It’s an absolute classic scene.
I agree that The Godfather is a great film (as is Godfather Part II). It reminds me of something seen more in films from the 70s than now—extended scenes that don’t necessarily advance the plot, but immerse you into the world of the characters. For example: the wedding scenes from The Godfather, and The Deer Hunter. Some people see fault in long scenes like those, but I love them. I guess our shortening attention spans have made them less common.
Just watched California Split, a 1974 Robert Altman movie (I think I’ve seen them all now).
Elliot Gould and George Segal bond over a shared addiction to gambling. Kind of a bromance. Described as a comedy but I didn’t find it particularly funny.
If you generally like Altman you’ll like this. I do and did.
:: golf clap ::
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) in theaters. After being disappointed with the previous one, I was not sure what to expect with this one. Fortunately, it was much better than I expected. It certainly is over the top, but at the same time, it had more characters whose ultimate outcome you do care about. On the whole it was a lot of fun though one does wonder why people in clubs tend to be so oblivious as to what is happening around them.
//i\\
Last night, we streamed A Knock at the Cabin and Sick
I liked a Knock at the Cabin. It was weird and there and there was no real explanation of why they ended up at THAT cabin. I liked much more than my wife, who found it a bit silly. She was right, but I still liked it. We both especially like David Bautista.
As silly as it was, it was far, far better than Sick. Mindless drivel about a family so distraught over their kin’s Covid death that the hunt and kill those that ‘infected’ him. Seemed a bit like they were painting people who believed in Covid precautions as tyrannical anti-freedom idiots
We watched the same last night and we liked. I liked it better though until Peacock auto-played The Sixth Sense , which I got sucked into . Nothing M. Night S has done since that has been half as good as TSS but we did enjoy Knock at the Cabin for what it was.
Just watched Barbarian and really enjoyed it. Very creepy and atmospheric.
It was certainly not what I expected it to be. Did you see Men from last year? Interesting movie, with a final 15 minutes that more people really need to see.
Damn Yankees. I’d been wanting to see this for a while and wow, was I profoundly disappointed. Even for a lighthearted musical comedy the plot makes no sense, the songs are badly sung (and most of them are mediocre apart from “You Gotta Have Heart” and "“Whatever Lola Wants”), and Tab Hunter is appallingly bad as an actor (to the point where I kept wishing they’d bring back the older version of the character). Ray Walston does his best with the incoherent mess he’s been handed, and Gwen Verdon hoofs her ass off to try to hold up the film, but even she murders the best song in the show by playing it for clumsy laughs.
The film has also dated very badly, both because there are a lot of cultural references peppered throughout and because there is some spectacular racism casually thrown in for laughs (I mean, cannibals and Indians…). On the whole I’d say give it a miss, and if you want to see “Whatever Lola Wants” performed well go watch Chiwetel Ejiofor sing it in Kinky Boots.
Ha, Mrs. solost and I watched ToS last night, and she had the same reaction as Mahaloth for the first third or so of the movie. It did seem like it was going to be a subtle, slow, bone-dry satire at first… before all freakin’ hell breaks loose 
Damn, did not know that. That’s awful.
This weekend I watched I See You (Helen Hunt) and Inside Man (Stanley Tucci). Both were good. I See You had some good twists in it and Inside Man was one of those crime dramas that make you say - “why are you doing that?” numerous times. It’s actually a mini-series of 4 episodes.
Oh, speaking of Stanley Tucci, I watch Devil Wears Prada with my daughter. Great cast and performances, makes me hate the fashion culture all over again. 
I really liked I See You, much more than I was expecting.
The Godfather Part II
Yes, it is very good. I still think the first one is actually better, though. I mean, the second one is an incredible sequel, but the first one has many more iconic scenes and I think it is overall a better movie.
Still, I was pretty impressed with both of these movies not having seen them in a very long time. They hold up and look terrific in HD on a big TV. Closest I’ve had to seeing them in a theater.
