|
|
Post by PromNightCarrie on Oct 20, 2019 15:48:50 GMT
I came in here just to say The Night of the Hunter. It's one of my favorite films. And go figure, it was not well-received when it was released. Too bad Laughton didn't direct more.
|
|
|
|
Post by PromNightCarrie on Oct 20, 2019 15:57:42 GMT
Great topic! Nominated for his work behind the camera in the sound department for The Conversation and winning for Apocalypse Now, Walter Murch was also nominated for editing Julia and Apocalypse Now and later went on to win Oscars for The English Patient. For a brief window in 1985, however, he decided to take on the sequel of a timeless classic and fuck up the childhoods of kids across nations. Shame he never directed anything else after Return to Oz, though he does have an episode of Clone Wars under his belt. Adapting his own novel, Dalton Trumbo only made one film with the unflinching Johnny Got His Gun.I'm a big fan of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead but Tom Stoppard has focused solely on writing since. Originally planned as a Martin Scorsese film until he went over budget, The Honeymoon Killers was the one film wonder of Leonard Kastle whose background was in opera composing. I didn't know all that about the director of Return to Oz! I've seen Return to Oz well over 100 times throughout my life. BTW this movie has a scene that scared me more than any horror flick part ever. Princess Mumbi and the heads "Dorothyyyy Gaaaaale!" |
|
|
|
Post by cheesecake on Oct 20, 2019 19:52:18 GMT
Great topic! Nominated for his work behind the camera in the sound department for The Conversation and winning for Apocalypse Now, Walter Murch was also nominated for editing Julia and Apocalypse Now and later went on to win Oscars for The English Patient. For a brief window in 1985, however, he decided to take on the sequel of a timeless classic and fuck up the childhoods of kids across nations. Shame he never directed anything else after Return to Oz, though he does have an episode of Clone Wars under his belt. Adapting his own novel, Dalton Trumbo only made one film with the unflinching Johnny Got His Gun.I'm a big fan of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead but Tom Stoppard has focused solely on writing since. Originally planned as a Martin Scorsese film until he went over budget, The Honeymoon Killers was the one film wonder of Leonard Kastle whose background was in opera composing. I didn't know all that about the director of Return to Oz! I've seen Return to Oz well over 100 times throughout my life. BTW this movie has a scene that scared me more than any horror flick part ever. Princess Mumbi and the heads "Dorothyyyy Gaaaaale!" I loved the IMDb board for that movie. One of the best threads was a person who, after growing up with the film and seeing it dozens of times, only recently realized what Mumbi was yelling in that scene and thought it had just been gibberish. God, it's so good. |
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Mar 20, 2020 3:26:22 GMT
 The Minus Man (1999) adapted and directed by Hampton Fancher , cowriter of Blade Runner. 7+/10. It's the type of movie I find endlessly interesting - a mysterious stranger disrupting a home and/or small town. Owen Wilson plays a sociopathic killer, a sort of simple, blonde Grim Reaper meets The Sandman folklore. Its Norwegian ties go a bit further, his character name Vann translates to "water" .....and he creepily says at one point, "You know why in the old days sailors and fisherman never learned how to swim? Cus if they knew how to swim it'd take so much longer to drown." Wilson's perf oddly works especially how he smiles, it's like his best try at a smile, an off, overdone approximation. As the uneasy couple who take him in as a boarder, Mercedes Ruehl and Brian Cox's perfs are among their career best - I love the pauses they add in their scenes, suggesting how they feel stuck behind the outcome of their lives. Cox has a really great drunk scene that's both bleak and hilarious. Somewhat admirable how much it trusts the audience to even want to mull all of this over - we don't get any background to the Wilson character or any clear conclusion. In his behavior, how Wilson shrinks away at moments, and the construct of how others make decisions for him, you can put together just how stunted and gullible and disturbed he is, and that's enough. He's even tricked himself into thinking he's harmless and out of the equation of his murders - yet aware that he's, as he puts it, "becoming a fact." Fancher adds a lot of detail, from color motifs to cats named Zip Code, and strikes a tone somewhere between the deadpan quirkiness of the aughts indie (if you cut out the murders it might work just fine as that) and a lurking, darker Lynch vibe. The biggest flaw is the recurring dream interrogators - it clashes too much and wants to be Pinter too much , actually feels like McDonagh's The Pillowman took from it (Wilson says, "The story's mine, it belongs to me"). |
|
|
|
Post by cheesecake on Mar 20, 2020 18:27:30 GMT
I watched it years ago but Don't Be Afraid of the Dark fits here for this month - the 2010 remake of the '70s TV Movie which I've N/S... Oops. Not sure if this is still accurate, but I featured the original on one of my past 31 Days of Horror and dug it. I saw the remake first but liked what they both brought to the table. |
|
|
|
Post by cheesecake on Mar 20, 2020 18:36:32 GMT
Known for his incredible title sequences and an Oscar winner for best documentary short, Saul Bass only made one feature — the underrated sci-fi horror Phase IV.
