Last Movie You Watched

[Karl Henning]

John Landis' Oscar. Very cute.

[Cato]

A remake of an earlier version with George Raft*, this one became a hit because of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake:



Excellent example of a 1940's "detective" movie, except that the Alan Ladd character, despite solving the mystery, is officially not a detective, but a "fixer" for a politician previously on the edge of corruption, now turned reformer.

Audiences liked the Alan Ladd-Veronica Lake roles so much, that the pair made several more movies together.



* There are some who claim the 1935 version With George Raft and Edward Arnold is better than this remake.  I have never seen it.

[SonicMan46]

I Coulda Been a Contender! - last night a 4K UHD Amazon upgrade:

On the Waterfront (1954) - I've been watching this movie since my teens - the UHD just purchased looked great on my 4K HDTV.  Great acting & multiple Oscar winners - see below.  A MUST see if new to the film - highly recommended.  Dave

P.S. famous cab scene at bottom, if interested. 

On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film, directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, and Eva Marie Saint in her film debut. The musical score was composed by Leonard Bernstein.  The film focuses on union violence and corruption amongst longshoremen, while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey. The film was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest films ever made. It received twelve Academy Award nominations and won eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, and Best Director for Kazan. In 1997, it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the eighth-greatest American movie of all time; in AFI's 2007 list, it was ranked 19th. (Source)

 

[SimonNZ]

Second viewing.

[Karl Henning]

I Coulda Been a Contender! - last night a 4K UHD Amazon upgrade:

On the Waterfront (1954) - I've been watching this movie since my teens - the UHD just purchased looked great on my 4K HDTV.  Great acting & multiple Oscar winners - see below.  A MUST see if new to the film - highly recommended.  Dave

P.S. famous cab scene at bottom, if interested. 

 

I still need to watch this.

TD: My Cousin Vinnie. I'm glad I stuck with it. The premise is an amusing enough take on the hallowed "fish out of water" trope. The long middle felt a bit like coasting. There are witty touches enough, yet I do feel it might have been tightened up. The ending is very strong. I'm thinking A-minus overall.

[San Antone]

Something Wild
Directed by Jack Garfein • 1961 • United States
Starring Carroll Baker, Ralph Meeker



A complex exploration of the physical and emotional effects of trauma, SOMETHING WILD stars Carroll Baker, in a layered performance, as a college student who attempts suicide after a brutal sexual assault but is stopped by a mechanic (Ralph Meeker)—whose kindness, however, soon takes an unsettling turn. Startlingly modern in its frankness and psychological realism, the film represents one of the purest on-screen expressions of the sensibility of the intimate community of artists around New York's Actors Studio, which transformed American cinema in the mid-twentieth century. With astonishing location and claustrophobic interior photography by Eugene Schüfftan, an opening-title sequence by the inimitable Saul Bass, and a rhythmic score by Aaron Copland, Jack Garfein's film is a masterwork of independent cinema.

Criterion has a collection, "Method Acting" of which this film is included.  (Also On the Waterfront, which I've seen numerous times, but might watch again).

Other films in the collection I've seen recently:

Humoresque
A Place in the Sun
Bus Stop
12 Angry Men
The Goddess
The Misfits

[71 dB]

Continuing my Mission Impossible journey. I watched Ghost Protocol on TV. This one I have seen before, at least the latter half of it. Not a movie I need in my Blu-ray collection, but watchable and better than the second and third MI movies. For us Finns the interesting thing with this movie is it is the Hollywood debut of Finnish actor Samuli Edelmann playing Wistrom.

[Karl Henning]

Going to try and rewatch Enemy of the State and Live Free Die Hard, but I'm finding more and more trust my nervous system simply desires peace, so I do not think these movies will fare well.

I hear you. I enjoy them both, and they're quite a ride. I  mean, they're not Aliens....

[71 dB]

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972) TV

Only now was I brave enough to watch this from start to finish. This movie feels like the 2001 Space Odyssey of Soviet Union. I like how the Solaris space station interior looks. The library is cozy thanks to wood and dark green walls plus the candles are extra cool on a space station! Nice contrast to the otherwise clinic feel. The dark red colour of the main corridor works very well. The somewhat matte metal doors look brutal and industrial, but there are mirror-reflecting metallic devises on the wall too. The living spaces are very white. Interior design is important for me, especially in this kind of movie with a lot of interesting opportunities for creativity. Camerawork is good. Acting wasn't that great and the dubbing of the dialog was sloppy and distracting (I also struggle with Italian movies for this reason). Snaut felt like a hobo rather than a scientist working on a space station. I read Lem and other sci-fi when I was a teenager and I must have read Solaris too, but I don't remember anything. Some of the thematic content in the movie is hard to follow (due to bad acting the motivations of the characters where unclear) and some scenes feel clumsy, but there are very good scenes too. I love how Bach's music is used in this movie.

