I love Bronson, although I've never seen this film. The only thing I know about it, other than it starring an all-time cinema great, is that Roger Ebert hated it and gave it zero stars. )
10 To Midnight also has one GREAT ending. I think you'll like it. Another sleaze masterpiece that I place next to Sudden Impact. (although much less relevant)
Eastwood staple Geoffrey Lewis turns up as an ambulance chaser lawyer as well.
Market007 and some others, this isn't twitter! So what if you saw 12 Rounds... what did you think about it?
Smokin' Aces
This is about a Vegas showman who has infiltrated the last Vegas mafia leader and is about to spill the beans. A hit is taken out on him, strangely taken up by a number of assassins, and the FBI have to protect him, holing him up in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel accessed by many elevators.
I suppose Babs and Mickey hoped to avoid this kind of gaudy, stylistic shoot-em-up flick when they hired Marc Forster for QoS. Yet ironically, it has a few things Casino Royale might have benefitted from. The casino/gambling motif is well done (although a casino doesn't really feature in the movie) and looks stylish and cool, unlike in CR where the gambling scenes just seem shoehorned into the film. There's even a sharp shooter/sniper trained on the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel that makes you wish they had utilised the 'first kill' incident from the Casino Royale novel. Very impressive.
Hell, even QoS singer Alicia Keys is made decent use of, as part of a lesbian assassin duo that anticipates the plotline suggested for the next Bond on another thread.
That said, the film is very stylistic and the first 15 minutes lost me somewhat, leaving me to play catch-up. The last 10 minutes, with a dramatic revelation, also passed me by a bit. And the film is generally less funny than Stratham's Crank and less charming and intelligent that Tarantino's Kill Bill stuff. But there's some flashy fun to be had nonetheless.
I love Bronson, although I've never seen this film. The only thing I know about it, other than it starring an all-time cinema great, is that Roger Ebert hated it and gave it zero stars. )
10 To Midnight also has one GREAT ending. I think you'll like it. Another sleaze masterpiece that I place next to Sudden Impact. (although much less relevant)
Eastwood staple Geoffrey Lewis turns up as an ambulance chaser lawyer as well.
I hate the ending 'cause...
I think Leo is arrested
Though it's not surprsing, we are talking about Brosnon here. )
Yes I would agree it's in the vein of Sudden Impact, a film I think deserved an oscar nomination for direction alone.
Also the hell with Ebert. 10 to Midnight a fun film with a great cast.
One from the Forgetting Sarah Marshall/Knocked Up stable I think, with regular Paul Rudd cast against type as a mild-mannered fellow who realises, with his wedding coming up, that he doesn't have any mates to be his Best Man, and sets about remedying this.
One of those films that does have a sociological point and hits the spot, but aspects of it are cringe inducing. It gets to the nub of those buddy buddy relationships where you either not cool enough for the poker crowd, or you don't want to pal up with society's rejects. To be honest, I'm not sure the film really finds an answer as I'm not sure I'd want to hang out with his eventual 'find' - the big guy who played the loser in Forgetting..., here cast also against type as an expansive, sexually confident anti-social fellow who lets his dog dump on the sidewalk as some kind of gesture of self...
And in true American style it turns out in the end
that the guy isn't such a loser, and has some money stashed away in investments, yeah right. He can't really be actually penniless.
Still, some good laughs to be had, just not as good as Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin, I felt the Rudd lead was just a bit too nerdy in this to be too likeable.
First Paul Newman film I have seen and it was a hell of a good one. Newman plays a southern drunk, ex-football player going through the tormoil of guilt which causes a tumultuous relationship with his wife played by Liz Taylor. This is the first film I ever saw that started off depressing, particularly for me, and continuted to be so until the end. I highly reccomend this film.
More straight faced then Bond, I'll give you that. However, International seems to be just another spy film clingling on to trends set by Bourne and Bond. Not horrible but far from being great either.
Anywho, Last night I watched:
ROPE
A rarely mentioned Hitchcock gem. Based on a play which was inspired by the thrill kill commited by Leopold and Loeb in the 1920's, two young college men, Brandon and Phillip, kill another student at their apartment but not nessecarily for fun. They both subscribe to a philosphy their Professor Rupert Cadell (Jimmy Stewart) proposed to them, killing should be an art and intellectually superior people are entitled the right to kill whoever is inferior.
Not too long later the boys host a party in their apartment and stuff the body of the student in a trunk. Cadell is also invited this party because the boys want his help to defend this theory to other students and important persons in the casual atmosphere of polite conversation. In the classic "Hitchcockian" style of supense, Cadell carefully untangles the crime that eventually explodes into a tense confrontation. Any fan of Hitchcock would place ROPE right up with greats like NORTH BY NORTHWEST and PHYSCO.
By the way, I was very surprised to learn that Jimmy Stewart felt he was mis-cast and this was the only collaboration with Hitchcock he disliked. Of course the actor's point of view is not always the same of the viewer.
