Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Breathless. It’s got that fantastic French New Wave vibe, it looks great. It’s got a solid plot — a petty thief who fancies himself a tough guy shoots a policeman, and mostly ignores the heat while trying to get the money he’s owed so he can blow town with Jean Seberg, the pretty girl he met not long ago who likes him but isn’t completely sold yet. The dynamics are interesting, and the film is generously just tremendous. The one thing holding it back is that our lead is a conceited, selfish twit, who’s not nearly as charming or interesting as the film seems to think he is. He’s just another self-absorbed young man who thinks he shouldn’t have to work very hard to get laid. He’s the kind of character a young director identifies with and thinks is sympathetic, but he’s not really, and the film doesn’t do enough to imbue him with some soul or some real depth to give him some kind of likability. It’s still a great, fascinating film, but it’s a pity Godard couldn’t make his lead as interesting as the rest of the film.

 

Heroes Shed No Tears (1980) - Not the John Woo movie!

​

So manipulative Zhou Donglai (Derek Yee) has his ‘chief’ Sima, Zhumeng (a frenemy), the awesome Xiao Lei Xue, and young Gao pitted against each so Donglai can rule the martial world. Donglai uses a familiar ploy to break everyone but Xiao and...



Derek Yee was not the best choice for the bad guy here. Nor is Fu Sheng the best choice for his opposition; Gao, the young swordsman carrying the Sword of Tears. The movie is overlong by at least twenty minutes.

So why do I revisit? The late, great Yueh Hua steals the movie as Xiao Lei Xue, a deadly and feared swordsman better known as the Man with the Wooden Box (containing 13 weapons) who seeks the Sword of Tears. He’s the reason why I slog through this every so often. Yueh had the ability to be so utterly convincing in his body language alone. He was clearly having fun here as the coolest character in the movie. Xiao Lei Xue is right up there with Ti Lung’s Fu Hung-Xue as the most bad a$$ed swordsman ever to show up in a Chor Yuan wuxia. I would love to see a duel between those two.

Anyway, Pai Pao and Ku Feng are also good as Sima and Zhumeng, but the younglings and the pacing threaten to unravel the story.

All that said, I probably will try to get the German blu ray for Yueh Hua. He’s just so good (and played several terrific characters working with Chor Yuan).

 

I saw this a few years ago and had an opposite reaction. It just looked to me like a bunch of young people whining in French. And I found it so slow that I very nearly dozed off. I guess I just don't get it. Oh, well...

 

I was never entirely sure how much the film actually thought he was charming and/or interesting. I mean, I think he is meant to pale next to the figures he considers inspirations. I guess it's hard to know what Godard thought; he may have talked about this in interviews or something, I'm not sure. But I think the film works for me on that level anyway. I mean, the bit where he's looking at the picture of Bogart is just . . . the contrast between Bogart's iconic face and Belmondo's youthful callowness is stark. And

Spoiler

his death scene is obviously farce, isn't it? I mean, the way he's just staggering down the street and then he kind of whiffs his big moment, the chance for him to whisper some meaningful dying words and he just gets misquoted immediately.

I don't know, I feel like the movie is more cynical about him than you felt it was. The question remains of why you want to make a movie about this guy in the first place, whether he's intentionally shallow or not, and of, once the movie has been made, whether you as a viewer want to spend ninety minutes with the guy, but it works for me as a character study.

 

I basically agree. I don't think the film is uncritical of Michel, especially toward the end. But the film seems to assume some basic level of empathy for him that it doesn’t quite earn by making him actually likable or compelling. It’s no coincidence the film gets better as it goes on and becomes more Patricia’s and less Michel’s.

 

Yeah, you're right about the film getting better as the focus shifts. Patricia's the more interesting character, even though I don't find her sympathetic either, and Seberg's performance is better. She's kind of a sociopath maybe, but less of one than Michel is and I think I kind of started to empathize with her near the end when I was really feeling the pressure Michel is putting on her just by his insistent presence. At a certain point, she just wants him to get lost, I think, and I was more on her page than his at that point.

 

Her total lack of reaction to the news that he killed a guy is rather telling. Michel’s diagnosis that they each talked about themselves is very much to the point: ultimately they’re a pair of narcissists trying each other on as lifestyle accessories. But Patricia’s more interesting and nuanced, while Michel never really comes off as more than just another young cad.

