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

The Virgin Spring. Bergman is very hit or miss as far as whether his work clicks with me. This clicked. A medieval tale of religion, revenge, and guilt, it’s a complex rendering of a simple story. Bergman often goes for heavy-handed dialogue, but here he suggests more than he states. It’s really excellent.

 

Time Bandits never watched it before and I didn't think it was an easy film to get in to at all. Weird at times, no surprise given its Monty Python' connections. I can see why it seems to have a cult status though.

 

The Land Before Time VII: The Stone of Cold Fire (2000). Mostly just watched this for a bit of a nostalgic roast, but as lighthearted kid's movies goes it's pretty fun. It's a pretty simple quest narrative, but livened up by the villain, a manipulative uncle of one of the characters who deals with a lot of repressed guilt cause he got a lot of people killed in the past, who has some interesting shades of grey. There's also a subplot involving aliens. Yeah, aliens. In a dinosaur movie. It's kind of awesome actually, they teleport around giving cryptic advice and dropping hints about science to the dinos, there's a cheeky thrill to the concept that I dig. There were three musical numbers, two of which slid off my brain the moment they were over, but 'Beyond the Mysterious Beyond' is a legit banger, that song rules. As far as I can remember from not having seen any of the others in like 15 years, this is one of the better ones, and it was a fun romp to re-experience.

 

Godzilla. The thing about Godzilla is that he’s a monster, not an actual character. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t really have thoughts or motivations to sustain a movie’s worth of narrative. People want to see monster fights, but unless you’re just going to do an MMA card of monster fights, you need human characters to sustain a narrative. Even though people just complain about the humans because they’re not monster fights.

Gareth Edwards just accepts it and leans into the fact that making a film that works as a film will piss people off by firmly grounding his Godzilla film in the human characters and deliberately denying us a big monster sequence until the climax. It didn’t make very many people happy, but I liked it. Edwards focuses relentlessly on a sense of scale; by sticking to the human point of view, he reinforces the magnificent scale and sense of awe of these titanic monsters sweeping through humanity. The actual human narrative is not that strong, typical action-movie stuff that doesn’t bother to make a ton of sense and is fairly simplistic. But it’s executed with commitment, a sense of the gravitas of an encounter with Godzilla, and a tremendous sense of style. Edwards has a real eye for striking compositions and he puts it to use to make a great-looking monster film. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s much more impressive than your average monster action movie. We haven’t seen anything from Edwards in the past six years, and I suspect the combination of this relatively uncommercial Godzilla movie disappointing and Rogue One being softly taken away from him by the floundering Kathleen Kennedy regime has caused Hollywood to do him dirty. But Edwards has real talent, and I would like to see him back in the saddle.

 

Memories of the Sword - 2015

Love, betrayal, regret, and revenge. Great fodder for a movie, and the revenge plot in this one is insane, though it's a bit too melodramatic. Still, there's some nifty sword play (not much, it's more drama than action), beautiful colors, and the level of costuming you would expect from a period piece. It's well short of the best films in this genre, but I think it's worth a watch.

 

Jennifer Eight for me this is up there on the list of underrated 90's murder suspense psycho mystery thrillers as one of the better ones. Andy Garcia plays John Berlin, a cop moving from LA to a rural town to work with his ex-sergeant (played by Lance Henriksen). He immediately becomes involved in a case where a dismembered womans hand and a dead dog have been found on a garbage dump. Berlin links the hand to a previously unsolved serial killer case (code named Jennifer) where 7 bodies of dead blind women had been found. The investigation leads to an institute for the blind and Berlin slowly becomes obsessed with the the victims room mate Helena (played by Uma Thurman). When the local paper run a leaked story on her she becomes a target for the killer, and the stakeout scene halfway through at the institute is gold, but Berlins obsessions with solving the case leads to a death within the dept and an IA investigation lead by the odious St Anne (John Malkovich) where they are trying to bring Berlin down and get him off the case.

I'm a big fan of this, its moody, tense and atmospheric. The score and cinematography is bleak and striking. The characterisation is given time to build and the performances are all top notch, everyone is taking it seriously and there are some big names from the time in this. The aforementioned stakeout scene at the institute is brilliant and creepy with just flashlights and noises in the empty building to heighten the tension. Arguably at 2hr its a tad too long and maybe the ending a touch rushed, but I think its well worth a watch and I can't believe its not as highly regarded as other 90's thrillers.

 

The Mist (2007) - this movie was very bad. The acting, the CGI, the story -- all horrible. The only fun(ny) part was it felt like a Season 1 The Walking Dead reunion. I guess you win some, you lose some with Darabont.

