I was inspired by this very thread to re-watch this film for the first time since it was out on VHS, and I'm glad I did. It's a really good cold war thriller. Brosnan is effective as a spy and cold-hearted killer. I don't think this is how he would have portrayed Bond if he had been in TLD in the same year, but it's great watching him as that type of character. Well worth watching!
I have just finished watching 'In The Heat Of The Night'. It was shown TV and from some of the language used I think it was not edited.
It is the first time I have seen this film. Tibbs and me share a few experiences of 'not being liked' so I found the film had powerful messages.
It's a great film. I know Steiger won the Oscar, but how come Sidney Poitier wasn't even nominated ?
He's even better IMO.
Mind you, '67 was a very strong year in the male acting category with many a great performance not getting recognised anywhere.
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
(2011)
Yes, well, no need to comment extensively on this.
Gary Oldman is excellent doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation. A host of good British actors give support. Hoyte van Hoytema does a great job making London look grimy and nineteen-seventies. Curiously, I feel as if Sam Mendes or the production team must have watched this film as those interiors of the Circus feel like the battered up underground last resort of MI6 we saw in SF, which started filming a few months after this movie's release. I'm probably wrong about that, but it is odd.
I enjoy the film; there is always something new to notice. The writers packed in a lot of exposition into two hours and just about succeed in making it clear - something that can't be said of every adaptation of a Le Carre novel.
I have just finished watching 'In The Heat Of The Night'. It was shown TV and from some of the language used I think it was not edited.
It is the first time I have seen this film. Tibbs and me share a few experiences of 'not being liked' so I found the film had powerful messages.
It's a great film. I know Steiger won the Oscar, but how come Sidney Poitier wasn't even nominated ?
He's even better IMO.
Mind you, '67 was a very strong year in the male acting category with many a great performance not getting recognised anywhere.
How Paul Newman didn’t win the best actor award for Cool Hand Luke in 1967 remains the mystery of the 20th century, it’s his finest performance in a glittering career. I may be prejudiced here though )
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
(2011)
Yes, well, no need to comment extensively on this.
Gary Oldman is excellent doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation. A host of good British actors give support. Hoyte van Hoytema does a great job making London look grimy and nineteen-seventies. Curiously, I feel as if Sam Mendes or the production team must have watched this film as those interiors of the Circus feel like the battered up underground last resort of MI6 we saw in SF, which started filming a few months after this movie's release. I'm probably wrong about that, but it is odd.
I enjoy the film; there is always something new to notice. The writers packed in a lot of exposition into two hours and just about succeed in making it clear - something that can't be said of every adaptation of a Le Carre novel.
I also watched Tinker Tailor. It's a great looking film but imo it detracts from the story. It doesn't look natural.
It would be a good companion film to The Lives of Others, which is rarely shown on telly.
I think it's better to do Le Carre as a series as you get involved as to who the traitor is, you feel a sense of personal betrayal. Le Carre's The Night Manager started reshowing on BBC 4 last night, the first 2 episodes, and I've not seen it before, it's really good, and quite movie-like. I now see why Hiddleston was mooted for Bond based on this, and his voice is very good. He blew it with his unwitting unPC comments at an awards ceremony, didn't he, and then going out with Taylor Swift.
Returning to Indiana and the Temple of Doom, by scheduling serendipity, two films have been on that nod to that. On the same day, Black Narcissus, the classic movie. Naturally, despite much of it shot in the studio, it seems more exotic and magical than Indiana Jones. It's set in the same area: the Himalayas yet oddly it's a cooler and more genuinely thrilling film. I know one is a masterpiece and the other popcorn movie, but the former has fun dialogue too.
The other similar film was The River of No Return with Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. Now, the former is the strong and silent type like Ford and the other plays a showgirl as does Kate Capshaw. There's also a kid in tow - Mitchum's kid - so the dynamic is the same as they have to navigate their way down river facing perils. But the chemistry between the two rocks and what's more, Monroe is just so hot they don't have stars like that any more, it's like it's considered indecent or not fair! Mind you same goes for Robert Mitchum, there's nobody as good-looking as that today. You can argue the pros and cons of that.
You could watch the film just for the scenery, you might say. Not so for Indiana Jones and Ford himself seems like an awkward and mumbled figure.
When you think about it, the underlying premise here is very simple: if the earth were attacked by extraterrestrial forces, why couldn't that attack have come in the American West of the 1870s instead of, say, present-day Tokyo?
And so we get a genre mash-up such as we have here. Daniel Craig, in between QOS and SF, wakes up in the desert with a wound in his midsection, a strange shackle on his wrist and no memory of anything, including his own identity. He makes his way to a typical frontier town with all the familiar characters -- a kindly preacher (Clancy Brown), a stressed-out saloon owner (Sam Rockwell), an overburdened sheriff (Keith Carradine), a mysterious woman (Olivia Wilde) who is not the hooker she appears to be, and a nasty landowner/rancher (Harrison Ford) who really runs things. It becomes clear that Danny is a pretty nasty piece of work himself, wanted for all manner of violent crimes. He makes some critical enemies, but before things get out of hand, spaceships from above wreak havoc, setting off explosions and lassoing people up into their bellies. Old grudges are gradually set aside as the humans band together to defend themselves from the invaders.
