how fresh this pseudo-documentary still feels. And so much of the language is still the same, and the rationale behind these tactics framed in the same kind of frightening american exceptionalism and hatred (esp of youth and minorities) who dare to criticize it. Peter Watkins was a genius. This film fucked me up. Haven't seen it since 2010 but it's stayed with me for a decade.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 30, 2020 18:48:47 GMT
King Lear (1970) 8.5/10 I love how the opening and ending shots of Scofield disembody him - he’s introduced like a statue bust on a pile of fur, and he speaks like something beginning to speak, unable to move, his voice a gravely low timbre. The ending shot a poetic image, hauntingly final, a body spiritually emptying. Scofield’s ancient face is perfect for his stoic, forbidding Lear. He doesn’t even laugh at his Fool - too deeply unsettled, he realizes something is wrong or becoming wrong (“Let me not be mad”). And when he slams at his daughters “You unnatural hags!” it’s really sort of scary - even the camera jerks to the side. In fact, with subjective shots, whip pans, and like in the completely masterful storm sequence how the rainwater seems to be dripping from the camera itself as it is off Lear - the camera is off Lear, with him, reacting to him, inside him. We get the play (it cuts some of it) but it's merged with a whole psychological dimension in its style and design that is convincingly and strikingly done. Whole cast delivers (Edgar usually annoys me but not here) - Scofield utterly brilliant. This is by far the best Lear production I’ve seen (the others being Glenda Jackson, James Earl Jones, Ian Holm, Hopkins). stephen who's a big fan and pacinoyes who perfectly summed this up as "a cold nightmare."
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jul 30, 2020 21:02:16 GMT
Did an extraterrestrial triple feature last night:
Solaris (2002), Close Encounters, and Signs.
It was a mighty fine night.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 31, 2020 1:27:48 GMT
Joseph Losey's The Romantic Englishwoman (1975)Kind of a diverting meditation from the director's late period on sex and marriage, underlined with some of the same home invasion class anxieties in The Servant. Glenda Jackson plays a bored housewife who runs away to a German town and meets Helmut Berger's conman/gigolo (posing as a poet), with whom she begins an affair. She returns to her author husband (a sardonic Michael Caine, who has some scintillating outbursts here) and Berger follows after and is employed by the husband as a secretary. The boundary between fact/fiction becomes blurred as the husband envisions his wife's affair in writing his screenplay as it plays out IRL under his nose (and he actually enables it in points), shielding a bruised ego in artistic hubris. Has some stirring images (the best is featured below). Losey was still working with Gerry Fisher and the results speak for themselves. And the screenplay was apparently co-written by Tom Stoppard, the guy who went on to co-write Brazil and win an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love! A lot of the dialogue here is quite good and brimming with sarcastic barbs. Watched on Prime Video with a Fandor subscription but it's on Kanopy too.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 31, 2020 1:37:02 GMT
@ Mattsby the cinematography in The Verdict is so underrated. I loved how Andrzej Bartkowiak framed the characters around their environments with high/low angles and closeups with an eye towards architecture. It's remarkable how Lumet was able to keep such a consistent visual style working with multiple DPs. The compositions here are strikingly similar to Kaufman's in 12 Angry Men/Pawnbroker and Hirschfeld's in Fail Safe. this is probably my favorite shot. Courtroom dramas never look this good.
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 31, 2020 3:03:32 GMT
@ Mattsby the cinematography in The Verdict is so underrated. I loved how Andrzej Bartkowiak framed the characters around their environments with high/low angles and closeups with an eye towards architecture. It's remarkable how Lumet was able to keep such a consistent visual style working with multiple DPs. The compositions here are strikingly similar to Kaufman's in 12 Angry Men/Pawnbroker and Hirschfeld's in Fail Safe. this is probably my favorite shot. Courtroom dramas never look this good. Agreed....... Lumet said he and Bartkowiak studied Caravaggio paintings to prepare for the visuals! It's such a patiently precisely done movie - and the actor blocking as usual with Lumet is phenomenal, like his long takes thru those massive locations or his two-shots like your pic. Even the use of slow dissolves, they kinda mimic the idea of the developing polaroid Newman takes early on where he has that epiphany (as Lumet said, "as the photograph took on life, he did too"). I love the look of a lot of his movies - especially his wider lenses. He knew exactly how to explore and build tension with his visual ideas, and often without any score btw! like The Hill, Fail Safe, Dog Day. If you wanna see something very un-Lumet, The Group is very feminine and bloomy and looks more like a 50s Doris Day movie or something than anything he's done.
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Post by mhynson27 on Jul 31, 2020 8:45:56 GMT
Anna Karenina (2012)
Imagine turning down Alicia Vikander for Keira Knightley. Could never be me.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Jul 31, 2020 15:47:28 GMT
The Big Chill. First watch. Performances were good but found the film kinda...lacking. It was fine but I suppose I just expected it to be a bit heavier and more emotional.
