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| Marj |
 Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 10:39 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 10497
Location: Manhattan
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Wonderful reviews, Guys.
Rod--Love your new avatar, btw. I love your use of the word 'frustrating' in your review of Idlewild. It was a movie that promised so much but just lost its footing.
I used to be a huge John Garfield fan. I thought I had seen all of his films but apparently not. I never did see the two your reviewed. I will keep my eye out for Out out of the Fog though.
When I was much younger, before I studied acting, I thought John Garfield was it! Now when I watch him, he seems so, I'm not sure --self conscious? Close to amateurish. Still there's something about some of his films ... Maybe it was the roles that always spoke to me. He was pre-Clift and pre-Brando. Too bad he never rose to their heights. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:41 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| Thank you all for the happy birthdays. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:44 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Garfield was only 39 when he died.
I saw him in a low budget noir "Nobody Lives Forever" a few years ago and he wasn't bad at all.
Of course, he's best know for "Body and Soul" and "Force of Evil." |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 1:28 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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mo_flixx wrote: Garfield was only 39 when he died.
I saw him in a low budget noir "Nobody Lives Forever" a few years ago and he wasn't bad at all.
Of course, he's best know for "Body and Soul" and "Force of Evil."
I'd assume that he's best known for The Postman Always Rings Twice. I saw an extra doc which basically considered Garfield a victim of HUAC.
I also watched two Garfield films in the past month.
Air Force, a Howard Hawks war film, in which Garfield plays the edgy ethnic outsider who is looking to get out of the air force until those sneaky Japs start something they can't finish.
And Under My Skin (1950), based on a Hemingway story about a emigre jockey with his boy in Europe. This is a fine little guy/hustler/outsider film. Garfield is quite good in this semi-gritty picture of a little guy struggling for respectability in a corrupt world, something of a transition towards Brando and Newman in The Hustler. Just checked at IMDb, and Under My Skin has a mere 28 votes. Is it that obscure? I have it on Dvd in a Fox Cinema Classics series of Hemingway-based films. Looks like it was released last year, in March '07.
I thought Garfield looked a lot like Peter Falk at times. There's one fantastic scene where Garfield has just cheated the fixers and is packing quickly to get out of town. But the gangsters arrive at his hotel before he can leave. So he sends his young son out the window and over the roof with his winnings and instructions to buy two train tickets. Then he invites the hoods in and tries to bluff and con the gangsters that he did nothing wrong. When he can't talk his way out of of trouble, he tries to punch his way past the two thugs and their boss.
In Air Force, Garfield has a small edgy role as a loner, contrasted with the upstanding camaraderie of the other men on the plane. In Under My Skin, it's all Garfield's film, and he shows both a tough and vulnerable side. Recommended. |
Last edited by gromit on Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:10 am; edited 1 time in total
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| Rod |
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 2:49 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Marj wrote: Rod--Love your new avatar, btw.
Grumpy Smurf. Close to my own general demeanour at the moment.
I've moved generally in an opposite direction on Garfield. The first few films of his I encountered, I found him oddly bland considering his reputation. Lately, having at last seen his most reputed role - Body and Soul - and other parts, I've come to better appreciate the restraint he brings to standard-issue tough-guy roles and, on the other hand, the grit he gives to gentler parts (such as in Gentlemen's Agreement), with his crisp, deceptively calm delivery style. He more anticipates Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and James Garner rather than Brando and Clift, in presenting a cool, self-contained style of acting, rather than Brando's mercurial wit and Clift's masochism. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:01 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Agree that Garfield resembles Peter Falk (although it's a much more handsome, sexy version of Falk) and predates Newman and McQueen more than Clift and Brando. I also agree his reputation is slightly inflated.
My favorite Garfield is Gentleman's Agreement, a rather dated but still interesting, entertaining (and Oscar-winning) "expose" of anti-Semitism in the United States. Garfield plays the Jew on board, the sidekick of Gregory Peck's crusading "fake Jew." As such, Garfield doesn't have to carry the picture, just provide a mix of sexiness and comic relief, which he does marvelously well. |
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| Marilyn |
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 9:31 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8210
Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 1:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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| My favorite Garfields are a couple of his early ones: Dust Be My Destiny and They Made Me a Criminal. I thought he made a really strong impression in both of them. |
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| Trish |
| Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 7:29 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 2438
Location: Massachusetts
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Marc wrote: Thank you all for the happy birthdays.
Happy Belated Marc |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:32 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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| Hot Fuzz...fuck yeah. |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:44 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| What's not to like about Hot Fuzz...and isn't Simon Pegg the most expressive comic actor since Bill Murray in his pomp. For some reason, the film left many here cold. A trifle self-indulgent maybe, British, overly long, too clever for its own good...but, to paraphrase Rod, great fucking fun. Not since Snatch has a British comedy exhibited such exuberance and confidence. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:00 am |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Urgh. Wouldn't compare it for a second to the horrendous Snatch.
Can't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a movie... |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:38 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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| Rod |
| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:05 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Blood Diamond
Yeah...As much as this was a pulpy Fred Forsyth style adventure I mildly enjoyed it. The pretensions to relevance and the excruciatingly milked finale were, however, vomitiferous. Really, it should have been made in 1942, starred George Raft, Rex Ingram, and Linda Darnell, and been called The Diamond Hunters or something. It's both amusing and yet not funny when filmmakers set out to make a movie about current crises and offer up leering, cigar smoking villains and a full barrage of contemporary Hollywood screenwriting cliches. Mercenary with a heart of gold. Foxy female journalist. Simple good-hearted black hero. Asshole baddie ripe for severe chastisement. Sometimes it looked more like a send-up than Hot Fuzz. Kept a grip thanks to Leo DiCaprio's unwavering commitment to his ridiculous character and Djimon Hounsou's force of personality - I think it's time he got a new agent however, so he doesn't have to go stripping bare-assed and swimming about in mud for once. Ed Zwick once again proves himself an utterly meretricious director with a flair for action and overripe drama. |
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 12:48 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| Paul Verhoeven's Black Book is an overdramatized movie about a semi-interesting topic, namely the Dutch collaborators during Nazi occupation. The narrative is uneven, and the dialogue is poorly written. A very expensive mess. |
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