If you can track it down, Perfume: Story of a Murderer (2006) has one helluva social distancing sequence. An all-timer of self-quarantines. _________________ Under New Management
Controversial-ish (?) opinion: Trey Parker and Matt Stone have made three of the best musicals of the past 25 years and should let South Park retire to focus on more stage and screen musicals. _________________ Under New Management
"Where to Find Roger Ebert's Great Movies Streaming": Link
Not surprisingly the Criterion Channel has a lot of what Ebert included in his book series The Great Movies and on his website - Ebert Great Movies before his passing. Worth checking out the website and the Criterion Channel while cooped up inside. _________________ Under New Management
Long-time LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan is semi-retiring:
Quote:
Kenneth Turan
@KennethTuran
I have some big news. After close to 30 years in the most exciting and rewarding of jobs, I am stepping away from being a daily film critic for the Los Angeles Times. (more)
I will keep writing about film but at a different pace. To quote Ecclesiastes, 'To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.' Looking forward to what's to come.
The Old Dark House (1932) - directed by James Whale for Universal inbetween horror masterpieces Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, this long-lost-then-found gem about strangers fleeing a storm to take shelter at a remote, sinister looking home populated by a weird family (the Femms) with dark secrets clearly has had a lasting impression on horror. Whale's haunted house tale more than holds up with some of the best horror movies it's indirectly inspired over the decades and does so through a fun mix of horny camp humor and legitimate creepiness. A wonderful, balanced enemble performance from everyone involved with Boris Karloff as the mute, scarred younger Femm sibling who gets horny and angry when he drinks (same), Ernist Thesiger coded as a "lifelong bachelor" chewing scenery with every prissy retort, and Charles Laughton as a late arriving unexpected guest with a tale of woe are the standouts. It's breezy, fast, fun, and eerie all while introducing and juggling so many characters under one roof. Definitely check it out - it leaves Criterion Channel on 3/31 and is also on Shudder.
Fast & the Furious: Hobbes & Shaw - well, I don't know what I expected.
All the days are running together.
Coincoin and the Extra-humans - Dumont's follow-up to 2014's Li'l Quinquin, the director brings back the same cast in the sleepy, parochial French seaside village of the first miniseries and turns the absurdity level up to 11 with an Invasion of the Body Snatchers homage. This series is probably for all of fifteen people, but Dumont leans into the deadpan absurdity, Jerry Lewis mugging, and Jack*ss style pratfalls that can be a bit too much here and there, but is more often than not downright hilarious. Bernard Pruvost and Philip Jore reprise their roles as the bumbling local cops as a latter day Laurel and Hardy via Dude, Where's My Car?
Lady in the Dark (1944) - Ginger Rogers gives an off-kilter performance in this more odd than good, hard to find musical about a career woman dealing with a psychological block due to her repressed desires to be more womanly. It's both progressive in being an early progenitor of the woman's career v. romance genre and regressive in its psychiatric solutions. There are no great song and dance numbers, which are confined exclusively to three increasingly odd dream sequences, but they are to be seen to be believed.
The Swimmer (1968) - Burt Lancaster gives one of his best performances as Ned, a coldly charming, handsome gladhander whose past and true personality are gradually revealed as he swims his way from neighbor's pool to neighbor's pool back to his home "like a river." The on the nose metaphors about aging and fragile masculinity work so well because of Lancaster's brilliant work and the sheer strangeness of the whole enterprise attempting to update the Odysseus myth via a satire of bland patrician yuppie-dom. An underrated '60s gem, catch it before it leaves Criterion Channel on 3/31 - a good takedown of the male ego and the suburban upper crust in one.
I Walk Alone (1947) - solid noir starring young Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in which Lancaster gets out of prison after 14 years for taking a murder rap for Douglas' character while running booze and wants his cut of Douglas' successful night club he's built up during the intervening years. Lizabeth Scott does solid work as the lounge singer love interest caught in the middle (what a voice!), but this is all about seeing Lancaster and Douglas mugging and sparring in this homosocial love triangle turned sour.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) - the earliest feature length animated film still extant, this retelling of a handful of tales from the Arabian Nights using silhouette animation is more than just a historical curio, it's a unique, lovely little film that feels both epic and fragile. Leaving Criterion on 3/31.
The Train (1964) - Jesus, Frankenheimer could do no wrong in the '60s. What a stone cold classic starring Lancaster as a railwayman who as a member of the French resistance (I know, just go with it) is tasked with stopping a Nazi officer from leaving the country with a treasure trove of rare French paintings on a railway train before the Allies retake Paris. Paul Scofield plays the thieving German Colonel to dastardly, cold perfection and the final showdown between he and Lancaster is epic. Holy (bleep), they blow up a train depot in this! There are multiple actual train crashes! The b&w cinematography is gorgeous and there are so many gorgeous, tense, well-shot suspense and action set pieces I can't get to all of them in this blurb. Hands down one of the best action movies of all time.