I loved Rope as well. It is not a long film, clocking in at less than 80 minutes, so the story is not very complex, and to be honest, I don't think it could have been drawn out longer. The most interesting feature of Rope, IMO, is that the entire film is shot in long takes of about ten minutes. Hitchcock obviously wanted to hide the cuts, and so at the end of each take moved the camera in onto somebody's back, and then moved away to hide the cut. This trick fooled me the first time, but later in the film it becomes painfully obvious. However, the film is very tense, exciting and ultimately great entertainment. I do indeed rate it up there with North by Northwest, Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo.
Still, some good laughs to be had, just not as good as Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin, I felt the Rudd lead was just a bit too nerdy in this to be too likeable.
I agree. I'm not a big fan of this film, mainly because I didn't find its brand of humour to be particularly funny but also because I din't like Paul Rudd's character all that much. Although to be fair, it was never likely to be as good as Knocked Up, and to a lesser extent, 40 Year Old Virgin. Those two latter films, in particular Knocked Up, were IMO among the best comedies of recent years.
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
i saw this the other day after a mate recommended it.
i have never ever laughed so hard in my life at a film. some people wouldn't, but for me, i just found it incredibly hilarious. cool phrases like "we've come on holiday by mistake" and (talking about drinking lighter fluid) "this is a far superior drink to meths, the w#!kers dont drink it cos they can't afford it" had me in stitches.
my wife on the other hand thought i'd lost the plot, withnail style, especially when the chicken went in the oven, sat atop a brick. lol
brilliantly funny, a bit emotional and excellently acted out, i'd say to anyone who hasn't seen it, you must.
Though it's not surprsing, we are talking about Brosnon here. )
Yes I would agree it's in the vein of Sudden Impact, a film I think deserved an oscar nomination for direction alone.
Also the hell with Ebert. 10 to Midnight a fun film with a great cast.
I completely agree that Sudden Impact deserved an Oscar nomination for direction. An absolute masterpiece, arguably the second best of the Dirty Harry films and one of my all-time favourite films, I think it's a crime that it wasn't more critically acknowledged, especially since IMO Clint should have also received an acting nomination; he should certainly ahve received an acting nomination for the first film.
As for Bronson, a legend; pure and simple. His most famous films, such as The Dirty Dozen, Once Upon a Time in the Westt and Death Wish, are of course classics, but I also love some of his lesser known films such as The Evil That Men Do.
Really? Well, all I can say is welcome aboard! {[] Paul Newman was an absolute star, an awesome actor and a great leading man; I hope you see (and enjoy) many more Newman films in the years to come.
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
I loved Rope as well. It is not a long film, clocking in at less than 80 minutes, so the story is not very complex, and to be honest, I don't think it could have been drawn out longer. The most interesting feature of Rope, IMO, is that the entire film is shot in long takes of about ten minutes. Hitchcock obviously wanted to hide the cuts, and so at the end of each take moved the camera in onto somebody's back, and then moved away to hide the cut. This trick fooled me the first time, but later in the film it becomes painfully obvious. However, the film is very tense, exciting and ultimately great entertainment. I do indeed rate it up there with North by Northwest, Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo.
Hitchcock said the hardest part of making this film was the changing of the background lighting from day to night. Some re-shoots had to be done to get it correct.
I completely agree that Sudden Impact deserved an Oscar nomination for direction. An absolute masterpiece, arguably the second best of the Dirty Harry films and one of my all-time favourite films, I think it's a crime that it wasn't more critically acknowledged, especially since IMO Clint should have also received an acting nomination; he should certainly ahve received an acting nomination for the first film.
Sudden Impact would have been a terrific note for the series to go out on but they just had to make The Dead Pool, ugh.
As for Bronson, a legend; pure and simple. His most famous films, such as The Dirty Dozen, Once Upon a Time in the Westt and Death Wish, are of course classics, but I also love some of his lesser known films such as The Evil That Men Do.
My favorite Brosnon film, in terms of a starring role, is Hard Times.
Really? Well, all I can say is welcome aboard! {[] Paul Newman was an absolute star, an awesome actor and a great leading man; I hope you see (and enjoy) many more Newman films in the years to come.
What was so contemptable about his ideals ? They were pretty much un-biased. I am really curious about your POV.
More Franz Kafka than Frank Capra I'm afraid, though It Happened One Night is a masterpiece.
Un Flic
The last film from Jean-Pierre Melville, with Alain Delon as Edouard, a burnt-out police commisioner realising his friend Paul (Richard Crenna, the colonel from the Rambo movies) is behind a string of robberies. It opens with a brilliant heist in a small town as a storm rages, then switches to Paris as Delon goes about the business of policing in a fairly cynical manner. There's one remarkable sequence where he turns up at the scene of a murder in a brothel and stares at the corpse of the victim. Melville cuts between a close-up of Delon and the face of the murdered woman and she seems far more alive than he does.
