Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Movie-mber Edition

[Chili]

Once Upon a Time in the West. Another lengthy classic I'd never seen. Fonda, of course, is fantastic in one of the great against-type casting decisions ever. All that wonderful Leone verve is there, but my big take away was actually the script. There isn't a whole lot that's said despite the near three-hour run time but man it feels like every line of dialogue that is said is a wonderfully hard-edged, cynical, snappy bit of wisdom or badassery.

Reading a book about Sergio Leone at the moment (Christopher Frayling-Something to do with Death) and it has a long chapter on each of his films. The director's goal with this film was a 'fresco to the birth of a nation'. The story was developed over months (with Sergio, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, script later written by Sergio Donati). Leone was a student of westerns, especially John Ford and the classics. Their are references to about 30 different movies in the story (from High Noon to Shane to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance...). Leone did go over the idea with Clint Eastwood but he wasn't interested. Both Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson had been offered roles before in the dollars trilogy. Fonda was still lukewarm about the role until convinced by Eli Wallach. Bronson got his first lead role here.

I think I remember the music more then any other film. A lot of it was written and recorded beforehand by Ennio Morricone and was actually playing during shooting helping actors get into character. Leone synchronized the crane shot of the town with the music. A fan of the film was Stanley Kubrick who similarily prepared music for Barry Lyndon before shooting that film.

John Boorman (Point Blank) called it 'the greatest and last western'. It's my favorite too.

 

[Osprey]

Babes in Toyland aka March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) - 8/10 (Loved it)

Laurel and Hardy, renting a room with the old woman who lived in a shoe and working in Santa's workshop, help Little Bo-Peep and Tom Tom the Piper's Son against the meanest man in Toyland. As Chili said, what a wonderful film. It's like a bunch of nursery rhymes come to life and is even introduced by Mother Goose. The playful sets are fantastic and I imagine that the probably helped inspire at least the Munchkinland set in The Wizard of Oz five years later. It's a shame that the film is only in black and white because I'm sure that the sets were very colorful. Even without color, it's a fun film with lots to look at. Laurel and Hardy are their usual amusing selves, so you know what you're getting there. This is probably the best film to introduce them to others with, especially to younger viewers (though the bogeymen at the end might make it too scary for really young viewers). It's just a wonderful and fanciful film for anyone who's ever liked nursery rhymes.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Reading a book about Sergio Leone at the moment (Christopher Frayling-Something to do with Death) and it has a long chapter on each of his films. The director's goal with this film was a 'fresco to the birth of a nation'. The story was developed over months (with Sergio, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, script later written by Sergio Donati). Leone was a student of westerns, especially John Ford and the classics. Their are references to about 30 different movies in the story (from High Noon to Shane to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance...). Leone did go over the idea with Clint Eastwood but he wasn't interested. Both Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson had been offered roles before in the dollars trilogy. Fonda was still lukewarm about the role until convinced by Eli Wallach. Bronson got his first lead role here.

I think I remember the music more then any other film. A lot of it was written and recorded beforehand by Ennio Morricone and was actually playing during shooting helping actors get into character. Leone synchronized the crane shot of the town with the music. A fan of the film was Stanley Kubrick who similarily prepared music for Barry Lyndon before shooting that film.

John Boorman (Point Blank) called it 'the greatest and last western'. It's my favorite too.

I would have loved being a fly on the wall when Leone, Bertoluci and Agento sat down to talk about movies.

 

[Pink Mist]

Café Society (2016) directed by Woody Allen

In the era of Golden Age Hollywood, a young man named Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg, doing an ok Woody Allen impression) moves from New York to LA to beg for a job from his uncle Phil (Steve Carell) who is a big shot Hollywood agent. While in LA he becomes enamoured with the Hollywood society and with a receptionist at his uncle’s agency, Vinnie (Kristen Stewart). Unaware to Bobby, Vinnie is engaged in a secret affair with her boss, his uncle Phil, which is only discovered when both men ask her to marry them. If you’ve seen a Woody Allen movie before, you’ve basically seen this movie, as Allen doesn’t really have anything new to say, just transplanting his usual ideas and themes to 1930s Hollywood and NYC. The film doesn’t really amount to anything but it does feature a charming cast and the 1930s setting of Hollywood and NYC is pretty to look at. Although this is probably one of his better films of late period Allen, which admittedly is a low-bar to clear, and is raised in part due to being extremely well shot by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Conformist) making it probably his best made film (I don’t know, I skip watching most of his catalogue these days). Well made fluff.

