Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jun 2, 2019 13:19:01 GMT -5
I can do Quest for Fire
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jun 2, 2019 23:49:39 GMT -5
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jun 3, 2019 0:36:03 GMT -5
Like Crazy
This film's the story of Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin), two students who fall in love while studying in LA. After they complete school, instead of returning to her home in England, Anna decides to stay the remainder of the summer with Jacob, violating her Visa. When she eventually visits home and tries to return again, she is unable to do so due to her past violation. This sets off a series of events where Jacob and Anna test the limits of their relationship as they constantly drift in and out of it.
I'll start off by saying that this film has some solid performances. Jones (especially) and Yelchin had enough charisma to keep me engaged with their characters despite the stupid decisions they constantly made (Visa, not scheduling calls, wide open texts from the ex, etc) that furthered their dilemma. These actions, along with Jacob's selfish nature, would've probably made me care less for these characters, had the actors not portrayed their affection towards each other so naturally and convincingly.
The film is also shot well, and somewhat evenly paced, although a lot of the "falling in love" scenes seemed like they were cut and pasted out of the Romance Movie Handbook.
As a love story, the film served its purpose, if at least to keep my wife and I talking about our interpretations of the final shot for at least 20 minutes or so after it ended.
7/10
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 3, 2019 3:20:19 GMT -5
Cute movie. It's about a girl that's going through the typical teenage struggles. She comes across a device that lets her time travel and she uses it to have fun. No real harm, right? Except she starts playing with people's emotions (and then her own) and comes to learn that time is valuable and you gotta make the best of it. It's not about fixing your mistakes but using what you've learned to better yourself.
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jun 3, 2019 19:46:42 GMT -5
Cute movie. It's about a girl that's going through the typical teenage struggles. She comes across a device that lets her time travel and she uses it to have fun. No real harm, right? Except she starts playing with people's emotions (and then her own) and comes to learn that time is valuable and you gotta make the best of it. It's not about fixing your mistakes but using what you've learned to better yourself. SO you literally watched it right after I posted it? Raising the bar, eh?
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 3, 2019 20:28:45 GMT -5
Cute movie. It's about a girl that's going through the typical teenage struggles. She comes across a device that lets her time travel and she uses it to have fun. No real harm, right? Except she starts playing with people's emotions (and then her own) and comes to learn that time is valuable and you gotta make the best of it. It's not about fixing your mistakes but using what you've learned to better yourself. SO you literally watched it right after I posted it? Raising the bar, eh? Did I beat PG Cooper’s record?
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 7, 2019 15:45:34 GMT -5
Night and the City
I just happened to get Night and the City recommended to me when I was going through a bit of a noir phase. The film noir genre is interesting in that it's not as easy to categorize which movies are indeed 'film noir' as opposed to gangster movies, crime movies etc. I think what attracts people to film noir the most is that oftentimes characters aren't established criminals or tough guys. Walter Neff in Double Indemnity was an insurance salesman. Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success is a press agent. Likewise in Night and the City, our man Harry Fabian is a small-time get rich quick schemester. He isn't a criminal in the traditional sense, he just wants to make the big time as quickly as possible. Of course he makes one mistake too many and he and those around him pay for his misdeeds but not before we're able to latch onto him and root for him to hopefully, somehow make it through to the end unscathed. They never do but it's one of the things that draws people back to movies like this.
On paper, Night and the City sound like a pretty silly concept. Harry Fabian, a broke hustler who is always looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme, talks an aged wrestler into going into business with him. Fabian tries to promote a huge wrestling match which should net a hefty payday but in order to do that he cons and steals from everyone who will give him any attention and, as they always do, the story leads to everyone getting their comeuppance. Sure the wrestling setup sounds a little corny but watching Fabian do whatever he can to stay ahead and ultimately survive while digging his hole ever deeper is the real story. The direction is dark and there are some great shots including the high angle opening of Fabian being chased across a lit square. It was a great way to set the mood for the rest of the film as Fabian is constantly trying to stay a step ahead of everyone on his tail.
Night and the City ticks all the boxes and in doing so delivers a classic noir film. It's not exactly the feel good movie to watch on a rainy day but it's equally effective and entertaining. Great rec!
A so says Doomsday
Coop, dunno if you've seen these but here are the into and post-videos from TCM for Night and the City.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jun 9, 2019 8:28:37 GMT -5
Quest For Fire (1981)
Cave people have been something of a archetypical character for ages, but you can probably count the number of films that deal with them seriously as historical figures rather than as camp figures on one hand. One of those movies, and perhaps the most famous of them, is Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1981 French-American co-production Quest for Fire. The film’s trailer opens with a narration that proclaims “Fourteen years ago, 2001: A Space Odyssey was the astounding epic that aroused a generation, telling them where they might be headed. Now, 20th Century Fox presents a science fantasy adventure that will arouse this generation, telling them where we might have begun.” That gives you something of an idea of how seriously this movie took itself, it wanted to be the definitive caveman adventure and in some ways it was. Rather than have the cast speak broken English they hired Anthony Burgess to invent a primitive language involving a variety of grunts for the characters to speak while a more advanced group they meet later uses the Cree language, all of this presented without subtitles, forcing the viewer to experience the movie as an exercise in visual storytelling.
