What was the last movie you saw?

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN - My initial reaction: I liked the idea of the story and several moments, but the CGI was over the top and it got chaotic towards the end. Watching it again after at least 10 years, I have the same reaction. The performances are good--and unlike superhero-type films that came after it, the story is taken seriously but still has humor--but humor only comes through character behavior, there's nothing self-aware and it doesn't get too grim. It would have benefited from an extra half hour and a slower pace. I think the Phantom and Moriarty should have been two separate individuals. I have trouble seeing why Tom Sawyer should be in the story, though I did not find him annoying except for that awful car scene in Venice.
This is the type of story that needed more practical FX.
I wish the Invisible Man was the Griffin character or at least left unnamed, but I didn't mind the actor's performance. Makes sense he would be a red herring. I especially liked Nemo and Jekyll Hyde--the latter was a more intense Banner-Hulk than what the Marvel movies had.
I read the comic years after the movie, I was not fond of it. I wish Fu Manchu was added, but I prefer the movie's scheme to weaponize their powers since it adds some cool bits like a second invisible man and the Hyde clone--though the CGI was cartoony.
 
Secrets of a Windmill Girl (1966)

Starts with a car wreck. This leads to a long flashback, as the best friend of the woman killed in the crash relates her sad story. They were chums as little girls, both wound up dancing at the famous Windmill Theater. The plot stops for a long time as we get actual scenes from the theater. Scantily clad dancers, comedians. The doomed woman winds up working at strip clubs, although, from what we see, these actually involve the exposure of less flesh than her former job. The end. Pretty pointless attempt at a very mild exploitation film.
 
Waiting for the Barbarians

A serious movie with little humour to offer relief from the impending doom that is about to engulf the characters. It has a great cast lead by the ever excellent Mark Rylance, a terrifying Jonny Depp and a disturbed Robert Pattinson. However the actor who plays The Girl, Gana Bayarsaikhan absolutely steals the show.
 
I watched Project Power last night. o really enjoyed it. The girl Was very good. Disappointed with the ending as it was a bit twee And would’ve preferred for “The Major” to have died. Also, his superpower came a cross as being a bit silly to me.

I also watched a Netflix film called Spectral. It started out okay, but at the halfway point when the scientist worked out what the ghostly things were, it kind of lost the plot a little and felt more like an episode of Macguyver or the A Team, so the ending was very disappointing.
 
Raiders of the Lost Ark - still absolutely brilliant. 9/10

The Last Crusade - fun, but somehow a paler version of Raiders. One of the few films where I think Sean Connery is any good, and a vast improvement after the disaster of Temple of Doom. 6.5/10
 
CHERRY 2000 (1987) A rather poor robot/android /sex slave joke of a film. The credits sequence shows a presumably nude woman gyrating behind what appears to be blinds, & that is as far as the nudity goes. So this guy, who is a loser with woman has a Cherry 2000 sex robot, which short circuits in the bubble bath. He wants a replacement, in which to upload the personality files from his broken one. Too bad this is a dystopian future, where the only Cherry robots are in the abandoned dept. store in the forbidden lands. What is more, the guy who fancies himself ruler of such forbidden land, has a strong dislike of Trackers, one of whom the poor guy must hire, in hopes of finding a new robot.

The action was over the top, too dumb, even way back then.


Night Editor (1946) NOIR ALLEY, I think it was the 1st one this Sept. Much of the story is told by a guy sitting at a table playing poker with his friends. Muller noted that that this was a cheap way of including 'scenes' that would have been budget busters in B-grade films.

So, this cop, married with a son, tells his wife that he is working the late shift, when he is really out with his girlfriend. :devilish: Wouldn't you know it, as they are parked at the beach surrounded by greenery, another car arrives, but it is in front, and its occupants do not notice the other car. The driver, a man kills the woman in his car using a tire iron. The cop instinctively turns on headlights upon hearing the woman scream. The man flees; the cop's girlfriend persuades him not to pursue the killer and not to report the incident, assuring him that soon enough, the murder will be discovered, and their lives will be ruined if otherwise. But, there are complications, such as the tire tracks from the cop's car that are found the next day.


