They are both worth watching but it is hard to beat Mitchum as a bad guy. I'd go with the original.
Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | {Insert Appropriate Seasonal Greeting Here}
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Chili
Where's the Walrus?
- Jun 10, 2004
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The Misfits-1961
Have been doing a Marilyn Monroe marathon lately. Here, she is in Reno and about to be divorced. Out with a friend to celebrate her freedom, she meets a cowboy (Clark Gable) and they end up together. Bit of a odd story written by Marilyn's soon to be ex husband (Arthur Miller). It's eerie to re-watch, knowing that it was both Marilyn's and Clark Gable's last film. Gable developed heart problems and passed away shortly after they finished filming. One of his lines from the film: 'We all gotta go sometime, reason or no reason. Dyin's as natural as livin'. A man is too afraid to die, is too afraid to live.' The director, John Huston said that Gable called this film some of his best work. Good film although a little tough to watch at times, including Marilyn's scenes.
Paris Blues-1961
Two young ladies vacationing in Paris meet two musicians and sparks fly. This isn't one of the seemingly paint by numbers romance films, the plot has depth and lots of shots of Paris including a panoramic view of the city to start the film. Some nice cinematography. Great score by Duke Ellington which was nominated for an academy award (pretty tough to beat West Side Story that year). Highlight of the film for me was Louis Armstrong's appearance and joining in with the band. He was one of those people who could put smiles on folks faces just entering a room. A gem for jazz fans and beyond.
The Longest Yard-1974
A former star football player (Burt Reynolds) ends up in prison. After taking his girlfriend's car and leading police on a hair raising chase he drives the car into the river. Then gets into a fight with the arresting officers. The warden of the prison has his own football team made up of the guards and wants to make good use of his new prisoner. There are alot of sport films, don't know if I 've seen many that combine comedy, drama and real believable action on the playing field. The players are really smacking each other including Burt who takes some real shots. He was a vgood player, it shows when he throws a ~50 yard pass on the money. Amazing cast including Burt's brother playing a lineman, ex NFLers, great story, memorable film. Maybe Burt's best.
Caught up with Elvis finally. Luhrmann's razzle-dazzle, uber-flash direction style wears me out over long stretches. Thought Austin Butler looked more like Justin Bieber than Elvis Presley. Presley charisma always had a risky sexual under-layer that Butler completely lacks. The movie tries really hard to make Presley appear to be woke on civil right, which seems a rather ludicrous attempt at revisionism. He certainly was strongly influenced by black music, but I don't remember him taking it much beyond that, Too many "alternate facts." He had only a passing acquaintance with B B King, they weren't like buds who confided in one another. Final third of movie, the Vegas to death part, seems one big fabrication after another. Overall, I think Elvis is a pretty superficial piece of work. 4A, just barely,
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I've been thinking about Armageddon Time and its various shortcomings and peculiarly downer ending, especially the stuff I said in the second paragraph above. I don't think I put together all the pieces well. I don't think the movie is any more fun to watch than I did when I wrote the review. But I now read the movie in a different way: I now see it as basically an attempt to expiate guilt, an act of atonement. Venturing none too confidently into artist intent, I would now theorize that director James Gray probably did have a black friend who he really screwed over as a kid, has felt deeply guilty about it his whole life, and that Armageddon Time is his mea culpa. If that is not true for Gray, it still works for the central character in the movie, so it comes to the same thing, Like his grandfather's ghost tells him, gently, lovingly, "so you let down your friend." Thus I'm bumping the score to a 7A, as the movie suddenly seems to make much better sense to me and I respect it a whole lot more.
Armageddon Time (2022) Directed by James Gray 5A
Like Stephen Spielberg's The Fabelmans, Armageddon Time is a movie by a very successful director looking back at his childhood. Gray's focus is on himself as Paul, just starting sixth grade. Paul is part of a loud, boisterous and one-dimensional Jewish family, and he is just beginning to learn about the Holocaust. He has developed a black friend named Johnny at school, and the movie not always gracefully swings back and forth to their relationship. An act of reckoning is coming, and Paul may not be up to the task. His conscience is represented by his grandfather, played well by Anthony Hopkins, the only thoroughly likeable adult in the entire movie.