Also leaving Criterion Channel on 3/31 _________________ Under New Management
Red River (1948) - not my favorite great western, but it remains a helluva lot of fun, jerk John Wayne is palatable John Wayne for me, and Hawks directs the crap out of the open air cattle driving scenes. And even though it's no doubt unintentional, white American settlers come off as the thieving bastards they were.
Army of Shadows (1969) - I can't think of another movie that feels like this. A masterpiece of tone, color, pacing, and performance. _________________ Under New Management
If you're looking for an uplifting flick about America and Americans, check out the slice of life documentary In Transit (2015), the final film from the late, great filmmaker Albert Maysles through 3/31 at the film's website: http://www.intransitfilm.com/watch .
It's currently unavailable anywhere else and has been made free through the end of the month. A lovely, uplifting piece of art that captures the stories of average Americans traveling on the Empire Builder train from Seattle to Chicago. _________________ Under New Management
Red River (1948) - not my favorite great western, but it remains a helluva lot of fun, jerk John Wayne is palatable John Wayne for me, and Hawks directs the crap out of the open air cattle driving scenes. And even though it's no doubt unintentional, white American settlers come off as the thieving bastards they were.
Army of Shadows (1969) - I can't think of another movie that feels like this. A masterpiece of tone, color, pacing, and performance.
Portrait of Jason (1967) - one of the greatest movies of all time. _________________ Under New Management
Red River (1948) - not my favorite great western, but it remains a helluva lot of fun, jerk John Wayne is palatable John Wayne for me, and Hawks directs the crap out of the open air cattle driving scenes. And even though it's no doubt unintentional, white American settlers come off as the thieving bastards they were.
Army of Shadows (1969) - I can't think of another movie that feels like this. A masterpiece of tone, color, pacing, and performance.
Portrait of Jason (1967) - one of the greatest movies of all time.
Day 176:
Seven Days in May - another in a string of '60s Frankheimer successes with Burt Lancaster, here a charismatic general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is secretly plotting a coup against the sitting POTUS whom he sees as too soft on the USSR. Of course his plot is foiled by Kirk Douglas and a group of gifted character actors in an effective espionage thriller that's 99% discussions in rooms. Rod Serling's script can be overcooked at times - Aaron Sorkin's probably a big fan - but overall it's a fun, star-studded Hollywood message picture that's better than many of its subsequent imitators.
The Toxic Avenger - ah, toxic waste infested Tromaville. What came first? The toxic sludge or all the (bleep), thieves, and murderers who live there? A true chicken or egg problem for trashy 1980s cinema. The moral of this early superhero comedy mashup is that hot, fit people are irredeemable monsters unless they're blind, which...true? Gratuitous 1980s T&A, a handful of offensive slurs and caricatures, so many bad puns, nerds being deformed by toxic waste, old ladies getting beaten up, some social satire, and a lot of fun gross out prosthetics work - it has its audience.
Dolls - watched it after the passing of Stuart Gordon, this is a fun, dumb 80s horror film that seems to be a direct homage to The Old Dark House but with dolls that are people who have been transformed into such by the haunted house's creepy old couple played by Guy Rolfe and Hilary Mason as two of the movie's very few standouts. There are shrill caricatures of two British punk rock girls, the young heroine named Judy Bower played by a terrible child actress, and the most painfully over-the-top terrible parents I may have ever seen in a movie - just awful performances. But long-time everyman schlub character actor Stephen Lee steals the movie as the "final girl" who's sense of childlike wonder helps him pass the dollmaker's ridiculous test, survive the night, and get away with the little girl who's told her evil father and stepmother have abandoned her. Fun stuff if not a good movie.
In the Mouth of Madness - a Carpenter blind spot for me, this is a damn good mashup of Stephen King psychological horror with Lovecraftian eldritch monsters from beyond. Sam Neill gets to be a skeptic on the tail of a Stephen King stand-in, Sutter Caine, whose horror novels seem to be transforming the real world and sparking a spreading global homocidal mania. The silly plot is inverted several times and doesn't matter much, but instead watch for the sheer fun of Carpenter's visuals (and his film score), the throwback slimy, knobby creature puppetry as Jurassic Park ushers in the era of CGI monsters, and Sam Neill - with a lovely awful American accent - enjoying the heck out of himself in almost a parodic homage to Possession (1981). Julie Carmen is also a standout. And if you're not convinced, just wait for that great ending. _________________ Under New Management
Were there any good to great American directors who emerged in the 2000s? So many great talents emerged in the 1970s thru the 1990s in American cinema decade by decade from New Hollywood through Spike Lee, Jarmusch and the Coens to PTA and Tarantino, etc., and I see a slew of interesting young directors who really came to prominence in the 2010s like Gerwig and Jenkins, but did any director who emerged in the 2000s manage to stick?