 

[Pink Mist]

Chained for Life (2018) directed by Aaron Schimberg

On the set of an exploitation film, the lead actress Mabel (Jess Weixler) strikes up a relationship with her fellow cast who are disabled and disfigured, particularly Rosenthal (Adam Pearson) an actor with severe facial deformities caused by neurofibromatosis. The film explores the use and well, exploitation, of disabled and abnormal actors in disabledsploitation films such as Freaks or Elephant Man as well as the beauty expectations of the actors in film (including by opening with a bullshit quote by famed film critic Pauline Kael, which was on the nose but I appreciate any mud slinging at Kael). While the themes of the film are well done and satisfying explored, particularly the polite condensation of the able-bodied cast and crew towards their disabled cast, the film unfortunately is brought down by its acting which is uneven. There was little chemistry between the two leads Weixler and Pearson, which may have been intentional as about b-movies after all, while the acting between the disabled actors seemed very natural in contrast. The film also becomes a little too meta for its own good towards the end of the film, but overall an interesting effort, which felt like a blend of Day for Night and Certified Copy.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

I'm actually surprised Cafe Society didn't get more love. Not saying it was great but it was good and combine that with how great it looked plus the Hollywood setting and I would have thought it would be a critic's darling.

His previous one, A Rainy Day In New York was pretty bad though.

 

[kihei]

Time (2020) Directed by Lula Loo (documentary) 8A

Time looks at the life of Fox. a woman who has spent nearly two decades waiting for her husband to be released from prison for an armed robbery, a felony in which she participated and already served her time. Both she and her husband seem to be a middle-class couple who fell on hard times and made a very bad decision out of desperation. Fox has six sons and one of the wonders of the movie is how well they all turned out, all likeable, model-citizen scholars with their heads screwed on right. One thing for sure about Fox she is diligent about the things she cares about and she cares about her husband and her family. And she has a lot of things to say about how criminal justice functions in the States. How one reacts to Time will depend upon one’s attitude toward the treatment of criminals by the State. One side will see praise for this film as misguided and an affront to the notion that if you commit the crime, you pay the time and no questions asked. The other side will see an indictment of the system’s emphasis on punishment over rehabilitation and on the racist use of prisoners as basically slave labour. Some of the footage in the documentary seems to be Fox’s own home movies from when she was much younger and some of the footage seems to be shot more recently to look like Fox’s home movies. It is an interesting approach that lends immediacy to an absorbing character study.

Prime Video

 

[kihei]

It may have been a bad year for film overall, but it has been a hell of a year for black film:

Lovers Rock
Mangrove
Red, White and Blue
Alex Wheatle
Education
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Da 5 Bloods
His House
Time
Hamilton

with potentially more to come:

One Night in Miami
The United States vs Billie Holiday
Judas and the Black Messiah

That's a stunner of a year by any standards.

 

[Chili]

I would have loved being a fly on the wall when Leone, Bertoluci and Agento sat down to talk about movies.

Would have to be careful if Jack Elam was around.

 

[Pink Mist]

I'm actually surprised Cafe Society didn't get more love. Not saying it was great but it was good and combine that with how great it looked plus the Hollywood setting and I would have thought it would be a critic's darling.

His previous one, A Rainy Day In New York was pretty bad though.

Agreed, it really is a film tailored to the Academy's sensibilities, aka movies about themselves

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

There's a fine line between ripoff and homage, but I believe that the staircase sequence is considered one of the more famous homages in film history. It was done deliberately and obviously by a talented director who appreciates classic films. I feel that a ripoff is more when an untalented director takes something, doesn't put his own stamp on it and passes it off as his own. I don't think that De Palma did that, personally. I feel that he mimicked the scene respectfully while bringing it to a much wider audience (after all, not many Westerners in 1987 would've seen or cared to see Soviet silent era propaganda). I think that a lot of the difference between homage and ripoff comes down to intent and I believe that De Palma's intent was very much to pay homage to the Odessa Steps sequence, not to rip it off, so I'm willing to count it as such. That's just my opinion, but it's certainly an interesting discussion.