I am going to watch the new edit of Godfather III, called the “Coda Cut”. They re-edited in a couple years ago and it is supposed to improve it somewhat, but not redeem it entirely.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
After working my way through the original and animated series, I decided to keep going chronologically to the original cast movies.
I don’t think I’ve watched this all the way through since I saw it on opening weekend in 1979. Star Wars had come out two years before. It was full of action and had better special effects. Comparisons were inevitable, and ST:TMP felt rather disappointing at the time. And history has not judged it favorably.
Still, I dunno… I didn’t hate it today. Having just finished watching the original series, this movie feels very much a part of that universe, thematically and philosophically. Let’s face it, the TV show wasn’t exactly action-packed. It could be quite ponderous, usually aiming for more cerebral plots and resolutions rather than just being a space shoot-em-up. That’s what this film was going for too, and the central plot device is an interesting and thought-provoking one.
The movie certainly has its problems, of course. It could have lost at least half an hour just by cutting all the long static exterior shots of the Enterprise. Sulu, Chekhov, Uhura, and even Bones and Scotty, had virtually nothing to do except… be there.
But overall it held my interest, and Spock’s personal journey was actually quite satisfying.
Are there better Star Trek movies? Sure. Is this one still worth a watch? I think so.
Caught In Time (2020)
A team of organised professional thieves are pulling off audacious and violent robberies while a police officer is determined to stop them…
Saw this on British TV. It’s a Chinese film (subtitled) set in the 1990s and although it sounds like a HEAT knockoff it’s apparently based on a genuine Chinese criminal.
Lasts just over an hour and a half and the Chinese setting is refreshing. The direction and scene staging is good. Plus the climatic fight is ‘real’ rather than involving all that martial arts stuff somersaulting up walls and hundreds of punches delivered per second.
The big, big problem is very limited characterisation and character development.
Worth watching as an insight into Chinese culture. But if this was an American production I doubt I would have watched to the end.
TCMF-2L
Like you, I saw it in 1979. It was much too long, but I chalked that up to the time spent on bringing all the main characters up to date, an issue they never had to address in subsequent movies. I haven’t seen this in years but I generally approved it at the time and have never understood the hate people have for it. The “V-ger” plot idea was an intriguing one. If I watched it today I would probably be distracted by what a creep actor Stephen Collins turned out to be, and the rather sad end of actress Persis Khambatta.
Me too. I hadn’t heard anything about it and seeing that it was 4 years old, I thought maybe it was just one of those movies that are so-so. My husband even liked it and we rarely like the same movies/shows.
A few days ago I watched The Year of Living Dangerously which I remembered loving when it was released (1982), and it definitely held up. Sigourney Weaver had a lot of trouble with her British accent, but it didn’t really matter. Otherwise, she was great. Mel Gibson was impossibly young, and Linda Hunt was heartbreakingly wonderful. Intense and involving with great supporting performances. There was no real music score, but Weir used a lot of different pieces of music. There was one section that sounded very Hans Zimmer-y to me. Turns out it was from an “opera” by Vangelis (L’Enfant from Opera Sauvage).
The Star from 1952 was Bette Davis as a former star on a downward slide. Just o.k. Well acted, but so familiar now. I liked watching it for the scenes of Southern California as I remember it from my early childhood, although this movie was made about the time I was born. She takes a job at the May Company department store, and I’m pretty sure it’s the one that’s now the Academy movie museum on Wilshire. A 13-14 year old Natalie Wood plays her daughter, and it made me think that Wood was one of the very few child actors who never had an awkward stage. She went from small child to tween to teen to adult with nary a bump. Another thing was Davis’s Oscar. It looked different than the current Oscar statuettes, but it looked very much like the one Janet Gaynor had in A Star is Born from 1937. Did they redesign it in the 50s or 50s? Interestingly, Gaynor, nor anyone else, called it an Oscar. Davis only called hers Oscar.