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 31, 2020 17:35:27 GMT
Went to the drive-in last night for a double feature of The Breakfast Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
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Post by Miles Morales on Jul 31, 2020 20:02:25 GMT
Schindler's List (Finally) and Children of Men are two of the greatest movies I've seen last week that I'll doubt I'll ever watch. Such a realistic portrayal of unflinching brutality with a tinge of hope in the end. Loved it. Probably the directors' best that I've seen so far. I watched Schindler's List last night and it was an absolute masterpiece. Haunting, unflinching and deeply engrossing and moving. I cried my eyes out during the last few minutes. Definitely the best film Spielberg has ever made, which says a lot considering I've seen quite a few of his films which have become my all-time favourites. Children of Men is amazing as well.
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Post by Pavan on Jul 31, 2020 20:04:10 GMT
Con Air (1997)- 6.5/10
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Post by Longtallsally on Jul 31, 2020 20:20:58 GMT
The Damned (1947) - 8/10
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Post by brancaleone on Jul 31, 2020 21:04:05 GMT
8/10
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 31, 2020 22:47:19 GMT
The Noose (1958) - ~ 8/10 The debut (I think?) of Wojciech Jerzy Has - far less ornate than his later acclaimed films - this one is very simple, short and direct. If anything it reminds me of The Grim Reaper by Bertolucci in that the guy directing would top this but if he had stayed like this ....well.........that would be kind of great too. A magnificent bleak central lead performance and a perfect existential - "don't ever start drinking" double feature with The Fire Within too.
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Post by Pavan on Aug 1, 2020 12:27:23 GMT
A Rainy Day in New York (2019)-
Jumping from one conversation to another is one of Allen's biggest strengths and he does it here too but without interesting characters it all feels blabbing. After three quarters have passed the film gets some movement courtesy of it's location and the weather, so that makes the title a pretty good one actually. Chalamet and Fanning are decent. Storaro (intentionally or not) broke lighting continuity a few times which bugged me, otherwise a beautifully shot film- 6.5/10
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Post by mhynson27 on Aug 1, 2020 14:44:01 GMT
Amour
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 1, 2020 20:15:18 GMT
The Super Cops (1974) - 7.5 maybe higher. Hilarious, grounded buddy cop movie - it's better than Busting and Freebie from the same year, and deals similarly with corruption and crusading like Serpico (both were filming at the same exact time in NYC). Directed by Gordon Parks after his Shafts, fast-paced and mostly tonally right. There's some racial subtext and its whole policing discussion is very interesting (who's scoffing at them doing too good of a job). Everything is made even better by the lead Ron Leibman perf - an absolute crackerjack perf. I need to see more from him! Based on real guys, they inspired Starsky and Hutch, also reminded me a little of Blackkklansman actually, and Edgar Wright stole some of it for Hot Fuzz - Wright singlehandedly boosted this pic out of relative obscurity: pushing the studio to put out a DVD, programming it on TCM, hosting screenings at the New Bev etc.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 1, 2020 20:51:04 GMT
Watched a string of movies yesterday dealing with families and weddings and funerals.....
True Love (1989) 6/10. "I don't eat blue food." Wedding made essential despite the emotional and romantic tergiversating of these believably Bronx people and the godawful man-child groom. Annabella Sciorra gives a tender perf. Several other Sopranos actors pop up...
The Funeral (1996) 7/10. Spooky use of Billie Holiday's Gloomy Sunday (its whole suicide myth culminates here). Abel Ferrara's pet themes of sickly religious guilt and deflection - Walken (who is terrific here) says "I'm not ashamed, I didn't make the world." We've seen much better versions of this subject from Coppola/Scorsese - but Ferrara isn't trying to one-up anybody or anything - the sexual rage here and the cheap stageplay-esque lighting is wholly his own.
Once Around (1991) 6/10. All over the place, is it zany, romantic, maudlin? and way too long (lop off the last 25min and end at the vacant baptism). But there's a lot of in-between charm to it (reminded me of the Family Stone) and the cast is, Boston accents galore, very good! Holly Hunter girlish and sweet, Dreyfuss deliberately infuriating, and MVP Danny Aiello going thru a whole stunned life crisis in a way that's tense and heartbreaking.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Aug 1, 2020 22:27:15 GMT
The Counselor. Probably my first rewatch since I saw it in theaters. Still mostly liked it. Michael Fassbender was...not very good. Liked the rest of the cast. Script was a little too muddled at times.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 2, 2020 2:57:01 GMT
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 2, 2020 10:38:58 GMT
Burn Witch Burn (1962) - 7+/10 rewatch Mattsby who has probably seen this but if not may enjoy the adaptability of its central conceit...... Slightly classic-ish horror premise that plays with overt melodrama and camp humor too (maybe won't scare you but at least will make you re-think marriage or the female motivation behind EVERYTHING - "patriarchy" my ass!). Personally I would love to see this remade and a return to this sort of premise because if you did this with an A list cast there's no reason this sort of Twilight Zone episode stretched to feature length couldn't work on multiple levels in 2020. Its funny that Monkey's Paw or Pickman's Model or Young Goodman Brown would be sought out as horror classics but in movies we don't really seek out oddly sinister films that worked in the same way.
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