Post-1980, deep in postmodern intertwining, it's kind of a waste of time to discuss the idea of ripoff. Homage is most of the time an excuse for a weak allusion. I don't remember the context of DePalma's staircase scene, but he is the author of some of the most amazing and satisfying allusions put on film, so I doubt this would be an empty one.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

The Black Hole (Nelson, 1979) - I'm not sure why I was told to watch this thing, but I did. The whole ending is kind of weird, but nowhere near enough to excuse the boredom inducing first hour. Coming two years after Star Wars, and with almost twice its budget (??!), it certainly makes you appreciate Lucas' film and its production value. The whole sequence where they go back into the ship to save the (princess?) is very star-warish, with the star wars doors, the star wars troopers that can't shoot their star wars blasters, and the comparison does not look good for The Black Hole (there's the giant fireball that looks good, and everything else feels like a 1968 tv set). Reading from IMDB, the film was not intended for children, which is kind of a relief, but makes the look of their R2D2 inexcusable. 2.5/10*

*Not making me like Disney+ any more than I did!

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Would have to careful if Jack Elam was around.

Well done.

 

[NyQuil]

The Black Hole (Nelson, 1979) - I'm not sure why I was told to watch this thing, but I did. The whole ending is kind of weird, but nowhere near enough to excuse the boredom inducing first hour. Coming two years after Star Wars, and with almost twice its budget (??!), it certainly makes you appreciate Lucas' film and its production value. The whole sequence where they go back into the ship to save the (princess?) is very star-warish, with the star wars doors, the star wars troopers that can't shoot their star wars blasters, and the comparison does not look good for The Black Hole (there's the giant fireball that looks good, and everything else feels like a 1968 tv set). Reading from IMDB, the film was not intended for children, which is kind of a relief, but makes the look of their R2D2 inexcusable. 2.5/10*

*Not making me like Disney+ any more than I did!

You have to watch bad science-fiction in order to appreciate the good stuff.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

You have to watch bad science-fiction in order to appreciate the good stuff.

Nah, the good stuff I can appreciate without the help of failed attempts at making a little cash on the huge success of [I will self-censor all of my opinions about said franchise from now on].

 

[nameless1]

It may have been a bad year for film overall, but it has been a hell of a year for black film:

Lovers Rock
Mangrove
Red, White and Blue
Alex Wheatle
Education
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Da 5 Bloods
His House
Time
Hamilton

with potentially more to come:

One Night in Miami
The United States vs Billie Holiday
Judas and the Black Messiah

That's a stunner of a year by any standards.

I have to say that there were some interesting Canadian movies I watched this year too. 2020 is a terrible year, for everything, but it also opened up new opportunities for overlooked films.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

The Black Hole (Nelson, 1979) - I'm not sure why I was told to watch this thing, but I did. The whole ending is kind of weird, but nowhere near enough to excuse the boredom inducing first hour. Coming two years after Star Wars, and with almost twice its budget (??!), it certainly makes you appreciate Lucas' film and its production value. The whole sequence where they go back into the ship to save the (princess?) is very star-warish, with the star wars doors, the star wars troopers that can't shoot their star wars blasters, and the comparison does not look good for The Black Hole (there's the giant fireball that looks good, and everything else feels like a 1968 tv set). Reading from IMDB, the film was not intended for children, which is kind of a relief, but makes the look of their R2D2 inexcusable. 2.5/10*

*Not making me like Disney+ any more than I did!

I remember watching that a year or two ago; I'm sure my review of it is buried somewhere in a previous thread.

What an incredible piece of shit that movie was. It's funny you say it wasn't intended as a kid's movie because I remember I had some merch from it when I was a kid. I definitely had a storybook, and I remember there was some stuff about it in kids' magazines I got at the time. The R2-D2 ripoffs were just sad, but what stuck out for me when I saw it again after all these years was how the so many interior parts of the Cygnus looked like an abandoned airport. There were these huge rooms full of empty air with some random cheap seating against one wall. Bit of a waste of space, really.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I remember I had some merch from it when I was a kid.

It seems there was indeed - they tried to go all Star Wars and failed on all levels.

 

[silkyjohnson50]

Has anyone seen “Tree of Life”, with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn?

I’ve never seen it and was surprised to see it was nominated for best picture.

