The original French film was much better.
I’m not surprised - it’s the sort of story that Americans love but can’t help turning into a Hallmark card of a film. The French are fine leaving things a bit rougher.
Watched Salt today. Angelina Jolie as a badass. It actually worked.
We just spent $20 to watch this. It was worth it. It’ll be a while until I can forget this.
But I’m a little twisted after seeing Parasite. I kept thinking “Hey, Korean family, I’m expecting something weird about to happen”. Was happy it was a relatively "normal"movie.
Innocent Witness - Han Lee
“Soon-Ho (Jung Woo-Sung) is a poor lawyer. He defends a suspect in a murder case. While working on the case, Soon-Ho meets Ji-Woo (Kim Hyang-Gi). She is the only witness in the murder case and she has autism.”
Source: https://asianwiki.com/Innocent_Witness)
Hyang Gi is absolutely brilliant. If you can find her KBS Drama Special, Pretty Oh Man Bok, she gives another amazing performance at a much younger age.
Pay close attention to her only friend Hye Shin (Kim Seung Yoon) as she plays an important part in the plot development. I’m positive Seung Yoon will become to be an amazing actress given the chance in movies and TV.
She’s got the lips for it.
Watched Gaslight (1944) on @CalMeacham’s recommendation a few days ago. Very good film. I’ve seen some of these 1940s and early 50s era noir films and I’d put this up there as one of the best.
Today I watched The Stranger starring Orson Welles and Loretta Young. Now this movie I wasn’t very impressed with. There’s no character development and the way the movie pans out was really obvious ahead of time. It was like a movie that decided to cut out the opening scenes and instead show the audience the film starting from what was initially recorded to be 20 minutes in.
After years of intending to do so, I finally watched Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets. Some staggeringly “outdated language” aside, it’s an entertaining little dark comedy about a man bumping off various family members (all played by Alec Guinness) in order to inherit a dukedom. That said, it’s not as good as the original The Ladykillers, another Ealing comedy featuring Guinness and an ever-increasing death count.
News Of The World. I teared up a bit during the sandstorm scene.
Just finished Beirut on Hulu. I’d never heard of this film. Reviewers liked it, viewers not so much. John Hamm does a very nice job, as do most of the other actors. Briefly: Hamm is a former diplomat whose wife is killed in Beirut. Thirteen years later, he’s a drunk living in a motel and running a 2-person dispute resolution business. Then the State Department comes looking for him to go back to Beirut to negotiate the release of an old friend of his. The set locations and the atmosphere are very realistic. I enjoyed it.
Ive been watching obscure 70s films recently. One film that stands out is Five Man Army; its a spaghetti western with an impressive international cast. While in no way is it a great film it is one of the most consistently entertaining movies Ive seen in ages. Its about a train robbery and set in French occupied Mexico. Its very hard to find but its definitely worth a watch.
I’ve been warming up for baseball season, and working through some movies that it’s been a while since I’ve seen them.
*61
The Billy Crystal-directed movie about the 1961 chase between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. I’m no fan of the Yankees, so it’s hard to watch a movie like this without thinking that it’s whitewashed over with Yankee fan nostalgia. But it’s pretty good for an HBO film. Thomas Jane is a very good Mantle, and the underrated/underused Barry Pepper is also excellent as Maris.
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
I just watched this last night, and I’m still processing through a little bit of it. Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor and a host of other actors you mostly recognize
are players in the Negro Leagues who are tired of being exploited by their owner, who is docking their salary to pay for a bus ticket home for Rainbow (played by Otis Day), who got beaned in the head and can’t talk. They go off to barnstorm and make their own fortune, and provide a job for Rainbow along the way. With so many baseball movies out there, this is really the only one featuring the Negro Leagues that I’m aware of. It’s not a movie I’ll be showing my kids until they’re much older - there’s heavy use of the n-word, and there are a number of prostitutes. More disturbing is the miraculous recovery of Rainbow, who gets hit in the head again, setting him right. It is a good movie, and a very good baseball movie. I’m not qualified to determine if the movie itself is exploitative. There are a lot of components that are uncomfortable, but I think that may be more of a feature than a bug.