Catherine Deneuve is the wife of Paul, but is putting out for Edouard as well. Deneuve is more than eye-candy here, even going as far as murdering an accomplice at one point. I finally understand why so many older critics go ga-ga at the mention of her name, for an ice-maiden she sure is hot. Paul and his gang pull of a train robbery, which would be amazing were it not for some of the dodgiest shots of a model train ever put on film. It's like a scene from Thomas the Tank Engine. Still Un Flic is a worthy send-off for one of cinema's finest directors.
Set in the 1940's, a favorite era of mine, Chris Cooper plays an unhappily married man who decides to kill his wife, played by Patricia Clarkson, so he can take up with Rachel McAdams who his seeing on the side. Pierce Brosnan plays Cooper's best friend who after meeting McAdams, decides he wants McAdams. So while the husband plots the murder of his wife, Pierce plots stealing the girlfriend, while the wife has an affair with another guy. The movie reached a climax when the night Cooper has arranged his wife's death, he discovers McAdams is dumping him for Brosnan.
The acting is superb, as all the main players deliver good performances in the film. The movie is short only about 90 minutes and the story does deliver some surprises, although I did see a few of them coming. At times the film seems more like a play as the sets are minimal and the production values limited. I enjoyed this film, which despite its production weaknesses manages to entertain based on the performances of the actors.
The last film from Jean-Pierre Melville.......one of cinema's finest directors.
I completely agree with this. Melville was awesome; phenominally cool and superbly talented. Shame that he isn't better known.
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
In waht way were they more Franz Kafka than Frank Capra? ?:) Also, how is that a bad thing?
I meant my POV is more Kafka than Capra. Capra is very much Capra, otherwise Mr Smith would have ended up being stabbed to death in a quarry without quite knowing why.
Black Sunday
Barbara Steele stars in one of Mario Bava's most famous films. The version I saw was the AIP cut with dubbed American accents making it sound like a kung-fu movie. Also the print wasn't that great either. There must be a better version out there. Steele is striking and there are some beautiful images, but I couldn't get into it. I've also got a hold of another Bava movie, Lisa and the Devil with Telly Savalas which looks interesting.
In waht way were they more Franz Kafka than Frank Capra? ?:) Also, how is that a bad thing?
I meant my POV is more Kafka than Capra. Capra is very much Capra, otherwise Mr Smith would have ended up being stabbed to death in a quarry without quite knowing why.
Of course. I didn't see that you were talking about your POV. Although, to be fair, it's not just Kafka. I absolutely love Capra, but he was astonishingly sentimental and if any of his characters lived in real life, they would probably get beaten up, and you don't need to have Kafka's worldview to wish violence upon them (although I personally don't; but then I am a huge Capra fan,) although obviously with other people, they may provide a reason for the violence.
It's been a while since I reviewed a film myself, so here goes. I recently saw Chéri with the ever beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by the great Stephen Frears (whose Dangerous Liasons was IMO among the greatest films ever made). I loved this film. It's funny as I read a quick review of it on IMDB, and the reviewer hated it, yet I had the exact opposite reaction. It's essentially the story of a love affair between an older woman and a younger man. The performances are superb, the art direction and costume design are both authentic as well as exquisite, the use of narration is handled creatively and delightfully and Frears proves yet again what a great director he is. I think it's a terrific film which I would most certainly recommend, and which incidentally I saw in a cinema that my GF calls the 'old people cinema.' )
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
"Up Periscope"
Standard WWII adventure/melodrama from 1959, starring a very young James Garner as a Navy frogman during WWII who is assigned a mission to infiltrate a Japanese-held island in the Pacific, and photograph some very important cipher codes, without being discovered or caught. The supporting cast includes the always-solid Edmund O'Brien as the skipper of the American submarine USS Barracuda, who's haunted by the loss of a crewman on the previous mission because he went "by the book." Also on hand are Alan Hale Jr. (the skipper from Gilligan's Island!) and then-football hero (later to be 'Monday Night Football' anchor) Frank Gifford...
Good stuff, if a bit stilted and overly romantic in Act One, as we're spoon-fed scenes about Our Hero's romance with a girl at Pearl Harbor...but the wartime action is good (with some actual Pacific theatre war footage awkwardly inserted), and Garner's mission itself is fairly tense. Very much of its time; 3 of 5 stars.
"The Magnificent Seven"
Oh, yeah B-) My ongoing erudition of The Loeffelholz Boys continues, to my great delight...
Director John Sturges' classic retelling of Akira Kurosawa's undeniable classic, The Seven Samurai, stars a few guys some film buffs might recognise: Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn all portray gunfighters hired by a helpless Mexican village to protect them from an evil warlord (Eli Wallach)...my personal DVD library edition of this film was packaged in 2001, and has a nice little "making of" documentary...one of the great anomalies celebrated here is the presence of German actor Horst Buchholz as Chico, the token Eastern European/Mexican on the team... )
One of my favourite stories about this picture is that Kurosawa---himself a great fan of the American western, especially as rendered by the likes of John Ford---sent John Sturges an authentic Japanese katana in recognition of his adaptation of his own work.