Unlike Spielberg who is preternaturally adverse to risk-taking, Gray to his credit takes a whole bunch of risks here, but with mixed results. For starters, Paul is a problematic character, a little bit on the thorny side to like, a fact that the movie doesn't seem to fully realise. Gray seems to want to ponder the degree to which his own white privilege has made his successful life possible, in contrast to the life of his black friend. But then there is Paul's treatment of said friend. What Paul learns about prejudice, mostly from his Grandfather, he only halfheartedly puts into practice when the crunch comes and then not for very long. So what's with this kid, whose understanding of the problem so far outstrips his actual behaviour? And what is the message here? Maybe the director never has resolved his feelings about his younger self, which isn't the greatest sin in the world. But it leads to a movie that only partially seems ready to be made.
To clarify: I now rate the movie highly NOT because it is an expression of liberal guilt, something I don't care about one way or the other, but because Armageddon Time takes the form of a successful apologia, something fairly rare in art.
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Pranzo Oltranzista
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- Oct 18, 2017
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- 2,941
La visione del sabba (The Witches' Sabbath, Bellocchio, 1988) – In Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna, Béatrice Dalle is to direct a scene in which Charlotte Gainsbourg will be burned at the stake. She asks her if its a first for her, and tells her about that movie where she played a witch herself, and about that experience. In doing so, she mentions a few times that even though it was an uncomfortable film to shoot, the result was beautiful. This is it, little Italian film I had (very weirdly) never encountered before. Dalle was right, it is truly beautiful. It's not a horror film, it walks the fine line of the fantastic tale, with the witches being just a little too obvious a metaphor of the women's power over men, putting them in a spell where they'll risk losing themselves (perfect casting for a young Béatrice Dalle). Story-wise, it would have benefited from a little sharpening. The narrative confusion works well within the themes, but never really feels totally mastered, which weakens an otherwise very interesting blending of art and narrative forms. It's at times very theatrical, it has 17th century vignettes of pictorial quality, it's sometimes a dance film (the main actor is a choreographer), and it has a few moments of the most stunning visuals – that shot of the witch going round is just on par with some of Raoul Ruiz's most amazing tricks. It is certainly a flawed film, of limited depth (no matter from what angle you choose to read it). You could say its portrait of women is somewhat misogynistic (which only makes Noé's film more relevant), and you could say it's one really uneven work (even aesthetically, with some out of focus shots and bad color calibration at times), but in the end, this felt to me like a little gem, which should have cult status by now. 8/10
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Thank you. Can't believe I forgot about your reviews Osprey. I know my memory isn't perfect, but that feels like something that should have stuck in my memory and stayed on my radar.
Chili
Where's the Walrus?
- Jun 10, 2004
- 8,893
- 5,106
Saw both long ago but certainly remember the plot. Like Osprey referencing Night of the Hunter, the original definitely reminded me of that film. The cameos were cool in the remake. Some serious suspense in both. I usually go for the originals, just watched Against All Odds remake of Out of the Past. That remake is well done but the original is memorable.
ItsFineImFine
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- Aug 11, 2019
- 3,770
- 2,429
I haven't seen the original, I went with the re-make cos I think it had the higher ratings (or knowing myself I either found it on a streaming service I have or it was easier to pirate in HD cos I think they're both similar ratings-wise).
I'd say the re-make was a bit too 90s with that added hint of cartoonishness and too much glaring suspense plus everything is too obvious and physical if that makes sense. The 50s and 60s did suspense better than modern films for me.
ItsFineImFine
Registered User
- Aug 11, 2019
- 3,770
- 2,429
Ticket To Paradise (2022) - 6/10
Obviously not the first to say this but every Netflix-produced film seems to be unbelievably formulaic. The one formula they rule on is to give stars a big pay cheque though and generally ensure the film is passable via test audiences but man they're all quite bland as a result and this spans across genres. Like if Netflix was the one who had originally produced the first Knives Out, we wouldn't have gotten the same Knives Out.
As for the film itself, really solid chemistry from the cast but I was rolling my eyes for the storyline. Felt like the whole film was indulging the fantasy of some naive romantic still in her youth or fetishizing about it. Some really bad cliches here especially the whole 'parents, you're either with me or you're not'....what a narcissistic entitled brat-ish embarrassment our culture has become. And I know I didn't go into this expecting some working class indie Loach type film but the first scene starts with the mom (Julia Roberts) bidding $75k on something at an auction. Hollywood really goes for the portraying almost everyone in a romcom now as being rich and worry-free financially, not even middle class but just pure outright rich.
