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

After ESB?

 

The Front Page. This is a film that has no obvious reason to exist. It’s the third film adaptation of a play, both previous adaptations being hilarious and one being one of the all-time great comedies. What does another adaptation have to offer, let alone attempt to top His Girl Friday? The answer is that it has Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau. And together, they deliver an adaptation every bit as gut-bustingly hilarious as His Girl Friday. Eliminating the gender flip allows Lemmon’s and Matthau’s unbeatable chemistry to shine, and both are hilarious and perfectly cast. Lemmon is all quick-witted patter, and Matthau is just uproarious. Nobody has ever done “curmudgeonly” better than Matthau, and he knocks it out of the park as a crusty, dirty-tricking boss. And Wilder and Diamond update the script with the ability to work a little blue and some pinpoint patter, and with Wilder’s comic touch in the director’s chair the whole thing works like an absolute charm. Nonstop hilarity from beginning to end. What luck that Wilder had the chutzpah to remake an iconic film and the talent to succeed.

 

Sanctum (2011)

First, the was Descent. A gripping, gruelling cave diving horror low budget movie. Always worth a watch.
Then came The Cave which remade Descent with early 2000's CGI monsters. A much bigger budget, and still fun, but a bit less impactful.

Then us Aussies decided to make our own cave diving movie. And, well, it's okay. It adds that dorkiness that we Aussies do when we try to imitate Hollywood. Where we are play acting at being American. But there's no blind subterranean monsters with lots of teeth and claws.

But it's okay. It's okay. I guess.

 

Last few weeks of reviews, although I think almost all of these are 2020 holdovers aside from Locked Down and The Little Things

Wonder Woman 1984
Wonder Woman 1984 is too much movie but that doesn’t necessarily mean its bad. At worst it is an ambitious mess that doesn’t quite justify its two and a half hour running time. WW84’s failure is sequel bloat and providing more entertaining stuff for the villains than the main character. It is kind of like watching Maxwell Lord: The Movie, guest starring Wonder Woman and sometimes Kristen Wiig/Cheetah. There is some fun superhero stuff in WW84, one just has to wait a long time to get to it.

Roald Dahl's The Witches
Roald Dahl’s The Witches is sort of a kid friendly version of a horror movie with monsters and mutations. Dahl also wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which is basically a kid friendly horror story where the characters get bumped off one by one. Directed by Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future) Witches has great visuals that may copy the same visuals of the 1990 Angelica Huston starring version of the Witches, but that’s probably just due to both movies being faithful to the original source. This is a weird, wild movie that has a lot of big performances and visual effects flourishes, ultimately resulting in a lot of loud nonsense but it is mostly entertaining loud nonsense.

News of the World
Directed by Paul Greengrass, the Western News of the World is different from Greengrass’ usual output of shaky cam visceral docudramas like United 93 or multiple Jason Bourne movies. Actually, the most surprising thing about News is that Greengrass can actually provide steady handed visuals. A slow look befits the Western genre instead of movies about amnesiac super-spies. Like pretty much all Westerns, News takes its sweet, lollygagging time to get to the point. But moments can be stirring as News has something surprisingly relevant to say about how true information can inspire change. The surrogate father and orphan kid story may be a well-worn Western cliché, but it is effective.

Promising Young Woman
Promising Young Woman is a solid vigilante revenge thriller with a few distinctive twists on the genre. It incorporates serial killer movie tropes but there isn’t a serial killer, although the main character sometimes acts a wee bit like a miniskirt version of Hannibal Lecter. The visuals are bright colours and the pop score is gleefully incongruous with the movie’s dark tone. At the centre is a crackerjack compelling lead performance. This is not a happy movie but it is often darkly amusing and dramatically satisfying one.

The Little Things
Director John Lee Hancock is notable for feel good biographical dramas like The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks but takes a different route in his latest film, the serial killer psychological drama The Little Things. Hancock has been trying to make the movie for about 30 years and while he insists he wrote the script before Seven, this still feels like a limp wristed Seven clone. Still, the trio of main actors in Things elevates the proceedings. For a serial killer movie, it doesn’t really have many big scares. It settles on being vaguely unsettling and has a different ending that may be aiming for morally ambiguous and subversive but mostly just comes off as somewhat unsatisfying. The Little Things has short bursts when the creepiness does feel creepy although other times it just feels like a generic murder procedural but with higher caliber actors than on network TV.

