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Topic:
Guilty As Charged: Super Sexy Thrillers: Now Disc. "9 1/2 Weeks" (1986)
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DarthBoba
Registered:
Jun '00
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Date Posted:
2/18 11:04am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. "Manhunter" (1986)
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Not to sound like a pretentious cheeseburger, but you should read em. Red Dragon in particular.
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Studies find that being drunk is like being a girl.
TOYB!
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/18 8:58pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. "Manhunter" (1986)
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Next: "Hardcore" (1979)
"When his runaway daughter turns up as an actress in a porn loop, devout dad George C. Scott, a Midwestern businessman, descends into the underworld of the porn industry to find her. As so often happens in investigative thrillers, the sleuth's obsessiveness leads him to discover his own darker impulses. Filmmaker Paul Schrader explores some of the same turf he did in his Taxi Driver screenplay; as in that film, the movie's heart lies in the unlikely relationship between the righteous avenger and a prostitute (Season Hubley) who doesn't think she needs rescuing."
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Rogue1-and-a-half
Title: Manager: Amphitheatre
Registered:
Nov '00
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Date Posted:
2/19 11:15am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. "Hardcore" (1979)
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DarthBoba posted:
Eh...I donno about it being better than Red Dragon. The whole point of Red Dragon is Dolarhyde's journey, and Manhunter greatly dumbs that down, IMO, and turns him into not much better than a freak to be destroyed.
Exactly; the point of Red Dragon is Dolarhyde and Fiennes is brilliant. As you say, Lang's performance in Manhunter is beyond one note.
But then, the point of Manhunter is Will Graham and Will Peterson is absolutely outstanding; in Red Dragon, focused on Dolarhyde as it was, Edward Norton was both horrifyingly miscast and quite awful.
In other words, the titles betray: Manhunter is about the detective, the 'manhunter;' Red Dragon is about the killer, the 'Great Red Dragon.' Both are great films when they focus on the titular character; rather weaker when they focus on anyone else. In other words, you need both to get the whole story; cut and paste the Peterson scenes together with the Fiennes scenes and you have a killer movie; as it stands, you have two very intriguing failures.
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I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
Without having ever felt sorry for itself.
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DarthBoba
Registered:
Jun '00
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Date Posted:
2/19 2:13pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. "Hardcore" (1979)
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Eh, just read the damn book. That's probably your utopic vision, Rogue. 
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Studies find that being drunk is like being a girl.
TOYB!
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/19 7:17pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. "Hardcore" (1979)
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20. All the President's Men (1976)
"Here, the investigators are reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), and their quarry is no less than the president of the United States. Not much action here, just two guys poring over files, pounding the pavement, and meeting shadowy informants in parking garages, but the stakes are so high that that's more than suspenseful enough."
Not much action is absolutely right.
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/20 6:41am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 20. "All the President's Men" (1976)
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Next: "The Conversation" (1974)
"Surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) captures a seemingly innocent conversation in a park, dissects it electronically, and plunges down the rabbit hole of conspiracy and paranoia. Francis Ford Coppola's Watergate-era fable about the death of privacy may seem low-tech by today's standards, but in Patriot Act-era America, it's no less timely."
Low-tech and low-key, with a nasty, witty twist in its tale.
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Mastadge
Title:
Manager Emeritus
Registered:
Jun '99
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Date Posted:
2/20 7:11am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 19. "The Conversation" (1974)
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Lovely movie, sandwiched between The Godfather and Apocalypse Now when Coppola was still a great filmmaker. Not a date movie, and not one to watch for a good time, but definitely worth making the time to watch.
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"This will be our reply to violence:
To make music more intensely,
More beautifully,
More devotedly than ever before."
- Leonard Bernstein
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/20 9:36pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 19. "The Conversation" (1974)
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Next: "Chinatown" (1974)
"Jack Nicholson's cynical private eye gets in way over his head when a routine missing-persons case leads him to a femme fatale (Faye Dunaway), a massive corruption scandal built into the very marrow of Los Angeles' infrastructure, and an unimaginably evil villain (John Huston). One of the most satisfyingly bleak movies ever made."