Obviously not the first to say this but every Netflix-produced film seems to be unbelievably formulaic. The one formula they rule on is to give stars a big pay cheque though and generally ensure the film is passable via test audiences but man they're all quite bland as a result and this spans across genres. Like if Netflix was the one who had originally produced the first Knives Out, we wouldn't have gotten the same Knives Out.
As for the film itself, really solid chemistry from the cast but I was rolling my eyes for the storyline. Felt like the whole film was indulging the fantasy of some naive romantic still in her youth or fetishizing about it. Some really bad cliches here especially the whole 'parents, you're either with me or you're not'....what a narcissistic entitled brat-ish embarrassment our culture has become. And I know I didn't go into this expecting some working class indie Loach type film but the first scene starts with the mom (Julia Roberts) bidding $75k on something at an auction. Hollywood really goes for the portraying almost everyone in a romcom now as being rich and worry-free financially, not even middle class but just pure outright rich.
Empire of Light (2022) Directed by Sam Mendes 3B
Empire of Light focuses on a group of employees who work at a movie theatre in Margate on the coast of England, not just any movie theatre but a beautiful grand palace of the kind that hardly exists anymore. The movie is about the lives of this motley crew, the glory of watching movies in a theatre, the sorry state of Thatcher's England, and the difficulty of sustaining a mixed-race relationship in Great Britain in the 1980s. Hilary (Olivia Colman), the theatre manager, and Stephen (Michael Ward), a younger black employee who starts to work at The Empire, receive by far the most attention. Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), the owner of the cinema, is the bad guy, a creep whom Hilary periodically services at Ellis' discretion. Despite the usual fine performance by Colman and some first-rate cinematography by Richard Deakins, there is little incentive to see this movie. Though there is a fine cast, Empire of Light is dull, lifeless and desiccated, an odd duck indeed if you are a director who wants to make a film that celebrates the redemptive power of going to the movies. There are periodic bravura scenes involving Hilary, which come more or less out-of-the-blue and die down just as quickly as they arose. HIlary, it turns out, is schizophrenic, but it seems artificial, unconvincing. In fact, I wondered if her schizophrenia was a device by Mendes, the scriptwriter, to inject some dramatic tension into an otherwise listless movie. Empire of Light is a dreary thing of little interest to anyone other than Olivia Colman fans.
I still prefer the original Disney version by a nose.
I must admit, I almost fell out of my chair. A very rare 8/10 rating from Pranzo.
La visione del sabba (The Witches' Sabbath, Bellocchio, 1988) – In Gaspar Noé's Lux Æterna, Béatrice Dalle is to direct a scene in which Charlotte Gainsbourg will be burned at the stake. She asks her if its a first for her, and tells her about that movie where she played a witch herself, and about that experience. In doing so, she mentions a few times that even though it was an uncomfortable film to shoot, the result was beautiful. This is it, little Italian film I had (very weirdly) never encountered before. Dalle was right, it is truly beautiful. It's not a horror film, it walks the fine line of the fantastic tale, with the witches being just a little too obvious a metaphor of the women's power over men, putting them in a spell where they'll risk losing themselves (perfect casting for a young Béatrice Dalle). Story-wise, it would have benefited from a little sharpening. The narrative confusion works well within the themes, but never really feels totally mastered, which weakens an otherwise very interesting blending of art and narrative forms. It's at times very theatrical, it has 17th century vignettes of pictorial quality, it's sometimes a dance film (the main actor is a choreographer), and it has a few moments of the most stunning visuals – that shot of the witch going round is just on par with some of Raoul Ruiz's most amazing tricks. It is certainly a flawed film, of limited depth (no matter from what angle you choose to read it). You could say its portrait of women is somewhat misogynistic (which only makes Noé's film more relevant), and you could say it's one really uneven work (even aesthetically, with some out of focus shots and bad color calibration at times), but in the end, this felt to me like a little gem, which should have cult status by now. 8/10
Pranzo Oltranzista
Registered User
- Oct 18, 2017
- 4,029
- 2,941
I don't watch movies seriously right now... I'll get back to it at some point. I'm off in a week, with a little more time I should take a few things off my must-watch list, or go back to some favorites (I do have subtitles to finish for an old French film too though, which is very time consuming). Or maybe I'll just binge the Friday the 13th films, we'll see...I must admit, I almost fell out of my chair. A very rare 8/10 rating from Pranzo.