[AnotherSpin]

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972) TV

Only now was I brave enough to watch this from start to finish. This movie feels like the 2001 Space Odyssey of Soviet Union. I like how the Solaris space station interior looks. The library is cozy thanks to wood and dark green walls plus the candles are extra cool on a space station! Nice contrast to the otherwise clinic feel. The dark red colour of the main corridor works very well. The somewhat matte metal doors look brutal and industrial, but there are mirror-reflecting metallic devises on the wall too. The living spaces are very white. Interior design is important for me, especially in this kind of movie with a lot of interesting opportunities for creativity. Camerawork is good. Acting wasn't that great and the dubbing of the dialog was sloppy and distracting (I also struggle with Italian movies for this reason). Snaut felt like a hobo rather than a scientist working on a space station. I read Lem and other sci-fi when I was a teenager and I must have read Solaris too, but I don't remember anything. Some of the thematic content in the movie is hard to follow (due to bad acting the motivations of the characters where unclear) and some scenes feel clumsy, but there are very good scenes too. I love how Bach's music is used in this movie.

I saw Solaris a long time ago. And I read the book, and I don't remember anything either. I think Lem has more interesting works. As for the film, I only remember that it was terribly sluggish. Like the episode where there is a cut shot in Japan in which an unknown car goes to an unknown place for quite a long, then water flows and flows in a stream, etc. Unshaven cosmonaut is silent for a long time, then says something, but what exactly few viewers are ready to grasp, because everyone is long asleep. In the USSR such a film was very unusual because of the complete absence of class struggle and propaganda, but now it is impossible to watch, it is merely a pretentious drudgery typical for many Tarkovsky films. Try his Stalker, for even more nonsense.

[relm1]

There must be a Spielberg marathon on tv this weekend because on Friday I saw Jaws and yesterday, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Jones.  Both films I haven't seen in many years.  It's really crazy how very good these movies are.  Not just extremely entertaining, but very good characters, so much fun, expertly crafted. 

Temple of Dooms has a fantastic score too! Just check out this sequence how utterly epic and spot on the music is with each character having their theme when on screen but always fully musically integrated.   

The acting is very over the top, like vaudeville 1930's "why I ough'ta smack you" style.  The first third is very funny and the second third is very dark, the final third full of thrills and chases and narrow escapes!  Some of my favorite moments include one of the great wall collapse sequences. 

John Williams is a master of "walls converging" scoring as he did in Star Wars trash compactor sequence as well.  Overall, a real thrill ride, very, very entertaining and I've enjoyed revising these films.  Now I'm wanting to rewatch Close Encounters which is a bit more enigmatic to me as I don't know I fully understand what the movie is actually about, but it has what I would argue is John Williams finest single score and probably one of the greatest scores in expressive and dramatic range by any composer period.

[VonStupp]

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Bandares

My wife wanted to see Harrison Ford one more (last?) time in the theatre, so we went yesterday. $5 tickets at AMC were the cheapest I can remember in a long time.
VS

[SonicMan46]

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Bandares

My wife wanted to see Harrison Ford one more (last?) time in the theatre, so we went yesterday. $5 tickets at AMC were the cheapest I can remember in a long time.
VS

Well, we'll probably wait until the film streams on Disney+ (have no idea when) - will look fine on my 50" 4K but not like the BIG SCREEN!  Did you enjoy?  Dave

[Karl Henning]

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Bandares

My wife wanted to see Harrison Ford one more (last?) time in the theatre, so we went yesterday. $5 tickets at AMC were the cheapest I can remember in a long time.
VS

Good deal!

[71 dB]

I saw Solaris a long time ago. And I read the book, and I don't remember anything either. I think Lem has more interesting works. As for the film, I only remember that it was terribly sluggish. Like the episode where there is a cut shot in Japan in which an unknown car goes to an unknown place for quite a long, then water flows and flows in a stream, etc. Unshaven cosmonaut is silent for a long time, then says something, but what exactly few viewers are ready to grasp, because everyone is long asleep. In the USSR such a film was very unusual because of the complete absence of class struggle and propaganda, but now it is impossible to watch, it is merely a pretentious drudgery typical for many Tarkovsky films. Try his Stalker, for even more nonsense.

Well I tried Stalker long ago and it is still the most boring movie ever for me and the reason why it took me this long to collect the courage to try Solaris. I have to say, for me Solaris is a superior film to Stalker... ...but I agree, the Japanese shots confused me a lot.

[AnotherSpin]

Well I tried Stalker long ago and it is still the most boring movie ever for me and the reason why it took me this long to collect the courage to try Solaris. I have to say, for me Solaris is a superior film to Stalker... ...but I agree, the Japanese shots confused me a lot.