 

Addams Family Values

 

Wait Until Dark. Audrey Hepburn stars as a blind woman who is preyed on by a bunch of hoodlums looking for a doll filled with heroin that her husband accidentally ended up with. The elaborate con game they play to be able to search the apartment keeps ratcheting the tension up, and it’s a really well-constructed little thriller. Hepburn is amazing, as always, the perfect vulnerable-but-strong heroine for this, while Richard Crenna is very good as the con man who earns her trust. Alan Arkin’s turn as the sociopath running the whole operation is suitably creepy (the creepiest part is seeing Arkin with hair). Excellent all around.

 

Brian Banks (2018)

A very good inspirational film. Brian was an aspiring football star only to falsely be accused of rape by a schoolmate. Brian gets out of prison, only to be contacted on facebook by his former accuser. She agrees to meet up with him while he is on parole. She then confesses with a witness present. Her false accusation of rape slowly unravels until Brian's conviction is overturned. This is a film worth watching. Banks went on to play in the NFL. This film also brings in the Innocence Project.

 

Metropolis. The visuals are the number one thing the film has going for it: the visual design of its Art Deco future is striking, and Fritz Lang’s compositions are exciting and impressive. The rest is less impressive; the story, an odd mix of Biblical allegory and socialism, is a rather simplistic morality play that’s sometimes striking but usually just feels kind of bland. It makes sense with the constraints of the silent medium, but it’s still nothing to write home about. It’s not helped by the silent convention of over-signaling every emotion and idea, which means each scene takes three times as long as it needs to convey what it’s trying to convey, adding to the film’s general plodding pace in which a relatively simple story takes two and a half hours. The only acting that stands out is Brigitte Helm, who is angelic as Maria but especially stands out for the demented, off-kilter physicality of her performance as her evil robot double. It’s an imaginative film rightfully hailed for its visuals, but it doesn’t hold up notably well outside that.

 

Metropolis plays a lot better in the cinema...

 

Haven't seen the original Metropolis but I really liked the anime version (2001 film).

 

World War Z

It was a little better than I remember it being from when I first saw it, but I see no reason to see it again.

 

I'd practically swear by that version. It's really a beautifully crafted movie way ahead of its time.

 

A while back, I saw it in a restored, old-style theater, with music provided by a vintage Wurlitzer non-electronic theater organ. It was amazing.

 

Same here. I think it had some restored footage, and IIRC the print was tinted.

 

The version I saw was the near-complete version before the latest restoration from the F.W. Murnau Foundation. There were a few scenes missing, with new intertitles filling in story gaps.

 

The Love Bug

 

The Set-Up. Robert Ryan plays a boxer who’s so washed-up, his manager doesn’t even bother to tell him the fight is supposed to be fixed. Of course that goes wrong, but the film leaves that for the denouement rather than building a thriller around it. It’s a boxing movie, pure and simple, and it’s short runtime is spent almost entirely on the leadup to the fight, as Ryan sits in the locker room nervously building up to a fight only he thinks he can win, and on the fight itself, which the movie runs in real time (along with the rest of the film). It’s a tremendously effective film, pure and potent. Robert Wise’s direction is great. It’s just an ideal late-forties B-movie.

 

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020) - as a big fan of Armando Ianucci's other projects, I couldn't wait to watch his latest movie. It also didn't hurt that it has such an amazing cast, including two from the MCU and one from the ST.
Loosely based on the Dickens novel, the salient feature of this adaptation is the contemporary feel, or as one of the filmmakers puts it, being "completely color inclusive" in its casting. Unlike earlier adaptations, it has a much more quirky tone that brings a lot of freshness to the story, despite it being very much a period piece.

 

The Seventh Seal. Plague! Witchcraft! Madness! Infidelity! Fear and doubt of God’s existence! The existential dread of death! Chess! It’s got everything you need for an exciting night at the movies!

There’s very little I can say about the movie that hasn’t already been said, but Bergman’s meditation on dread, angst, and spiritual uncertainty and longing is strange and compelling. It’s no wonder it’s been so influential.

 

Death matter-of-factly sawing down a tree just to kill a guy is such a criminally underrated scene.

 

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Two of literature's most compelling characters, and some of cinema's most immersive filmmaking. No matter how many times I see it, I still want more. As usual, when it was over I immediately watched the deleted scenes just so I could spend more time in that world.