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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 9, 2015 17:37:50 GMT -5
The Long Voyage Home (1940) D-John Ford John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Barry Fitzgerald, Ian Hunter
Merchant marines sail the North Atlantic under a British flag with explosives in their cargo. Justified cause of trepidation along with the suspicion that one of the sea men might be a German spy.
Its an international cast of seamen with half of them Irish and John Wayne a Swede by Jimminy. Yaw he does the Svedish accent all the time. The film mainly deals with life on the open seas with these scurvy old salts, the loneliness, the drinking and fighting and the waves causing your stomach to lurch. The threat of German warplanes is ever present
Wayne gets top billing but its really an ensemble story. In fact I think the movie deals with Thomas Mitchell more than anyone else.
Pretty good. A macho man movie.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 9, 2015 17:50:46 GMT -5
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Francois Tone, Fred McMurray, Veronica Lake, Ray Milland, Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Holloway, Preston Sturgess, Rochester, Cecil B DeMille, Mary Martin, Dick Powell, Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, Alan Ladd and probably more but I'm tired of listing them
Music variety ensemble of Paramount Studios biggest performers. I'm not going to get into the plot the justifies all these people getting together on stage for their songs and dances and comedy sketches. Just want to say
Betty Hutton is a great physical comedy actress Sterling Holloway does a great Veronica Lake impression Lake, Lamour and Goddard do a great comedy song together Rochester does a fine number in a zoot suit I hate Dick Powell. I don't know why but I just do An opportunity to see Sturgess and Demille in front of the camera
Being a variety it teeters between great comedy and stupid comedy. Worth seeing for sure. It ends with Der Bingle singing why America is so great. Then they'll hit you up for war bonds on the way out of the theater. The must see portion is Betty Hutton trying to scale the wall of Paramount Studios with the assistance of 2 gents. Hysterical
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 9, 2015 18:50:28 GMT -5
On Labor Day, I watched Yoyo (1965) starring Pierre Etaix and Claudine Auger. It was on Turner Classics and is a French film. It tells the story of a family that loses their fortune and the young son works as a circus clown, hoping to regain the fortune. The son becomes a huge success and becomes rich and famous, restoring his family's home and wealth. It is a charming movie and Pierre Etaix is perfect in his role. A fun movie to watch. Everybody knows that becoming a circus clown is the fast track to wealth and fame.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 9, 2015 21:19:08 GMT -5
On Labor Day, I watched Yoyo (1965) starring Pierre Etaix and Claudine Auger. It was on Turner Classics and is a French film. It tells the story of a family that loses their fortune and the young son works as a circus clown, hoping to regain the fortune. The son becomes a huge success and becomes rich and famous, restoring his family's home and wealth. It is a charming movie and Pierre Etaix is perfect in his role. A fun movie to watch. I watched that too and it's one of Pierre's better works and most importantly I was very (story direction) surprised by this movie and I do enjoy it very much! It's charming film and I find Claudine's role as Isolina one of many surprises in this film back in 1965.
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 12, 2015 10:23:21 GMT -5
I watched and reviewed it a short while back. A must see. Must see. Must. I watched The Tin Drum last night. It lives up to its reputation. Great movie, but really messed up!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 12, 2015 15:01:54 GMT -5
The Killer (1989) Director-John Woo Yon-Fat Chow
An honorable assassin for hire accidentally causes his girlfriend's blindness. He needs to preform one last job for the mob to get the money for an operation to cure her. However a super-cop is determined to stop him even though he slowly grows to respect him
Action, action, action. I guess this was Woo's big breakout hit before coming to the US to work with Van Damme, Travolta, Cruise and other American action stars. The amount of bullets used is astonishing as the villians seem to fire hundreds of rounds and they all miss while the heroes connect every time. In fact, when someone gets shot its never one bullet-its at least a half dozen. Half the time the blind girlfriend is in the middle of the fire fight and she keeps crawling around screaming. Over and over.
Probably would have been very impressed with the stylized action back when this came out. At this point I've seen so many similar films that the shootouts just numb me out. OK if all you need is guns in your movie
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 13, 2015 0:03:03 GMT -5
The Killer (1989) Director-John Woo Yon-Fat Chow
An honorable assassin for hire accidentally causes his girlfriend's blindness. He needs to preform one last job for the mob to get the money for an operation to cure her. However a super-cop is determined to stop him even though he slowly grows to respect him
Action, action, action. I guess this was Woo's big breakout hit before coming to the US to work with Van Damme, Travolta, Cruise and other American action stars. The amount of bullets used is astonishing as the villians seem to fire hundreds of rounds and they all miss while the heroes connect every time. In fact, when someone gets shot its never one bullet-its at least a half dozen. Half the time the blind girlfriend is in the middle of the fire fight and she keeps crawling around screaming. Over and over.
