Last movie seen — Page 284

DuracellEnergizer said:

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Bland direction, no likable characters, and all that convoluted nonsense with the keys near the end make this one of the most overrated movies I've ever seen. Ray Milland's performance is the only real saving grace this picture has.

I'm positive that were it not for Hitchcock's name, this movie would've been forgotten decades ago.

C-

 I agree completely. I was going on a Hitchcock binge recently and Dial M for Murder was the only film I just couldn't get into. I just don't thing it grabs the audience like Hitchcock films do. Why is this considered one of his masterpieces, and Marnie considered a crapsterpiece?

DuracellEnergizer said:

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Bland direction, no likable characters, and all that convoluted nonsense with the keys near the end make this one of the most overrated movies I've ever seen. Ray Milland's performance is the only real saving grace this picture has.

I'm positive that were it not for Hitchcock's name, this movie would've been forgotten decades ago.

C-

 But did you see it in 3-D, as Sir Alfred intended? ;)

stretch009 said:

EyeShotFirst said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Bland direction, no likable characters, and all that convoluted nonsense with the keys near the end make this one of the most overrated movies I've ever seen. Ray Milland's performance is the only real saving grace this picture has.

I'm positive that were it not for Hitchcock's name, this movie would've been forgotten decades ago.

C-

 I agree completely. I was going on a Hitchcock binge recently and Dial M for Murder was the only film I just couldn't get into. I just don't thing it grabs the audience like Hitchcock films do. Why is this considered one of his masterpieces, and Marnie considered a crapsterpiece?

 I really liked Dial M but it's definitely no masterpiece.  I've seen a lot of Hitchcock movies and Marnie is easily my least favorite. 

You must keep in mind it was one of his numerous "run for cover" films; films he would make to provide a greater response at the box office-especially after some of his more personal or artistic films hadn't done so well. Dial M was based on the stage play and Hitch felt it was a surefire hit. He couldn't really change anything and this combined with a short schedule and the extremely cumbersome 3D camera holds the film back. What is incredible is the depth of the photography visible even in 2D all these years, the attempted murder, the direct usage of camera technique to  underline story, the fact that we get to look at Grace Kelly, Anthony Dawson as the ill-fated blackmailee, and one of Ray Milland's finest performances. He truly is the picture.

Marnie is a flawed gem. Outdated, old-fashioned, dreamlike in places, held back by censors and MCA-Universal, and featuring a lead actress so remote and frigid that she works far better in this psychologically damaged character than in The Birds. Had Hitch been able to make the film as he wanted and kept Kelly in the role, it would be among the masterpieces. I still find it a striking and gorgeous at times masterpiece (I can somewhat criticize Hitch at times, but no one made pictures like him--even his heavily compromised ones.) but it is frustrating to watch because of all the heavy compromising and the fact that Hitch was losing touch with his audience at this time in addition to being reined in by the studio. BTW, Connery is outstanding here, steals the picture, and again proves how great he can be when given a direction to go in.

Reached #20 on my usual marathon which I do almost monthly at times.

Die Another Day-Dolby EX.

It's not necessarily bad, nor does it deserve it's terrible reputation. What cannot be ignored though is how the story seems to give up entirely after the first act. This is where the curse of Purvis & Wade really came into full force and has tarnished everything since. They cannot develop a single idea properly and in the Brosnan era which already had these sorts of problems it proved a deathblow. And what hurts even more is just how good Brosnan was getting into the role at this point. It is a shameful waste.

Some good moments, plenty of underdevelopment, terrible CG sequences, godawful director show-off bits of slo-mo, a flipping "yo mama" joke, weak villain ripping off Fleming's brilliant Hugo Drax, far too many nods to the past, product placement galore and of course the horror known only as Jinx. For all those who have a problem with the nuclear scientist in TWINE, I give you this annoying idiot. Thank god the proposed spinoff never happened!!!!

And still I give this somewhere around a 3.5 out of 4. At least it's well made.

In regard to Thunderball, my theory is that the problem is twofold: First the novel is based on the original treatment by Fleming, Wittingham and McClory. It lacks the usual panache of Fleming's other books and already on its own feels a bit long winded and has less zest. Then the film script was based around Richard Maibaum's original 1961 draft for when TB was proposed as the first Bond film.

