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inlareviewer

Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 12:41 am

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

Re-posted from Zuckerbook

Goodfellas

Rediscovering this modern classic, which, along with "Raging Bull," we feel to be Scorsese!'s masterwork. The helming, scripting, design and production elements -- particularly the music choices and Mr. Ballhaus's 'tography -- throughout are exceptional. The violence, as so seldom, comes from an organic, true-to-narrative place. The dark humor is not exploitative but character/milieu-driven. And the acting, from The Liotta's unimproveable narrator/anti-hero to La Bracco's shoulda-won-the-prize other narrator/betrayed Mafia wife, to DeNiro! and deserved-prize-winner Mr. Pesci's indelible, um, mentors, across the roster, is beyond praise, Mira's Dad swiping scenes with merely a silent look as The Ultimate Goombah. Not easy. Not pretty. Not for the squeamish. But artful, authentic, audacious and just try to look away. From where we sit, A Great Fillum.

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"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

billyweeds

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 10:06 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

inla--Couldn't agree more re: GoodFellas, but have always resisted Raging Bull despite De Niro's great performance and the indelible work by Pesci and La Moriarty. RB always seems IMO to take itself too seriously as an "art" film, whereas GoodFellas is always entertainment first, art second, and therefore to me is MS's masterwork.

Strangely, I guess, my other favorite Scorseses are not the "accepted" masterpieces Taxi Driver and Mean Streets or the Oscarwinning The Departed but the less universally acclaimed The King of Comedy and The Wolf of Wall Street (which shoulda been Leo's Oscar role rather than the one where he tramps across snow and battles a CGI grizzly and does very little real acting).

carrobin

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 5:24 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

When I was still merely one of the students at the Filmmakers on Filmmaking class at the New School, I had just scored an aisle seat when the head ticket-taker approached me and asked me to move over to the next seat because a friend of Richard (Brown, our prof) needed the aisle. The fellow was a good-looking young man but he didn't say anything to me, and he spent the next twenty minutes squirming and wringing his hands as the class discussed the screening we had had the past weekend, "Mean Streets." (A lot of people had walked out of it.) I wondered whether this guy had some kind of mental condition. And then Richard introduced him--Marty Scorsese. I'll bet he still remembers that night.

whiskeypriest

Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 10:18 pm

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

I am about an hour into Inherent Vice, and I have a question. Is it really the worst movie of the century so far, or is it even worse than that? Serious answers only, please.

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

Syd

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 2:15 am

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

whiskeypriest wrote:

I am about an hour into Inherent Vice, and I have a question. Is it really the worst movie of the century so far, or is it even worse than that? Serious answers only, please.

I haven't seen it, but have you seen Dylan Dog, Your Highness or Tideland? They're the movies I measure other films by. with Tideland the absolute pits.

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

gromit

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 7:13 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

I liked Inherent Vice. It's certainly shaggy and a bit sloppy, but also fun once you catch on to the vibe. I could watch that again.

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

billyweeds

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 12:53 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

whiskeypriest wrote:

I am about an hour into Inherent Vice, and I have a question. Is it really the worst movie of the century so far, or is it even worse than that? Serious answers only, please.

It might be the worst, but since I could only make it through 20 minutes, I can't really say.

bartist

Posted: Sun May 20, 2018 10:47 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6958 Location: Black Hills

whiskeypriest wrote:

I am about an hour into Inherent Vice, and I have a question. Is it really the worst movie of the century so far, or is it even worse than that? Serious answers only, please.

No, it's just incoherent and ridiculous. If the Coens had directed it, it would have been down there with maybe Hudsucker or Hail Caesar, but not on any Worst of Century lists.

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

billyweeds

Posted: Sun May 20, 2018 11:41 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

bartist wrote:

whiskeypriest wrote:

I am about an hour into Inherent Vice, and I have a question. Is it really the worst movie of the century so far, or is it even worse than that? Serious answers only, please.

No, it's just incoherent and ridiculous. If the Coens had directed it, it would have been down there with maybe Hudsucker or Hail Caesar, but not on any Worst of Century lists.

Paul Thomas Anderson is perhaps the most erratic of directors. Boogie Nights, Phantom Thread, Punch Drunk Love, and Magnolia are all favorites of mine, but almost every other movie he's made has been on my worst-of-the-decade list.

gromit

Posted: Sun May 20, 2018 3:41 pm

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9010 Location: Shanghai

I liked Boogie Nights, but the rest of his films mostly just get a shrug from me. I disliked Phantom Thread but mostly because I couldn't get interested in it at all.

Punch Drunk Love was one of those decent but forgettable films for me, that lots of folks for some reason really love. Kind of like Rushmore from the other Anderson. An entirely decent film that has a very devoted following.

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

carrobin

Posted: Sun May 20, 2018 4:41 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

TCM had a Hepburn & Tracy grouping a few days ago and I caught the seldom-seen "Desk Set" for the first time in maybe 50 years. As someone whose career has taken her from manual typewriters to laptop computers, I found it charmingly nostalgic, with the frightening new wall-wide computer flashing and churning in poor Kate's formerly prim and efficient research department. Of course Spencer was its master, so it turned out to be a pet rather than a predator, but it still made me think about how much times have changed over the course of my New York lifespan. Now a machine in my pocket can deliver everything that computer could, plus make phone calls and take photos, and so much more. But if it gives me trouble, I can't fix it with one of Kate's hairpins.

billyweeds

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 2:08 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

carrobin wrote:

THe most interesting thing about Desk Set to me is why they changed the title from the Broadway show starring Shirley Booth. That play was called "The Desk Set," and the title had a very cute double meaning. Taking "The" out of the title just made it meaningless. A similar ridiculous title change was Cradle Will Rock. Huh?

carrobin

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 2:15 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

"Cradle Will Rock"--sounds like a prequel for "School of Rock."
Actually, the weirdest thing about "Desk Set," for me, was Gig Young. Katharine Hepburn and Gig Young as a romantic couple (pre-Spencer, of course)? Hepburn & Bob Hope were more believable.

This morning I caught a TCM flick I'd seen before but was happy to watch again--"When Ladies Meet." A very literate, amusing, smart drama in which Myrna Loy is a successful author who is having an affair with her publisher, Frank Morgan, and Ann Harding is the publisher's wife who is introduced to her incognito. They have some great conversations about marriage and fidelity and love and life before Morgan shows up and suddenly everyone knows who's who, and long-set opinions start changing. The film was remade in the '40s with Greer Garson as the wife and, I think, Mary Astor as the author, and it was almost as good (but nobody's as good as Myrna). Maybe there should be another remake--with George Clooney as the publisher. Morgan was okay, but it was hard to see him as the beloved of two brilliant women.

inlareviewer

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 12:37 am

Joined: 05 Jul 2004 Posts: 1949 Location: Lawrence, KS

billyweeds wrote:

willybeeds, fair enough, though I always fall prey to the very things about RB that turn you off it. And can only agree with the other movies you cite -- Leo was never better shown off than in TWOWS, staggering work -- plus -- oh, lord, I can't believe I'm saying this -- the director's cut of New York, New York, is kind of spectacular in its self-circumscribed, epic way Just saying.

_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim

Syd

Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 8:51 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12921 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

New York, New York is just okay as a movie, but I prefer Liza Minelli's version of the title song to Frank Sinatra's. Surprising because I usually don't like her singing (except here and the title song from Cabaret.) Maybe she needed to do more title songs.

I do like her as an actress. Including Arthur. Maybe I would like Arthur's Theme better if she had sung it.

_________________
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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