Probably would have been very impressed with the stylized action back when this came out. At this point I've seen so many similar films that the shootouts just numb me out. OK if all you need is guns in your movie I saw this when it first came out. And it was awesome! It remains my favorite Hong Kong film. One time I saw it at the New Beverly theater, a revival house in Los Angeles, and I walked into the lobby when it was over (It was the first film in a Hong Kong double feature with Hard-Boiled.) and Lawrence Tierney was standing in the lobby with a foul look on his face. (Tierney was friends with the guy that owned the place. I had seen him there a few weeks earlier when they showed Dillinger and Born to Kill and he had talked about making both films and he also talked about Reservoir Dogs.)I walked up to him and said: "How did you like that, Mr. Tierney?" He made a face like he just couldn't believe what the world had just done to him. (I should add that he had some scabs on the top of his head. I suspect he'd been in a fight pretty recently.) He said: "What the hell was that? That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen!" I told him I had seen it before and I loved it and that a lot of people loved it for being so over the top and for the humor and Tierney immediately softened and even smiled a little bit and said "Well, different tastes is what makes the world. How ya doing, kid?" I actually saw him quite a bit around Hollywood. I talked to him a lot. He told me a bunch of crazy stuff about guys like Dutch Schultz and Benjamin Siegel (Don't call him Bugsy! He didn't like it!)
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 13, 2015 0:11:34 GMT -5
I'm watching Hakuchi, sometimes known as The Idiot. This is an Akira Kurosawa movie made in 1951 based on the Fedor Dostoevsky novel.
This has a bit of a reputation for being a bit difficult to sit through but it still has a 7.5 rating on IMDB. I really love almost everything Kurosawa did so I've been wanting to see it. I've watched over an hour and I love it so far! There's still more than an hour and a half to go so I hope I can stay awake.
It makes me want to read the book! I read Crime and Punishment a long time ago and it's one of my favorite classic novels. Kurosawa's version of The Idiot makes me think this novel is really good too!
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 13, 2015 13:25:27 GMT -5
I liked Hakuchi overall. But it does drag a bit here and there. I bet if I saw it in a movie theater with popcorn and a Coke and some Sno-Caps, I would have liked it a lot more. And I didn't finish it until after midnight, so I was close to dozing off here and there at the end.
Hakuchi is about a guy who was within minutes of being executed for a crime he didn't commit, but the execution is stopped at the last minute and he is set free. The ordeal has been too much for him and he has changed under the strain. He has become honest, perhaps a bit too honest. He trusts people. He wants to ease all suffering.
This causes problems when he returns to his hometown in Sapporo, Hokkaido. (There's lots of snow. Kurosawa is usually pretty big on rain, but in this movie he decided to give snow a chance.)
It's a bit slow at times. But it still has that Kurosawa magic that makes him my favorite director. I would recommend it for Kurosawa fans and Dostoevsky fans.
Tonight, I got The Naked Spur on the DVR and I'm looking forward to seeing a movie in English that's only 90 minutes after watching The Tin Drum and Hakuchi the last two nights.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 14, 2015 13:58:34 GMT -5
The Silencers (1966) Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Victor Buono, Cyd Charrisse, Dahlia Lavi, Roger C. Carmel
Matt Helm, greasy haired spy vs the Big O (Victor Buono) who wants world domination by causing WWIII. Pretty dumb plan
Matt Helm, the greatest 60's spy (after James Bond, Patrick McGoohan, Steed and Mrs Peel, Nick Fury, The Men from U.N.C.L.E., Our Man Flint, Secret Squirrel, I Spy, Mission Impossible Team and more). What other spy sings songs in the background of his films. He's got 2 gimmicks in this film, jacket buttons when pulled off act like hand grenades. Plus a revolver that shoots backwards so he wants you to take it away from him and use it to kill him. What a spy!! The film has drop dead gorgeous woman. Too bad Matt didn't drop dead but went on to sequels
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 14, 2015 14:07:24 GMT -5
The Ruling Class (1972) Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sims
After a hard day in Parliament, the 13th Earl of Gurney likes to relax by wearing a ballerina dress and tying a noose around his neck. Opps-he dies. His entire fortune goes to his mentally disturbed son (O'Toole) who thinks he's GOD. The family can only contest the will be getting O'Toole married and having a son, then commit him and be trustees for the baby. But if alternately O'Toole is cured of his GOD persona, can he become something worse?