 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). After the first Doctor Strange, which had very strong visuals but was shackled to a rote origin story, this one had the freedom to fully unleash itself. The action scenes and trippy visuals make this one of the most striking MCU movies, the choreography and dynamic elements at play were spellbinding. The costume design also 'popped' a bit more, more vibrant colours.

The America Chavez plotline was a little lower in the mix, but she had fun chemistry with Strange that helped the middle act keep afloat through all the weirdness. Elizabeth Olsen killed it as Wanda, she has such incredible range. From the pathos and comedy stylings of WandaVision to going full over-the-top terrifying villain here was a sheer delight, and felt like a perfect to carry on her story strands. Hoping she isn't gone indefinitely. I also appreciated the links to What If...?, which rapidly became one of my favourite pieces of the MCU. The movie revelled in using its high body horror quotient and the unbridled potential of infinite universes to create something that was utterly hilarious (like the wipeout of the Illuminati) without cheapening the drama. Great stuff.

 

I have spent a good part of the last week catching up with the best of the surviving John Ford movies thanks to the Criterion Channel and my own Ford at Fox DVD collection. Trying to watch them all chronologically, I've watched/revisited:
Just Pals (1920)
The Iron Horse (1924)
Kentucky Pride (1925)
3 Bad Men (1926)
Four Sons (1928)
Hangman's House (1928)
The Black Watch (1929)
Men Without Women (1930)
Born Reckless (1930)
Up the River (1930)
Seas Beneath (1930)
Pilgrimage (1933)
Doctor Bull (1933)
The World Moves On (1934)
Judge Pries (1934)
Steamboat Around the Bend (1935)
The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)

...and that's it for now, though there's a lot more, for sure.
It's especially interesting to see how Ford made his transition into sound and how his trademark sentimentality initially didn't transfer over right away, but eventually would after he became more comfortable with sound films. His versatility is extremely remarkable, but unfortunately his work is not immune from the racial caricatures that were popular during his day, and the performances by Stepin Fetchit in Ford's movies are particularly cringe-worthy today.

 

June viewings (* denotes theater viewing):

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984)
Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)
The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022)
Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg, 2022)*
The Haunting (Robert Wise, 1963)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
Occult (Kôji Shiraishi, 2009)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1997)
Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984)
Jurassic Park III (Joe Johnston, 2001)
Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona, 2018)
Fire and Ice (Ralph Bakshi, 1983)
The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979)
Jurassic World: Dominion (Colin Trevorrow, 2022)*
In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994)
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, 1953)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021)*
Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)*
RRR (S. S. Rajamouli, 2022)
Spiral (Higuchinsky, 2000)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008)
Fiend Without a Face (Arthur Crabtree, 1958)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi, 2022)
Hercules in the Haunted World (Mario Bava, 1961)
Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960)
Black Sabbath (Mario Bava, 1963)
The Black Phone (Scott Derrickson, 2021)*
Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (Roy Ward Baker, 1974)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959)

 

Soul (2020) – Pete Doctor, Kemp Powers

Don’t worry, they’re fine. You can’t crush a soul here. That’s what life on earth is for.

Pixar’s Soul focuses on Joe, an African American band teacher who has big dreams of becoming a big time jazz pianist. All of those dreams seem to be poised to come true when Joe is killed in a tragic (and strangely slapstick) accident. Now, with the help of the snarky Soul 22, Joe’s got to find a way to escape the realm of the souls and get back to his “real” life.

This movie is exceptionally good; it ranks right toward the top of the middle tier of Pixar films in my opinion. It’s not quite top tier, but it’s darn close. It’s a visually stunning film, both in the way it depicts the metaphysical elements of the story and also in the way it works toward visualizing the jazz music that is at the film’s heart. The score is really stupendous, featuring work from Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste. Reznor & Ross handle a lot of the underscoring while Batiste is responsible for the jazzier cuts, including the diegetic music. Reznor and Ross really do just keep getting better as they broaden their palette. I loved their retro and very atypical score for Mank and this one is even better. They work a lot with the piano, just like Batiste does, but in a more ethereal and spiritual tone and their work is key to the film working as well as it does. One of the most deeply moving moments of the movie is a quiet piano solo that Joe improvises late in the film, taking inspiration from the mundane aspects of life that he always tended to overlook, and the music absolutely lives up to the moment and is the reason the scene works. Likewise, Batiste’s jazz is really hot and often high energy and the film is genuinely one of the best movies about jazz I’ve ever seen.