I stumbled upon this about 30 seconds in, and had no intention of watching more than a few minutes. Somehow, it held my attention for its entire length. It's all pretty predictable, but even though I guessed what was around just about every corner, I still wanted to see. Way more fun and entertaining than I had imagined.
Yesterday evening I watched this again, mainly for Meryl Streep's performance - and as the first part of a 'double bill' with the thematically related 'All The President's Men', which I'm going to watch this evening. 'The Post' was obviously made, in part, as a response to Trump's attacks on news media; and it's interesting to return to the film now, at a point book-ending Trump's time in office. The other attraction is the movie's period mise-en-scene: it's set in 1971 (the same year as my favourite Bond film!)
Last week I watched 'The Deer Hunter', which is what put me onto my current Meryl Streep kick. (And like 'The Post', 'The Deer Hunter' is concerned with the Vietnam War.) Streep's always been a very mannered performer, but she's fascinating to watch on screen and part of a generation of 'new wave' and method actors who helped transform film in the 70s. Watching 'The Deer Hunter' again reminded me, too, what a phenomenal performance Christopher Walken gave in that 1978 classic, winning him an Oscar. (Although Walken stands out as a fine actor in AVTAK - by comparison with the rest of AVTAK's cast - it's obvious that he was just 'phoning in' Zorin when 'The Deer Hunter' is considered alongside it!)
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, on Netflix. This is basically a filmed play, so it's kind of claustrophobic, but it's still a fascinating, beautifully-acted look at 1927 America, when the only way a black person could make it was as an entertainer--and even then there were limits. It also has the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, who's excellent as an ambitious trumpeter; but it's hard to overlook how thin he is. . .and the knowledge of what caused that thinness.
Last week I watched 'The Deer Hunter', which is what put me onto my current Meryl Streep kick. (And like 'The Post', 'The Deer Hunter' is concerned with the Vietnam War.) Streep's always been a very mannered performer, but she's fascinating to watch on screen and part of a generation of 'new wave' and method actors who helped transform film in the 70s. Watching 'The Deer Hunter' again reminded me, too, what a phenomenal performance Christopher Walken gave in that 1978 classic, winning him an Oscar. (Although Walken stands out as a fine actor in AVTAK - by comparison with the rest of AVTAK's cast - it's obvious that he was just 'phoning in' Zorin when 'The Deer Hunter' is considered alongside it!)
I watched this recently too - the first time in over 30 years - and this was my diary entry:
"What a dreadful film. A Vietnam PTSD experience movie full of macho, misogynistic male posturing, characters who can't express themselves with any eloquence however paltry. Their alternative is to get drunk, curse and shoot deer. In preference to not saying anything, these tawdry people choose words which don't mean anything. The script is appalling, the acting crass, the story simplistic, unexplained and full of symbolism that would play no part in a Pennsylvania steel worker's existence. It's loud, overblown and overwrought for all the wrong reasons. Horrible."
I watched this recently too - the first time in over 30 years ... I don't think I enjoyed it very much.
Haha! Always interesting to read a negative review of a movie one admires... Then again, I can't think of a single movie I like that doesn't include characterisations of flawed people...
Having completed, this evening, my 'double-bill' viewing of 'All The President's Men' and 'The Post' I can compare Jason Robards' and Tom Hanks' respective portrayals of Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post's editor during a period when the paper had hard fights on its hands to exercise its right under the First Amendment to expose covert governmental skulduggery. While achieving a closer imitation of the real-life Bradlee, complete with gravelly voice, Tom Hanks makes a more conventional Hollywood hero of the character, while Robards' portrayal is hardbitten: his Bradlee is a gruffer, sometimes intimidating defender of constitutional values. A difference is that in 'The Post' Hanks' Bradlee is a principal character alongside Streep's Kay Graham, whereas in 'All The President's Men' it's obviously Redford and Hoffman who occupy centre stage as Woodward and Bernstein.
'All The President's Men' feels more dated today than it would have done even a couple of months ago. Hal Holbrook's shadowy Deep Throat character may give Woodward 'shock horror' hints that collusion in the Watergate affair goes 'right to the top' of the White House - but even that seems small potatoes at a time when the outgoing POTUS has been impeached for a second time, now for inciting insurrection!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, on Netflix. This is basically a filmed play, so it's kind of claustrophobic, but it's still a fascinating, beautifully-acted look at 1927 America, when the only way a black person could make it was as an entertainer--and even then there were limits. It also has the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, who's excellent as an ambitious trumpeter; but it's hard to overlook how thin he is. . .and the knowledge of what caused that thinness.