Most Yanks have seen the American picture...but I cannot stress strongly enough the need to see the original Kurosawa...I've got to convince my sons to read the subtitles...
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Pretentious art house flick by Marc Forster, a sort of remake of The Bicycle Thieves. Some bloke turning anti-social, going on the rampage, losing his job because his Vespa's been taken from him, from what I can tell.
Pretentious art house flick by Marc Forster, a sort of remake of The Bicycle Thieves. Some bloke turning anti-social, going on the rampage, losing his job because his Vespa's been taken from him, from what I can tell.
)
I recently saw Wake in Fright, an Australian film from 1971. Recently restored (its print was lost for decades), it is a cadidate for the title of greatest Australian film of all time. A horror film of sorts, it tells the story of a schoolteacher attempting to return home to Sydney at the end of the school term (he teaches in the outback due to contractual obligations whereby teachers were given $1000 contracts which they had to pay off, but in doing so, were forced to work whereever the Education Department wanted them to.) However he gets trapped in a small town where he gambles away all of his money and finds himself in a living nightmare. It's a brutal film which features real-life scenes of kangaroos being killed and is a scathing commentary on Australian ideas of mateship and manhood, as well as a representation of how terrifying the isolated Australian town can be. I don't know if it's available overseas as I was only able to see it at an Australian cinema, but I imagine it would be. A few intersting side-notes: the legendary Martin Scorsese apparently is a big fan. Additionally, the director (Ted Kotcheff) went on to direct First Blood; while Donald Pleasence, YOLT's Blofeld, also plays a villain in this film.
I would strongly recommend it as it is a magnificent film. Brilliantly directed, it has appropiately creepy music, great performances and is surely one of the greatest films, from any nation, of all time.
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
edited August 2009
"Defiance"
A remarkable and entertaining film from Edward Zwick, and starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber as Tuvia and Zus Bielski, Jewish brothers who flee into the forest to escape the capture and internment/murder of Jews by the Nazis in 1941. Zwick seems to take some knocks on these boards, but I always find his films extremely well-made and most enjoyable. This one is no exception---a tale based on a true story that needed to be told...and, like so many in this milieu, should never be forgotten.
Craig (also a man known to take his knocks in these parts) turns in a bravura, multi-layered performance of a man suddenly weighted down with a crushing, unwanted responsibility---the safety of hundreds of Jewish refugees---a man forced to take terrible and decisive action. Schrieber is also excellent here, as are the the countless talented character actors who populate this picture.
Not that it's perfect, of course:
The ending, like Zwick's The Last Samurai, is a little too tidy, perhaps...but that's Hollywood's need to tie things up in a neat little package...
All the same, I'm happy that I bought this DVD unseen, and am proud to put it in my collection of great war films. 4.25 out of 5 stars.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
The days are close and the nights balmy over here in England currently. So what better than to pop this classic slice of Americana into the DVD around 10.30pm?
This is a wonderful film with wall-to-wall rock n roll and surfing songs of the time, but never intrusive, it's subtley done as much of the film is driving around in cool cars that have the transistor radio on, so it fits. It's about the last night before the kids go off to college - they drive around town and reminisce and have cold feet about their future. Some of the kids aren't going to college, so there's that schism well represented.
Many might see this as George Lucas' low-key flick before Star Wars, but in fact this 1973 movie took some doing, with loads of auditions for cars of the time (not that hard I suppose, it's set only 10 years earlier) and it was the studio's biggest grosser of the year and ever, second only to Airport three years ealier. So no small arthouse flick.
It's great to see a young Richard Dreyfuss (though he's not that young, teenagers in those days did tend to look older. I've got pictures of me at 19 where I look 40). Of course there's Ron Howard, Harrison Ford in a cameo (he's go on to be with Lucas in Star Wars of course) and the actor who went on to play the accountant in The Untouchables.
It's bittersweet. At the end
what we find out about the characters casts a pall over it and it depicts a time of lost innocence, as it's pre-Kennedy and Vietnam. We don't get to hear anything about the gals in the movie and their future however.
This is a film that really gets you but you're best off seeing it like I did originally - late at night, on telly, watching it unfold not expecting much, like the characters in the film itself. There's a real sense of loss at the end.
By one of those quirks, Netflix delivered two films about those whose stood against the Nazis. First, Sophie Scholl: The Last Days. This movie is like a hard punch to the gut, but, still, you can't turn away from it. It dramatizes the three days in which Sophie and her brother are caught distributing anti-Nazi literature at the University of Munich, Sophie's interrogation by the police, and the siblings' farcical show trial and execution. You end up with nothing but contempt for the small-minded bullies who rose to power under Hitler's regime and great admiration for Sophie and her White Rose comrades. Had there been more people like her in Hitler's Germany, the tragedy of the war may have been averted.
