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| whiskeypriest |
 Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:07 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| Caught The One I Love streaming on Netflix. Imagine if Rod Serling made a rom-com.... A really, really good movie, smart and funny. But then, any movie that makes bacon a key plot point has a direct route to my heart. My cholesterol-clogged heart. |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 10:30 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6964
Location: Black Hills
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| I raved on TOIL here a while ago; glad you found it. My favorite indie of the past year. As well as Serling, there are touches of Edward Albee I much enjyed. LOL the single-word spoiler. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:24 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Picnic at Hanging Rock, directed by Peter Weir, is about a fashionable but remote girls school in the Australian outback. They go on a picnic, but are warned to stay away from Hanging Rock, a large volcanic promontory that dominates the landscape.
Of course, four of the girls break away and hike up to it. What they see is what the camera shows us: several angles of the rock that soon blot out everything else. The wind blows through its crevasses, and the girls seem to be having a numinous experience, though they are far too immature. At least I think they are.
The plot has three independent threads, which are confusing and vaguely unsatisfying. Cinematography and acting are first rate. |
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:39 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6964
Location: Black Hills
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Agree on the cinematography, but also found the numinous encounters unsatisfying. Seem to recall one 3eye regular hated the film, but not sure. It's been some years since I saw PaHR, but I remember it being overly ominous in tone....and wondering if there was some sexual subtext there.
Thanks for sharing, Y. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:17 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12934
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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bartist wrote: I raved on TOIL here a while ago; glad you found it. My favorite indie of the past year. As well as Serling, there are touches of Edward Albee I much enjyed. LOL the single-word spoiler.
I'm watching it now, and cracking up a lot. But I had to take a break because I had a sudden craving for bacon.
Edit: Finished it, and it's delightful. As near as I can tell, the budget was less than half a million dollars, and half of that was Ted Danson, who disappeared ten minutes into the film. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:28 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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bartist wrote: Seem to recall one 3eye regular hated the film, but not sure.
Be sure. Be very sure. Picnic at Hanging Rock is the very essence of the overrated debacle, the pseudo-intellectual trap. It's trumped in that category, however, by Weir's absolutely unwatchable The Last Wave. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:31 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:29 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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Peter Weir is on my short list of Most Overrated Directors. He has made a host of critically acclaimed movies I thoroughly detest, including Dead Poets Society, Green Card, The Mosquito Coast, The Truman Show...the list goes on and on. Witness is the only movie he's made that I can stand to watch.
The One I Love, however, is wonderful. It's NOT directed by Peter Weir. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:36 am; edited 2 times in total |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:33 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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I picked up a pair of Warner film noir 2-fers:
Act of Violence (Robert Ryan & Van Heflin) / Mystery Street (Ricardo Montalban)
Where Danger Lives (Mitchum) / Tension (Audrey Totter.
I'll probably toss one of those on shortly.
Others that are available:
CrossFire / Dillinger
Born To Kill / Narrow Margin
They Live By Night - Side Street (Farley Grangers)
Crime Wave (Sterling Hayden) / Decoy
Illegal (Edward G. ) / Big Steal (Mitchum & Jane Greer)
And some one-fers:
On Dangerous Ground
The Racket
His Kind of Girl
Let me know if any of those are any good -- especially of the two-fers I didn't pick up today.
Think I mentioned it a little while back, but there was a pretty terrific Dick Powell film Cornered -- Nazi's and other intrigue in post-war Argentina. |
Last edited by gromit on Fri Jan 02, 2015 4:32 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:18 am |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12934
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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If Crossfire is the anti-anti-Semitism movie, it's reputed to be good.
On Dangerous Ground is the other, better, Ida Lupino/Robert Ryan film from 1952 (as opposed to Beware, My Lovely). Gromit did a pretty accurate write-up of it back here. http://www.thirdeyefilm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=237171&highlight=lupino#237171
I've seen The Big Steal, but I can't remember whether I liked it or not. If I remember, it's more of a comedy than a film noir. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:57 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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| Crossfire has a very good (and Oscar-nominated) peformance by Robert Ryan as the anti-Semite, but is fairly dated. It came out the same year as the more "serious" (as opposed to noirish) take on anti-Semitism called Gentleman's Agreement, which won the Best Picture Oscar and is similarly dated. Both movies are good, however, and worth watching. |
Last edited by billyweeds on Sat Jan 03, 2015 8:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:00 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Syd wrote: If Crossfire is the anti-anti-Semitism movie, it's reputed to be good.