Bleak, yes, but shot through with black humour, and one of the greatest nasty endings evah.
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JohnWesleyDowney
Registered:
Jan '04
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Date Posted:
2/20 9:44pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 18. "Chinatown" (1974)
- Date Edited:
2/20 9:46pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
JohnWesleyDowney
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Zaz posted:
Next: "Chinatown" (1974)
"Jack Nicholson's cynical private eye gets in way over his head when a routine missing-persons case leads him to a femme fatale (Faye Dunaway), a massive corruption scandal built into the very marrow of Los Angeles' infrastructure, and an unimaginably evil villain (John Huston). One of the most satisfyingly bleak movies ever made."
Bleak, yes, but shot through with black humour, and one of the greatest nasty endings evah.
Lots of great dialogue, and the scene with Polanski slicing open Nicholson's nose is a classic. As is the great "slapping" scene with Jack and Dunaway. I showed it to one of my film geek friends who is never shocked at anything, but boy, THAT scene shocked him. It doesn't get much bleaker than that.
One of the very best movies of the 70s, in my opinion. Even John Huston is good.
It's a great scene when Jack asks Huston why he needs to be so incredibly rich. He already owns and can buy anything, but Huston's answer as to what he wants to control and possess is classic: "The future Mr. Gittes, the future."
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How many movies do you think Industrial Light and Magic has worked on? WRONG. http://www.ilm.com/ilm_services.html "Films fulfill an unconscious spiritual desire that human beings have to share a common memory." - Martin Scorcese
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/21 8:05am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 18. "Chinatown" (1974)
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Capitalism run rampant.
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/22 7:29pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 18. "Chinatown" (1974)
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Dirty Harry (1971)
"Don't forget, Clint Eastwood's .357 Magnum-wielding maverick cop didn't just blow bad guys away and wreak havoc (though he did plenty of that); he was also a skilled detective who did solid gumshoe work in order to hunt down serial killers. We like all five Dirty Harry flicks, but the first, with Harry pursuing a Zodiac-like fiend, really makes our day."
Okay, this movie is all kinds of retrograde, and I love it anyway. Guilty pleasure.
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/23 9:15am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 17. "Dirty Harry" (1971)
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Next: "Rear Window" (1954)
"No suspense list would be complete without Hitchcock. Here, amateur sleuth Jimmy Stewart, all but immobilized with a broken leg and unable to see anything but the goings-on visible in his neighbors' windows, still manages to solve a murder in a neighboring apartment. Course, he has some help, from enchanting Grace Kelly and wisecracking Thelma Ritter."
The voyeur as non-action hero. Great, nasty fun.
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soitscometothis
Registered:
Jul '03
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Date Posted:
2/23 11:45am
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 16. "Rear Window" (1954)
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Fantastic thriller. Stewart, Kelly, Hitchcock... need I say more?
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I am not an eel popsicle. Art: http://boards.theforce.net/Fan_Art/b10020/17816752/?21 Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
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ForceJumpAnakin
Registered:
Dec '06
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Date Posted:
2/23 5:43pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 16. "Rear Window" (1954)
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Miss Torso
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Milk, Got. Hmmm?
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Zaz
Title: Manager, The Ampitheatre
Registered:
Oct '98
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Date Posted:
2/25 8:13pm
Subject:
RE: Guilty As Charged: 21 Great Crime Thrillers: Now Disc. 16. "Rear Window" (1954)
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Next: "DOA" (1949)
"In this thoroughly inventive thriller, poisoning victim Edmond O'Brien (White Heat) figures he has about 48 hours to solve his own murder before he succumbs. Far superior to the weirdly sunny 1980s remake starring Dennis Quaid."
Never seen this one, alas.
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