Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Apr 22, 2019 13:28:25 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Apr 24, 2019 18:32:36 GMT -5
I'll throw Ian in since he expressed some interest a few posts back. ROUND 182 Dracula - PG Cooper Doomsday - Neverending Nilade - IanTheCool
It would be cool if we could get our movies in under 3 months. We can do it, I believe in all of you.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Apr 24, 2019 20:23:46 GMT -5
DoomsdayTHE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958)OBSESSION (1976)USED CARS (1980)BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980)ERASER (1996)
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Apr 24, 2019 21:25:59 GMT -5
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1godzillafan
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I like pie!
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Post by 1godzillafan on Apr 24, 2019 22:16:51 GMT -5
Neverending just made me want to dig out my copy of Eraser and see some "You're luggage" action.
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SnoBorderZero
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Post by SnoBorderZero on Apr 24, 2019 22:28:44 GMT -5
Doomsday THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958)OBSESSION (1976)USED CARS (1980)BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980)ERASER (1996) Yup, that's a patented Neverending list if I ever saw one.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Apr 25, 2019 9:46:06 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Apr 25, 2019 12:56:32 GMT -5
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Apr 25, 2019 16:09:55 GMT -5
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Apr 28, 2019 7:29:06 GMT -5
Yeah I just got back from a trip, but I'll do it.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on May 4, 2019 9:55:42 GMT -5
Bringing Up Baby (1938) MASH (1970) Like Crazy (2011) The Grey (2012)
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on May 4, 2019 13:55:32 GMT -5
The Sea Hawk (1940)
I’m not entirely sure why it took so long for me to watch The Sea Hawk. I watched and liked other Flynn/Curtiz adventure movies like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood a long time ago. I think I just read a negative review of it in a book ages ago and that always just stuck in the back of my mind. In the film Flynn is once again playing a pirate, but a very patriotic pirate who plunders in the name of England in their cold war with Spain. This change in outlook from the (slightly) more revolutionary swashbuckling of Captain Blood has to do with the beginning of World War II and the film has been thought to have had a pro-British propaganda element to it. Like a lot of Flynn’s characters, the protagonist at center of this is pretty squeaky clean but he’s also not rebelling against a corrupt king or robbing from the rich, he’s just fighting against a hilariously evil foreign dictator and that does sand the little bit of edge that was ever there. But let’s be real, the real attraction here is the swashbuckling spectacle and that remains pretty strong. The opening ship to ship battle is quite strong and the various sword fights are pretty good even though they all seem to involve those skinny little fencing swords that don’t look like they can actually cut anyone. Additionally there are some other neat touches like a sequence that actually involves color tinting, which is not something I associate with the sound era at all.
***1/2 out of Five
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on May 7, 2019 2:24:47 GMT -5
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on May 7, 2019 7:50:19 GMT -5
The Sea Hawk (1940)
I’m not entirely sure why it took so long for me to watch The Sea Hawk. I watched and liked other Flynn/Curtiz adventure movies like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood a long time ago. I think I just read a negative review of it in a book ages ago and that always just stuck in the back of my mind. In the film Flynn is once again playing a pirate, but a very patriotic pirate who plunders in the name of England in their cold war with Spain. This change in outlook from the (slightly) more revolutionary swashbuckling of Captain Blood has to do with the beginning of World War II and the film has been thought to have had a pro-British propaganda element to it. Like a lot of Flynn’s characters, the protagonist at center of this is pretty squeaky clean but he’s also not rebelling against a corrupt king or robbing from the rich, he’s just fighting against a hilariously evil foreign dictator and that does sand the little bit of edge that was ever there. But let’s be real, the real attraction here is the swashbuckling spectacle and that remains pretty strong. The opening ship to ship battle is quite strong and the various sword fights are pretty good even though they all seem to involve those skinny little fencing swords that don’t look like they can actually cut anyone. Additionally there are some other neat touches like a sequence that actually involves color tinting, which is not something I associate with the sound era at all. ***1/2 out of Five
Glad you enjoyed it. I'll squeeze in The Hero at some point this week.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on May 11, 2019 9:10:08 GMT -5
24 Hour Party PeopleThis is a good look at the rise of the British punk movement in the late 70s and through the eighties from the viewpoint of a news anchor-turned-record producer. Steve Coogan plays the record producer and is great in the role; very watchable and subtly funny in just the right moments. I'm not really into punk music; in fact, I've always sort of thought that punk fans are some of the most pretentious out there. There's always a better punk band than the one you like. But it was cool to see their beginnings, and Sean Harris' portrayal as the Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis was pretty fascinating.
The movie has a lot of fourth wall moments interspersed throughout which don't really work for me. The story doesn't really need them, and it feels very "of the era', as in a filmmaker in 2002 may have seen it as innovative, but it just didn't come off that way. I'm not always against techniques like this; I really enjoyed The Big Short when a lot of other people didn't, for example. And I didn't hate it here, it just seemed extraneous.
Its a very enjoyable watch though. First half better than the second, but all pretty entertaining.
