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Post by Mattsby on Aug 21, 2020 19:27:17 GMT
The Fallen Idol (1948) - 8/10. “We’ve got to think of lies and tell them all the time.”
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Aug 22, 2020 5:22:24 GMT
Bone Tomahawk - I don't know what Zahler's next project is... but he should try and re-team the main 4 from this.
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Post by urbanpatrician on Aug 22, 2020 5:37:21 GMT
Commando - 8/10
A case of "they don't make that kind of film anymore." It's the shit. 80s were so awesome. Bring me back to 1985. The music, the attitude, the style, the hair. I'd mow anyone's lawn 8 hours a day for 5 years for a Back to the Future time machine....... fuck the 2010s.
Action classic - without a non heart-pounding and non orgasmic moment. Arnold for president.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2020 8:19:13 GMT
A Streetcar Named Desire - 10/10 rewatch
There is a moment in this film - a famous one, early on - where Brando, enters the scene opposite Vivian Leigh, completely dominates the physical space (and the negative space) so utterly that would be in itself, thrilling. Then he does this - looks down at his arm when Leigh touches it, after sizing her up - sexually, intimidatingly, cruelly, and then imitates the cat's screech (feral, animalistic, primal) where he is utterly in sync with the plays themes and undercurrents.
American film acting would never be the same.......one of the all-time stage to screen adaptations.....
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 22, 2020 17:47:07 GMT
The Big Red One (1980) - 7/10, maybe more. Not on the level of Sam Fuller’s best work. Essentially episodes of war, with interstices of downtime that aren’t really enough to make the characters interesting. They aren’t interesting to begin with, and the casting could’ve been better, except Lee Marvin who’s the only standout… as usual he has such a presence and subtle, credible way with dialogue, even if there isn’t much of it. There are some really great scenes throughout - the problem is many of these moments kinda clash with the uninflected directness intended of the whole thing - Lee Marvin’s TE Lawrence esque return, the way he calls out to his squad in the silent smoke like a Kurosawa fever-dream, the boy bartering to bury his mother, the slapstick pregnancy scene, the asylum assassination (a surprising Stephane Audran cameo), etc.
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Post by Longtallsally on Aug 22, 2020 20:54:03 GMT
Wings of Desire (re-watch) - 10/10
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Post by MsMovieStar on Aug 22, 2020 21:47:17 GMT
The Crimes That Bind (Crimenes de familia - family crimes) 2020 I read about this one in the New York Times... it is a made for Netflix Argentinian movie starring Cecilia Roth, more famously known for starring in Almodovar's. All About My Mother. Not sure if this was written specifically for Roth, but it presents the same character, a selfless mother and her son. It's not a comedy but more of a serious melodrama... It's a good movie, with a good plot, and has a great falling in place at the end. 8/10
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Archie
Based
Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
Posts: 3,712
Likes: 4,398
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Post by Archie on Aug 23, 2020 0:51:59 GMT
The Godfather Part II (rewatch) - 10/10
That entire New Year's Eve scene is just... *chef's kiss*
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Aug 23, 2020 7:34:18 GMT
Witness - An all-timer. It's my best compliment. To this day, it's still one of the best screenplays.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 23, 2020 10:28:41 GMT
Love Me Or Leave Me (1955)- 7.5+/10 rewatchNot quite as good as I remembered it - I used to call this my favorite Cagney and he's definitely fantastic here - but as a movie I could do with some trimming of the musical numbers and and some of the arc repeats. But Cagney is really spectacular and complex here and Doris Day is mostly good too. If you've never seen it, it will play better than me seeing it so much - it's not that it doesn't hold up, it just doesn't match the first one or two viewings.....which is fine. Cagney, ferociously memorable:
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 23, 2020 18:40:39 GMT
Nightmare in Chicago (1964) 7/10 Robert Altman’s first studio movie, technically; at first an episode of NBC’s Kraft Suspense Theater (with a great title, Once Upon a Savage Night), but needing a bigger budget to shoot entirely on location in Chicago, Universal commissioned Altman to shoot more footage and fashion a feature out of it, which they called Nightmare in Chicago, and it saw a small release in Canada and Europe. Altman did a few Kraft eps until he pissed them off by telling TV Guide their show was “as bland as its cheese.” Except this one wasn’t bland at all. Somewhat noir and Psycho influenced but a curious precursor to giallo and the American slasher cycle. Set right before Christmas, this mainly follows a serial killer, in media res, while trying to dodge the police only finds himself drawn back to his sick compulsion to murder blonde women. Of course his fixation roots back to childhood, and like many villains who have a defect (like Ross Martin’s asthma in Experiment in Terror), this one has an eye condition where light itself is painful to him so he’s always wearing sunglasses. The police team (Charles McGraw, Ted Knight, etc) are distracted by an Army convoy coming thru Chicago and, humorously, an upcoming handball game they don't wanna miss. Barbara Turner is very good as a diner waitress with a fondness for boiled eggs. There’s also an eerie, early-career score by John Williams. Huge drawback is that this only seems to be available in a crappy, muddy quality. It’s very rare too. Altman shot on 35mm, and this’d be a gem if they remastered a print of it. It’s an unlikely Altman movie - a concise, typical thriller narrative, but there’s a real immediacy to its use of locations, a fascinating use of sound and handheld camera, and a disturbed underlining to the murders. It’s a low-key, creepy, gripping little movie.