Is it basically just Lonergan, Coppola, and Jonze? Reitman came to prominence in the last decade, of course, but that's a mediocre forerunner for the 2000s. Apatow? Really? I guess the Safdies with Daddy Longlegs in 2008?
My research has yielded little. Please add any and all thoughts. _________________ Under New Management
Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 12111 Location: Bay Area
Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 4:05 pm Post subject:
Does Jonze count? BJM is 1999 and Her is 2013. Adaptation is 02 but BJM is the better movie, i.e., he already emerged in 99.
And I think Chris Nolan half-counts. Following is his debut but we all remember Memento, his first US release. And then Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. Not a bad decade.
Were there any good to great American directors who emerged in the 2000s? So many great talents emerged in the 1970s thru the 1990s in American cinema decade by decade from New Hollywood through Spike Lee, Jarmusch and the Coens to PTA and Tarantino, etc., and I see a slew of interesting young directors who really came to prominence in the 2010s like Gerwig and Jenkins, but did any director who emerged in the 2000s manage to stick?
Is it basically just Lonergan, Coppola, and Jonze? Reitman came to prominence in the last decade, of course, but that's a mediocre forerunner for the 2000s. Apatow? Really? I guess the Safdies with Daddy Longlegs in 2008?
My research has yielded little. Please add any and all thoughts.
Good question. Rian Johnson and James Gunn would be my choices, however, they both may have made smaller debuts that I'm not aware of during the 90s so I could be wrong. It does seem to be a decade bereft of new blood.
Does Jonze count? BJM is 1999 and Her is 2013. Adaptation is 02 but BJM is the better movie, i.e., he already emerged in 99.
And I think Chris Nolan half-counts. Following is his debut but we all remember Memento, his first US release. And then Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. Not a bad decade.
Ah, but Nolan is a Brit!
And, re: Aronofsky, he's right on the cusp like Jonze is - his debut feature Pi (quite good) was in 1998. Jonze had been making music videos for most of the '90s, but he, Aronofsky, and Sofia seem to be of a similar late Gen X filmmaker cohort. _________________ Under New Management
Were there any good to great American directors who emerged in the 2000s? So many great talents emerged in the 1970s thru the 1990s in American cinema decade by decade from New Hollywood through Spike Lee, Jarmusch and the Coens to PTA and Tarantino, etc., and I see a slew of interesting young directors who really came to prominence in the 2010s like Gerwig and Jenkins, but did any director who emerged in the 2000s manage to stick?
Is it basically just Lonergan, Coppola, and Jonze? Reitman came to prominence in the last decade, of course, but that's a mediocre forerunner for the 2000s. Apatow? Really? I guess the Safdies with Daddy Longlegs in 2008?
My research has yielded little. Please add any and all thoughts.
Good question. Rian Johnson and James Gunn would be my choices, however, they both may have made smaller debuts that I'm not aware of during the 90s so I could be wrong. It does seem to be a decade bereft of new blood.
Good call on both. Johnson was only working on short films in the late 90s while Gunn was a screenwriter with Troma going back to the 90s who got his directing start with Slither in 2006.
I guess the Safdies, Jenkins, and Chazelle are just on the cusp with debut films in 2008 and 2009. But it's definitely a weak decade for new American filmmakers. _________________ Under New Management
Man, Ben Affleck has had one of the most mediocre acting careers out of any of the 90s heartthrobs. I haven't seen The Way Back, but his single notable performance seems to be in Gone Girl and then...? Chasing Amy? _________________ Under New Management
Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 12111 Location: Bay Area
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:34 am Post subject:
Baron Von Humongous wrote:
Cutheon wrote:
Does Jonze count? BJM is 1999 and Her is 2013. Adaptation is 02 but BJM is the better movie, i.e., he already emerged in 99.
And I think Chris Nolan half-counts. Following is his debut but we all remember Memento, his first US release. And then Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. Not a bad decade.
Ah, but Nolan is a Brit!
And, re: Aronofsky, he's right on the cusp like Jonze is - his debut feature Pi (quite good) was in 1998. Jonze had been making music videos for most of the '90s, but he, Aronofsky, and Sofia seem to be of a similar late Gen X filmmaker cohort.
Half-counts! (FWIW, he split time growing up in UK/Illinois.)
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