The cast is also very good, for the most part. Jamie Foxx is restrained and empathetic as Joe, bringing a lot of genuine emotion to his performance. And I have to mention Rachel House, an actress I first encountered in Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople; she absolutely slays her role here as a metaphysical soul-hunter trying to track down Joe’s wayward soul. It’s honestly not that different from the role she had in Wilderpeople, so I kind of suspect she got this part based on someone at Pixar seeing that movie and, if so, good for them. I’m a bit less sold on Tina Fey’s performance as Soul 22; there’s not a whole lot that’s surprising about that character or that performance. She’s fine, but she fails to really bring the character to life in the way I wish she had.

I have to say that the film has a couple of flaws in terms of its messaging, I think. It wants to be a little too profound, I think, and so it tries to kind of dig into this idea of everyone having a “spark” at the end in a way that I didn’t find that compelling and was actually a little confusing. Something about how a spark isn’t your “passion,” it’s your “reason for living” but it doesn’t quite nail that shift. Still, the script is very nuanced in its discussion of dreams and passions and the ultimate message is that attaining your dreams really isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, that achieving your dreams may not be a transcendent experience that transforms your life into a wonderland. It isn’t anti-dreams or anti-achieving-your-dreams, but it has a pragmatic notion of the way life works and often doesn’t work when we focus too hard on our fantasies. I respect the film for shooting for a very nuanced and adult take on the subject matter; if Soul fails to ultimately pay off in the tremendously effective way that I find a lot of Pixar films to pay off, well, it’s still trying to talk about complicated things in a serious way while also being really funny and focused on music, so high degree of difficulty on this one. Still, like I say, this one didn’t knock me out emotionally in the way that a lot of Pixar films do, but it’s still a really good, really thoughtful film with only a few minor stumbles along the way. 3 ½ stars.

tl;dr – Soul probably ranks at the top of the middle tier of Pixar films, but that’s not a slam; amazing music, a thoughtful script and a great central performance make this one a keeper. 3 ½ stars.

 

Top Gun (1986)
I liked the sequel more than I expected to, so I decided to give the original another chance. It still looks like a mid-80's MTV video, and all the stuff it gets wrong (which is a lot) still bugs me. The iconic lines are still thoroughly quote-able though. Goose is the most enjoyable character in the movie; after he dies, the whole story goes into a nosedive and never really recovers, IMO.

 

You say mid 80's video game like it's a bad thing.

 

The Wiz
1978

This was my first viewing of this musical that features a lot of talented people in a very disappointing movie.

First of all, Joel Schumacher's screenplay is all over the place and often makes no sense, but no surprise there. The real shocker is how poorly Sidney Lumet directed this thing.

During one of the only good songs, "Ease On Down the Road," he choose to film Diana Ross and Michael Jackson in a static long shot of the landscape with the actors backs to the camera! Can't recall the last time I saw such incompetence. He even zooms out further at one point as we watch the actors dance away with their backs to the screen.

And for MJ's only solo number he is stuck on a pole. Let's see, we've got one of the world's top entertainers and greatest dancers here, so let's have him stuck on a pole for his only solo dance number. Whatever.

Dorothy is a mid thirties school teacher who lives with Auntie Em who wants her to move out. Diana Ross is mopey and whimpering most of the way; hard to believe she is playing an adult person. The director or someone should have tried to help her find a character or cast a younger actor and keep Dorothy a farm girl instead of a Harlem school teacher.

The witch has a cool number, something about no bad news, but she tortures the protagonists which is weird and is then killed when Dorothy pulls a bloody fire alarm and she melts into her throne which is actually a toilet.

The witch goes down a toilet.
Just like this bloody film.

Oh and Richard Pryor is in it. He is The Wiz. His role in Superman 3 is better if that gives you an idea of what we're talking about here

And Motown, with their incredible roster of singing talent, cast an actor as the Tin Man who can't sing and then they gave him more solo numbers to sing than they gave Michael Jackson.
You can't make that up.

This is just scratching the surface. I will definitely rewatch this again because it is just so messed up that it is entertaining. Kinda like in a SW Holiday Special type of way.

 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It’s the Western as irreverent buddy hangout movie, and it works. The charisma and chemistry of Newman and Redford as they banter their way through life on the run is a thing of beauty, and it’s one of the funniest non-comedies you’ll find thanks to their deadpan repartee. Every scene is worthy of the film’s classic status.

 

No, I said mid-80's MTV video, and they're both bad things. At least they are when it's supposed to be a feature film.

 

My Fair Lady (dir. George Cukor, 1964). Viewing experience: Netflix.



The setup: Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), who's an obnoxious and conceited person, bets his friend Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that he could take lower-class Cockney-accented flowerseller Eliza Doolite (Audrey Hepburn), and teach her "proper English" and successfully pass her off as an upper-class lady.

