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

As noted in another thread, I went to see a revival showing of "National Lampoon's 'Christmas Vacation'" last night. It's a close call, but I'd say it's my favorite of the series. It's very funny, and manages to have a few nice moments of sentiment. And the bit where Clark goes off the rails about his boss is hilarious.
This was a charity showing, benefitting this year's toy drive by the PBA. They got a very good response and it was well-attended, though some in the audience kept shouting out lines in the movie just before they came up. It was at the Dunellen Theater in Dunellen, NJ. It was a nice movie venue, until the lockdown. It was closed for quite a while, and now concentrates on live shows, rather than movies.

 

No Blood Relation. Mikio Naruse’s earliest surviving film is this silent melodrama. It follows a successful actress who returns to Japan to find the daughter she regrets abandoning when she left to follow her dreams. But her husband has divorced her and married a new woman, a loving stepmother. Having sacrificed her family for success, she can’t simply get it back whenever she wants. The father’s business collapses, and the actress succeeds in taking her daughter, but while she can offer comfort, she can’t make the girl love her. The little girl wants the only mother she’s ever known, who struggles desperately to get her back. There is conflict between the hoodlum brothers of both women, and a lot of angst, but eventually the bottom line must be what’s best for the child. She must accept that she cannot turn back time and cannot force a relationship. It’s a pretty powerful storyline, aided by an excellent score that sells the drama.

 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Sadly only in HD rather than the shiny, new 4K version. Although I suspect that even that can't cure the scenes where people are randomly out of focus for no reason, usually the speaker is out of focus while the focus is on someone else, but they aren't even showing any reactions. I expect it would've looked better on our 70 in TV rather than the 100 in projector. Not only the slow pace, but also the FX reminded me a lot of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for a good reason, Douglas Trumbull was responsible for the photographic visual effects on both movies.

 

Willow Being a child of the 80's it was full of sword and sorcery mediaeval style adventures like Conan, Dragonslayer, Beastmaster, Krull and Red Sonja and TBH I was never much of a fan of them. However seeing as the new Willow series is out I thought I'd finally get round to watching the film. I actually quite enjoyed it, very SW in its themes and maybe even a bit in its story too. The characters were likeable and theres also some mad weird stuff in it. It lurches from funny, to serious, to camp and then you get some sudden bursts of relatively scary stuff in comparison to much of the film. The scenery is gorgeous in this too. What a strange film.

 

Normally I don't leave reviews on older films that I've seen many times before, but as the new series is now out in the open, I figured I'd leave the review on my re-watch of the Willow. One of the few questions you'd get asked is whether or not this film stands the test of time. IMO you're ignorant if you say it doesn't. Just because the special effects, which were innovative for the time might be laughable by the new age crowd. I'd bet the budget of Ron Howard's entire film is the equivalent of about a minute and a half of James Cameron's Avatar sequel that's out in a few weeks. The characters, the story, the action, the humor, the dialogue; everything works in Willow, and that's why it's among my favorite fantasy films of all time.

 

I love Willow. I suspect there aren’t many on these boards that haven’t seen it yet—and if you haven’t, i highly recommend it; it’s very Lucasian (story, dialogue, humor, etc.)
Of course there is considerably more fantasy out there now than there was in the ‘80s, I’m really not sure how Willow holds up to a younger person who likes fantasy but hasn’t seen this one yet.

The morphing scene was really cutting-edge at the time.

 

Rogue One a Star Wars Story > Star Wars > The Empire Strikes Back

Was fun to revisit these back-to-back last night.

Also, Captain America The First Avenger. I really enjoy this film and still imagine what Joe Jonston's Captain America The Winter Soldier could have been.

And Werewolf By Night again (which I consider a short film). I need more with Jack & Ted like yesterday.

 

Kinky Boots

Magnificent film, I must watch it every year around this time when its on TV

Stunningly built film. Ejiofor is magnificent as Lola and Edgerton plays the role of perennially confused perfectly.