Bananas (?) Woody Allen goes to a banana republic in order to get the girl who jilted him, and ends up in a revolution. I am not a fan of WA, but this was very funny.


Song of Love (1947) the story of Clara Schumann (Katharine Hepburn), her marriage to Robert Schumann (Paul Henreid, gets the girl in Casablanca) and the involvement of J. Brahms (Robert Walker). So, RS is a young composer who loves his teacher's daughter, but teacher Professor Wieck (Leo G. Carroll) thinks he is not good enough for her.
Franz Liszt (Henry Daniell, I liked him better in the Body Snatcher) intervenes, and assures the Prof. that Schumann has a bright future.

Most of the film centers on the home life, in a rapidly growing family, and RS' stress about composing music etc., and being able to support his family without Clara occasionally doing piano recitals. He suffered an unidentified brain ailment. It was difficult for me to figure out that something was wrong because of the ringing in my own ears, but it was depicted as a high pitched sound.

Though I listen to classical music regularly, I know very little about the composers, so I found this interesting.
 
Dreary Little Eurospy Films Featuring Agents With Three Letter And/Or Digit Code Names Triple Feature:

Agent 3S3: Passport to Hell (1965)

Starts with a woman running through the streets in terror. A guy shows up in a car, and she thinks he can help her, but he shoots her dead and takes some microfilm from her. This sets up our bad guys, an independent espionage organization that is attacking both sides in the Cold War. Our hero is assigned to track down the guy they think is the head of the group, an ex-agent known as Mister A. He does this by meeting with the man's daughter, hoping to find out where the guy is. Meanwhile, Mister A's minions convince the daughter to give our hero (and herself) some stuff in their drinks that will temporarily knock them out, but it's really poison. Our hero figures this out by using a tiny piece of paper that changes color, like litmus paper, when it's placed over -- not even in -- the drink. This all leads to a series of chases and fights from snowy Vienna to sunny Beirut. It's obvious from the start that Mister A is a red herring, and his supposed second-in-command is the real bad guy. The main Bad Girl has a gold compact that shoots poison darts, but otherwise there are few spy gadgets.

Secret Agent 777 -- Invitation to Kill (1966)

Our hero has been let go by his spy bosses for medical reasons. He knows something about some pieces of paper that add up to a secret formula, so goes around chasing after them, leading to the usual fights with the bad guys and such. There's not much to say about this one. The plot is both simple and difficult to follow, requiring a lot of voice-over narration from the hero.

Agent 003: Operation Atlantis (1965)

Our hero gets hired by some folks to investigate a source of uranium in North Africa. Right away, we learn that this is supposedly the lost city of the survivors of Atlantis. Typical spy stuff follows for three-quarters of an hour or so before we finally get to the city. It's got a force field around it, which requires use of a spacesuit to cross. The movie suddenly turns into a sword-and-sorcery adventure, with bizarre sets and costumes. It turns out that this place is a fake, the result of the Chinese finding a meteorite with some fictional element that allows for all the science fiction gadgets we see in the place. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later we go back to normal spy stuff. The nutty parts of the plot make it sound a lot more interesting than it is.
 
Dreary Little Eurospy Films Featuring Agents With Three Letter And/Or Digit Code Names Triple Feature:

Agent 3S3: Passport to Hell (1965)



Secret Agent 777 -- Invitation to Kill (1966)



Agent 003: Operation Atlantis (1965)
I have seen two of these. I found it interesting that while Hollywood avoided James Bond clones except for a couple of comedy series (Flint, Matt Helm) Europe did untold numbers of them. They also did a few women spy films like Special Mission, Lady Chaplain. The sequel to Agent 3S3 aka the Italian James Bond has him in Turkey and at one point these thugs try to encase him in cement and he turns the tables and their heads get cemented instead and he says to his partner: "Quick drying. They have pretty good cement in Turkey." I enjoy the dubbing in these films.
 