Locked Down
Locked Down is a gaggle of scenarios from the world of the COVID-19 pandemic that turns into a heist movie in the last 30 minutes or so. It is mostly a chatty character piece with two quirky lead characters trading barbs about dealing with crushing isolation in lockdown. This is an interesting artifact of the early lockdown era on London and what affect it had on people in a comedic twist, a bunch of celebrity cameo zoom calls filling in scenes in between, and then a somewhat low key heist. It is sort of two movies pasted on top of each other, relationship dramedy and heist movie, but the immediacy of the pandemic lockdown setting is unique as it manages to be mostly enjoyable.

 

Rope. The long-take gimmick neither makes nor breaks this film; it works fine and isn’t particularly noticeable aside from the clunky transitions, and Hitchcock uses it to good effect to move the camera around voyeuristically and linger on the evidence of the crime. But the excellence of the movie doesn’t come from its camera gimmick but from its construction and performances. It’s a great premise, a couple of young men who murder a friend purely for the thrill of it, to see what they can get away with, and host a daring dinner party with his body still in a trunk, inviting his parents, his girlfriend, his romantic rival, and their unconventional, fiercely intelligent, perceptive former professor, the one man who might be able to catch them — and might appreciate their daring. The execution is outstanding. Hitchcock gooses every bit of suspense he can out of the macabre situation, as the arrogant youths dangle clues and wordplay. James Stewart is excellent as the professor, and Farley Granger is exquisitely tortured as the weaker of the couple, the one who spends the whole party wracked by guilt and tortuously right on the verge of breaking. But the best performance might belong to John Dall, magnificently smug and jaunty as the sociopath, the one who spends the whole party drolly amused with himself for his feat of daring and cleverness, a superior being who did not a thing wrong but now has to manage his weak lover. It’s just a fantastic movie, a great taut showcase of suspense.

 

For the Disney era, I prefer "Solo" over "Rogue One". Both are good movies, but "Solo" is closer to the fun adventure of the original "Star Wars".

 

Solo is the worst Disney movie easily.

 

We shall have to agree to disagree. It's the only one I saw more than twice in the theater, and the only one I got on home video.

 

Great flick. This movie ensured that any ideas I had about spelunking are far gone, lol.

We watched JFK last night & then I have the week off so during the day I watched Tinkerbell & The Great Fairy Rescue which is part 3 of the Tinkerbell quadrilogy. Yes, I love the T-Bell films. Just dont let my guy friends find out.

 

How To Train Your Dragon (2010)
Possibly my favorite animated movie of the 21st century. It has adventure, excitement, life lessons, totally believable family relationships, and a great sense of humor.

 

Herbie Rides Again

Herbie must help save an old woman's home from a greedy businessman (the same villain from Absent Minded Professor).

 

Have you seen the Disney movies? It would be difficult, likely impossible, for any film in any franchise to be worse than TFA and TROS. And TLJ isn’t going to set any records for quality either.

Solo and Rogue One are both mediocre films, but a literal turd is better than any of the ST.

 

Kiss Me Deadly. A gloriously lurid Mike Hammer noir, this is the kind of noir that isn’t remembered for twisty plotting, tormented characters, or a vivid premise. It’s for atmosphere out the ears. It’s a great encapsulation of the pulpy spirit of B-movie noir, and it’s about as aggressively hardboiled as the genre ever got. Mike Hammer is a brutal, hard-edged protagonist, the kind who responds to questions with a glare and goes immediately to slapping information out of people. The film is packed with attitude and action, pushes the boundaries on sex and violence in a fifties film, and is bookended by two knockout, gonzo sequences. It starts with a panicked Cloris Leachman running down the road in nothing but a trenchcoat, flinging herself in front of Hammer’s car in desperation, and then spending the entire opening credits sobbing for breath, gasping in a terrified, utterly expended rattle over the credits, unable to answer even the basic questions about what she’s doing. And it ends in a wild scene that clearly influenced the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, as a villainess makes the mistake of opening a box full of radioactive material, which in a wildly inaccurate but unforgettably cinematic rendering of radioactivity, emits an unearthly, wailing hiss and overpowering light as she screams and explodes into flames, burning down the house as the hero crawls to safety with his girlfriend. I told you, this is one wild, gonzo trip that can’t be missed.