Yes, an extremely wacked out and irreverent movie. Another bravura performance from O'Toole. The English manor the movie is shot in is magnificent. Classy, intelligent, over the top, I loved it.Recieved an X rating from the British Film Board and probably not for its brief nudity. If you like absurd cinema, this is for you. And its a Criterion to boot
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2015 14:10:17 GMT -5
The Silencers (1966) Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Victor Buono, Cyd Charrisse, Dahlia Lavi, Roger C. Carmel Matt Helm, greasy haired spy vs the Big O (Victor Buono) who wants world domination by causing WWIII. Pretty dumb plan Matt Helm, the greatest 60's spy (after James Bond, Patrick McGoohan, Steed and Mrs Peel, Nick Fury, The Men from U.N.C.L.E., Our Man Flint, Secret Squirrel, I Spy, Mission Impossible Team and more). What other spy sings songs in the background of his films. He's got 2 gimmicks in this film, jacket buttons when pulled off act like hand grenades. Plus a revolver that shoots backwards so he wants you to take it away from him and use it to kill him. What a spy!! The film has drop dead gorgeous woman. Too bad Matt didn't drop dead but went on to sequels I have all four movies of his Matt Helm and I just loved this series and I consider him so cool and I loved the photography of these movies - too many drop dead gorgeous women - my favorites are Ann Margret, Senta Berger, Elke Sommers, and of course Daliah Lavi, Camilla Sparv, and Beverly Adams who played Lovey Kravezit as his assistant. I watch them all on a rainy day - in an annual basis for fun!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 14, 2015 14:14:15 GMT -5
Places In The Heart (1984) Sally Field, Danny Glover, Ed Harris, John Malkovich
Depression era drama set in the south where Sally Field's sheriff husband is killed senselessly. Not only raising her 2 children, she needs to figure how to keep up payments on her small farm before foreclosure. Enter Danny Glover, itinerant worker, willing to help for room and board. The KKK are not happy with this set up
Heartfelt story. Sally Field won best actress and the film won for best writing. Ed Harris has an unnecessary side story as a cheating husband. I have no idea why it was included. Kudos to this movie
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 14, 2015 14:20:29 GMT -5
Never On Sunday (1960) Melina Mercouri, Jules Dassin
Dassin is an American Tourist in Greece. He comes upon happy hooker Mercouri and believes she symbolizes the decline of Greek civilization. He aims to educate her
Dassin also wrote and directed this film. Mercouri won the Cannes film festival award for this role. A classic theme song. The film still holds up but you'll need the captions activated to understand all the Greek. Drink some ouzo as you watch
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 14, 2015 14:48:18 GMT -5
The Silencers (1966) Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Victor Buono, Cyd Charrisse, Dahlia Lavi, Roger C. CarmelMatt Helm, greasy haired spy vs the Big O (Victor Buono) who wants world domination by causing WWIII. Pretty dumb plan Matt Helm, the greatest 60's spy (after James Bond, Patrick McGoohan, Steed and Mrs Peel, Nick Fury, The Men from U.N.C.L.E., Our Man Flint, Secret Squirrel, I Spy, Mission Impossible Team and more). What other spy sings songs in the background of his films. He's got 2 gimmicks in this film, jacket buttons when pulled off act like hand grenades. Plus a revolver that shoots backwards so he wants you to take it away from him and use it to kill him. What a spy!! The film has drop dead gorgeous woman. Too bad Matt didn't drop dead but went on to sequels I don't much like the Matt Helm movies. I've disliked them since childhood but a few years ago I decided to give old Matt another chance and I saw The Ambushers. It was awful! But I was visiting my dad recently and The Silencers was on TV (I think it was the Movies! channel.) and I watched the last half of it. It was very silly but I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the The Ambushers. What helped a lot was Stella Stevens (love her!), Daliah Lavi (she's awesome! Great voice.) and Victor Buono as the villain. Maybe I've been too harsh on Matt Helm over the years. Daliah Lavi is also in the 1960s version of Casino Royale and I've been wondering if anybody else has been in both the Matt Helm series and a James Bond movie. Does anybody know?
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