An evening of Netflix movies last night.

Spencer. I’m not a fan of Mark Wahlberg, but this film was pretty good.

Extinction, which I enjoy.

Shaft (the newer one), which I’m rather embarrassed to say that I enjoyed quite a bit.
 
An evening of Netflix movies last night.

Spencer. I’m not a fan of Mark Wahlberg, but this film was pretty good.

Extinction, which I enjoy.

Shaft (the newer one), which I’m rather embarrassed to say that I enjoyed quite a bit.
 
Knives Out. An old fashioned whodunit; passably entertaining, but nothing new, and with a decidedly distracting Tennessee accent (or some such) from Daniel Craig. 6/10.

Also, Man of Steel, which my son saw for the first time. And it was as bad as I remembered. Starts as an over-rushed, over-complicated 6/10 sci-fi film and ends up a 2/10 disaster orgy of mindless, incoherent action scenes. Only a notch better than Superman IV, The Quest for Peace, but that's not saying much. 4/10 overall.
 
The best to least-best of my recent watches:

Pain and Glory (2019)
An excellent drama (perhaps part-biographical about its director, Pedro Almodóvar) about an ageing and formerly-successful film director who no longer writes. Antonio Banderas is excellent as the lead, and I loved the cinematography. Easily the best film I've seen recently.

The Concert (2009)
A fun heartwarming comedy drama about a group of musicians who plan to pose as the Bolshoi Orchestra for a prestigious concert in Paris.

A Simple Plan (1998)
A slow-burning but gripping thriller about two brothers who find a stash of cash in a crashed plane.

Live Flesh (1997)
A (not your typical) revenge thriller about a guy wrongly imprisoned for shooting a police officer - the police officer now married to the woman the imprisoned guy is still in love with. Interesting enough.

Tenet (2020)
My first cinema trip since a Parasite/Birds of Brey double-header back in March!

Hmmm. The dialogue is awful in Tenet - often exposition or dialogue I couldn't make out due to the bad sound mix. Would I have understood the film more if I heard that dialogue? John David Washington was very good, and along with some good action scenes (including the weirdest fight I've seen), did enough to make the film watchable. I think Nolan stopped making great films a long time ago, Inception being the exception that came close. Like Tarantino and his indulgences, Nolan maybe needs someone else to help hold back some of the Nolan-isms. Maybe I could've suspended my disbelief more if it wasn't for the weird expositions, though despite the lead actor being excellent, there didn't seem like much to care about or for in Tenet.

All About My Mother (1999)
A good drama about a mother who seeks her son's father (who he never knew about).

In the Fade (2017)
Decent courtroom drama that at some point becomes a revenge thriller.

Jojo Rabbit (2019)
A comedy with a couple of laugh out loud moments I couldn't really engage with.

The Mourning Forest (2007)
A retirement home worker takes a resident on a road trip that goes wrong. Cue lots of crying and nothing much other than walking through a forest (the clue was in the title).

Empire Records (1995)
A day in the life of some young record store employees. Started off well, but soon became boring - perhaps because there were too many characters to develop and given they were all slackers, difficult to get behind.
 
The Island Monster (1954)

Dreary little Italian crime drama, notable mostly for wasting the talents of Boris Karloff. Karloff has the title role as a seemingly benign fellow who runs a hospital for sick children on an island near Naples. He really runs a narcotics smuggling ring. Our nominal hero is sent to investigate the island, leaving wife and young daughter behind. He chats up the local glamorous nightclub singer (who is never heard singing) in an attempt to get information. Wife and kid show up to visit him. Karloff orders his hoods to kidnap the kid in order to get the investigation called off. The kid's heroic dog tracks her down to Karloff's hideout, a nifty sea cave. Our hero comes back, pretending to be a member of another criminal gang. The nightclub singer, a member of the narcotics ring, recognizes him, but agrees to help him because her own child died of pneumonia after the kid's father left, leaving her all alone and sinking into alcohol and drugs. That makes it sound more exciting than it is. Mostly a lot of talk, and poorly dubbed talk at that. They even have somebody dub Karloff, in a poor imitation of his famous voice.
 