The next day I saw Defiance, with our own Daniel Craig. It's a good movie, and despite being too long and occasionally slow, I liked it. Still, it suffers from "Hollywood Syndrome." Too often I was distracted from the human drama by the movie's own artfulness. The performances are pretty good, especially Liev Schreiber's, but it seems that each of the three brothers gets a Big Speech in which he rallies the refugees or pontificates on the importance of what they're doing. The forest in which everyone hid was at times too darned pretty, and I was often thinking more about how good-looking Alexa Davalos is instead of concentrating on the plight of her character. Maybe my view is tainted by seeing Sophie Scholl just a day before, but Defiance seemed too hung up on being an "important film" instead of just telling a compelling story.
I, Claudius, the classic 1976 BBC adaptation. An odd sort of series, being the sort of thing your parents would enjoy watching hard to square with the scenes of relentless orgies and so on.
Good to see a pre-beared Brian Blessed as the main emperor before he became a stereotype (strangely he turned up as his usual booming self on the comedy quiz Have I Got News For You on real TV just after). George 'Hilary Bray' Baker is in it as a brooding Gordon Brown type being shoved into power by his rapacious mother Livia, played by Sian Phillips.
A fine actress and the star of the series so far (I'm only up to episode 3), how about a type like that in a Bond film? Ian Ogilvy also pops up in episode one and it's a jolt to see the second rate Saint doing a fine actorly turn as a Roman general, which you can't see Roger managing.
Derek Jacobi of course is Claudius, the stuttering lame boy who learns not to look the man most likely, as he witnesses all the contendors fall by the wayside...
Wonderful film BTW. IMO it is among the very greatest Westerns of all time, and is among my all-time favourite Westerns (along with the 60' s Leone films, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Eastwood's High Plains Drifter and Ford's The Searchers.)
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
Another phase I've recently been enjoying is "Brusceploitation" - The endless films made after his untimely death at 33. The first one I tackled was,
The Ninja Strikes Back - (1981) - With Bruce "Le" - A Lee clone and probably one of the best. The great thing about this is Harold Sakata plays the baddie and there's a great showdown between the two. Sakata even has a deadly bowler which he throws and a golden claw! To top things off every time he appears, GF music plays. I'm talking blatantly ripped off without any permission that I could discern )
This movie is wonderful wacky stuff with a never ending chikki chikki-wakka score and plenty of naked ladies. (natch) Add some zany martial arts and animated scenes of broken bones randomly edited into combat and there's a movie to watch with a cold beer.
I think I'll watch some more of Bruce "Le" and then dive into the Sonny Chiba films. :007)
The Passenger, a 1975 Michelangelo Antonioni movie with Jack Nicolson.
Quietly engrossing film in part due to the lack of music on the soundtrack. A prestigious reporter is out in the desert, er somewhere, when he meets an English businessman played by an unrecognisable (even when you play the film back after seeing his name in the credits) Bond connection Steven Berkoff. Said bussinessman carks it of a heart attack and Nicolson for no apparent reason nicks his identity so it seems as though he has died instead.
Some of the developments afterwards are a bit incredible and Nicolson's love interest in his new life, Maris Schneider, has a vocal delivery that makes Barbara Bach in TSWLM seem like Bea Arthur in comparsion. Still, quietly absorbing and good scenery in various locales like Barcelona.
Comments
Eastwood staple Geoffrey Lewis turns up as an ambulance chaser lawyer as well.
xxx
Smokin' Aces
This is about a Vegas showman who has infiltrated the last Vegas mafia leader and is about to spill the beans. A hit is taken out on him, strangely taken up by a number of assassins, and the FBI have to protect him, holing him up in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel accessed by many elevators.
I suppose Babs and Mickey hoped to avoid this kind of gaudy, stylistic shoot-em-up flick when they hired Marc Forster for QoS. Yet ironically, it has a few things Casino Royale might have benefitted from. The casino/gambling motif is well done (although a casino doesn't really feature in the movie) and looks stylish and cool, unlike in CR where the gambling scenes just seem shoehorned into the film. There's even a sharp shooter/sniper trained on the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel that makes you wish they had utilised the 'first kill' incident from the Casino Royale novel. Very impressive.
Hell, even QoS singer Alicia Keys is made decent use of, as part of a lesbian assassin duo that anticipates the plotline suggested for the next Bond on another thread.
That said, the film is very stylistic and the first 15 minutes lost me somewhat, leaving me to play catch-up. The last 10 minutes, with a dramatic revelation, also passed me by a bit. And the film is generally less funny than Stratham's Crank and less charming and intelligent that Tarantino's Kill Bill stuff. But there's some flashy fun to be had nonetheless.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
xxx
I hate the ending 'cause...
Though it's not surprsing, we are talking about Brosnon here.