 

I saw that shortly after it came out, haven't seen it since. But from what I recall it's a fun feelgood movie, and I remember Chiwetel Ejiofor making a great drag queen. I forgot Edgerton was in it!

 

I saw it via a Fathom Events revival not too long ago. It has great VFX and one of Jerry Goldsmith's best scores. And it does try to focus on some profound philosophical themes. But it moves very, very slowly. And it lacks a lot of the humanity TOS had. And, except for Nimoy and De, the cast isn't really given much to do, while Shatner is not so much playing Kirk as he's doing a William Shatner impersonation.
It's certainly worth watching (particularly the revised Director's Cut), but it has problems. "Wrath of Khan" was an improvement.

 

Wrath of Khan was a huge improvement, and helped bring Star Trek to the masses.

 

The Wonder

Florence Pugh should get an Oscar for this. Her performance is flawless even if the movie itself makes a few annoying missteps.

 

We're No Angels
Classic film, timless comedy that was funny from beginning to end.

 

Gremlins 1983
Joe Dante, who directed Wolfen, directs this classic 80's creature feature that was a huge crowd pleaser and helped usher in the PG-13 rating. Straddles the line between fun, cute and scary where many movies of this type have tried and failed. Feels like a Spielberg movie (he was a producer). Great creature effects for the time. Classic Jerry Goldsmith score. The movie just works and is very creative. Very entertaining, with numerous classic set pieces. Opened the same day as Ghostbusters; they would both become big hits.

 

Dante did The Howling not Wolfen.

 

Christmas in Connecticut - 1945

Classic Christmas romantic comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck.


Eat your heart out, Hallmark.

 

Contempt (Le Mépris) (dir. Jean-Luc Godart, 1963)

I've seen this film praised into high heaven (one review I had read at one point called it the most important European post-war work of art that's been made) so it had been on my list for a while. I thought it was very good but I wouldn't praise it that highly. It's a film with a meta narrative that seeks to comment on and deconstruct itself, and cinema in general.




The setup: A movie production in Rome. An obnoxious American producer, Jeffrey (Jack Palance -- you know, the Unsolved Mysteries guy) has hired German filmmaker Fritz Lang (played by the actual Fritz Lang -- you know, the Metropolis guy) to create a film of Homer's Odyssey, but is unhappy with the results as he doesn't think it will make a lot of money. They hire playwright Paul (Michel Piccoli) as a screenwriter to rework the script. Paul feels torn between Lang's artistic vision and Jeffrey's demands.
Paul has the good fortune of being married to the young, stunning-looking Camilla, who looks exactly like Brigitte Bardot. On the first day on set, Jeffrey asks Camilla to come over to his villa for drinks, inviting her to sit in his sports car, clearly trying to come on to her. Much to her surprise, Paul tells them to go ahead and that he'll follow; Jeffrey drives off with the bewildered Camilla. Paul arrives half an hour late; Camilla becomes suspicious about Paul's motivations. They leave and return to their apartment, where they argue about their relationship. Hoping to win back his wife's affections, Paul accepts Jeffrey's invitation to join them during filming in the beautiful island of Capri, off the Italian coast.

Despite the gorgeous Capri scenery during the third act--that place really does look amazing--the argument in the apartment was actually my favorite part of the film. I've only seen one other Godart film before this one, Breathless, which is also characterized by a lengthy argument in a closed space (a hotel room, in that case) in the middle of the film, but I found that one to be far too lengthy and somewhat obnoxious. In this film I really liked this scene and I felt really engaged; I liked the cinematography, how the camera caught the moving actors in the small locations, and how the dialogue was written; the push-pull between escalation and reconciliation, between what is said and what is unsaid, until Camilla confesses to Paul that she doesn't love him anymore. Great scene, and well-acted by PIccoli and Bardot.