Hallucination Generation (1966)

Starts with a guy running through the streets, finally collapsing to the ground. His voice-over narration sends us into a flashback. He went to the island of Ibiza, hung out with some "beatniks" (that's what everybody says in this film, despite the year it was made), met a German woman, got married. His mother cuts off his allowance, so the wife is the breadwinner, since the guy is a failed writer. The guy eventually goes back to the "beatniks," the leader gives him an "LSD cocktail," we finally get our brief hallucinations scenes, in color. (The rest of the film is in washed-out black and white.) Then the movie turns into a heist-gone-wrong film, as our antihero robs some guy, winds up killing him, and has a few more brief hallucinations. It's a pretty dull affair.
 
The Sphinx (1933)

Poverty Row murder mystery. We first see Lionel Atwill walk out of a stockbroker's office at night and talk to a janitor. The janitor finds the stockbroker's body. Open and shut case, right? Except for the fact that there is no doubt at all that Atwill is a deaf-mute, and could not have spoken to the janitor. He gets put on trial, and the case is thrown out of court because of this little problem. It's up to a couple of the usual wisecracking reporters, one of them a woman who admires the supposedly philanthropic Atwill, to crack the case. You may figure out the gimmick to this how-dun-it, but it's worth a look for Atwill's performance.
 
The Fatal Flying Guillotines (1977)

Screw a detailed plotline synopsis; it involves a guy who decapitates people with a hat. This is Hong Kong chop-sockey fun at its finest. Enjoy the over the top sound effects as well.
I saw this, or something like it. The boss has his best men trained to use the title weapon, & then, becomes paranoid. He accuses each one in turn of treason & sends the others out to kill them.

I also saw a documentary about the weapon, or perhaps, its impossibility. Cannot recall the channel, though.


Lone Wolf and Cub, Baby Cart in the land of demons (1973). More swords and blood spraying from wounds.
 
The Greenwich Village Story (1963; color footage added 19??)

Soap opera set among the bohemians and beatniks of New York City. The version I saw begins and ends with color footage of the Village, obviously added some years later to the real movie, which is in black and white. Throughout the film we get documentary-style scenes of the Village, from outdoor activities in the park to music and poetry in the cafes and coffeehouses.

After the title sequence, which features some folks playing traditional country music in the park, we begin with a pretty young woman in a leotard dancing on a rooftop, accompanied by a pot of flowers. At this point, I can't help but think of one of the many old cartoons by Jules Feiffer, featuring such a dancer.

original-jules-feiffer-cartoon-print_1_fbc68bbc63d9f54803f368b066fcd54f.jpg


A reminder of the real world outside comes when a bunch of guys ogling her from a nearby building call out mildly suggestive remarks.

Anyway, the dancer lives with a writer, who is excited by the possibility of selling his novel. (He's not exactly an amateur; we're told that he won the O. Henry award for a short story four years ago.) After some time spent at pot parties and such, we start to get into the plot. The writer's previous girlfriend, a little older than he is and a lot richer, shows up, with a new boyfriend, an advertising copywriter, in tow, although it's clear she's really interested in getting back with the writer.

Meanwhile, a painter keeps trying to start his own romance with the dancer, but she's completely loyal to the writer. She even gets an offer to join the traveling company of a musical, which would be a huge boost to her career, but stays with the writer.

Adding to her problems is the fact that she pregnant, but doesn't tell the writer. The writer promises to marry her if he can sell his novel, but it doesn't work out. The dancer sells the only valuable thing she owns, her mother's brooch, for an illegal abortion. Don't expect a happy ending.

Although cheaply made and melodramatic, it's a fascinating time capsule.
 

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