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Post by Pavan on Aug 23, 2020 20:29:10 GMT
Bitter Moon (1992)-
I really liked the setup in here. The backstory and narration are great at first but they wore out as the movie reaches it's end but the setup and suspense with Hugh Grant as to what he has in store is what kept me interested. Polanski turned the climax into a sick joke which subtly says a lot about human impulses. Part erotic thriller and part black comedy. Peter Coyote is the stand out. Could've been short but totally worth the trip- 8/10
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Post by Viced on Aug 23, 2020 20:52:13 GMT
Figured it was time to get my head out of my ass and watch more Chaplin movies than the two I saw years ago... This was quite funny... charming, sad... maybe a little repetitive as it went along but was always entertaining. And that ending was a bit of a knockout out of nowhere.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 24, 2020 16:53:28 GMT
Les Biches (1968) - Re-watch 9/10I have a theory that your involvement in this film - a crucial film - depends on where you see it in Claude Chabrol's filmography. The first time through you may rank it as a warm up for some great stuff he did later......and yet on a 2nd viewing when you have seen more of his great stuff you admire it for being so uniquely Chabrol. It's his Bird With The Crystal Plummage but Chabrol had directed a ton of stuff before his career was now "starting". Never before has fashion mattered more in death or in plot - in sex, sadness, pathology. Beautiful decor, zippers open seductively in the back of dresses, boots, purses, lipstick - all appearances are deceptions in every way. For the first time Chabrol is completely in control of every component: visually and in the narrative - and while he'd been great before at times, now he gets deeper. This film was made in the day when lesbian stories didn't have to be "beautiful" or a statement against the "patriarchy!" ........and it is all the better for it. The relationship between Stéphane Audran and Jacqueline Sassard is simultaneously......... hot.........cool......"off" ...........in the best (and worst!) possible ways. One looks in the mirror.......one does not:
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 24, 2020 20:04:11 GMT
Noises Off (1992) 8/10. Well, I couldn't stop laughing. Breakneck slapstick from the spot-on cast, a send-up of the fickle chaos of theatre and the Feydeau farce. Reminded me of the quote from Orson Welles that "a director is someone who presides over a series of accidents." Michael Caine's director is exactly right, as he compels the stagehand to fix the doors but immediately shushes him for making any noise. It's another comic triumph from Caine, and those perfs really try on Hopkins who doesn't have any. Also wanna shout out what's probably my fav John Ritter perf, and the fantastic physical comedy of Carol Burnett.... therealcomicman117 Who's a fan of the movie, I believe...
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Post by Viced on Aug 25, 2020 5:29:35 GMT
A Brighter Summer Day (1991)I split this into two sittings like a dumbfuck... so I think the impact was slightly lessened... but this still knocked me on my ass so I'm not going to complain too much. Almost 4 hours long and pretty much always captivating. Directed in such a naturalistic way but with great style at the same time. Also does a flawless job of transporting you to 1960 Taipei... and maybe it's mainly for plot reasons (youth gangs), but I got some slight Rumble Fish vibes. Or maybe it's the melancholy mood, unique family dynamic, and the overwhelming feeling of longing. And I had to post the above image... because Cat is now one of my favorite film characters. That little dude was awesome.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 25, 2020 21:23:43 GMT
Gone with the Wind (1939) - 7.5 or 8/10 “ War! Isn’t it exciting?” Alright, I’ll confess - Not only had I never seen this before, I hadn’t seen even a minute of it. It’s a magnificent visual feast, a really impressive production. I loved the first half (to me, would be a great movie on its own), but post-intermission while not an entire falloff, it wavers and dulls, becoming convenient, swamped, and just ridiculous. I’m also left unimpressed by Clark Gable who mistakes wiggly eyebrows for charm. (“He looks as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy.”) Vivien Leigh is phenomenal - I really wasn’t expecting Scarlett to be such a Southern belle from hell. Gable isn’t wrong when he calls her a cold-hearted thief, though there’s more of an unsatisfied twisting to her and the perf, she’s both bright yet foolish, blocked off yet transparent, childish yet witchy, sexy yet ugly. One thing she is entirely is desperate. It’s there with lure at the start when she’s a tease, it’s there with sympathy when she’s trudging back to dilapidated Tara, and it’s there cruelly as she angles for money and her sisters' husbands. She keeps thwarting romance, while ultimately seeking it. She folds like the South did. Directed well, matching its size with insides, and those touches, an apocalyptic expressionism, a cryptic emptiness. Or how sometimes the locations step right into a blatant studio set, which controverts the idealism as false loft. I know Fleming has the credit, but Cukor prepped it for years, casted, directed for 18 days, and coached Leigh throughout. He deserves a small co-credit. Too many great shots to name, but my favorite cuts were: Scarlett's snide turn in the floppy hat to Hattie who volleys back a knowing look of her own, Aunt Pittypat having already fainted when ScarOh accepts the dance at the charity ball, and the wide shot of a marooned ScarOh at Ashley’s birthday. Also, having seen Jezebel already, I was reminded of it.… and they actually share cinematographer and composer. How to get ahead:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 26, 2020 10:07:20 GMT
