Body Heat. One of my favorites, IMO the best neo-noir of the last few decades. Watching now for about the 10th time. But, Ned and Matty are having sex, both covered in sweat, there is one scene in a bathtub, she pours in some ice to cool them down. Other sex scenes have the same problem with the heat. But she lives in a million dollar house, no air conditioning? Yes, sex can get hot and sweaty even with AC. But I have always felt there should be a line,just one line, to explain it. Matty says, about AC, Edmond doesn’t believe in it, says it makes people weak…
I’m half-watching Raiders of the Lost Ark right now and there’s quite a bit of below-par re-recorded dialogue, particularly in the scenes in Cairo. You don’t have to be watching people’s mouths to catch it — there are obvious instances where the levels don’t match, or they didn’t record room tone, or something.
It bugs me because the movie has such solid, evocative sound (and scoring) work overall. And it’s a fine piece of craftsmanship overall, like a Swiss watch or an ABBA song.
Trading Places. Ralph Bellamy is explaining to Eddie Murphy the commodities that the Duke Brothers trade in. He explains a bacon lettuce tomato (BLT) sandwich, and Murphy looks at the camera as if to say, “Is this as dumb as I think it is?”
Unnecessary, in my view. Murphy would have done much better to say to Bellamy, “I know what a BLT is,” or similar. It’s a fine movie, and very entertaining, but that one instance of breaking the fourth wall was unnecessary.
Dunno if a missing scene would be on-topic here, but I was disappointed in The Two Towers when they didn’t have the scene of Treebeard drinking the Ent Draught, where the drops fall through the evening air like glittering stars. It seemed like such an iconic cinematic image that I was certain it would be in the Extended Edition at least.
In The Dark Knight, the Joker gives an ultimatum: The 2 passenger ferries must blow the other up, or he blows up both at midnight.
Problem is, this is a flawed ethical dilemma: By this logic, there is no reason not to blow the other up since both face guaranteed death. In fact, pulling the trigger saves a boat of lives. There is no dilemma, as presented.
He should have said, “If you don’t blow the other up, then I blow up one boat, out of the two, at random.”
Killing innocent people to save yourself is hardly moral. And you’d have to go through the rest of your life living with the consequences of your decision. (I do remember a science fiction story that had the exact dilemma, and the decision ruined the survivor’s life).
If the Joker kills them, you are not morally responsible for other people’s death.
Hmm. It was 1981 so regular people did not have A/C. Dunno about a wealthy man in Florida. But the Wiki synopsis states the movie took place during an extreme heat wave so perhaps they wanted to convey that.
Except that, as presented in the Joker’s ultimatum, the other person would die no matter what. Either they die by you pulling the trigger, or they die by the Joker pulling the trigger. But under no circumstances do they live.
That makes pulling the trigger far more palatable for you (not “you” personally but you in general,) which then makes it a poorly-designed premise, because it is no longer a dilemma.
At the end of James Bond:Skyfall after blowing up the manor when Kincade and M escape through the blackness of night I absolutely hate that they were so stupid to carry a lantern along with them. Silva easily sees the lantern moving across the blackness of the countryside and immediately tracks them down.
I would change it where somehow he outwits them and figures out they escaped and where they went to. Having them carry a lit beacon was too easy and made the head of MI6 look incredibly stupid.
Real-world elephants are quite impressive enough. There was no need to super-size them.
The Mirror of Galadriel is a scene that calls for subtlety. Jackson opted for bombast. That scene should have been dark and quiet, and all of the menace should have been hinted at, in Cate Blanchett’s voice.
At the conclusion of “The Natural”, when Robert Redford is playing catch with Glenn Close’s (and his?) son in the wheat field, which no one would ever do because the ball could get dropped, overthrown, or lost in the tall wheat for a long long time.
LA Confidential ends up with a shootout between the 2 “good” cops and the bad guy and his minions. The bad guys chose the location and gave the protagontists a perfect defensive spot with enough time to figure out it was a set up.
The final showdown could go down exactly as it did; just find some way for it not to have been the spot chosen by the bad guys, or at least add in a deus ex machina reason for the bad guys arriving so late.
In the movie “The Godfather” Fabrizio, the Sicilian bodyguard who kills Michael’s first wife isn’t killed. There were plans to have Michael do it but those shelved. In the novel Fabrizio works in a pizzeria in Buffalo and one of Michael’s men kills him there.
My kids and I watched it on Disney +, my first time seeing it in HD. Beautiful movie, filmed amazingly. I think it was much more gorgeous than I ever realized on VHS or DVD.
That clifftop set where Wesley fights Inigo? It’s too “set like” and cheesy compared to the rest of the movie. The whole thing is a Fairy Tale, but everything else looks like a real enough location. The clifftop was not well made enough to hold up to film-cameras. It’s silly looking.
Peter Sellers’ outtakes during the closing credits of Being There. That scene is more than just a minor detail I’d like to change – IMO (and Sellers’ too, I think) it broke the spell and spoiled the movie.
They did actually film this scene but it didn’t make it into the movies. It’s added back into The Godfather Saga, if you have time to commit to watching that. Good scene, though I would have liked to see Michael confront Fabrizio rather than watching from a safe distance. I guess that fits in with his growing emotional detachment from his world.
At the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (I’m not going to spoiler-box a 38-year-old movie; stop reading if you don’t want to know), Khan knows he’s about to die, but he plans to take Kirk and the Enterprise with him, which will be his final victory. In his twisted mind, he has won.
In his last seconds, he’s watching the Enterprise on an intermittently functioning view screen as he deploys the Genesis device - but just in time, warp drive is restored and the Enterpries flies safely away.
But does Khan know this? We don’t know. Just a brief shot of Khan watching the Enterprise speed away would have made his defeat utter and complete (and given Ricardo Montalban one final chance to much on a little scenery). But for all we know, Khan died thinking he’d won, which is much less powerful.