That sounds like a great show. Will definitely watch it when I next renew my Netflix subscription.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
On a lighter note, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
We all know what we think of this. Great fun, only a bit too cartoony in a couple of scenes (the Nazi shaking his fist at the departing air ship, for instance) and in a way it's a homage to those Will Hay movies, the jokes are as prevalent.
I'll admit the look of Raiders is a bit grittier, a bit more realistic even if I never personally got behind that film.
The movie is.a reset after Temple of Doom, but the next film undid all that of course.
I suppose you could argue it's a rare attempt to see Christian propaganda in a mainstream Hollywood film. It doesn't happen that often, does it?
The 'younger' Henry Jones gets his own credit, oddly, though he's just a shadowy figure in the early scenes and we don't see his face. Maybe a scene was cut. I don't know if Connery did the voice.
It's a shame that for the next film they didn't have a more recent picture of Connery as Henry Jones for Indy to gaze at contemplatively as that might have meant he had a credit in that movie, but what am I saying. That film was as rubbish as League of Extraordinary Gentlmen.
I enjoyed travelling across the US by Greyhound looking forward to the summer's big movie releases such as Batman, Indy, Lethal Weapon 2 and that year's Bond movie. I saw the Last Crusade in Flagstaff if I recall.
LAST CRUSADE is a good one. It's a little too 'cute' funny in places but it's overall a very satisfying film if you're looking for something that, spiritually, is akin to RAIDERS. My big issue with LAST CRUSADE is with the quality of the special effects; many of the shots really, really look quite poor (the blimp, in particular, is never convincing).
Fun movie.
For some reason when I first watched Last Crusade (which was sometime in the early 2000s) I found the obvious artificiality of some of the effects (such as the airship which you mentioned) to be a charming and endearing aspect of the film. To me it added to the mid-20th century feel of the film. I feel similarly about old films which have obvious matte paintings and miniatures.
I watched this recently too - the first time in over 30 years ... I don't think I enjoyed it very much.
Haha! Always interesting to read a negative review of a movie one admires... Then again, I can't think of a single movie I like that doesn't include characterisations of flawed people...
Thanks
'All The President's Men' feels more dated today than it would have done even a couple of months ago. Hal Holbrook's shadowy Deep Throat character may give Woodward 'shock horror' hints that collusion in the Watergate affair goes 'right to the top' of the White House - but even that seems small potatoes at a time when the outgoing POTUS has been impeached for a second time, now for inciting insurrection!
After reading your reply, I noticed All the President's Men was on the Beeb at midnight on Sunday. I didn't mean to watch it, but once I started, I couldn't stop. I enjoyed it after a sort of retro-fashion. Hoffman does his usual scuttling-harrassed- immediate thing which he perfected around this time and which I find extremely annoying. His Carl Bernstein is an unlikeable hero. Bob Woodward, being personified with Redford's suave, smooth, calm ego comes across as more sympathetic. The bits I really enjoyed were in the Post editing office, where Jason Robards' Bradlee holds court over his sub-editors.
I think you mentioned Spotlight earlier.That's a film I admire greatly. I wasn't aware of the exact circumstances of the Spotlight child abuse investigation, but what Tom McCarthy's film does which ATPM fails to do is provide a clear outline of what is being investigated and why. Here a lot of information is thrown at the viewer without any accuracy. It is only in the final reel, when Redford's (Woodward's) informer 'Deep Throat' tells him that everyone is involved and no one is safe, that it becomes clear the two journalists were following up a case larger than the misappropriation of campaign funds. This introduces tension for the first time - when Redford believes he's being tailed, turns, sees no one and his face betrays the fear he noted on all the CRP interviewees - a particularly fine piece of editing from Robert L. Wolfe.
Unfamiliar with the exact ins-and-outs of the Watergate case, except in a vague historical context, I was none-the-wiser at the end. This is not the case with Spotlight, which is deliberately painful in its explanation of the investigation, leading to moments of tension and power throughout.
Both films feature superb supporting casts. Mark Ruffalo is a more dynamic hero than either Redford or Hoffman.
The final shot of ATPM inside the Washington Post newsroom, a television playing Richard Nixon's '73 swearing in, upholding freedom and justice and the constitution, while the journos are seen typing their exclusive story, is a pertinent direction from Alan J. Pakula, suggesting the clear agenda he had in making the movie. McCarthy too has a fine closing shot as the telephone's ring with hundreds more witness stories.
Both movies reflect a certain way to make a movie - at a certain time, too - and ultimately both succeed, although I'd probably prefer Spotlight's more precise telling.