I was a University student at the time Stalker came out. We had heard about the film, but we didn't really expect it to appear in regular cinemas. One day I was riding the trolleybus to a lectures and saw a small board with advertisement for Stalker, which from that day on was to be released in one of the city's non-mainstream cinemas. Naturally, I didn't go to the lecture, but went to the cinema for the very first show nine in the morning. There was quite a long tickets queue before the beginning, at least 50 or 60 people, but I still managed to get one of the last tickets. Looking ahead, the first show was the last one. The film was withdrawn from demonstration on the very first day. And it was only years later that it reappeared again, without much hype.

As for the film itself, I'll just say that I didn't understand a thing. There was no desire to watch it again and find out what the maestro was trying to say. As I have already said, in the USSR Tarkovsky's films were surrounded by a certain kind of aura, but it doesn't work anymore.

[71 dB]

There must be a Spielberg marathon on tv this weekend because on Friday I saw Jaws and yesterday, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Jones.  Both films I haven't seen in many years.  It's really crazy how very good these movies are.  Not just extremely entertaining, but very good characters, so much fun, expertly crafted. 

Temple of Dooms has a fantastic score too! Just check out this sequence how utterly epic and spot on the music is with each character having their theme when on screen but always fully musically integrated.   

The acting is very over the top, like vaudeville 1930's "why I ough'ta smack you" style.  The first third is very funny and the second third is very dark, the final third full of thrills and chases and narrow escapes!  Some of my favorite moments include one of the great wall collapse sequences. 

John Williams is a master of "walls converging" scoring as he did in Star Wars trash compactor sequence as well.  Overall, a real thrill ride, very, very entertaining and I've enjoyed revising these films.  Now I'm wanting to rewatch Close Encounters which is a bit more enigmatic to me as I don't know I fully understand what the movie is actually about, but it has what I would argue is John Williams finest single score and probably one of the greatest scores in expressive and dramatic range by any composer period.

Temple of Doom is actually my favourite Indy movie. For me it is the greatest adventure movie of all times. I love the way it goes over the top in a self-ironic way. The movie has it all: Humour, horror, action, exotic locations, animals from insects to elephants, funny side-kicks (both Short Round and Willie Scott are imo funny), great score as you said and even a meaningful story about doing the right thing (helping the people of the village by freeing the children and returning the sacred stone). Spielberg's directing is of course top notch. Just look at the awesome camera movements in the opening dance scene with all of the sparkle! Spectacular stuff, but that's what we can expect for mr. Spielberg.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an epic movie about people discovering their obsession/purpose in life and the encounter of not only aliens and humans, but also "likeminded people."

[VonStupp]

Good deal!

Well, we'll probably wait until the film streams on Disney+ (have no idea when) - will look fine on my 50" 4K but not like the BIG SCREEN!  Did you enjoy?  Dave

Well enough, Dave. I appreciate the old-timey settings and torch-light lighting.

I don't go to the theater often, so not spending an arm and a leg makes me think better of the situation. I probably wouldn't have gone at all and waited for it to stream too, until my better half expressed interest yesterday.
VS

[DavidW]

I don't go to the theater often, so not spending an arm and a leg makes me think better of the situation. I probably wouldn't have gone at all and waited for it to stream too, until my better half expressed interest yesterday.
VS

My experience is strongly dictated by ticket price, good service, a handful of trailers vs 30 minutes of commercials and trailers.  I discovered that I would rather drive farther for a theater like that then tolerate the multiplex.

But I still rarely go because it seems like every movie these days has to be 3 hours long!!

[SonicMan46]

Yea - what ever happened to 90 min movies! 

Last few nights, two quite different films:

The Stranger (1946) - short synopsis and cast below; Welles as a sinister ex-Nazi trying to hide under an assumed name but Edward G. is on his trail; ratings: 97%, Rotten Tomatoes; 3*/4*, Leonard Maltin; 3+*/4*, VideoHound - I enjoyed, wife less so - a good Welles movie.

The Rookie (2002) - a Disney 'feel good' movie for the family which Susan preferred to the one above! Brief summary and cast below - Quaid as usual quite 'likable' in this role about a high school chemistry teacher and baseball coach trying in his mid-30s to return to professional baseball - based on a true story of Jim Morris.  Dave

The Stranger is a 1946 American thriller film noir directed and co-written by Orson Welles, starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Orson Welles. Welles's third completed feature film as director and his first film noir, it centers on a war crimes investigator tracking a high-ranking Nazi fugitive to a Connecticut town. It is the first Hollywood film to present documentary footage of the Holocaust. (Source)

The Rookie is a 2002 American sports drama film directed by John Lee Hancock and produced by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the true story of Jim Morris who debuted in Major League Baseball at age 35. The film stars Dennis Quaid as Morris, alongside Rachel Griffiths, Jay Hernandez, Angus T. Jones, and Brian Cox. (Source)