In almost any “aliens come to Earth” movie I can think of, seeing the aliens is the disappointment.
The good movies of this genre aren’t about the aliens. They’re about the humans.
That is some impressive special effects if you managed to get sand in your eye! 
There are some Jackie Robinson movies [although I don’t know how much is from when he was in the Negro Leagues], for example.
The Soul of the Game [1996], full movie free at:
The Jackie Robinson Story [1950], full movie free at:
42 [2013], trailer at:
I’ve been meaning to track down “Soul of the Game”. But I definitely would not classify “42” as a movie about the Negro Leagues. It’s very much about Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey as Jackie breaks the MLB color barrier - not the 43 games he played for the Monarchs.
Though if you haven’t seen “42”, you should. It’s fantastic.
Yes, I really liked 42 as well. The scenes where Branch Rickey spoke to another team owner about whether God loves baseball, and when the appallingly racist Phillies manager Ben Chapman is put in his place, were particularly good.
I’ve only watched the beginning of it so far (Too busy and not enough time), but I picked up a DVD of 1001 Arabian Nights, a movie I haven’t seen in ages. It’s a 1959 UPA Cartoon feature starring Mr. Magoo as Abdul Aziz Magoo.
IOt was the first theatrical film from UPA and Columbia’s first animated feature, which had only made shorts before this, and the first Mr. Magoo feature film (made three years before they made Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol for TV.).
Interesting film. The colors are incredibly bright and the animation active but cartoony in the UPA style. It’s really just the story of Aladdin* with Magoo shoehorned in as Aladdin’s uncle (and owner of a lamp shop – you can see where that’s going). It’s hard not to think that Disney cribbed from this when they were making their own version, because it features an oversized primary-colored Genie, dispenses with the Genie of the Ring from the original story, and has the Evil Vizier of the kingdom as the one trying to get the lamp (in the original story, it’s a Moroccan wizard who poses as a relative), and who has animal “familiars” that he talks to, an orphan Aladdin (not in the original story), and a fat and silly Sultan.
There’s a lot of familiar voices here, beside Jim Backus as Magoo. Daws Butler is the rug merchant. Hans Conreid (who did a lot of work in cartoons and for Disney, and is best known in cartoons as the voice of both Mr. Darling and Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Here he’s the Evil Vizier), Alan Reed (Fred Flintstone, here playing the Sultan), and Herschel Bernardi (Charlie the Tuna! Here playing the Genie). Dwayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis!) is Aladdin, and Kathryn Grant is the Princess Yasminda (having just played Princess Parisa in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad the previous year)
It occurs to me that there were a lot of “Thousand and one Night” movies that came out around this time, and that I saw as a kid in the local theater at matinees :
Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (Ray Harryhausen – 1958)
1001 Arabian Nights (Mr. Magoo – 1959)
Wonders of Aladdin (starring Donald O’Connor – I had no idea at the time who he was – 1961)
Thief of Bagdad (starring Steve “Hercules” Reeves – 1961)
Captain Sinbad (with Guy “Zorro” Williams – 1963)
*technically, Aladdin isn’t even contained in the canonical “Arabian Nights”. Burton assigns it to the addendum to the nights. It’s clearly a story in the same vein, and has itself become iconic of those stories.
the original is well worth reading, because it’s more layered and impressive than the story you might remember from your childhood. Aladdin is a wastrel boy living with his mother who has no sense of responsibility and spends his time goofing off, and gradually changes under the influence of the two genies and having to deal with the unexpected setbacks, growing into a responsible adult. Disney apparently considered doing something close to this, with the widowed mother and all, but ultimately went with the orphan Aladdin living on the streets, but already a responsible individual who cares for the poor kids.
Another thumbs up for Nomadland, though I’m mildly peeved it was nominated for best cinematography. Beautiful scenery =/= great cinematography.
Although, nothing beats Gravity winning that category despite being something like 92% visual effects, so clearly I’m out of touch.
Also peeved that Wonder Woman 1984 and Uncle Frank got no nominations.
[tangent] Why hasn’t anyone done a biopic of Sir Richard Burton?