Last week I watched 'The Deer Hunter', which is what put me onto my current Meryl Streep kick. (And like 'The Post', 'The Deer Hunter' is concerned with the Vietnam War.) Streep's always been a very mannered performer, but she's fascinating to watch on screen and part of a generation of 'new wave' and method actors who helped transform film in the 70s. Watching 'The Deer Hunter' again reminded me, too, what a phenomenal performance Christopher Walken gave in that 1978 classic, winning him an Oscar. (Although Walken stands out as a fine actor in AVTAK - by comparison with the rest of AVTAK's cast - it's obvious that he was just 'phoning in' Zorin when 'The Deer Hunter' is considered alongside it!)
I watched this recently too - the first time in over 30 years - and this was my diary entry:
"What a dreadful film. A Vietnam PTSD experience movie full of macho, misogynistic male posturing, characters who can't express themselves with any eloquence however paltry. Their alternative is to get drunk, curse and shoot deer. In preference to not saying anything, these tawdry people choose words which don't mean anything. The script is appalling, the acting crass, the story simplistic, unexplained and full of symbolism that would play no part in a Pennsylvania steel worker's existence. It's loud, overblown and overwrought for all the wrong reasons. Horrible."
I don't think I enjoyed it very much.
I gotta say I don't like The Deer Hunter either, despite some great actors in the lead roles.
The whole pacing of the film is completely wrong, and its a very long film.
Seems like nearly half the film is just that neverending wedding party establishing the characters. Then the actual VietNam content comes and goes in about ten minutes. We rejoin our heroes overseas in midbattle, they are immediately captured, and most of the VietNam content is the prison they escape from. deNiro goes home alone, and once again we're right back to the smalltown life we just wasted a whole damn slowmoving hour in waiting for the war film to start, and after another long chunk of the film he's finally persuaded to go back to VietNam and find his buddy.
I don't have an issue with the characters being macho and inarticulate - they are small town factory workers, that part makes sense. Compare with Apocalypse Now, in which the characters quote T. S. Elliot!! That is by far the better film, but the dialog is surreal.
Farewell, My Lovely, 1975
with Robert Mitchum as Phillip Marlowe, the first of two films he'd do
yup, I shoulda watched this one first.
This is actually set in prewar Los Angeles, as its supposed to be, all sepia tones and period decor. Looks aesthetically like a less ambitious version of Chinatown, which is exactly as it should be.
Been a long time since I saw Murder My Sweet (the 1944 version of the same story), but this seems to be a closer adaptation of Chandlers' book, including scenes left out of the 1940s version, such as a bordello, intravenous drugs, and homosexuals. The ending is closer to what I remember from the book too.
Mitchum is good as Marlowe when the context is right, though still too old.
Not so many big stars as the Big Sleep, but Anthony Zerba (he's one of ours) plays the big gang boss. He always looks slimey whatever role I've seen him in. Charlotte Rampling as the femme fatale (Claire Trevor's role in the original). Harry Dean Stanton as the bad cop. and Sylvester Stallone has an early cameo as a thug!
soundtrack by David Shire is quite good, evoking that doomed rainy noirish vibe.
Lew Grade produced this, but his names not quite so prominent as it was in the Big Sleep. If he knew Chandler was meant to be set in prewar LA, why the blazes did he decide to transpose the sequel to modernday Britain??
a near-metafictional satire of Hollywood filmmaking
hey! this is another VietNam film! but more like Taxi Driver, its about a PTSD'd vet trying to find his place in America after the war, his sense of reality shattered by his experiences. Vet played by Steve Railsback, an actor Ive never heard of but all sources say he is most famous for previously playing Charles Manson, and it shows.
The veteran is on the run from the police, for a crime we are never definitively told the truth of. He stumbles into the middle of a filmshoot, where he witnesses the death of a stuntman, then is himself offered the stuntman's job.
Second best parts of the film are the bravura sequences showing the film-within-the-film being shot, a WWI battlefield epic. Levels of reality shift up and down within these intricately choreographed sequences, featuring, as the tile promises, much deathdefying stuntwork.
I would say the film is not pure metafiction, as there is a main level of consensus reality within the film, although all filtered through the unreliable eyes of our paranoid protagonist. Still, when he finally explains to his ladyfriend Barbara Hershey why he is wanted by the police, that too turns out to be a multilayered performance and we may or may not have been told the truth.
But the constant questioning of reality means the actual baseline of reality is us, the audience in the movie theatre, watching both the revelation of how the magic is done while indulging in the fantasy at the same time.
First best part of the film is Peter O'Toole as the director of the film-within-the-film, a godlike personage literally descending from the heavens in and out of the other characters dialogs, infuriating with his irresponsible commitment to his art yet charming all into following him to the end. Best ever O'Toole performance?
speaking of the end...
...I was disappointed at the seeming copout, in which there is a logical explanation for everything and all live happily ever after. The story has been building up to a suspenseful thriller finale in which either the good guys should have got away, or died tragically. But upon reflection, the ending we are given is consistent with the ideas that have been developed throughout, as our vet on the run finds his place in Hollywood fantasyland and ultimately accepts the safest choice is just to Believe in the fantasy.