This film was filmed in Technicolor and is generally considered to have gorgeous-looking colors (I recently watched a YouTube video about the "10 best uses of color of all time" in cinema, and this one made the list). I watched this film via Amazon's streaming service, and I found that Amazon made the colors look pretty drab. I've had this experience before with Amazon; their streaming isn't of the highest quality. Mr Bezos, if you're reading this, you really need to do something about this. If not, I will be forced to wag a very stern finger in your direction, and you don't want that to happen, do you now.

Rating: somewhere between 4 and 4.5 pouty Brigitte Bardot looks out of 5.

 

Rocco and His Brothers. When a family from the rural, poor south of Italy migrates to Milan for opportunities after the father’s death, some succeed and some fail, and the family struggles to stay together as a whole.

The oldest brother, having already moved up there, is unenthused at the idea of supporting his mother and four brothers who have unexpectedly followed him. He’s got a good job, he’s engaged to Claudia Cardinale — he’s doing fine, he never asked for this responsibility, and his family is ultimately a drag on him. He stays in the picture, but detached; he isn’t going to run the family, leaving the other brothers to take up the slack.

The second brother, Renato Salvatori, takes up boxing to support the family, but the three-hour film is the story of his long, slow decline. A carefree charmer, he takes to the darker side of city life, his boxing ascent leading to indolence and dissipation, and as his vices undermine his success, he becomes twisted and bitter, clashing with his other brothers, with the ugly relationship between second and third brothers driving the film.

The titular middle brother, Alain Delon, is the heart of the film and the family. Quiet and generous, he’s a conciliator who takes on himself the responsibility for the family’s success. He achieves the boxing success Salvatori couldn’t, but he never wanted it; he falls in love with a prostitute with a history with his brother, and abandons her to make him happy. He’s the pillar the rest of the family leans on, but there’s a spinelessness to his endless forbearance that leads the family to crumble. He is constantly making sacrifices to protect Salvatori, and Salvatori is constantly throwing them away, rendering them brutally pointless. Delon is ultimately almost as tragic a figure as Salvatori, blinded by unthinking family loyalty, with no moral compass but his family, throwing himself away on a thankless, fruitless effort.

The fourth brother is actually the best of the lot, settling down with a job, a fiancee, and a level head, trying to take up the slack of Delon and hold the loose cannon Salvatori accountable, but no one wants to hear it. Delon and the mother are too blinded by a family loyalty that ultimately leaves the family shattered, the oldest too disengaged, Salvatori too self-destructive; he can’t get any credit, and he’s simply too young to wear the pants in the family even if he’s the best suited. The best he can do is try to protect the youngest, still a boy, from the corrosive influences around him. It is the youngest, he explains, who has the best chances in the future if he can avoid their mistakes, but looking at the destruction around him, the kid pines for their old village; like Delon, he doesn’t care about his opportunities, he just wants to go back to the way things were.

It’s a really powerful, well-conceived drama, a multidimensional family tragedy about urbanization, family dynamics, and strength of character. It’s the rare three-hour drama that stays at an intimate, personal scale but fills up its whole running time flawlessly. Really excellent.

 

Correction; I meant Ripley's Believe it or Not, not Unsolved Mysteries. Whatevvah.

 

Running Man classic Arnie movie about a dystopian USA which is now like a militarised police state. Anie is falsely accused of a crime and ends up competing on the Running Man game show, a sadistic prime time TV show where criminals are given a shot at winning their freedom by being dumped into a dedicated derelict area of LA and are hunted by stalkers, each with their own unique look and way of killing. I guess its an ultra violent version of Gladiators. Arnie is competing with 2 other fellow prisoners and a hostage he took when trying to escape LA, who has also been framed as an accomplice. Theres a half baked subplot where they are also trying to find the resistance, who just happen to have their secret base within the Running Man's game zone. All culminating in them finding them and taking the show off the air by force. Switch your brain off and its enjoyable fun, but stop to think about it and some of it doesn't make sense really, everything just happens to be conveniently contained within this game zone, does taking this game show off air start a country wide revolution? They don't really seem to pay too much attention to some of the story ideas like why are they after the resistance, how did Arnie train this army up so fast and its all so small scale that actually looks more like a TV movie than a big screen experience. The fact its set in 2017 is quite funny as I remember when first seeing this when it came out that 2017 seemed so far away into the future, yet here we are in 2022 in the blink of an eye.

