paul carruthers Posted April 7, 2021 Share Posted April 7, 2021 Unless I missed something, Christopher Lee's last appearance as Dracula in the classic Hammer series.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul carruthers Posted April 11, 2021 Share Posted April 11, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrum Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 Watched the other night. Watching this tonight. Watching this in between. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RainbowElf Posted April 12, 2021 Share Posted April 12, 2021 Casino is a classic mob movie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul carruthers Posted April 17, 2021 Share Posted April 17, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stryder1978 Posted April 19, 2021 Share Posted April 19, 2021 Watched this on Saturday night...great flick I haven't seen since I was a kid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 19, 2021 Share Posted April 19, 2021 Caught up with all of the Best Picture nominees this past week. "Nomadland", "Judas & the Black Messiah", "Promising Young Woman", and "The Sound of Metal" were the only ones I really liked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrum Posted April 19, 2021 Share Posted April 19, 2021 ARE WE NOT MEN? WE ARE DEVO! Dr. Moreau: What is the law?Sayer of the Law: Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?Dr. Moreau: What is the law?Sayer of the Law: Not to go on all fours, that is the law. Are we not men?Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?Dr. Moreau: What is the law?Sayer of the Law: Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men?Beasts (in unison): Are we not men? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 19, 2021 Share Posted April 19, 2021 3 minutes ago, redrum said: ARE WE NOT MEN? WE ARE DEVO! Dr. Moreau: What is the law?Sayer of the Law: Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?Dr. Moreau: What is the law?Sayer of the Law: Not to go on all fours, that is the law. Are we not men?Beasts (in unison): Are we not men?Dr. Moreau: What is the law?Sayer of the Law: Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men?Beasts (in unison): Are we not men? We are DEVO! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrum Posted April 20, 2021 Share Posted April 20, 2021 The spiral staircase scene is amazing. Audrey Hepburn has a small roll as 'Chiquita.' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John M Posted April 20, 2021 Share Posted April 20, 2021 The novel is really good too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 21, 2021 Share Posted April 21, 2021 R.I.P. Monte Hellman. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reids Posted April 22, 2021 Share Posted April 22, 2021 On 4/20/2021 at 1:52 AM, redrum said: The spiral staircase scene is amazing. Audrey Hepburn has a small roll as 'Chiquita.' I just picked this up for $2 on dvd. Going to watch it this weekend 😎👍 R😎 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 22, 2021 Share Posted April 22, 2021 (edited) Powering through the International Film Oscar nominees…so far, I have watched the nominees from Denmark, Hong Kong, and Romania. In a sea of depressing nominees, Denmark's "Another Round" is a beacon of life. Easily one of my favourites of the year. Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen collaborated on 2012's powerful "The Hunt" and they deliver another winner with "Another Round". Mads Mikkelsen deserved a Best Actor nomination more than Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. "Collective" is a documentary about the health scandal fallout after the Colectiv nightclub fire in Romania. Strangely, it is nominated in both the Documentary and International Film (formerly known as Best Foreign Film) categories for this year's Academy Awards. I don't recall a documentary being nominated twice like that before. I think it has a better chance of winning Best Documentary than International Film, where "Another Round" is still the favourite to me. Two more International Film nominees to go….the ones from Tunisia and Bosnia/Herzegovina. Edited April 22, 2021 by Strider Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrum Posted April 23, 2021 Share Posted April 23, 2021 17 hours ago, reids said: I just picked this up for $2 on dvd. Going to watch it this weekend 😎👍 R😎 👍 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 25, 2021 Share Posted April 25, 2021 I have no clue what movies are going to win at this year's Oscars. But there IS one movie I am actively rooting against: "Mank". They say that Hollywood loves to celebrate itself and what more proof do you need than the fact that they gave the most nominations to this pile of Hollywood hooey. Within 15 to 30 minutes of the start of "Mank" I had already thrown my hands up in the air at the profligate number of factual and historical errors popping up. I laughed when they portayed the writers room at MGM as Algonquin West. I kept waiting for Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner to show up and throw some bon mots around. Herman Mankiewicz did say many pithy things. But he did not say them on one day on a stroll around the lot. But then, with all of the inaccurracies, I never got the sense I was watching Gary Oldman portray the actual Herman Mankiewicz anyway. He could have been playing Barton Fink, for all anyone knew. For one of the most tired tropes in movies is the alcoholic writer...in particular that specific subset of the alcoholic writer from New York bitter about having to slum it out in Hollywood. That's been done to death. So, without attention to historical and biographical detail, Gary Oldman's character just seemed like any other doomed screenwriters you've seen in a hundred movies from "Barton Fink" on down. To me, "Mank" seemed to be less about the real Herman Mankiewicz and more about David Fincher's dad (he wrote the screenplay) using Mankiewicz as an agent of revenge to rewrite the wrongs of Upton Sinclair's defeat in the 1934 California Gubernatorial election. I won't waste time and space listing all of the errors and historical fallacies in "Mank". There are plenty of articles online that do just that. But it does make one question who this movie was made for? Anyone who knows enough about Hollywood and California history will be put off by all the errors and mistakes. Those too young to know the history will be clueless about the