Compare with Apocalypse Now, in which the characters quote T. S. Elliot!! That is by far the better film, but the dialog is surreal.
To be fair, 'The Deer Hunter' isn't setting out to be a 'war film' in any conventional sense, though Vietnam obviously has a critical impact on the lives of all the characters and their smalltown community. The film also features the brilliant John Cazale's last performance. Cazale was Meryl Streep's partner at the time, terminally ill, unwell during filming but determined to give it his all...
Imho 'The Deer Hunter' is a more nuanced film than 'Apocalypse Now' - which is impressive but flawed. Coppola ruins the climax of 'Apocalypse Now' by allowing an improvising Brando to mess up Joseph ("The horror!") Conrad: Brando's Kurtz claims that "words cannot express" "the horror" - only to ramble on for several minutes, mixing garbled metaphors in an excruciating attempt to "express" that very "horror" which words supposedly can't convey! I prefer the honest taciturnity of 'The Deer Hunter''s De Niro, any day of the week!
Having said that, it was a stroke of genius on Coppola's part to re-imagine Conrad's harlequin as Dennis Hopper's hippie, a character who today would be like some sort of QAnon shamen.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
The Anderson Tapes. Today on TV. This is the first time I have seen this film. It stars Sean Connery. It is a great film and one which I will definitely watch again.
Knowing that I am a fan of Connery, a friend of mine at work is going to lend me 'The First Train Robbery'. Apparently that is also a very entertaining film.
To be fair, 'The Deer Hunter' isn't setting out to be a 'war film' in any conventional sense, though Vietnam obviously has a critical impact on the lives of all the characters and their smalltown community. The film also features the brilliant John Cazale's last performance. Cazale was Meryl Streep's partner at the time, terminally ill, unwell during filming but determined to give it his all...
you're right, its a problem of me expecting it be something its not.
Because it came out and won awards while Coppola was behind schedule on Apocalypse Now, it has this reputation as having stolen the claim to be the first great VietNam epic, but its not the same sort of film at all. Its about small town life being disrupted.
Still, those two digressions into VietNam come at the middle and the end, and contain the shocking images we all remember.
Other than the two VietNam sections, the one part that really sticks with me is the actual deer hunt, when Walken confesses he doesn't care if they bag a deer, he just "likes, um, er, how the trees are". An incredibly inarticulate line, but I think I know what he means: communing with nature is good for the mental health, almost spiritual.
But his character can't form those words, and its a bit suspect amongst his manly friends even thinking such things at all when theyre supposed to be killing something. This is his character's brave but frustrated attempt to express an unusually sensitive thought, and the scene would not work with more clever dialog. We learn Walken is the sensitive soul in the gang, and this is why his final fate is such a tragedy.
Joshua,
You are right, The Anderson Tapes is a brilliant film. It's very prescient considering the amount surveillance we all endure these days - most of it without even realising.
If you can try to catch a copy of THE OFFENCE from around the same time: quite possibly Connery's best performance ever.
He had a good run of movies in the 70s, even if they were not all commercial or critical hits, they were hardly ever less than interesting.
Comments
I was inspired by this very thread to re-watch this film for the first time since it was out on VHS, and I'm glad I did. It's a really good cold war thriller. Brosnan is effective as a spy and cold-hearted killer. I don't think this is how he would have portrayed Bond if he had been in TLD in the same year, but it's great watching him as that type of character. Well worth watching!
I actually watched it recently - still more enjoyable then 80% of the current CGI crap
Ha - I erased that one from my brain
You have chosen wisely.
It is the first time I have seen this film. Tibbs and me share a few experiences of 'not being liked' so I found the film had powerful messages.
It's a great film. I know Steiger won the Oscar, but how come Sidney Poitier wasn't even nominated ?
He's even better IMO.
Mind you, '67 was a very strong year in the male acting category with many a great performance not getting recognised anywhere.
(2011)
Yes, well, no need to comment extensively on this.
Gary Oldman is excellent doing his best Alec Guinness impersonation. A host of good British actors give support. Hoyte van Hoytema does a great job making London look grimy and nineteen-seventies. Curiously, I feel as if Sam Mendes or the production team must have watched this film as those interiors of the Circus feel like the battered up underground last resort of MI6 we saw in SF, which started filming a few months after this movie's release. I'm probably wrong about that, but it is odd.
I enjoy the film; there is always something new to notice. The writers packed in a lot of exposition into two hours and just about succeed in making it clear - something that can't be said of every adaptation of a Le Carre novel.
How Paul Newman didn’t win the best actor award for Cool Hand Luke in 1967 remains the mystery of the 20th century, it’s his finest performance in a glittering career. I may be prejudiced here though
And then the director made The Snowman
It would be a good companion film to The Lives of Others, which is rarely shown on telly.