D-Tox Saw this listed as Eye See You and didn't think I'd seen it before, but its actually the Stallone thriller from 2002. Its got a classic thriller premise to it. Stallone is an FBI agent on the trail of a sadistic serial killer, who kills one of his colleagues and his girlfriend and Stallone ends up checking in to an isolated detox clinic for cops to get over his demons. Little does he know that the killer has followed him there and is posing as one of the patients where he starts bumping everyone off one by one. Can Stallone identify the killer?
I did some reading up on this after watching it and it had an extremely troubled production, it was actually completed a couple of years before its release and Stallones comments on it were very interesting about the stigma attached to it. Its got a good recognisable cast too - Stallone, Charles S Dutton, Dina Meyer, Kris Kristofferson, Jeffrey Wright, Polly Parker, Tom Berenger, Stephen Lang, Robert Patrick and Robert Prosky. Everything is here to make a great film, decent cast, fantastic snow bound old military bunker setting, its got a Ten Little Indians meets Alien 3 vibe about it and I have to say I enjoyed it. Its not as great as it could be, but its dark, watchable and Stallone is good I thought. You can tell when watching it that something was wrong in its production, theres some little jumps in the film where some things don't quite make sense or seem a bit rushed and I had to go back a bit to watch little bits again. The killings become a little too thick and fast, when maybe a more methodical approach would have been a touch better, and Dutton seems to get sidelined a bit when he discovers that something isn't right at his friends clinic. But overall this was ok, a decent watch and I don't think its one of Stallones worst efforts at all.

 

Saw it as a teenager, and watched it again a few years ago. Holy cow is it campy! Fun though.

As a teenager I didn't recognize Mick Fleetwood. Or Frank Zappa's son Dweezil. Dweezil at one points gets to quote a line from one of his father's songs ("Don't touch that dial," from "I'm the Slime")

 

The Running Man is based on a Stephen King book. He wrote it under the name Richard Bachman.

 

Fair game a 1986 b-movie. It was one of the films covered in Not Quite Hollywood where Tarantino talks about a scene where the lead is tied topless to a truck and driven around and he wondered how someone thought that up. It looked crazy in that way but the film is not just a non stop wacky fest. 3 dudes roll into town and just start harassing Cassandra Delaney and each form of harassment gets crazier. This is a basic plot of girl gets terrorized and then strikes back. What saves this from being 100% garbage is that Delaney is just so likable. IRL she went on to marry John Denver, had one daughter with him, then went through a horrible marriage and divorce from him where she revealed his public persona was an act and in reality he was a drunken, controlling narcissist. She won full custody, and had herself a small of a singing career.

 

somehow that makes it worse.

 

Holiday. Cary Grant. Katharine Hepburn. What more do you need?

Grant plays an irreverent, free-spirited young man who is shocked to find that the fiancee he courted on a holiday, Doris Nolan, comes from a spectacularly rich family. Her sister, Hepburn, is a free spirit who feels stifled by the old-money life and rapturously welcomes the introduction of Grant to the family circle, which also includes Lew Ayres as a brother whose disappointment at knuckling under to his father’s stultifying influence has led him to alcoholism. Hepburn and Grant hit it off, and as it becomes increasingly obvious that Nolan, still subservient to daddy, simply isn’t independent enough to live the kind of life that Grant wants, it’s clear that Hepburn is the better match.

It’s a light, charming romantic comedy. There aren’t a lot of belly laughs, but it’s consistently pleasant — humorous, charming, romantically compelling, with two magnificent leads. It’s a very solid entry in the long list of winning classic romance-comedies.