Yes I would agree it's in the vein of Sudden Impact, a film I think deserved an oscar nomination for direction alone.
Also the hell with Ebert. 10 to Midnight a fun film with a great cast.
One from the Forgetting Sarah Marshall/Knocked Up stable I think, with regular Paul Rudd cast against type as a mild-mannered fellow who realises, with his wedding coming up, that he doesn't have any mates to be his Best Man, and sets about remedying this.
One of those films that does have a sociological point and hits the spot, but aspects of it are cringe inducing. It gets to the nub of those buddy buddy relationships where you either not cool enough for the poker crowd, or you don't want to pal up with society's rejects. To be honest, I'm not sure the film really finds an answer as I'm not sure I'd want to hang out with his eventual 'find' - the big guy who played the loser in Forgetting..., here cast also against type as an expansive, sexually confident anti-social fellow who lets his dog dump on the sidewalk as some kind of gesture of self...
And in true American style it turns out in the end
Still, some good laughs to be had, just not as good as Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin, I felt the Rudd lead was just a bit too nerdy in this to be too likeable.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
First Paul Newman film I have seen and it was a hell of a good one. Newman plays a southern drunk, ex-football player going through the tormoil of guilt which causes a tumultuous relationship with his wife played by Liz Taylor. This is the first film I ever saw that started off depressing, particularly for me, and continuted to be so until the end. I highly reccomend this film.
I loved Rope as well. It is not a long film, clocking in at less than 80 minutes, so the story is not very complex, and to be honest, I don't think it could have been drawn out longer. The most interesting feature of Rope, IMO, is that the entire film is shot in long takes of about ten minutes. Hitchcock obviously wanted to hide the cuts, and so at the end of each take moved the camera in onto somebody's back, and then moved away to hide the cut. This trick fooled me the first time, but later in the film it becomes painfully obvious. However, the film is very tense, exciting and ultimately great entertainment. I do indeed rate it up there with North by Northwest, Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo.
i saw this the other day after a mate recommended it.
i have never ever laughed so hard in my life at a film. some people wouldn't, but for me, i just found it incredibly hilarious. cool phrases like "we've come on holiday by mistake" and (talking about drinking lighter fluid) "this is a far superior drink to meths, the w#!kers dont drink it cos they can't afford it" had me in stitches.
my wife on the other hand thought i'd lost the plot, withnail style, especially when the chicken went in the oven, sat atop a brick. lol
brilliantly funny, a bit emotional and excellently acted out, i'd say to anyone who hasn't seen it, you must.
Vive le droit à la libre expression! Je suis Charlie!
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As for Bronson, a legend; pure and simple. His most famous films, such as The Dirty Dozen, Once Upon a Time in the Westt and Death Wish, are of course classics, but I also love some of his lesser known films such as The Evil That Men Do.
Really?
Hitchcock said the hardest part of making this film was the changing of the background lighting from day to night. Some re-shoots had to be done to get it correct.
Sudden Impact would have been a terrific note for the series to go out on but they just had to make The Dead Pool, ugh.
My favorite Brosnon film, in terms of a starring role, is Hard Times.
Thanks, I will.
More Franz Kafka than Frank Capra I'm afraid, though It Happened One Night is a masterpiece.
Un Flic
The last film from Jean-Pierre Melville, with Alain Delon as Edouard, a burnt-out police commisioner realising his friend Paul (Richard Crenna, the colonel from the Rambo movies) is behind a string of robberies. It opens with a brilliant heist in a small town as a storm rages, then switches to Paris as Delon goes about the business of policing in a fairly cynical manner. There's one remarkable sequence where he turns up at the scene of a murder in a brothel and stares at the corpse of the victim. Melville cuts between a close-up of Delon and the face of the murdered woman and she seems far more alive than he does.
Catherine Deneuve is the wife of Paul, but is putting out for Edouard as well. Deneuve is more than eye-candy here, even going as far as murdering an accomplice at one point. I finally understand why so many older critics go ga-ga at the mention of her name, for an ice-maiden she sure is hot. Paul and his gang pull of a train robbery, which would be amazing were it not for some of the dodgiest shots of a model train ever put on film. It's like a scene from Thomas the Tank Engine. Still Un Flic is a worthy send-off for one of cinema's finest directors.
Set in the 1940's, a favorite era of mine, Chris Cooper plays an unhappily married man who decides to kill his wife, played by Patricia Clarkson, so he can take up with Rachel McAdams who his seeing on the side. Pierce Brosnan plays Cooper's best friend who after meeting McAdams, decides he wants McAdams. So while the husband plots the murder of his wife, Pierce plots stealing the girlfriend, while the wife has an affair with another guy. The movie reached a climax when the night Cooper has arranged his wife's death, he discovers McAdams is dumping him for Brosnan.