I think it's better to do Le Carre as a series as you get involved as to who the traitor is, you feel a sense of personal betrayal. Le Carre's The Night Manager started reshowing on BBC 4 last night, the first 2 episodes, and I've not seen it before, it's really good, and quite movie-like. I now see why Hiddleston was mooted for Bond based on this, and his voice is very good. He blew it with his unwitting unPC comments at an awards ceremony, didn't he, and then going out with Taylor Swift.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The other similar film was The River of No Return with Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. Now, the former is the strong and silent type like Ford and the other plays a showgirl as does Kate Capshaw. There's also a kid in tow - Mitchum's kid - so the dynamic is the same as they have to navigate their way down river facing perils. But the chemistry between the two rocks and what's more, Monroe is just so hot they don't have stars like that any more, it's like it's considered indecent or not fair! Mind you same goes for Robert Mitchum, there's nobody as good-looking as that today. You can argue the pros and cons of that.
You could watch the film just for the scenery, you might say. Not so for Indiana Jones and Ford himself seems like an awkward and mumbled figure.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
WW2 drama starring two of my absolute favourites, Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer.
It's based on the story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty who saved the lives of thousands of Jews and Allied POW's in Rome.
Very underrated film.
When you think about it, the underlying premise here is very simple: if the earth were attacked by extraterrestrial forces, why couldn't that attack have come in the American West of the 1870s instead of, say, present-day Tokyo?
And so we get a genre mash-up such as we have here. Daniel Craig, in between QOS and SF, wakes up in the desert with a wound in his midsection, a strange shackle on his wrist and no memory of anything, including his own identity. He makes his way to a typical frontier town with all the familiar characters -- a kindly preacher (Clancy Brown), a stressed-out saloon owner (Sam Rockwell), an overburdened sheriff (Keith Carradine), a mysterious woman (Olivia Wilde) who is not the hooker she appears to be, and a nasty landowner/rancher (Harrison Ford) who really runs things. It becomes clear that Danny is a pretty nasty piece of work himself, wanted for all manner of violent crimes. He makes some critical enemies, but before things get out of hand, spaceships from above wreak havoc, setting off explosions and lassoing people up into their bellies. Old grudges are gradually set aside as the humans band together to defend themselves from the invaders.
I stumbled upon this about 30 seconds in, and had no intention of watching more than a few minutes. Somehow, it held my attention for its entire length. It's all pretty predictable, but even though I guessed what was around just about every corner, I still wanted to see. Way more fun and entertaining than I had imagined.
Yesterday evening I watched this again, mainly for Meryl Streep's performance - and as the first part of a 'double bill' with the thematically related 'All The President's Men', which I'm going to watch this evening. 'The Post' was obviously made, in part, as a response to Trump's attacks on news media; and it's interesting to return to the film now, at a point book-ending Trump's time in office. The other attraction is the movie's period mise-en-scene: it's set in 1971 (the same year as my favourite Bond film!)
Last week I watched 'The Deer Hunter', which is what put me onto my current Meryl Streep kick. (And like 'The Post', 'The Deer Hunter' is concerned with the Vietnam War.) Streep's always been a very mannered performer, but she's fascinating to watch on screen and part of a generation of 'new wave' and method actors who helped transform film in the 70s. Watching 'The Deer Hunter' again reminded me, too, what a phenomenal performance Christopher Walken gave in that 1978 classic, winning him an Oscar. (Although Walken stands out as a fine actor in AVTAK - by comparison with the rest of AVTAK's cast - it's obvious that he was just 'phoning in' Zorin when 'The Deer Hunter' is considered alongside it!)
I watched this recently too - the first time in over 30 years - and this was my diary entry:
"What a dreadful film. A Vietnam PTSD experience movie full of macho, misogynistic male posturing, characters who can't express themselves with any eloquence however paltry. Their alternative is to get drunk, curse and shoot deer. In preference to not saying anything, these tawdry people choose words which don't mean anything. The script is appalling, the acting crass, the story simplistic, unexplained and full of symbolism that would play no part in a Pennsylvania steel worker's existence. It's loud, overblown and overwrought for all the wrong reasons. Horrible."
I don't think I enjoyed it very much.
Haha! Always interesting to read a negative review of a movie one admires... Then again, I can't think of a single movie I like that doesn't include characterisations of flawed people...
Having completed, this evening, my 'double-bill' viewing of 'All The President's Men' and 'The Post' I can compare Jason Robards' and Tom Hanks' respective portrayals of Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post's editor during a period when the paper had hard fights on its hands to exercise its right under the First Amendment to expose covert governmental skulduggery. While achieving a closer imitation of the real-life Bradlee, complete with gravelly voice, Tom Hanks makes a more conventional Hollywood hero of the character, while Robards' portrayal is hardbitten: his Bradlee is a gruffer, sometimes intimidating defender of constitutional values. A difference is that in 'The Post' Hanks' Bradlee is a principal character alongside Streep's Kay Graham, whereas in 'All The President's Men' it's obviously Redford and Hoffman who occupy centre stage as Woodward and Bernstein.