7/10
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on May 18, 2019 22:17:14 GMT -5
Obsession (1976)
Of the major filmmaking talent that established themselves in the 1970s, Brian DePalma is probably the one I'm least familiar with. Sure I've see Untouchables and Scarface and Mission: Impossible and he also has more than his fair share of stinkers but I'm very unfamiliar with his earlier work that came out in a time when Hollywood was in a huge state of flux. DePalma was never a commercial household name like Steven Spielberg or George Lucas nor was he really considered a popular auteur like Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola. His entire body of work seems to greatly range between hitting it out of the park and going way, way off the mark. I think that can be a really good thing though because it's often the sign of an artist pushing their craft and themselves forward. I like someone with some balls and as far as I'm concerned it takes balls to remake a movie like Vertigo.
From the start Obsession feels very Hitchcockian and the influences are plentiful. Uncle Ben plays Michael Courtland, a successful real estate developer happily married with a wife and child. After an anniversary party the Courtland girls are kidnapped and are both killed after a botched rescue attempt. Years later Michael and his business partner Lasalle (John Lithgow) are visiting Italy to close a deal when Michael sees a woman the spitting image of his wife in the same church where they first met. He introduces himself to her, takes her out, romances her and slowly begins to mold her into the image of his wife. As the affair continues however Courtland discovers that there's a more sinister scheme behind the romance, one that's been years in the making.
To keep it short and sweet, Obsession is a very engrossing movie and is a great example of a movie whose slow pace and established atmosphere greatly serve the building tension and suspense. Speaking of Hitchcock, Bernard Hermann's score is also a fantastic addition. My only major gripe with the movie is the predictable twist with Lasalle. Not only do you see his backstabbing coming, his plan didn't make a whole lot of sense. Fortunately that's all overshadowed by Cliff Robertson's great performance and the steady buildup to the very end.
A- so says Doomsday
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on May 19, 2019 18:08:35 GMT -5
As a follow up I sat down and watched DePalma's Dressed to Kill last night which I had no idea was a send off on Psycho. It's....well, I guess some of it works but it's not as successful as Obsession. While Psycho had lots of sexual subtext Dressed to Kill is very on the nose. The opening shower scene feels unintentionally funny and a lot of the dialogue seems like it's trying too hard to be risque. There's some good stuff to take away and DePalma certainly knows how to stage a suspenseful, eerie scene but there's too much that bumped for me to say it was a really good thriller.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on May 20, 2019 22:35:35 GMT -5
The Hero
I've seen three Satyajit Ray films now and all three have been pretty different. Pather Panchali follows an impoverished family living in rural Bengal in the 1910s, The Music Room is about a wealthy landlord in the decline of his aristocracy, and now The Hero opens in on a famous contemporary film star in India at something of a crossroads of potential personal and professional crisis. What all three of these films share is each offers an intimate character study more concerned with studying how its lead reacts to their situation rather than the situation itself. In the case of The Hero, that leads to an incredibly gripping encounter where matinee idol Arindam Mukherjee (Uttam Kumar) meets idealistic journalist Aditi (Sharmila Tagore). Aditi is at first dismissive of Arindam, but as the two talk she begins to see greater complexities to the man. The film is not really a lament for the tragedy of being rich and famous, but it does offer a sympathetic look at Arindam, who is slowly revealed to be an alienated and lonely man.
All told, The Hero is another unambiguous win for Ray. Uttam Kumar, himself a major star of Indian cinema, is wholly believable in the lead and I was even more enamored by Sharmila Tagore, who is just fantastic. The affection she develops really lands and the ending where the pair eventually go their separate ways is nicely bitter-sweet. If the film has any shortcomings, its that the supporting cast gets a lot of attention to the point of The Hero starting to feel like an ensemble piece, but it never really is. The heart of the film is Arindam and Aditi and the focus should have been too. Still, this is clearly a great piece of filmmaking and all the more proof that Ray is a major figure I need to watch more of.
A
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on May 25, 2019 23:48:15 GMT -5
Just waiting on a couple more I think, how we looking?
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on May 25, 2019 23:56:58 GMT -5
Just waiting on a couple more I think, how we looking? Very soon
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on May 26, 2019 3:01:53 GMT -5
Just waiting on a couple more I think, how we looking? Very soon Ditto
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on May 26, 2019 13:24:54 GMT -5
ONE, TWO, THREE (1961)This Billy Wilder sitcom stars James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin who has to babysit his bosses daughter. It reminds me of that episode of Fresh Prince in which Geoffrey’s previous employer, Lord Fowler, comes to visit, and his daughter Lady Penelope, turns out to be a wild party animal. But here it’s much worse, the daughter secretly married an East Berlin communist. Dun dun dun! I can appreciate the premise of this movie, but not so much the execution. Billy Wilder is a weird cat. He can make a lively film such as Some Like It Hot but then will make stage-y films like Seven Year Itch and this one. Are you trying to make a movie or a play? Then there’s Cagney’s old-timey performance that almost feels like a parody. For a moment I thought Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz were gonna bust through the door and shout, “you’re through in this town.” This movie was made in 1961 but feels like it’s from 1946.
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on May 29, 2019 1:03:23 GMT -5
Sorry guys, will try to have mine up before the weekend.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on May 29, 2019 1:50:07 GMT -5
Sorry guys, will try to have mine up before the weekend.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on May 29, 2019 9:22:37 GMT -5
In for next round.
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