The acting is superb, as all the main players deliver good performances in the film. The movie is short only about 90 minutes and the story does deliver some surprises, although I did see a few of them coming. At times the film seems more like a play as the sets are minimal and the production values limited. I enjoyed this film, which despite its production weaknesses manages to entertain based on the performances of the actors.
In waht way were they more Franz Kafka than Frank Capra? ?:) Also, how is that a bad thing?
I completely agree with this.
I meant my POV is more Kafka than Capra. Capra is very much Capra, otherwise Mr Smith would have ended up being stabbed to death in a quarry without quite knowing why.
Black Sunday
Barbara Steele stars in one of Mario Bava's most famous films. The version I saw was the AIP cut with dubbed American accents making it sound like a kung-fu movie. Also the print wasn't that great either. There must be a better version out there. Steele is striking and there are some beautiful images, but I couldn't get into it. I've also got a hold of another Bava movie, Lisa and the Devil with Telly Savalas which looks interesting.
It's been a while since I reviewed a film myself, so here goes. I recently saw Chéri with the ever beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by the great Stephen Frears (whose Dangerous Liasons was IMO among the greatest films ever made). I loved this film. It's funny as I read a quick review of it on IMDB, and the reviewer hated it, yet I had the exact opposite reaction. It's essentially the story of a love affair between an older woman and a younger man. The performances are superb, the art direction and costume design are both authentic as well as exquisite, the use of narration is handled creatively and delightfully and Frears proves yet again what a great director he is. I think it's a terrific film which I would most certainly recommend, and which incidentally I saw in a cinema that my GF calls the 'old people cinema.'
Standard WWII adventure/melodrama from 1959, starring a very young James Garner as a Navy frogman during WWII who is assigned a mission to infiltrate a Japanese-held island in the Pacific, and photograph some very important cipher codes, without being discovered or caught. The supporting cast includes the always-solid Edmund O'Brien as the skipper of the American submarine USS Barracuda, who's haunted by the loss of a crewman on the previous mission because he went "by the book." Also on hand are Alan Hale Jr. (the skipper from Gilligan's Island!) and then-football hero (later to be 'Monday Night Football' anchor) Frank Gifford...
Good stuff, if a bit stilted and overly romantic in Act One, as we're spoon-fed scenes about Our Hero's romance with a girl at Pearl Harbor...but the wartime action is good (with some actual Pacific theatre war footage awkwardly inserted), and Garner's mission itself is fairly tense. Very much of its time; 3 of 5 stars.
"The Magnificent Seven"
Oh, yeah B-) My ongoing erudition of The Loeffelholz Boys continues, to my great delight...
Director John Sturges' classic retelling of Akira Kurosawa's undeniable classic, The Seven Samurai, stars a few guys some film buffs might recognise: Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn all portray gunfighters hired by a helpless Mexican village to protect them from an evil warlord (Eli Wallach)...my personal DVD library edition of this film was packaged in 2001, and has a nice little "making of" documentary...one of the great anomalies celebrated here is the presence of German actor Horst Buchholz as Chico, the token Eastern European/Mexican on the team...
One of my favourite stories about this picture is that Kurosawa---himself a great fan of the American western, especially as rendered by the likes of John Ford---sent John Sturges an authentic Japanese katana in recognition of his adaptation of his own work.
Most Yanks have seen the American picture...but I cannot stress strongly enough the need to see the original Kurosawa...I've got to convince my sons to read the subtitles...
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Pretentious art house flick by Marc Forster, a sort of remake of The Bicycle Thieves. Some bloke turning anti-social, going on the rampage, losing his job because his Vespa's been taken from him, from what I can tell.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I recently saw Wake in Fright, an Australian film from 1971. Recently restored (its print was lost for decades), it is a cadidate for the title of greatest Australian film of all time. A horror film of sorts, it tells the story of a schoolteacher attempting to return home to Sydney at the end of the school term (he teaches in the outback due to contractual obligations whereby teachers were given $1000 contracts which they had to pay off, but in doing so, were forced to work whereever the Education Department wanted them to.) However he gets trapped in a small town where he gambles away all of his money and finds himself in a living nightmare. It's a brutal film which features real-life scenes of kangaroos being killed and is a scathing commentary on Australian ideas of mateship and manhood, as well as a representation of how terrifying the isolated Australian town can be. I don't know if it's available overseas as I was only able to see it at an Australian cinema, but I imagine it would be. A few intersting side-notes: the legendary Martin Scorsese apparently is a big fan.
I would strongly recommend it as it is a magnificent film. Brilliantly directed, it has appropiately creepy music, great performances and is surely one of the greatest films, from any nation, of all time.
A remarkable and entertaining film from Edward Zwick, and starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber as Tuvia and Zus Bielski, Jewish brothers who flee into the forest to escape the capture and internment/murder of Jews by the Nazis in 1941. Zwick seems to take some knocks on these boards, but I always find his films extremely well-made and most enjoyable. This one is no exception---a tale based on a true story that needed to be told...and, like so many in this milieu, should never be forgotten.