 

The Descent is easily one of the best post 2000 horror movies for me. (why does that sound so awkward)

 

Hulk (2003) starring Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott, and Nick Nolte; directed by Ang Lee. I saw this while visiting Younger Brother, and I'm sorry, bro, that you let me pick it. I said as we tuned in, "Well, this ought to be good for some laughs." The special effects were fine, Eric made an okay Hulk, so it seems the story was at fault? It wasn't entertaining, not that it had to be one switch-to-green-fury segment after another. It's possible I'm biased because Hulk doesn't move me as a character, not in the way that Cap, Iron Man, Batman, Aquaman and Superman do. At film's end, the perception sank in that the split screen usage and final credits were meant to evoke comic panels. I don't want to boycott Lee; Elder Brother suggested seeing Life of Pi and thought it was terrific. YB, I'm glad we watched Titanic together because you'd never seen it.

 

Five Easy Pieces
1970

This film reveals just as much about it's characters through music and visuals as it does through dialogue, especially regarding the main character Bobby Dupea played by Jack Nicholson.

This is the story of a shiftless, apathetic and moody man who seems to work hard, have a good heart deep down, and one who has cool friends and a lovely girlfriend yet he is clearly dissatisfied with everything in his life and his apathy and cruelty constantly ruin many moments that could be positive otherwise.

Something lies beneath the surface here, but the film never tells or shows us the missing details fully which makes it more intriguing.

It's ostensibly about a failed classical pianist who is estranged from his father and subsequently seeks a lifestyle that doesn't fulfill his potential and that leads him to further ambivalence and non action.

In the first third of the film, the score is dominated by Tammy Wynette tunes and the settings are an oil rig, bowling alley, a highway and a trailer park.

The middle section is a road trip through CA to WA, which includes the famous diner scene and much beautiful cinematography.

"I want you to hold it between your knees."

The third section brings the music of Mozart, Chopin, and Bach and a setting change to Bobby's beautiful family home on an isolated and gorgeous forested island in a lake where he has come to visit his ailing father. And more great nature cinematography.

I bought Five Easy Pieces on DVD many years ago, one of my first DVDs actually as I have a Jack Nicholson collection.
Anyhow, it was great to finally see this on the Criterion blu ray. It has never looked or sounded better, I noticed many new details in the set decorations and heard new lines of dialogue even.

Although not my personal favorite Jack role, this is arguably Nicholson's best performance, or top 5 perhaps. Certainly in his top 10. His range in this is extraordinary, his naturalism and depth of expression remarkable. Not to mention shades of the humor and over the top mannerisms his fans have grown to love. Yet he also sits solemnly at a piano and plays a Chopin prelude.
Essential viewing for Nicholson fans.

It's a pretty moving and impactful picture that gets better upon rewatches. And what a haunting ending as the credits roll.

I'll give Five Easy Pieces a 9/10.

 

Reportedly, Mickey Spillane hated this movie, mainly for making Hammer into a sleazy, sadistic divorce P.I. For a counterpoint, try "The Girl Hunters", where Spillane, himself, plays Hammer.

 

Rogue One is mediocre, it's great. TLJ borders on great. TFA is entertaining. ROS is extremely uneven. But Solo is a completely pointless origin story with an actor who doesn't seem like the character at all. It should have just been a film about Lando instead. At least they're going to somewhat rectify that by having the Lando show.

 

I'd been waiting for a movie or TV show based on the Brian Daley books, chronicling Han's early adventures, for years, and "Solo" was very much in that spirit. While Alden Ehrenreich didn't look or sound too much like Harrison Ford, I thought he absolutely nailed the character's swaggering, reckless confidence. I'd be very much in favor of he & Chewie returning, and I agree on bringing back Lando, as well.

 

Rogue one should have been a 40 minute short film called the Battle of Scarif.

 

How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)
Of course it can't have the originality of the original, but it ups the family drama, and the visuals are even better. Many animated films do a lousy job of capturing the sensation of flight, but these movies get it right, and it's glorious.

 

I was just watching Tora! Tora! Tora! and some of the action scenes look incredibly dangerous , like some of the 'gags' went a bit out of control , there's a shot of a plane taxiing , exploding and crashing into a bunch of others and you can see the stunt guys literally scrambling to get out the way.

 

Yup! Pretty much said the same thing of the film.

 

Dracula's Daughter (1936)
A nice backlot gothic cosy horror movie