Second: The original rough cut ran for four hours and Peter Hunt had to beg UA for more time to make something coherent out of it. This pushed the film to December '65 and resulted in many scenes being dropped. It seems the shoot held to the script which was rather faithful to the novel instead of essentially abridging the source for film as the previous three films had done. If Guy Hamilton had stayed on it would have all fallen apart. That's not a slight, just that Hamilton worked in the opposite way. At least with Terrence Young returning there was that drive again that instills vitality in scenes otherwise flat.

As far as Dial M for Murder goes, I'm a big fan of John Williams' (the actor, not the composer) performance as Inspector Hubbard.

He's so outwardly unprepossessing that you can't help but think he's going to be a blundering detective in the mold of Thomson and Thompson, but he's far cannier than he lets on.

Perfect casting in my opinion. I kind of wish Denholm Elliott had played Marcus Brody that way at some point in the Indy films--it'd have provided a good balance between the bumbling museum curator of Last Crusade and the savvy ex-adventurer of Raiders.

The Last Five Years

Interesting concept for a musical, it takes the titular last 5 years of a relationship with each scene/song taking place at a different point in the relationship. The couple takes turns singing, her songs start at the end of the relationship and work backwards to the beginning while his songs go the opposite way, timelines meeting in the middle for the wedding. Unless you've read the description, there's no real set up for that, so going in blind is confusing for the first several songs.

As for the quality, watching it on my iPad on an airplane sharing earbuds with Mrs. O'Five probably wasn't the ideal conditions, but I enjoyed it overall. The music is good, the cinematography is not. I get the feeling most of the songs were done in a handful of takes, so there's a lot of long shots and the camera or the singers sometimes get lost or you can tell the cameraperson is running after them.

Anyway, if you like musicals, you could do worse.


Kingsman: The Secret Service

I feel like a fuddy-duddy, but I didn't get much enjoyment out of this movie at all. I like the Colin Firth mentoring a streetwise kid on how to be a gentleman spy stuff, but then it would dip into dark places that would make Craig Bond wince, then go into over-the-top stuff that Austin Powers never dreamed of. I read that Vaughn wanted to redefine the spy movie like Spielberg redefined the serial adventures of his youth with Raiders, but he really missed with it. And its not like the serial adventures were still going strong in the 80's with a hundred better takes on it already out like we have with spy movies.

START SPOILERS

We're talking about a movie where a bunch of rich people's heads explode in brightly colored smoke in time with the music being immediately followed by a mother trying to break into her bathroom with a meat cleaver to murder her toddler. It's an insane whiplash.

My biggest issue was the final test for these gentlemen spies-in-training. They were given a dog at the beginning of training and told to take care of it. Every lesson we see is about building teamwork between the students. The final test is they're given a gun and told to shoot their dog. Of course, our hero doesn't do it. So he fails.

Sure, the guns had blanks, but it still holds that refusing to shoot the dog you were told to take care of is a failure in this gentleman spy organization. What kind of lesson is that? Where would he have learned that in the training? The last time I saw an organization that gave you a dog and forced you to kill it was HYDRA, and they're the bad guys.

END SPOILERS

Anyway, I didn't like the movie, thought it failed to do anything it set out to do. And this one I saw at an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema while drinking with a bunch of people who did seem to be enjoying it, so it wasn't the environment.


Jupiter Ascending

My wife and I went to another Alamo Drafthouse to see this to wash the dirt off from Kingsman. We were both pleasantly surprised. After hearing about it and how most people I know who saw it enjoyed it, I took it upon myself to not abandon it as I did John Carter and Edge of Tomorrow, movies I was sure I would have liked but didn't see in theaters which I ended up enjoying a lot and feeling bad for waiting for Blu-ray.

I found it intriguing and engrossing. I want to see more of the world the Wachowskis created for this, unfortunately due to what seems to be WB losing all faith in it last summer and delaying it till winter (you can't tell me they delayed it 9 months to finish the effects and couldn't have waited an additional 3 to keep it a summer movie) and then not promoting it properly, the franchise is dead already. I love me some comic book movies, but I also love me some original IP. It's a shame this isn't getting more love. Because I love it.

I avoided Kingsman because I knew I'd get far too annoyed with the overall crass tone, overabundance of CGI and the fact that the "homage" basically crapped on the great elements of many classics, such as The Avengers. Some of these elements were what I hated in First Class despite it being one of the strongest X-Men films.

