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

Everything Everywhere all at Once

well ... I was really looking forward to this , I'd heard nothing but great things from all quarters , but - I didn't really get along with it , I couldn't really see what the story was .

Maybe I'll give it another go sometime.

 

Col. Parker was a cartoonish figure---purposefully.

 

I've watched Elvis twice. What Hanks does here is truly remarkable. It's hard to remember the last time the "bad guy" in the movie was someone you so wanted to like. Because Hanks knows how to be likable, but he's skilled enough as an actor to also show us what a conniving weasel Parker was.

 

the odd thing was the accent. He gives him sort of a dutch accent because Parker was secetly an immigrant , but in real life he just had sort of a vaguely southern accent . Even being compared to Elmer Fudd. i heard someone yesterday say they should have cast an unknown because he's such a well known good guy. Geez, he's a great actor. I never thought 'oh that's Tom Hanks' during the film.

 

I was aware on a subliminal level...

 

Skyfall

This is an impressive film with a lot going on plotwise and many incredible action set pieces. The opening 15 minutes for example is one of the most intense and well choreographed action sequences I've ever seen. One incident seemlessly elides with the next creating a chain of ever increasing stakes.

One of the best movies of its kind and I look forward to rewatching it.

 

With the best opening Bond theme song.

 

The Skyfall theme is right up there with Live and Let Die.

 

But "Goldfinger" is the gold standard by which all Bond themes are judged.

 

The Greatest Show on Earth. This is cinema as spectacle, a literal three-ring circus of activity thrown up on the screen. Unfortunately, that’s all it is. Its story, centered on a dull love triangle, isn’t enough to sustain its epic length. Charlton Heston’s all-business circus manager is a character in search of a movie that actually has something for him to do, mostly because of Heston’s screen presence, while everyone else is forgettable, except for Jimmy Stewart, who is memorable mainly for spending the entire movie behind clown makeup. It is just a lot of melodrama and lengthy circus spectacle crammed into a weak vehicle. Its redeeming feature is that all the circus footage is at least fun, a good-natured exhibition of amusement and daring feats that it’s impossible not to enjoy at some level. It’s more of a commercial for the circus than a movie, but at least it’s got trapeze stunts.

 

Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022)
Nice movie from actor/writer/director Cooper Raiff. Really good performance from Dakota Johnson, too.

 

The Lost World 1960 film adaptation of the Artur Conan Doyle novel, an explorer organises a trip to an isolated jungle plateau where he believes dinosaurs still roam. When they get there though they have to deal with an equally primitive tribe of natives cut off from the outside world. I suppose this is now firmly in the classic bracket, lizards with fins stuck on them and the obligatory volcano setting. Its got some big names in it too and like many of the old dinosaur films from the 50's and 60's its still worth a watch.

 

Aerial Gunner (1943)
It has more story than I expected for a 75 minute run time, and it's not entirely made up of war-time cliches. Close, though. Dialog and acting ranged from adequate to less-than-adequate. Lots of marching bands, parades, and flag-waving.

Of course I was watching it for the airplanes, and the full support of the US War Department did not disappoint. There were some good training scenes with air-to-air shots of North American AT-6 Texans set up for gunnery training, and some decent combat action stuff with Lockheed Hudson bombers, which you never see or hear about anymore.

 

Cecil B. DeMill was among of the great silent film directors. He’s one of the few to make the transition to sound and excel doing so. He looked at the limitations sound added and pushed through them to find new solutions that didn’t sacrifice what he’s been able to do before.

His last two films Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments feel like actual silent films to me in sound. I’d say DeMill is the last of the Silent Film directors. Even thou he was completely successful working in sound and with color - I think he’s the unusual director who adapted the use of new technology to fit the old
style of movie making he’d mastered.

So this epic movie also feeling like a glossy ad for the circus sort falls under the scope of silent films. So the melodramatic plot that doesn’t quite stand on its own. But some how the spectical and gravity of a few actors carries the entire movie.

I like your review of the movie. The other role I thought stood out was the gymnast. He would later direct and star in The Naked Prey.

That’s a good film. Basically arrogant British hunters in Africa refuse to pay homage when passing through a tribe’s territory. The actor who portrays the acrobat tells the rest of the hunting party what a bad idea that is.

Shortly afterwards the hunting party is captured. The offended tribe has great fun putting everyone to death through creative means.

The three British hunters the tribe deem the most fit they save for last. They let the three go with a head start before the tribe’s best hunters go on the hunt for the hunters.

The majority of the movie is the one decent British hunter on the run being hunted over days and weeks.

 

I’ve wanted to see it ever since it was referenced on Mad Men (a “films referenced on Mad Men” watchlist would be pretty amazing).

The Glenn Miller Story. Some biopics exist because the subject has a compelling narrative to their life, a story that’s begging to be told. Some exist because the subject is the kind of person people will see a movie about. Glenn Miller is definitely in the second category. There’s nothing to his story beyond the usual narrative of any person who had to work hard for success, no special element that screams cinematic feature. But Miller was exactly the kind of person people liked and would enjoy a movie about. In his four years of success as a big band leader, Miller was enormously popular, with a distinctive sound — he had nearly as many top ten hits as the Beatles and Elvis put together. Then he volunteered for the Army, and served as a bandleader for the Army Air Forces until his plane went down and he died tragically young, at the height of his popularity. Celebrating his life ten years later, with lots of his tremendous (and hugely popular) music, was a natural draw for audiences, and the movie was a huge hit.