'All The President's Men' feels more dated today than it would have done even a couple of months ago. Hal Holbrook's shadowy Deep Throat character may give Woodward 'shock horror' hints that collusion in the Watergate affair goes 'right to the top' of the White House - but even that seems small potatoes at a time when the outgoing POTUS has been impeached for a second time, now for inciting insurrection!
That sounds like a great show. Will definitely watch it when I next renew my Netflix subscription.
We all know what we think of this. Great fun, only a bit too cartoony in a couple of scenes (the Nazi shaking his fist at the departing air ship, for instance) and in a way it's a homage to those Will Hay movies, the jokes are as prevalent.
I'll admit the look of Raiders is a bit grittier, a bit more realistic even if I never personally got behind that film.
The movie is.a reset after Temple of Doom, but the next film undid all that of course.
I suppose you could argue it's a rare attempt to see Christian propaganda in a mainstream Hollywood film. It doesn't happen that often, does it?
The 'younger' Henry Jones gets his own credit, oddly, though he's just a shadowy figure in the early scenes and we don't see his face. Maybe a scene was cut. I don't know if Connery did the voice.
It's a shame that for the next film they didn't have a more recent picture of Connery as Henry Jones for Indy to gaze at contemplatively as that might have meant he had a credit in that movie, but what am I saying. That film was as rubbish as League of Extraordinary Gentlmen.
I enjoyed travelling across the US by Greyhound looking forward to the summer's big movie releases such as Batman, Indy, Lethal Weapon 2 and that year's Bond movie. I saw the Last Crusade in Flagstaff if I recall.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
For some reason when I first watched Last Crusade (which was sometime in the early 2000s) I found the obvious artificiality of some of the effects (such as the airship which you mentioned) to be a charming and endearing aspect of the film. To me it added to the mid-20th century feel of the film. I feel similarly about old films which have obvious matte paintings and miniatures.
Thanks
After reading your reply, I noticed All the President's Men was on the Beeb at midnight on Sunday. I didn't mean to watch it, but once I started, I couldn't stop. I enjoyed it after a sort of retro-fashion. Hoffman does his usual scuttling-harrassed- immediate thing which he perfected around this time and which I find extremely annoying. His Carl Bernstein is an unlikeable hero. Bob Woodward, being personified with Redford's suave, smooth, calm ego comes across as more sympathetic. The bits I really enjoyed were in the Post editing office, where Jason Robards' Bradlee holds court over his sub-editors.
I think you mentioned Spotlight earlier.That's a film I admire greatly. I wasn't aware of the exact circumstances of the Spotlight child abuse investigation, but what Tom McCarthy's film does which ATPM fails to do is provide a clear outline of what is being investigated and why. Here a lot of information is thrown at the viewer without any accuracy. It is only in the final reel, when Redford's (Woodward's) informer 'Deep Throat' tells him that everyone is involved and no one is safe, that it becomes clear the two journalists were following up a case larger than the misappropriation of campaign funds. This introduces tension for the first time - when Redford believes he's being tailed, turns, sees no one and his face betrays the fear he noted on all the CRP interviewees - a particularly fine piece of editing from Robert L. Wolfe.
Unfamiliar with the exact ins-and-outs of the Watergate case, except in a vague historical context, I was none-the-wiser at the end. This is not the case with Spotlight, which is deliberately painful in its explanation of the investigation, leading to moments of tension and power throughout.
Both films feature superb supporting casts. Mark Ruffalo is a more dynamic hero than either Redford or Hoffman.
The final shot of ATPM inside the Washington Post newsroom, a television playing Richard Nixon's '73 swearing in, upholding freedom and justice and the constitution, while the journos are seen typing their exclusive story, is a pertinent direction from Alan J. Pakula, suggesting the clear agenda he had in making the movie. McCarthy too has a fine closing shot as the telephone's ring with hundreds more witness stories.
Both movies reflect a certain way to make a movie - at a certain time, too - and ultimately both succeed, although I'd probably prefer Spotlight's more precise telling.
The whole pacing of the film is completely wrong, and its a very long film.
Seems like nearly half the film is just that neverending wedding party establishing the characters. Then the actual VietNam content comes and goes in about ten minutes. We rejoin our heroes overseas in midbattle, they are immediately captured, and most of the VietNam content is the prison they escape from. deNiro goes home alone, and once again we're right back to the smalltown life we just wasted a whole damn slowmoving hour in waiting for the war film to start, and after another long chunk of the film he's finally persuaded to go back to VietNam and find his buddy.
I don't have an issue with the characters being macho and inarticulate - they are small town factory workers, that part makes sense. Compare with Apocalypse Now, in which the characters quote T. S. Elliot!! That is by far the better film, but the dialog is surreal.
with Robert Mitchum as Phillip Marlowe, the first of two films he'd do
yup, I shoulda watched this one first.