Yes it is. One of the only ones I read the back cover synopsis.
Good to know that's supposed to be good, plus sounds historically interesting.
And Dillinger looked reasonably promising as well.
I often have trouble recalling these noirs with their terse interchangeable titles. I wouldn't have recognized Dangerous Ground, but yeah that was a fairly good film. More interesting than wholly successful.
The Granger pair sounded potentially promising, but I figured I might as well read a writeup before taking the plunge. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 5:43 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9016
Location: Shanghai
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Where Danger Lives is fairly silly.
The initial premise is fine enough: a pretty young woman attempts suicide, is revived at the hospital, but mysteriously leaves a false name and flees the next day. She contacts the doctor to apologize and they begin an affair. Mitchum isn't terribly convincing as a doctor, but I could let that go. The woman has a secret, and another secret beyond that. All a fine enough set-up for intrigue and noir.
But basically she tricks Mitchum into thinking he killed a man. And then engineers a series of bad decisions. Mitchum goes along because he got concussed in the deadly fight, so spends the rest of the film groggy and self-diagnosing. He tells her that he's likely to make bad judgements for the next day or two, before becoming gradually paralyzed and slipping into a potentially fatal coma. It's all a fairly hokey way of explaining why our upstanding young doctor is willing to flee to Mexico with a woman he's known for under two weeks, after (he believes) he accidentally killed a man.
Unfortunately, Mitchum is then required to spend the rest of the film groggily blinking his eyes, staggering a little and becoming gradually paralyzed.
Where Danger Lives was directed by John Farrow, and has good shadowy lighting. Faith Domergue is the female lead, one of Howard Hughes' squeezes, and does a respectable job. Claude Rains has a small part as the murder victim. Unfortunately the nonsense with the Mitchum character cripples the film's credibility, and undercuts Mitchum's usual presence. Not recommended. |
Last edited by gromit on Sat Jan 03, 2015 12:32 am; edited 1 time in total
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:32 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12934
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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| double post. |
Last edited by Syd on Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:34 pm |
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Site Admin
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12934
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Caught A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races back to back with some trepidation since I often find the Marx Brothers tedious, particularly in At the Circus and to a certain extent in Horse Feathers, and, it turns out, A Day at the Races. I did like the anarchy around the big race at the end, but there are a bunch of tedious musical numbers, the only one of which I liked was Harpo playing the Pied Piper in a swing number (an idea repeated in At the Circus.) I was thinking that Judy keeping her sanitarium really wasn't that great an idea, especially when you consider who she appointed chief of staff. (I also thought she should have run away with Chico, who she had more chemistry with than her love interest.)
A Night at the Opera, on the other hand is very funny, and really only dragged for me when Harpo did his invitable harp solo. I rather liked the other musical numbers, including Chico's piano playing (he does odd things with his fingers), but the real masterpieces are the set pieces, including the famous stateroom scene, Chico posing as a famous aviator giving a speech to a New York audience, Harpo trying to swing from one porthole to another on a rope that keeps dunking him in the water, Chico and Harpo in the orchestra pit, and a tenor attempting to do an aria while the scenery changes chaotically behind and sometimes in front of him. I even forgave the cute young couple, Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones, because I liked them and they both can sing opera, which would seem a prerequisite for this movie.
Apparently there's a missing scene at the beginning, which is odd, because the opening we do have, with Groucho and Margaret Dumont, is just right. Oh, and Groucho himself sings bits of famous arias here and there, which is fun. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 11:50 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Punch-drunk Love is a shameful mess. Adam Sandler is not only a nerd, but a dim, violent one, who nevertheless wins the girl due to no reason suggested by the story.
The one funny bit is Seymour Hoffman playing a crooked mattress salesman who's running a phone sex business. "Shut the fuck up!" is about all he says, but it's enough. |
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