The film’s basic story is fairly simple. The central tribe does not fully understand how fire works and thinks they need to keep the flame going in order to keep using it. When their flame is extinguished in an opening battle they need to go on a quest to find more fire and bring it back. The film features Ron Perlman in his first role and along the way they meet a cave lady from another tribe played Rae Dawn Chong, who is essentially nude through the whole movie, which comes across as more tasteful than that sounds. That said, caveman sex is one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the film because through much of the film the cavemen more or less feel entitled to rape the cave women in an animalistic fashion. This behavior is not eroticized and it’s seen as a sign of progress when the sex becomes a bit more consensual later on, but it’s still kind of an uncomfortable metaphor and a romance of sorts that comes into the film late never really works.
The film also isn’t as authentic as it claims to be. It reminded me a bit of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto in that it kind of conflates different eras of an area into a single adventure narrative. The kind of apelike humans seen in the opening scene would been long gone before the kind of village dwelling tribe seen late in the film would have established itself and the odds of all three groups being in such close proximity with such vastly different levels of development is ulikely. And simply as a piece of filmmaking this is a bit of a mixed bag. The film incorporates a lot of good scenery but some of the special effect don’t look quite right. Sabre tooth tigers are created by simply putting fake teeth in the mouths of real lions (would hate to have to be the guy who has to install those), which is a level of practical effects work that I should appreciate but which also means that humans don’t really interact with them during the action scenes. Ultimately I just don’t think Annaud quite the chops to pull off the rather challenging trick he was trying to do with this movie and that 2001 comparison from the trailer is just really off-base, but I appreciate that the movie was trying to compete with that movie during an era when everyone was trying to make the next Star Wars. ***1/2 out of Five
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Jun 9, 2019 9:23:58 GMT -5
Sounds like you appreciated it on a similar level as I did.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jun 9, 2019 11:49:55 GMT -5
Night and the CityI just happened to get Night and the City recommended to me when I was going through a bit of a noir phase. The film noir genre is interesting in that it's not as easy to categorize which movies are indeed 'film noir' as opposed to gangster movies, crime movies etc. I think what attracts people to film noir the most is that oftentimes characters aren't established criminals or tough guys. Walter Neff in Double Indemnity was an insurance salesman. Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success is a press agent. Likewise in Night and the City, our man Harry Fabian is a small-time get rich quick schemester. He isn't a criminal in the traditional sense, he just wants to make the big time as quickly as possible. Of course he makes one mistake too many and he and those around him pay for his misdeeds but not before we're able to latch onto him and root for him to hopefully, somehow make it through to the end unscathed. They never do but it's one of the things that draws people back to movies like this. On paper, Night and the City sound like a pretty silly concept. Harry Fabian, a broke hustler who is always looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme, talks an aged wrestler into going into business with him. Fabian tries to promote a huge wrestling match which should net a hefty payday but in order to do that he cons and steals from everyone who will give him any attention and, as they always do, the story leads to everyone getting their comeuppance. Sure the wrestling setup sounds a little corny but watching Fabian do whatever he can to stay ahead and ultimately survive while digging his hole ever deeper is the real story. The direction is dark and there are some great shots including the high angle opening of Fabian being chased across a lit square. It was a great way to set the mood for the rest of the film as Fabian is constantly trying to stay a step ahead of everyone on his tail. Night and the City ticks all the boxes and in doing so delivers a classic noir film. It's not exactly the feel good movie to watch on a rainy day but it's equally effective and entertaining. Great rec! A so says Doomsday Coop, dunno if you've seen these but here are the into and post-videos from TCM for Night and the City. Glad you enjoyed it! It's not an especially deep film, but it's very well-made and that tension really builds. Also, I saw the movie as part of Noir alley so I have seen those Eddie Mueller excerpts.
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IanTheCool
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Post by IanTheCool on Jun 15, 2019 14:37:57 GMT -5
Blind Chance
So... okay. I will be honest, about halfway through this movie I started thinking to myself, "What am I going to say about this for the film club?" Because at that point it wasn't looking to be anything too positive. This Polish film from the eighties had me immediately asking what in the world was going on, and was also not doing a great job at engaging me despite that question. I was growing pretty bored.
A lot of that came from my ignorance of Soviet Polish politics I suppose. But when the movie started getting into its main focus, which was the idea of different possible timelines, then my brain really started to kick off. But for a while, it still wasn't good.