Craig (also a man known to take his knocks in these parts) turns in a bravura, multi-layered performance of a man suddenly weighted down with a crushing, unwanted responsibility---the safety of hundreds of Jewish refugees---a man forced to take terrible and decisive action. Schrieber is also excellent here, as are the the countless talented character actors who populate this picture.
Not that it's perfect, of course:
All the same, I'm happy that I bought this DVD unseen, and am proud to put it in my collection of great war films. 4.25 out of 5 stars.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
The days are close and the nights balmy over here in England currently. So what better than to pop this classic slice of Americana into the DVD around 10.30pm?
This is a wonderful film with wall-to-wall rock n roll and surfing songs of the time, but never intrusive, it's subtley done as much of the film is driving around in cool cars that have the transistor radio on, so it fits. It's about the last night before the kids go off to college - they drive around town and reminisce and have cold feet about their future. Some of the kids aren't going to college, so there's that schism well represented.
Many might see this as George Lucas' low-key flick before Star Wars, but in fact this 1973 movie took some doing, with loads of auditions for cars of the time (not that hard I suppose, it's set only 10 years earlier) and it was the studio's biggest grosser of the year and ever, second only to Airport three years ealier. So no small arthouse flick.
It's great to see a young Richard Dreyfuss (though he's not that young, teenagers in those days did tend to look older. I've got pictures of me at 19 where I look 40). Of course there's Ron Howard, Harrison Ford in a cameo (he's go on to be with Lucas in Star Wars of course) and the actor who went on to play the accountant in The Untouchables.
It's bittersweet. At the end
what we find out about the characters casts a pall over it and it depicts a time of lost innocence, as it's pre-Kennedy and Vietnam. We don't get to hear anything about the gals in the movie and their future however.
This is a film that really gets you but you're best off seeing it like I did originally - late at night, on telly, watching it unfold not expecting much, like the characters in the film itself. There's a real sense of loss at the end.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The next day I saw Defiance, with our own Daniel Craig. It's a good movie, and despite being too long and occasionally slow, I liked it. Still, it suffers from "Hollywood Syndrome." Too often I was distracted from the human drama by the movie's own artfulness. The performances are pretty good, especially Liev Schreiber's, but it seems that each of the three brothers gets a Big Speech in which he rallies the refugees or pontificates on the importance of what they're doing. The forest in which everyone hid was at times too darned pretty, and I was often thinking more about how good-looking Alexa Davalos is instead of concentrating on the plight of her character. Maybe my view is tainted by seeing Sophie Scholl just a day before, but Defiance seemed too hung up on being an "important film" instead of just telling a compelling story.
Good to see a pre-beared Brian Blessed as the main emperor before he became a stereotype (strangely he turned up as his usual booming self on the comedy quiz Have I Got News For You on real TV just after). George 'Hilary Bray' Baker is in it as a brooding Gordon Brown type being shoved into power by his rapacious mother Livia, played by Sian Phillips.
A fine actress and the star of the series so far (I'm only up to episode 3), how about a type like that in a Bond film? Ian Ogilvy also pops up in episode one and it's a jolt to see the second rate Saint doing a fine actorly turn as a Roman general, which you can't see Roger managing.
Derek Jacobi of course is Claudius, the stuttering lame boy who learns not to look the man most likely, as he witnesses all the contendors fall by the wayside...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Wonderful film BTW. IMO it is among the very greatest Westerns of all time, and is among my all-time favourite Westerns (along with the 60' s Leone films, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Eastwood's High Plains Drifter and Ford's The Searchers.)
The Ninja Strikes Back - (1981) - With Bruce "Le" - A Lee clone and probably one of the best. The great thing about this is Harold Sakata plays the baddie and there's a great showdown between the two. Sakata even has a deadly bowler which he throws and a golden claw! To top things off every time he appears, GF music plays. I'm talking blatantly ripped off without any permission that I could discern
This movie is wonderful wacky stuff with a never ending chikki chikki-wakka score and plenty of naked ladies. (natch) Add some zany martial arts and animated scenes of broken bones randomly edited into combat and there's a movie to watch with a cold beer.
I think I'll watch some more of Bruce "Le" and then dive into the Sonny Chiba films. :007)
Quietly engrossing film in part due to the lack of music on the soundtrack. A prestigious reporter is out in the desert, er somewhere, when he meets an English businessman played by an unrecognisable (even when you play the film back after seeing his name in the credits) Bond connection Steven Berkoff. Said bussinessman carks it of a heart attack and Nicolson for no apparent reason nicks his identity so it seems as though he has died instead.
Some of the developments afterwards are a bit incredible and Nicolson's love interest in his new life, Maris Schneider, has a vocal delivery that makes Barbara Bach in TSWLM seem like Bea Arthur in comparsion. Still, quietly absorbing and good scenery in various locales like Barcelona.
Roger Moore 1927-2017