Osprey
Registered User
- Feb 18, 2005
- 28,086
- 11,046
So do I. That might be one of the rare movies that I'd give a 10/10 to; if not, at least a 9/10.
If you watched del Toro's version, I recommend checking out the "making of" documentary on Netflix. It really helps you appreciate all of the work that went into the film.
Osprey
Registered User
- Feb 18, 2005
- 28,086
- 11,046
There is. The new one certainly bested my expectations. The stop action is next level. But the darkness comes at a price, so I indeed still do prefer the original.
Two international submissions that won't make the Academy Award short list:
Nice View (2022) Directed by Wen Muye 2A
Jing Hao, a guy who can fix anything, has to make a lot of money fast or his adorable little sister will die if she doesn't get a life-saving heart operation, the same one that killed her mother. Need I go on? Needless to say, the kid gets the operation with the help of Jing Hao's fellow workers. But first Jin Hao has to survive every possible misfortune except wolves nipping at his heels. Odd message: If you need an expensive operation in China, get the money yourself. The accompanying musical score is so sweet it may cause diabetes in field mice. Plus, there is no view evident, nice or otherwise. Think of the worst Jackie Chan movie ever oonceived--then eliminate Chan and eliminate the stunts.
One for the Road (2022) Directed by Nattawut Poonpiriya 3A
Dying of cancer, lounge lizard Aood talks old pal lounge lizard Boss, running a bar in Manhattan, into returning to Thailand so that they can go on a road trip and Aood can say goodbye to all his old flames. But because these guys are complete assholes, the vast majority of their old lovers want nothing to do with them. Super slick, super vacuous film making--at its best, parts of this movie looked like a rejected high concept ad for expensive perfume. And what the hell kind of rooting interest do we have here?
subtitles in each case
Nice View (2022) Directed by Wen Muye 2A
Jing Hao, a guy who can fix anything, has to make a lot of money fast or his adorable little sister will die if she doesn't get a life-saving heart operation, the same one that killed her mother. Need I go on? Needless to say, the kid gets the operation with the help of Jing Hao's fellow workers. But first Jin Hao has to survive every possible misfortune except wolves nipping at his heels. Odd message: If you need an expensive operation in China, get the money yourself. The accompanying musical score is so sweet it may cause diabetes in field mice. Plus, there is no view evident, nice or otherwise. Think of the worst Jackie Chan movie ever oonceived--then eliminate Chan and eliminate the stunts.
One for the Road (2022) Directed by Nattawut Poonpiriya 3A
Dying of cancer, lounge lizard Aood talks old pal lounge lizard Boss, running a bar in Manhattan, into returning to Thailand so that they can go on a road trip and Aood can say goodbye to all his old flames. But because these guys are complete assholes, the vast majority of their old lovers want nothing to do with them. Super slick, super vacuous film making--at its best, parts of this movie looked like a rejected high concept ad for expensive perfume. And what the hell kind of rooting interest do we have here?
subtitles in each case
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Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
Baz Luhrmann is one of the top 3 dipshits who never deserved the budget they got for their films post-1990. It sounds really specific, but it's not. Give this thread 30 mil (less than each of his films for the past 20+ years) and a decent enough technician to guide the troop, I'm 1000% sure we smoke this guy on sensibility alone. He's so bad. Imagine having so many resources and access and your best film is still Romeo + Juliet.