There’s also Tim Roth who is yet to follow up his hell of a debut The War Zone.
Gary Oldman has another directorial feature in the works on IMDb, but as it stands his only directorial effort is Nil by Mouth.
I also kinda love Thursday (1998) and it’s a shame Skip Woods hasn’t made anything else.
|
|
coop032
Full Member
Choose life.
Posts: 657 
Likes: 222
|
Post by coop032 on Mar 21, 2020 16:59:00 GMT
Best? No. I probably like them more than most,
but these are decent...
Mystery Men (Kinka Usher)
Scotland, Pa. (Billy Morrissette)
Permanent Midnight (David Veloz)
|
|
|
|
Post by Martin Stett on Mar 21, 2020 17:12:20 GMT
Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo)
Girl Walk // All Day (Jacob Krupnick)
True Stories (David Byrne - although he did direct a doc or two afterwards)
|
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Jun 29, 2021 1:15:28 GMT
 Came across Look in Any Window (1961) on TCM (it'll be there for another month). Big draw here is that it's the only leading role for Paul Anka, then 18 and mid teengirl-swoon stardom.... except he's playing a peeping tom creep, something his fans probably felt awkward about - the ogled is now the ogler. And this is the same year he wrote Top 10 chart song Dance On Little Girl with the lyrics, "While I'm watching you, I'm wishing it were me." And it came a year before essential doc Lonely Boy that outed the stressful facade of his extreme fame. Another interesting bit - two of the principal cast happened to become the fathers of pop idols Mickey Dolenz and David Cassidy - yes this is Jack Cassidy's movie debut and already we see his famous pinky ring. Unlike Elvis, Cliff Richard, etc, Anka was cast (boldly) against type and without a lick of music... and the movie has a low-budget cheapness, so it felt to me attempting to mix the nearby angst of the age, like Johnny Nash in Take a Giant Step (1959), with the nearby Hollywood suburb skewering on a penny like Private Property (1960). Those two movies are better.... Anka's perf is pretty bad and it fails in trying to explain his character, it puts dated blame on the parents. But a lot of it works... it ties themes to details in a fascinating way, the taunting of magazine covers, fences made with cross beams to give you a step to peak over, pool parties that look like drunken tribal ritual, "masks" both literally and figuratively in a keeping up with the joneses way. I liked the Ruth Roman perf... and there are a lot of good lines. Three favs: “Did I make varsity? Where’s my big red A? For a while I was up to bat, swinging from the heel, but I really didn’t earn my scarlet letter… in fact, I settled for iced coffee.” “We’ve become a nation of peeping toms, no longer participating in life but getting our little pleasures from watching others.” “To speak any language, Daddy, you have to start early and practice often.” The director William Alland was a Welles hire at Mercury and they were good friends... He was not only an assistant to Welles on Citizen Kane, he plays one of the two Rosebud investigators! He mainly produced b-movie schlock with some cult success (Creature from the Black Lagoon).... Look in Any Window is less a directorial standout than it is an obscure curio. Could pair with The Ice Storm. Currently only has 158 votes on IMDb, less than 50 views on Letterboxd... |
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Sept 29, 2021 18:16:10 GMT