The primary concept of the film is how random chances can affect the course of your life, as we see three different timelines for our protagonist. I first thought the idea was neat, but then wondered why there needed to be a whole feature length film to support it. It also reminded me of that awful, forgotten sci-fi movie from a few years back called Mr. Nobody (which this was clearly a main influence on). But while that movie was pretentious refuse, this one luckily lacks that pretension and is much more grounded. But still, I had to question what the point was.
But then the movie kept going, moving from the second timeline into the third. And I figured out the point. This wasn't just a simple "lets see how this guy's life would change depending if he runs into beer guy or not", but it actually does go a lot deeper than that. It is actually making a pretty bold statement about how random our lives are created, and how malleable everything in it is. The film posits that even the really large stuff like love, political ideologies, and even religious beliefs are all at the whim of entropy. and so I began respecting the movie a lot more, and enjoyed the latter half quite a bit.
I have to point out the score, which was odd. It was like a mix of the Godfather theme and the theme from Hinterland's Who's Who (sorry for the esoterically Canadian reference). The photography was muted, as most Cold War Eastern European movies are. Acting was solid, especially the main lead.
So where do I land? Well, reconciling the boring first half with the better second half, I'm gong to come down on a 7/10. Thanks for the neat rec Drac.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jun 15, 2019 16:05:55 GMT -5
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 22, 2019 22:59:34 GMT -5
How's everyone looking? I think we're waiting on a couple more people.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jun 22, 2019 23:20:16 GMT -5
How's everyone looking? I think we're waiting on a couple more people. Will do mine next week. House sitting right now and don't have access to my usual resources.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 23, 2019 0:04:59 GMT -5
How's everyone looking? I think we're waiting on a couple more people. Will do mine next week. House sitting right now and don't have access to my usual resources. Lame
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jun 23, 2019 15:11:31 GMT -5
How's everyone looking? I think we're waiting on a couple more people. I watched mine this past week. Should have it up within the next 24.
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Deexan
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Post by Deexan on Jun 23, 2019 18:11:04 GMT -5
How's everyone looking? I think we're waiting on a couple more people. I watched mine this past week. Should have it up within the next 24. Talk is cheap.
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1godzillafan
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Post by 1godzillafan on Jun 23, 2019 20:02:11 GMT -5
I watched mine this past week. Should have it up within the next 24. Talk is cheap. It seems like every time I open my mouth I get sued for sexual harassment, so I assure you talk isn't cheap.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 28, 2019 17:16:22 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 Paul Schrader went to Facebook to talk shit about Brian de Palma’s skills as a filmmaker theplaylist.net/paul-schrader-savages-de-palma-20190628/Keep in mind that Schrader is the brilliant director behind that masterpiece Lindsay Lohan/James Deen movie that he luckily hasn’t gotten MeToo’d for.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 28, 2019 17:18:13 GMT -5
If you're referring to The Canyons I would appreciate a little more respect in your tone, thank you very much.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 30, 2019 21:13:13 GMT -5
How's everyone looking? I think we're waiting on a couple more people. I watched mine this past week. Should have it up within the next 24.
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jul 2, 2019 0:51:11 GMT -5
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Mandy (Amber Heard) returns from summer vacation to her senior year in high school as a newly blossomed beauty, immediately catching the attention of all the boys in school. When a jock invites both her and her friendzone sidekick to a pool party, they both agree as an attempt to fit in with the cool kids, but the night soon ends in tragedy. Six months later, Mandy is now one of the cool kids, and takes a trip with them to spend the weekend at one of their group’s family ranch. The body count soon begins.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a slightly serviceable slasher flick that, while going through the motions of the genre, fails to deliver what ultimately makes these types of film fun. The film falls short of delivering creative kills, gore, and suspense, yet manages to stay afloat due to a team of competent actors and a twist ending that seemed clever enough at the reveal, but soon begins to make less sense when given additional thought after the film. To elaborate more would reveal the ending to potential viewers.
I’ve always been a fan of the slasher genre but found this film to be a disappointment. It wasn’t a bad film by any means, just a forgettable one lost in a genre that has produced films with much more personality than Mandy Lane.
5/10
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jul 2, 2019 12:53:11 GMT -5
Just a heads up, I did watch my movie, but I don't think I'll be putting a review up until either tomorrow afternoon or Thursday. I have my thesis defense tomorrow so I'm trying to stay in that head space right now.
If you want to start a new round, go ahead. I'm in. If you need a short review now to keep things moving, I watched Bad Company. It was pretty good. I liked Jeff Bridges and the cinematography. I'm thinking a B. More to come in a day or two.
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jul 2, 2019 15:33:02 GMT -5
SO you literally watched it right after I posted it? Raising the bar, eh? Did I beat PG Cooper ’s record? I think PG Cooper still has the record at 2 hours 19 minutes. You got yours in at 2 hours and 44 minutes. Very close.
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Nilade
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Post by Nilade on Jul 2, 2019 15:34:23 GMT -5
I'm in next round.
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