None of that is to say the film is just a commercial hack job. Jimmy Stewart is likable as always as Miller, Anthony Mann’s direction is solid, the film is packed with cameos by other big band giants (though it misses a chance to feature Miller’s actual commanding officer in the SHAEF radio service . . . Lieutenant Colonel David Niven), and Miller’s music is irresistibly delightful. It’s a loving tribute to a great musician. But it lacks much in the way of a compelling story, and it’s not trying to be a particularly penetrating biopic. It’s forced to just sort of meander along on the strength of its likable characteristics. It’s enjoyable enough, but not distinguished.

 

The Long Arm 1956 Ealing Studios crime drama starring Jack Hawkins as a detective Halliday who is on the trail of a safe cracker. The villain doesn't use explosives, no keys are missing and yet the contents of the safe have been robbed. Is it an inside job and what links all the robberies? The crimes escalate when a night watchman is run down and killed, but crucial leads are left in the car and Halliday is getting closer to catching his man and uncovering the conspiracy.
I'm a big fan of this film, this era of British film making has some pure gold in it and this is no exception, I actually look at this as a loose prequel of sorts to Gideons Day, another crime drama starring Jack Hawkins made a few years later.

 

Elvis

The anxiety-provoking first half almost disintegrates under all its frenetic Baz Luhrmannerisms, but it calms down a bit in the second half. Maybe this is intentional? A representation of the aging Elvis addled and weighted down by the substance abuse? But I wish they'd paid more and better attention to detail during Elvis's rise to fame. The documentary Elvis Presley: The Searcher does such a thorough job of outlining Presley's influences and questions of cultural appropriation that Luhrmann's much more impressionistic portrait seems a bit too sketchy by comparison. It makes the case almost that Elvis was adopted into the culture rather than him taking something from it. I don't know if that's an interpretation that sells.

But Elvis's influences were what they were and Luhrmann makes a bold but possibly misguided attempt to help us experience those influences through Elvis's eyes. It kind of works. Maybe? Austin Butler does sell every moment. He is at least as good an Elvis as Rami Malek was a Freddy Mercury.

Honestly, Tom Hanks as Parker is the film's weak link. The performance, whatever it is, doesn't really make it through all the facial prosthetics. Some people might say that's just an inability to accept Hanks in an unsympathetic role, but I don't really buy that. It's just not a great performance. I'll blame the fat suit, but something wasn't working.

It almost would have been fun to make this a generational epic. The rise, fall, rise, fall, rise of the Presleys. Elvis is the king of rock and roll, squanders his life, talent and fortune with the help of a corrupt entourage. Then Priscilla rebuilds the fortune through Graceland tourism. When she comes of age, Lisa Marie gains control of the estate, then squanders the fortune again, also possibly with the help of corrupt advisors. Finally Riley Keough becomes the serious Hollywood actor that Elvis never quite managed to be.

 

I absolutely love SKYFALL.... from the great theme song that managed to be new and yet oh so "classic Bond" it hit the ground running and never let up. The Bond series is a weird one - kinda sorta one continuity and yet not, with recasting and rebooting at various points but without the "hard" resets of some entertainment genres. By way of saying I tend to judge the movies independently, almost as "Elseworld" stories that stand somewhat alone.

And here, I LOVED the older, step-slower, more mortal (by Bond standards) Bond. I enjoyed the discussion of the harsh realities and moral grays of the world in which Bond moves - and Javier Bardem's villain, fantastic in just about every way, really plays on all of this perfectly. When he

Spoiler

goes over Bond's test scores and evaluations with Bond, and asks Bond how his being sent out DESPITE these things is anything but a betrayal.... powerful and thought-provoking!

. I love how the

Spoiler

death of the agent at the start of the movie isn't brushed off - it has an IMPACT on Bond, it's not inconsequential ... followed by the "take the shot" moment.

. With certain limitations, this feels like a more grounded Bond (again, by Bond standards) with consequences and regrets and tough decisions all the way around. A regular "rewatch" for me!

 

Top Gun: Maverick again. This one gets better on rewatches, IMO. I noticed more details that they got right, and a couple more they got wrong, and paid more attention the characters. Mav and Rooster are the only ones with more than one dimension, but they still manage to make me care about more than just the airplanes. Speaking of those, that Tomcat is still the awesome-est.

 

Have you read the "goofs" section on the imdb page? I thought it was hilarious.

 

My dad asked me if this movie took place in the Metaverse.

 

Diverges just a bit from here:

 

Resident Evil (2002)

I had forgotten there was a time where Milla Jovovich's first appearance in every movie had to be in the nude. This one ends with her nude under a medical sheet, too. Very silly.

The house of horrors stuff is generally good, the laser room is a classic, but the characters, the amnesia, the mystery, the plot; there's nothing of interest in any of it. Very poorly developed. The CGI looks every bit it's age, but that can be forgiven. The zombies also look surprisingly poor, which cannot be forgiven. Zombie makeup was developed decades before this.

I recommend against watching this, and the series just gets worse with each entry.