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whiskeypriest

Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2017 8:14 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Catching up...

Caught the recent Fonda/Reford Netflix Original movie, titled I think Our Lives at Night. Found it touching if unmemorable - a fact that should be obvious when you note I am not all that sure of the title and not inspired to seek the answer out.

The Imitation Game was OK, I guess. I liked the central performances well enough, but the whole thing moved with a rather predictable Big Moments rhythm.

I found Mr. Holmes disappointingly flaccid and dull. Disappointing because of my fondness for the McKellen and Linney and Holmes the character. Flaccid because it had no rhythm, jumped time too much, had a pointless set of subplots, and dull never really went anywhere.

Saw the Kieslowski movie Blind Chance, which posits three futures for the same character based upon a single pretty random act of just catching, or not catching, a train. Boguslaw Linda is the lead, does a good job; like most Kieslowski movies beautiful and thought provoking. A combination that when accompanied by "entertaining" I adore. Blind Chance was fitfully entertaining, and bound up as much of it was with the Stalinist Poland and dissidents, may have meant more to people who lived through it. Which would be my wife but the movie is not her cup of tea.

Right down her alley, on the other hand, would be Lion. I found the first half of Lion remarkable. Second half bogged down for me a little because I did not believe the Dev Patel character would think his incredibly supportive adoptive parents would be anything except incredibly supportive. I guess that is the conflict that prevents it from becoming an ad for Google Earth, but it still took me out of the movie a little. Still liked it a lot; the good will from the first part carried me through. I should also note my wife noted that the "Slumdog Millionaire" guy has matured remarkably well.

No qualms at all about Florence Foster Jenkins, which reminded me that as good as Maryl Streep is drama, she is remarkably adept at finding the human in the comic roles. Which is necessary because it would be very easy to have FFJ a mere comic personna. But Streep made her comic and touching and loveable and human. Grant is as good as anything I have ever seen him in. But even with Streep, Simon Helberg stole every scene he was in, as her pianist who properly always seems like he is trying to prevent himself from exploding, even as he comes to admire and love FFJ. And also, I suspect, played him as a man so thoroughly closeted he was even closeted from himself.

Last edited by whiskeypriest on Mon Dec 04, 2017 8:50 pm; edited 3 times in total
_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

whiskeypriest

Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2017 8:23 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Helberg was also great in A Serious Man, as a young rabbi whose theological world view was precisely limned by what he could see from his window. "Look at that parking lot!"

_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

bartist

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 10:09 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6944 Location: Black Hills

Fortunately, I bailed out of "The Big Bang Theory' (AKA Geek Jokes That Get Tedious After 2 Seasons) early enough that I can watch Helberg in a movie and not think "Howard Wolowitz!" I look forward to viewing FFJ, which I have put off far too long.

Imitation Game got a lot wrong about Turing - I did some IT work with AI back in the 80s, studied a lot about Turing, so was not the ideal audience for this highly fictive account. I think I posted a link somewhere way back there, from the Independent or the Guardian, that detailed all the Turing bloopers, but can't find it atm.

Here it is....

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/20/the-imitation-game-invents-new-slander-to-insult-alan-turing-reel-history

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

Syd

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 5:46 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12890 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I watched Pan's Labyrinth again the other night and got caught up in it all over again. It was my second viewing, so I was able to see all the foreshadowing. I'd also forgotten that it has one of the great movie scores, as well as all the makeup and stories.

I'm really looking forward to del Toro's latest, The Shape of Water.

I also watched the BBC version of As You Like It from 1978 with Helen Mirren as Rosalind, and good performances by the actors playing Orlando, Touchstone, Jaques, Phebe and the old shepherd. Celia was also good, but overshadowed by Rosalind. (Celia tends to steal scenes in most versions.) My main gripe is that it looked like it was transferred from a videotape to DVD and the colors looked washed out. Oh, and Shakespeare wasn't that great a songwriter, and there are quite few in the play. (They tended to disappear the other times I've seen the play.)

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

yambu

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 5:12 pm

Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area

Syd wrote:

...I also watched the BBC version of As You Like It from 1978 with Helen Mirren as Rosalind, and good performances by the actors playing Orlando, Touchstone, Jaques, Phebe and the old shepherd. Celia was also good, but overshadowed by Rosalind....

Rosalind, says Harold Bloom and many others, is Shakespeare's most complicated and human female. His audience loved gender swapping roles, so imagine an adolescent boy playing a woman playing a man, playing a woman. Poor Orlando, though it helps the action that he's not very bright.
Shakespeare wrote a fair amount of music, per audience demand, but none of it in musical notation, so we are left to guess the melodies. I love Sigh No More, Ladies, from Branagh and Thompson's "Much Ado".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boNnrv0CGzU

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That was great for you. How was it for me?

whiskeypriest

Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2017 5:35 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

bartist wrote:

I have never watched BBT, except an episode on tv in someone else's place which I was not paying much attention to. I bailed on all episodic television about 20 years ago.

I expect things like Imitation Game to be Hollywood true. Meaning true enough, but not so true that it does not stay entertaining. My problem with IG is it was not all that entertaining. I spent the first two thirds of the movie waiting for the "sudden discovery" scene followed by the "running madly scene" followed by the "triumph" scene. Because that is just the way movies are. The slow process of scientific discovery is not very cinematic.

_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

bartist

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 10:28 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6944 Location: Black Hills

I think the major problem people had was not the minor plot embellishments and usual genius cliches, but that the film portrayed Turing as a traitor, covering up for a Soviet spy (for a while). The article I link explains how that was extremely unlikely. I.e. not "true enough."