I thought it was awful. It was a very unpleasant movie watching experience.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Ghosts of War

with people who usually get killed in tv shows a lot

France, 1944. A unit of 5 US airborne soldiers are roaming the countryside blowing up Germans, occasionally torturing them for laughs or cutting their gold teeth out, or challenging random SS troops to fistfights before blowing their brains out. Fun bunch. Their mission takes them to an abandoned mansion where the former aristocratic French owners were found to be hiding Jews and then horribly tortured and killed by the Nazis. Their fellow US soldiers greet them with haunted stares, then bail out on a truck as fast as they can after being relieved. Huh. Surely hardened soldiers wouldn't be easily rattled...and yeah. Later on, there's a whole bunch of stuff in the mansion that goes bump in the night, a diary conveniently left by one of the Germans, evidence of occult rituals in the attic, and all manner of supernatural phenomena. And that's just the beginning. Soon, waves of Nazi reinforcements, hallucinations, time loops, and various other things start being thrown at us. Much like a drunken Japanese salaryman at a karaoke bar, this movie does not know when to stop. And oddly, when it finally does you're disappointed because it doesn't have an ending, it just sort of halts in the middle of what it was doing.

It reminds me of a college term paper that you have to send in halfway done because you ran out of time. Some of the characters in it are okay; liked the crazy sniper dude, but the whole thing wanders off the rails after about the 3/4 mark. It starts with the gritty reality of war theme, motors into Paranormal territory, then...other places. It doesn't know what it wants to be about or say. Meh.

On Netflix.

Halt! It might be Nazis...or an alternate reality! Keep on your toes, men!

 

[nameless1]

Recently, I also noticed a rise in movies that focuses on different Aboriginal cultures. They vary in quality, but I am glad Aboriginal stories are told now.

 

[Osprey]

Better Watch Out (2016) - 5/10 (Didn't like or dislike it)

A tween (Levi Miller) and his babysitter (Olivia DeJonge) face an intruder at Christmas time. This home invasion thriller/horror starts out as generically as that description makes it sound, but then takes a complete left turn a little over half an hour in and becomes something very different and unique. I appreciated that, but then I felt that the suspense dissipated and it got a little too unbelievable. I just couldn't really get into the premise and it didn't seem as fun or as darkly humorous as many reviews (and the trailer) suggest that it is. It's very Christmas-y, looks good, is well acted and has some cleverness to the plot twists, though, so it has those things going for it. I didn't really enjoy it, but others might like it more and it's a film that I wouldn't mind eventually re-watching and can see myself perhaps liking better the second time. Warning: Don't read the audience reviews at RT unless you want the main twist spoiled for you.

It's on Amazon Prime.

 

[kihei]

A Better Tomorrow (1986) Directed by John Woo 4A

Though director John Woo had been a staple of Hong Kong film for well over a decade, A Better Tomorrow is the first of his many films to find success with an international audience. A Better Tomorrow is about two brothers, the younger one is a cop, the older one is a gangster. The gangster has a pal (Chow Yun Fat)l who is as close to him as another brother would be, a pal who relishes his life as a criminal to the hilt. There is much family conflict, and the two gangsters fall on very hard times. The older brother genuinely tries to go straight for the sake of his kid brother but the fates keep conspiring against him. A Better Tomorrow possesses both Woo’s good and bad hallmarks. On the negative side, the move is haphazardly plotted, plays to the lowest common denominator, and is infused with periodic doses of cloying sentimentality. On the plus side is the action which is really Woo’s primarily calling card. All the explosions and gun battles are viscerally staged and have a manic energy that is off the charts and a treat to watch. A Better Tomorow is an entertaining bad movie, but, no question, Woo got a whole lot better than this in the years to follow.

subtitles

YouTube

 

[Chili]

Dead End-1937

A different type of gangster film from the era. Humphrey Bogart in a role he played many times early in his career as the gangster, this time returning to his roots. The area has changed though as rich penthouses have been built around the poor tenements. The Dead End kids first film, they would later star in Angels with Dirty Faces among others. Bogart and the kids both getting into lots of trouble. Great cast, strong performances, a very good film.

Available on YouTube

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Tentacles (Assonitis, 1977) - Same that with The Black Hole, the film can't hold up the comparison to the work it was trying to emulate. Ironically, the worst part about this one is its music misuse. The score (mostly recycled from another movie as per IMDB) really is atrocious. 1/10