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I'm game for that, ready for HFBoards: The Movie
Spring in Fialta
A malign star kept him
Cinema Sabaya (2022) Directed by Orit Fouks Rotem 7A
How far down the meta-rabbit hole do you want to go? Cinema Sabaya is a fictional film that masquerades as a documentary film about a young graduate student giving a class on film making to a mixed group of Arab and Jewish women, eight in all. Rona, the teacher, eventually wants to make a movie of the class making movies, an idea which doesn't go over so well with her students. In reality, the movie is really quite straightforward if unorthodox (no play on words intended for once). In style, as opposed to content, Cinema Sabaya recalled to mind 12 Angry Men, in that both movies contain a large group of people, all of whom we get to know a little during the progression of the story. Same thing goes here. Rona asks her class to do exercises in which they film their everyday lives. While this idea seems good in theory, in practice it sometimes leads to tension, tears and even violence among the class members. Cinema Sabaya, though, turns out to be a great vehicle for breaking some stereotypes while showing what fuels other stereotypes. Ultimately, the movie is about people with dissimilar beliefs still having much in common and finding ways to get along. The all-female cast, with only one amateur actor among them, is excellent. Cinema Sabaya is a clever and entertaining work.
subtitles
sdf
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angel heart
After I watch a movie, I myself feel like a character in a movie when I do something and walk around the room
After I watch a movie, I myself feel like a character in a movie when I do something and walk around the room
Hawa (2022) Directed by Maimouna Doucoure 7A
It quickly became apparent that I was watching the wrong Hawa. I wasn't watching the Bangladesh submission to the Academy Awards in the International Film category. Instead I was watching Mamouna Doucoure's follow up to her highly controversial (and unfairly so) Cuties. which dealt with the sexualisation of young girls. What are the chances of two Hawas being released in the same year? Anyway I got hooked and really enjoyed Doucoure's wholly unexpected follow up--a feel-good movie but a bracing one, with all the schmaltz and treacle removed, about a mid-teen Parisian girl who is on a quest. Because her immigrant grandmother from Cameroon, her only relative, will soon die of cancer, Hawa, all frizzy blond hair and Coke-bottom glasses, must find someone to adopt her. She decides that someone should be her great hero Michelle Obama. Hawa is tough-minded and infinitely resourceful, and she is determined to meet Obama who just so happens to have a book-signing gig in Paris (the city looks the beauty it is in this movie). Doucoure's touch is perfect in Hawa which only adds to her already formidable reputation as a young film director of real breadth and power.
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available on Prime Video for free
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Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) Directed by Alejandro Inarritu 7C
Director nostalgia movies, some that take the form of personal memoirs, seem all the fashion this year. Bardo is by far the most unconventional memoir of the lot, and it has gotten a rocky reception so far. Most of the critics of this film actually seem to hate it. The movie has been called pretentious, bloated and self-indulgent. I'll admit that it is a strange work to turn up on Netflix where it will likely baffle and'or bore audiences like crazy. Criterion Channel or MUBI would have been more welcoming destinations. The plot is Fellini-esque. Silverio Gama, Inarritu's alter ego here, is a journalist and documentary film maker who returns to Mexico from his home in LA to receive a prestigious award. With the movie employing the form of Latin Magic Realism, the occasion triggers a whole series of memories and confrontations from the director's past as well as his present.
Basically Bardo is Inarritu in advancing middle age taking stock of his life and asking a lot of questions. Each new visually stunning sequence lends itself to bravura film making of an almost Orson Welles magnitude. Silverio confronts his dead father in a restroom; Cortez, the conqueror of the Aztecs, on top an impressive mountain of dead bodies; and his daughter in a Baja swimming pool. The movie is an endless, albeit rather showy, delight to the eye, with intricate interior tracking shots, long takes, overuse of fish-eye lenses, and absolutely massive technique evident in just about every frame. However, there are indeed moments when I wanted to strangle Inarritu. For instance when he has Silverio claim "Success was my only failure," the urge to slap him upside the head and tell him to get over himself is overwhelming. That's not the only gaffe either. If viewers can see Bardo as just a really long (160 minutes), unconventional, surrealistic, and, yes, indulgent character study that probably needed trimming (though I don't know what I would trim as I found it all pretty interesting), then it might be worth checking out. Just don't come looking for me with a gun afterwards.
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Best Movies of 2022
1) The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh, Ireland
2) Decision to Leave, Park, South Korea
3} Aftersun, Wells UK
4) The Quiet Girl, Bairead, Ireland
5) No Bears, J. Panahi, Iran
6) Hit the Road, P. Panahi, Iran
7) Everything Everywhere All at Once, Kwan/Scheinert, US
8) Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Inarritu, Mexico
9) Moonage Daydream, Morgen, UK
10) Glass Onion, Johnson, US
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