Landscape in the Mist (1988) 10/10 re-watchDirector: Theo AngelopolosI have seen this several times - more than any other Greek film - and it's not only a masterpiece that rivals other big 80s international ones (The Sacrifice, Dekalog), it sort of represents Greek film in a lot of ways, in itself. It has the "parental theme" to it that comes up in many Greek films (Dogtooth for one) - where the government stands in as a parental figure metaphorically (or the people are seen acting like the government is filling in that role). The movie is heartbreaking and simple (but not simplistic at all) and it gets deep lyrical power through amazingly thought out shots and two of the best (and most complicated) young performances ever. I watched this with someone who had never seen it and she literally couldn't even really talk about it afterwards - she was stunned - it was (and is) literally breathtaking.
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Post by Pavan on Aug 26, 2020 11:58:35 GMT
Hannibal Rising (2007)-
Handsomely produced and mostly well acted. I was even invested in for half of the film but after a while it feels like any other revenge film not one necessarily belonged to Lecter and that's where the film falls flat. I guess we don't need to know the backstory of some monsters as they loose their mystique or they need even better stories- 6/10
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 27, 2020 0:59:51 GMT
The Driver (1978) & Kiss the Blood off My Hands (1948) - both 7s. I watched these back to back and they made an accidentally apt double-feature. Both are really tight movies that hardly feel longer than an hour. Both leads are shelled, standoffish men who seem to invite the repeating need to escape. Their principles and impulses let them down. They become pawns by others, they are undermined, they are revived by beautiful women (Adjani, Fontaine). Kiss the Blood besides being one of the great movie titles is a small noir gem, with a stand out perf from Burt Lancaster as the impulsive, luckless war vet who hates the zoo - he so expects trouble that he initiates it, and we sense he’d crumble if he weren’t so furious. “That’s why I didn’t mind the army, when you hit, you didn’t have to run." The Driver is crisp, well-acted by a solidly stern Ryan O’Neal and especially Bruce Dern’s taunting copper who loves to hate the man he’s chasing. “Maybe I’m your friend.” Walter Hill’s vision of cyan streets and cool criminality is a cinematic bridge between Melville and Mann. Stripped of things, even names, though intentional kept me from loving it; impressive contrast to Hill’s next, the comic-book chaos of The Warriors. DP Philip Lathrop who finessed the use of widescreen as we know it and could be quite stylishly amazing (Experiment in Terror, Point Blank, They Shoot Horses) is to-the-point here and creates a really bricky cityscape behind the wet neon coloring; funny enough…… he was an assistant-cameraman on Kiss the Blood—!
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Post by mhynson27 on Aug 27, 2020 8:06:39 GMT
Schindler's List (re-watch)
One of the best directed films of all time.
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Drish
Badass
Posts: 2,020
Likes: 1,754
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Post by Drish on Aug 27, 2020 13:21:51 GMT
I enjoyed the hell out of In the House by François Ozon. Such a wicked movie which constantly plays with the audience as to what is real and what's not and you can't help but just enjoy the whole ride. Absolute fun!
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Post by jakesully on Aug 27, 2020 15:54:30 GMT
The Devil's Advocate - Wild film. Pacino is the fucking man and I was impressed that Keanu kept up with him in this one. 7.5/10
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Post by Pavan on Aug 27, 2020 20:28:42 GMT
Runaway Jury (2003)-
Good legal thriller, not nail biting or anything but i was invested. Most of these kind throws all the legal mumbo jumbo at us but this film mostly didn't. Could've added a little more spark in the script and direction but the cast makes up for it. At half point i was worried Hoffman and Hackman may not have a scene together but they did and it was pleasure watching two greats go at each other. Even with those two heavy weights and a charming Cusack i think Rachel Weisz came out as the MVP. She provided the film some much needed emotional weight- 7.5/10
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Post by wilcinema on Aug 27, 2020 23:12:11 GMT
Tenet: I swear that sometimes Nolan complicates everything just for the sake of it. This film is a mess.
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