This is actually set in prewar Los Angeles, as its supposed to be, all sepia tones and period decor. Looks aesthetically like a less ambitious version of Chinatown, which is exactly as it should be.
Been a long time since I saw Murder My Sweet (the 1944 version of the same story), but this seems to be a closer adaptation of Chandlers' book, including scenes left out of the 1940s version, such as a bordello, intravenous drugs, and homosexuals. The ending is closer to what I remember from the book too.
Mitchum is good as Marlowe when the context is right, though still too old.
Not so many big stars as the Big Sleep, but Anthony Zerba (he's one of ours) plays the big gang boss. He always looks slimey whatever role I've seen him in. Charlotte Rampling as the femme fatale (Claire Trevor's role in the original). Harry Dean Stanton as the bad cop. and Sylvester Stallone has an early cameo as a thug!
soundtrack by David Shire is quite good, evoking that doomed rainy noirish vibe.
Lew Grade produced this, but his names not quite so prominent as it was in the Big Sleep. If he knew Chandler was meant to be set in prewar LA, why the blazes did he decide to transpose the sequel to modernday Britain??
1980
a near-metafictional satire of Hollywood filmmaking
hey! this is another VietNam film! but more like Taxi Driver, its about a PTSD'd vet trying to find his place in America after the war, his sense of reality shattered by his experiences. Vet played by Steve Railsback, an actor Ive never heard of but all sources say he is most famous for previously playing Charles Manson, and it shows.
The veteran is on the run from the police, for a crime we are never definitively told the truth of. He stumbles into the middle of a filmshoot, where he witnesses the death of a stuntman, then is himself offered the stuntman's job.
Second best parts of the film are the bravura sequences showing the film-within-the-film being shot, a WWI battlefield epic. Levels of reality shift up and down within these intricately choreographed sequences, featuring, as the tile promises, much deathdefying stuntwork.
I would say the film is not pure metafiction, as there is a main level of consensus reality within the film, although all filtered through the unreliable eyes of our paranoid protagonist. Still, when he finally explains to his ladyfriend Barbara Hershey why he is wanted by the police, that too turns out to be a multilayered performance and we may or may not have been told the truth.
But the constant questioning of reality means the actual baseline of reality is us, the audience in the movie theatre, watching both the revelation of how the magic is done while indulging in the fantasy at the same time.
First best part of the film is Peter O'Toole as the director of the film-within-the-film, a godlike personage literally descending from the heavens in and out of the other characters dialogs, infuriating with his irresponsible commitment to his art yet charming all into following him to the end. Best ever O'Toole performance?
speaking of the end...
To be fair, 'The Deer Hunter' isn't setting out to be a 'war film' in any conventional sense, though Vietnam obviously has a critical impact on the lives of all the characters and their smalltown community. The film also features the brilliant John Cazale's last performance. Cazale was Meryl Streep's partner at the time, terminally ill, unwell during filming but determined to give it his all...
Imho 'The Deer Hunter' is a more nuanced film than 'Apocalypse Now' - which is impressive but flawed. Coppola ruins the climax of 'Apocalypse Now' by allowing an improvising Brando to mess up Joseph ("The horror!") Conrad: Brando's Kurtz claims that "words cannot express" "the horror" - only to ramble on for several minutes, mixing garbled metaphors in an excruciating attempt to "express" that very "horror" which words supposedly can't convey! I prefer the honest taciturnity of 'The Deer Hunter''s De Niro, any day of the week!
Having said that, it was a stroke of genius on Coppola's part to re-imagine Conrad's harlequin as Dennis Hopper's hippie, a character who today would be like some sort of QAnon shamen.
Knowing that I am a fan of Connery, a friend of mine at work is going to lend me 'The First Train Robbery'. Apparently that is also a very entertaining film.
Because it came out and won awards while Coppola was behind schedule on Apocalypse Now, it has this reputation as having stolen the claim to be the first great VietNam epic, but its not the same sort of film at all. Its about small town life being disrupted.
Still, those two digressions into VietNam come at the middle and the end, and contain the shocking images we all remember.
Other than the two VietNam sections, the one part that really sticks with me is the actual deer hunt, when Walken confesses he doesn't care if they bag a deer, he just "likes, um, er, how the trees are". An incredibly inarticulate line, but I think I know what he means: communing with nature is good for the mental health, almost spiritual.
But his character can't form those words, and its a bit suspect amongst his manly friends even thinking such things at all when theyre supposed to be killing something. This is his character's brave but frustrated attempt to express an unusually sensitive thought, and the scene would not work with more clever dialog. We learn Walken is the sensitive soul in the gang, and this is why his final fate is such a tragedy.
You are right, The Anderson Tapes is a brilliant film. It's very prescient considering the amount surveillance we all endure these days - most of it without even realising.
If you can try to catch a copy of THE OFFENCE from around the same time: quite possibly Connery's best performance ever.
He had a good run of movies in the 70s, even if they were not all commercial or critical hits, they were hardly ever less than interesting.