people the movie is talking about and getting a false version of the events. So what purpose does this movie serve? None, that I can see....except to mollify the Pauline Kael sycophants that still cling to the absurd belief that "Citizin Kane" was solely Mankiewicz's creation. Cinema is a collaborative art. All one has to do is read Mankiewicz's draft of "Citizen Kane" and then watch the film to see that Orson Welles played a great part in the shaping of "Citizen Kane"'s final shooting script. Let's also not forget John Houseman, who WAS in that house with Mankiewicz, despite what "Mank" would have you believe. Gregg Toland's cinematography. Robert Wise's editing. The cast. Many talents had a hand in the making of "Citizen Kane", which will always endure while "Mank" gets tossed into the tank of oblivion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted April 30, 2021 Share Posted April 30, 2021 Happy 88th birthday Willie Nelson! A guilty pleasure of mine. Who knew Dyan Cannon could sing so well?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrum Posted April 30, 2021 Share Posted April 30, 2021 34 minutes ago, Strider said: Happy 88th birthday Willie Nelson! A guilty pleasure of mine. Who knew Dyan Cannon could sing so well?!? Dyan busting out of that blouse. 😍 So love Slim Pickens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redrum Posted April 30, 2021 Share Posted April 30, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted May 5, 2021 Share Posted May 5, 2021 A round-up of the remaining new 2020-21 movies I finally got around to watching. "I Care A Lot" is pitched as a black-comedy, but may come to be seen as a documentary in the future. I have no doubt there are some unscrupulous doctors and lawyers bilking old people out of their property and belongings. The movie struggles with its tone at times and sags in the middle. But Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage are entirely great fun throughout, even if their characters are unlikable. One of my favorites of the entire year and I am glad "My Octopus Teacher" won Best Documentary. "Porttrait of a Lady on Fire" had just been released in theatres last year before coronavirus shut everything down. Now that I have finally watched it, I can't believe it wasn't nominated for anything by the Academy...not even for cinematography. One of the best films of 2020. A beautiful and emotionally satisfying film. "Pieces of a Woman" opens with a stunt...a thirty-minute unbroken take of a woman having a home-birth. It is fairly intense and realistic. But after that scene, the movie dissipates into standard soap-opera fare. Vanessa Kirby and Ellen Burstyn are okay but I have never liked Shia Laboef in anything and I really hated him in "Pieces of a Woman". I am also getting tired of seeing his penis in movies. He's like the new Harvey Keitel…without the talent. Fair warning: "Pieces of a Woman" is not a movie you should watch if you are pregnant or thinking of having a baby, especially a home-birth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted May 5, 2021 Share Posted May 5, 2021 At last I can close the book on cinema in the year 2020. It is so weird. When 2020 dawned, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" was one of the few new movies I was kind of looking forward to seeing. If the theatres had not closed, I probably would have seen it opening weekend. But when the theatres shut down, I lost interest in seeing new movies because I didn't want to see them on tv. I figured I would wait for the theatres to reopen. But they never did. So I ended up watching all the new movies on tv through the various streaming services, after all. Strangely, "Tenet" ended up being the last of the 2020 movies I saw. Frankly, I was not too impressed with "Tenet". It's an overly convoluted, way over-long James Bond/Mission Impossible movie. People seem to think time-travel babble confers profundity on a film. It doesn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted May 5, 2021 Share Posted May 5, 2021 Now, back to the classics. I watched these two on Shirley MacLaine's birthday. "Two for the Seesaw". Starring Shirley and Robert Mitchum in a May-September romance, directed by Robert Wise, fresh off his "West Side Story" success. New York looks fabulous, as all movies shot in New York in the early-sixties tend to do. Ted D. McCord was the cinematographer. André Previn provided one of his better music scores. The film is adapted from a play by William Gibson and I am curious why they did not use the actors who played the characters on Broadway, Anne Bancroft and Henry Fonda? "Two Miles for Sister Sara" is good, silly fun in a spaghetti-western-lite way. One of several Don Siegel-Clint Eastwood team-ups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted May 5, 2021 Share Posted May 5, 2021 Last Friday was Ann-Margret's 80th birthday. Watching Ann-Margret dance is one of the great pleasures of this world. Paul Lynde and Maureen Stapleton are the secret weapons of "Bye Bye Birdie". "Kids! What's the matter with kids today?" There is an interesting credit in "Bye Bye Birdie": Teen-Age Makeup by Helena Rubinstein. "Viva Las Vegas" is pretty much the last watchable Elvis movie...thanks to the charms of Ann-Margret and William Demarest. And some really cool racing footage in the last ten minutes of the movie. There is another interesting name credited in "Viva Las Vegas": Nicky Blair. Nicky eventually opened a famous restaurant on the Sunset Strip...Nicky Blair's. Right next to another famous place, Le Dome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strider Posted May 5, 2021 Share Posted May 5, 2021 Cary Grant's very first film, 1932's "This Is the Night". But the stars are Lili Damita, Roland Young, Charles Ruggles. Cary Grant and Thelma Todd don't have much to do…but they look good. There are some weird musical interludes and you will either love or hate the silly opening scene, which involves Thelma Todd losing her dress and everyone in Paris singing about it. Some nice interiors and sets and beautiful costumes but even though it's only 1932, the marital infidelity hijinks already seem forced and tired in this pre-Code. It's a plot we've seen a hundred times before. It is missing the 'Lubitsch Touch'. Lili Danita and Roland Young and Charles Ruggles make it watchable. Make sure the version you watch is the tinted night scenes version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.