Never Say Never Again

Still as stodgy and dated as ever. Terrible in how held back it was. Everything seems to be based off the one LD era master, just that MGM snipped off the WB logo and substituted the Orion one. Need to snag the BD at some point. Surprising how the overall mix is very muddy and not dynamic. The Dolby Stereo matrix is far better than the discrete 5.1 remix which has virtually no rear effects.

captainsolo said:

I avoided Kingsman because I knew I'd get far too annoyed with the overall crass tone, overabundance of CGI and the fact that the "homage" basically crapped on the great elements of many classics, such as The Avengers. Some of these elements were what I hated in First Class despite it being one of the strongest X-Men films.

The Silent Star (Der schweigende Stern, 1960)

Released in the US as a cut-down, badly dubbed version called First Spaceship on Venus (which you might remember from an episode of MST3K).

This is actually, however, an East German film from the Soviet days. It concerns an international crew of astronauts in the then-near future (the 1980s!), who set out to the planet Venus when Earth scientists discover artifacts from a crashed Venusian spacecraft.

Upon landing, however, the crew finds that Venus is totally deserted.... though there is evidence of a powerful civilization, and its machinery still works.

The original German cut is a very interesting film, as much for the portrayal of the crew as for the still-impressive visual effects.

The international makeup of the crew (German, Soviet, Chinese and Japanese, Indian and African--and co-ed, to boot!) clearly reflects the optimistic brighter side of Soviet ideology. In that respect, it's leaps and bounds ahead of Forbidden Planet, and very much an anticipation of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, just a few years later.

Surprisingly for Soviet propaganda, one of the crew is an American. But then again, he was one of those who worked on the atomic bomb--which is mentioned frequently so as to get as many jabs in as possible against the capitalist menace.

(In the American dub, however, all of the Soviet scientists became Westerners, and the American became a Russian. The references to the atom bomb were cut--which also deprived the film of some important character moments.)

The film was adapted from The Astronauts, an early novel by famed Polish SF author Stanislaw Lem. Lem grew to dislike the novel in later years--with the unfortunate result that there is no English translation available.

The DVD of the original cut of The Silent Star is currently quite expensive, so try to get it from a library if you're on a budget. But it's probably better not to watch First Spaceship on Venus until you've seen the film in its proper form.

4 Venusian skulls out of 5.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)

I admit I loved this movie. Of course, that's probably due to Vincent Price's presence more than anything else in the film.

B

Same but really only because he has such a ball. It's really like an Egghead two-parter from the Batman series expanded to feature length.  Never watch the sequel however. Oh dear god....words fail me.

Being There

Admittedly not perfect-but a picture to be experienced each year. Less of a narrative experience, and more of a parable really. Deep, thought provoking and intricate to this day. And of course it completely hinges on what is arguably Peter Sellers finest performance--the one time where his usual feelings for a character's inner dignity are so complete that the performance becomes completely real and obliterates the fictional confines.

The Blu-ray gives a nice bump to HD but WB has gone in and done heavy DNR which is a damn shame.

Re-watched 'Wolf of Wall Street' on Blu-Ray.

I thought this was probably the best film of last year when I saw it at the cinema, despite the mixed-to-postive reviews and not getting a single BAFTA, or Oscar. I wondered if it would hold up as well on a second viewing and it does.

Scorsese and Schoonmaker were on fire with this movie despite a combined age of 145. There is this bit where they rapidly jumpcut forward in time across several years in time with the music, then just cut back in time for a quick gag, cut forward again and then continue the story seemlessly. They are just playing with film with carefree abandon. Younger filmmakers need to get some guts.

Plus it's a laugh riot from start to finish. A frequent criticism was that it doesn't offer any morality, which was a big factor in why I loved it. It never does that 'Wall Street' cop out.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Deliverance (1972)

With the way everybody talks about this movie, I was expecting something almost on the level of The Shawshank Redemption. All I really got, though, was a slightly above average movie. I guess Ned Beatty squealing like a pig is tremendously memorable.  *shrug*

B-

 It was pretty shocking for audiences back in the 70's. Well into the 80's it was severely edited for tv, leaving most of what happens in a certain scene a mystery if you've never seen it uncut. I'm not certain you could even get away with that in a movie today.

It's also pretty much ingrained into the popular culture. (And probably cemented the reputation of inbred backwoods folks forever.) Several years back, there was a truck commercial where these guys are in the woods, having a good time. When they hear Dueling Banjos coming out of the forest, they freak and set a new speed record for getting the hell out of there. Not ending up like Ned Beatty's character was a selling point.