Yeah, the eureka moments are usually not sufficiently dramatic. They started the cliche about the time Archimedes jumped out of his bathtub and ran naked through Athens.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

whiskeypriest

Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2017 1:23 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Quote:

Don't know why I forgot these:

From Rome With Love - I have not seen a full Woody Allen movie since BVC - sorry, VCB

I seem to have completely forgotten seeing Midnight in Paris.

Last edited by whiskeypriest on Sat Dec 23, 2017 9:54 am; edited 1 time in total
_________________
I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

Syd

Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2017 8:34 am

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12890 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

Touch of Evil. Good film noir with some ludicrous moments. (If you're surreptitiously recording someone, why have the sound on your recorder so loud that the person you're recording can hear it? A lesser hero would have used earphones.) Heston doesn't really seem Mexican, which is unfortunate because some of the other characters actually are. However, there is a point here that he's playing a character here which would usually be the intrepid American investigator investigating sinister Mexican connections. It's good to have an intrepid Mexican investigator. He's a precursor to Benicio del Toro's cop in Traffic. I really liked Janet Leigh in the early scenes, especially her first meeting with the Grandi gang.

There are a lot of showy camera angles, which sometimes work especially well, notably in the wonderful opening tracking short. I liked the scene where the Grandi kid is tormenting Janet Leigh by shining a flashlight into her curtainless room. Some viewers find that scene silly, and it's certainly not scary, but it works as an example of petty bullying.

Welles is made up to look morbidly obese, and I get that he wanted Quinlan to look corrupt on the outside as well as inside, but he should have toned it down; it's distracting and takes away from a very interesting character, who is, as one character says, is a great detective and a very bad cop.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

carrobin

Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2017 12:19 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

I rediscovered a film on Sunday, when I flipped into TCM and found "3 Godfathers" getting started with an introduction by Tiffany Vasquez (did they fire Ben Mankiewicz?). She talked about the friendship between John Ford and Harry Carey, who had died shortly before the film was made, and how Ford cast Harry Jr. as the youngest "godfather," and dedicated the film to Carey Sr. I had seen the film many years ago and didn't remember much, so I decided to stay with it until they found the baby. That took a while, and by then I was hooked. John Wayne was loose and funny and likeable, and Harry Jr. was a sweet kid learning the bank robbery ropes, and Pedro Armendariz, whom I never heard of but found he had an interesting acting history according to Vasquez, was number three. Ward Bond was the sheriff who had rounded up a small posse to pursue the robbers, and I wondered sometimes why the three didn't give themselves up, as they were struggling through the desert with a newborn baby and no water--but then I figured they probably didn't know the pursuers were still on their trail. Anyway, it turned out to be sad and moving and a Christmas story with an improbable but satisfyingly happy ending, and the wonderful cinematography didn't hurt either. Thumbs up.

gromit

Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:34 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

I've been watching a lot of old Dvd's I have lying around.

Slackers was pretty bad. So much of it implausible, and then it falls into deep cliche mode. I guess this was Jason Shwartzman's breakthrough, which is a debatable accomplishment. Maybe if I was 15 this film would seem cool or daring or not completely awful. or whatever.

Three Kings
This is a pretty great film and really holds up well. There's a lot of unexpected action, good humor, etc. I like the way that Saddam's troops are busy repressing the nascent uprising so they just ignore the few American troops who turn up unexpectedly in a village post-truce.
Tight script, good cast, well-executed. If there's a better Iraq War film -- yes I know this was the first war -- let me know.

Idlewild
A retro-30's hiphop film. There's a lot to like here. Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000) is slyly good. There's a good twist with the new female singer. But the film kind of has a conventional plot. And it's creativity kind of goes on autopilot the last 1/3. Some of the gimmicks, like the talking rooster on the flask are overused and not effective. The musical production numbers are impressive, though I wish they didn't rely so much on rapid editing to hype them.
I think i felt the same way after 1st watch-- there's a lot to like and it's mostly fun, but it comes up a bit short. Some tweaking, a little more to the final 1/3 and this could have been something memorable. Still it's likable, with fun moments.

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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

gromit

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 9:14 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9008 Location: Shanghai

Lured a 1947 film noir.
I think this is the first film I've seen where Lucille Ball stars. I've only seen her in bit parts before. Directed by Douglas Sirk. It's mostly entertaining with good police side characters. but it's overlong and the ending twist is telegraphed well in advance. It's a crime drama but with a good deal of film contrivance as opposed to the gritty kind.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

bartist

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:35 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6944 Location: Black Hills

Speaking of noir, just saw a 1933 French noir directed by Duvivier, "La Tete d'un Homme," based on a Simenon novel. Had never seen a Maigret film, and found the actor's take on Simenon's police inspector nicely low-key and a touch humorous. You may sense in places a sort of overacting that must have resulted when silent film actors, taught to compensate for lacking sound by enlarging their expressions, were unable to break the habit when they first got into talkies.

Loved 3 Kings, must see again.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

Befade

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 1:01 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 3784 Location: AZ

Gromit.....I posted on Lured a while back. I saw it on Film Struck which featured a bunch of Sirk's early films. They have a series now of films made from books of Graham Greene.

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Lost in my own private I dunno.

Syd

Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 6:17 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12890 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

gromit wrote:

You managed not to see The Long, Long Trailer! I wish I could say the same. They show that on tv a lot here for some reason.

_________________
I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament

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