 Two more ;; Chameleon Street (1989) is mentioned on the first page, and it deserves a highlight. Wendell B. Harris Jr written and directed... a very cleverly scripted, unique "black Zelig" satire that has the fascinating feel of Welles all over it, even quoting the scorpion and the frog tale from Mr Arkadin. Harris Jr also stars - he has a sonorous radio voice like Welles. It's a tour de force performance of role-playing.... I got the impression he could play Othello and Iago..... or smart sophisticated Denzel type roles (doctor, lawyer, professor).... comedic roles .... or Westlake/Willeford esque crime characters: his only other solid acting role was in Soderbergh's Out of Sight. Sod actually led the Sundance jury back in '90 that awarded him the Grand Jury Prize - beating Charles Burnett, Whit Stillman, Hal Hartley. It's been difficultly available since that. Rumor is Warner Bros who bought remake rights wanted to bury the movie to clear way for their own take, but they never made it. It's one of the standout films of the year, and a better racial pic than Do the Right Thing. Modern Girls (1986) Jerry Kramer directed a bunch of music videos and stand up specials but this was his only feature. Written, coproduced, and shot by women, it's a girls-night-out hangout movie, but neon-drenched and emblematically '80s (fashion etc) - it's kinda like Valley Girl meets After Hours but with three extra reasons to see it, the costars: Daphne Zuniga, Cynthia Gibb, Virginia Madsen. They have a great rapport between them, shirking the weekday work mentality, their nights prioritize a fading, foolish ideal. It bombed at the BO, Ebert gave it 1 star, and it's at 5.8 on IMDb - an underrated, fun movie. |
|
BlackCaesar21
New Member
You're barking up the wrong acorn!
Posts: 143
Likes: 103
|
Post by BlackCaesar21 on Sept 29, 2021 18:40:16 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Jan 26, 2022 17:35:04 GMT
 Sparrows Can't Sing (1963) was the first English-language film to be released in the US with subtitles! It's about a little cockney strip of East London - a sailor returns home and can't find his home or his wife. Joan Littlewood's only feature film - she was a major theater director, despite being banned by the BBC and spied on for decades by MI5, she helped kick up the kitchen sink, staging A Taste of Honey in '58, did lots of musicals (Sparrows feels a bit like a musical with local lingo instead of singing) and made a lot of transfers to the West End and Broadway. She was in fact the first woman to be Tony nominated for Director of a Play and Musical ('61, '65) - in both categories, she was one of only five total women nom'd before the 00s. Littlewood was known for figuring much improv into rehearsals while developing plays - a process later used by Mike Leigh. Sparrows is a pretty delightful, plotless movie - something that surely would've been a Screen Two gem were it made decades later. Nevertheless a gem, with only 300ish IMDb votes. Apparently the cast is stacked with Brit TV legends...... and a fun trivia: the Kray twins were the unofficial location managers. |
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on May 22, 2022 18:45:51 GMT
 Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam (1962) - Mentioned already by fiosnasiob and I know Drish is a fan! Just watched this on Criterion channel. What a great film. I believe producer-star Guru Dutt did some uncredited helming but at any rate, the only film directed by Abrar Alvi. And very impressively so. Very atmospheric.... lots of dolly shots, superimposing, and enveloping use of sound that is by turns haunting (the ghostly off-screen singing), clever (the squeaking shoes), and otherwise quite musically sensuous. The flashback structure also keeps it feeling like a melting-away dream. Great character intros too. It's all quite Wellesian, come to think of it. And it helps having the presence of Meena Kumari whose own life and untimely death sort of mirrors the movie, adding an uncanny pall. |
|