Musicals aren't usually my thing, and this one is no exception; most of the songs (some exceptions) aren't necessarily disagreeable to me, but there are just too many of them, and with a movie that's already far too long for its simple story (almost 3 hours) they overstay their welcome. That said there are times when the film uses a musical number to do give us something really nice and visually interesting, for instance in this number:



The movie also appears convinced that Henry Higgins' conceitedness is funny or charming, and it just isn't, to me; he's just obnoxious. But then, there's a lot about this film hasn't aged gracefully--it's classicist and sexist. I suspect most people will realize that, and whether you'll be able to look past that will differ from person to person and/or depend on your mood.

OTOH, what does absolutely work is Hepburn. She's loveliness personified and she's magic on screen. Also, speaking of magic, there really is something magical about technicolor, isn't there?

So, yeah. Difficult film to be excited about; difficult to dismiss. I'll rate it 3 fair ladies out of 5.

Total side note: this film was based on a stage musical, which was in turn based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, which was, in turn, based on a story in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The myth described by Ovid is about a sculptor, Pygmalion, who falls in love with a statue he's created; Aphrodite then changes the statue into a real woman, so he can marry her. Obviously My Fair Lady has little in common with Ovid's myth. despite being (very indirectly) based on it. The more you know.

 

The Wiz is such a disappointment considering the talent involved. Unfortunately too many behind the scenes problems doomed the film. Stephanie Mills was the original Dorothy, she originated the role on Broadway and was cast before Diana Ross decided she wanted the part. Ross' leverage was being able to bring in Michael Jackson to the film. With Mills out original director John Badham left and was replaced by Sidney Lumet. Lumet however didn't want Jackson and preferred Jimmie Walker (JJ was big in the 70s). This might explain the lack of Jackson heavy dance numbers. Screenwriter Joel Schumacher & Ross were heavily involved with est (remember still the 70s) and threw out most of the original dialogue to include est teachings and sayings. Lumet also cashed in on family connections & favors by bringing in mother-in-law Lena Horne as Glinda as well as bringing in Quincy Jones to produce the music. The films failure pretty much killed off the blaxploitation genre but this was where Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson first worked together. After that they would team up for Jackson's Off the Wall, Thriller & Bad.

 

Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)
Not bad if you're into the franchise. Adds cool new characters voiced by Alan Arkin and Michelle Yeoh... There's a neat scene set in SF's Chinatown, and cool oldies on the soundtrack.

 

I love The Wiz, but admit it's a very flawed film. Most people I talk to don't like it. A lot of the appeal is probably nostalgia as I saw it as a kid and am from NY. It was a major bomb when it was released. The Broadway play was not set in contemporary NYC as far as I know. I think that was Lumet's idea. I remember a trip to NYC as a kid. My dad tried to get us Wiz tickets (the play), then came back to the car and said "nope. Those tickets are way too expensive."

 

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022)

A charming movie that does wonders with a shoestring budget (no pun intended) with great vocal performances by Jenny Slate and Isabella Rossellini. Highly recommended.

 

The Trial. Orson Welles is the perfect director to adapt Kafka’s paranoid classic on the impenetrability of bureaucracy. He’s so comfortable making something weird, off-kilter, and challenging, and his ability to communicate cinematically is so perfect for this material. Anthony Perkins stars as the man accused of . . . something, and Welles makes his film a perfect maze of disorientation, but he also taps into something by pushing Perkins to act shifty, like a man with a guilty conscience. Often adaptations play on the idea of an innocent man unable to prove his innocence in a labyrinthine system in which the accusation is the punishment, but Welles is alert to the idea that everybody is guilty of something, that an unspecified allegation inevitably brings up the idea that something won’t be able to stand up to scrutiny. It’s a real gem of a film from Welles.

 

The Tomorrow War

am I wrong or does Chris Pratt just give the same performance in every film?

this was like Back to the Future meets Starship Troopers . ... don't bother is my reccomendation.

 

The Addams Family 2 (2022)

The animated creepy and cooky family family are back. This time they've been visited by a stranger who suggests that Wednesday is not a real Addams; having been switched at birth. In desperation to keep his family together, Gomez decides to take them on a road trip through America. It's a somewhat fun romp with same very familiar voices.

 

A Good Year 2006
Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe reteam after their Gladiator success. This one is a much more low key affair. A high powered stock broker from London inherits a house and vineyard in France he spent summers in with his uncle and discovers the joys of a simple life. If living in a multimillion dollar house in France is a simple life I guess. Marion Cotillard and Albert Finney co-star. The French scenery is beautiful, and it's nice to see Crowe attempt romance/light comedy. It is a well made film, if lightweight and forgettable. Pleasant enough, could be a Hallmark/Lifetime/Nicholas Sparks type film but elevated to decent by the cast and director.