Rope is hard to get immersed into because of the gimmick. Every time the screen goes black as the camera pans past something in the foreground, you start focusing on the filmmaking rather than the storytelling.
To be fair, I had the same criticism of 1917 which had technical resources Hitchcock could only dream of.
I saw The Lady Vanishes in college and agree with all of your comments, wolfpup. I was underwhelmed by Rope, though. Just never clicked for me.
The Loved Ones
Not very recommended. Maybe a bit?
Guy turns a girl down for prom and she kidnaps him to force him into a hostage-prom. It’s less interesting than even this. Adequate, properly made, but really nothing particularly new here.
Edit: Same director made The Devil’s Candy, which was a lot better. See that one.
For fans of Rope, BBC series Psychoville (from the same stable as League of Gentlemen and Inside No 9) did an episode in homage to it. Filmed in two takes apparently, including a cut done in a similar fashion to the film.
I believe I recall reading somewhere that James Stewart complained that Hitchcock spent more time rehearsing the camera than the actors.
We just got through watching Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
Insidious: The Red Door on Netflix, Patrick Wilson. Horror movie about a man and his son who both have out-of-body experiences and encounter demons. Kind of muddled, but not bad as horror films go.
To Catch a Thief (1955). In this Hitchcock production, Cary Grant plays a former jewel thief who is pursued by French police because they think he’s responsible for a recent series of jewel thefts. Grace Kelly is the daughter of a wealthy socialite who plays his love interest.
With these stars and the filming location in the south of France, this is perhaps Hitchcock’s most glamorous film, but far from his best. It has long stretches of what I’d describe as “nothing happens”. The end sequence where the Grant character captures the real cat burglar isn’t all that suspenseful, and the plot twist predictable. Still, I’d include it in Hitchcock’s top 20 or so films. Definitely worth seeing, but if introducing someone to Hitchcock for the first time I’d pick something better.
And you thought…?
His reviews are scattered across different threads.
We streamed Fear the Night last night.
I expected a film like the great You’re Next, and that is what it wanted to be. Girl power, getting back at the bad men!!
But what we got was sucky, stupid ball of suck. Written and directed by Neil LaBute, who obviously didn’t give a crap.
If that’s what you’re looking for, I highly recommend Promising Young Woman. It racked up a total of 117 wins and 193 nominations, including a 2021 Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Best Actress nomination for Carey Mulligan. It won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Very emotional and competently put together. It does tend to cast men in a misandrist light, but speaking as a man, that’s OK, because it has a worthwhile story to tell that rings true about what predators many men are.
I came across The Martian while channel surfing and watched the last 2/3rds…but I’ve seen it twice before. But I want to post it here because I just love this movie. It has no villains; just good people working to solve a problem, being smart, using diplomacy, and breaking the rules (and accepting the consequences).
And the climax will put a lump in your throat.
And it’s really, really funny in spots; mostly Matt Damon’s video diary…eg, “Mark Watney -Space Pirate” cracks me up.
Good pick. It’s one of my favorites by one of my favorite directors.
I re-watched the 1935 movie She the other night. This is the definitive version of the film of H. Rider Haggard’s novel. It was made by Merian C. Cooper, and a lot of people who worked with him on 1933’s King Kong were involved in this, including scripter Ruth Rose (who probably was inevitable – she was married to Cooper) and composer Max Steiner, who re-used a lot of musical phrases from Kong. They also re-used those giant gates that Kong broke through, re-dressing them so they looked different. In fact, they re-used them twice, as two different sets of doors.
The version I watched was colorized under the direction of Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen is on record as disliking a lot of colorization, especially the job the Turner people did on King Kong. But She was supposed to have been filmed in color in the first place, only the studio yanked the funding for it at the last minute. I think HJarryhausen saw colorizing this version as simply righting a wrong. And it does look good in color.
I’d wanted to see this for years. It was mentioned in a lot of histories of fantastic film, but never seemed to be on TV. For years it was thought to be a lost film, until a copy showed up in Buster Keaton’s garage. The film was influential. Ray Harryhausen himself re-used the avalanche footage for his first solo film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. And the throne room of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed very clearly influenced his design of the throne room of the Grand Lunar in his film First Men in the Moon. I also have no doubt that the Disney artists stole one of the costumes for the Evil Queen in Snow White from this one. In fact, the whole character of the Evil Queen owes a lot to this film.
I think that Haggard’s novel is the source for the trope of the White Queen Ruling Over a Lost Civilization of Blacks that showed up an awful lot in films and stories in the 1930s and 1940s, like the 1948 Jungle Goddess. Somewhat fortunately, this film avoids some of that by being set in Asian mountains, somewhere in Siberia or the Himalayas. The movie uses not only the original novel, but pieces from the sequels, and the first sequel has She being reincarnated in Tibet. I suspect Cooper thought that using a Lost Civilization of Black People would be too much like King Kong, so he grabbed an opportunity to change the setting. So he dodged charges of racism here (Despite it being set in Asia, the people She rules over appear to be degraded white guys, not people of obviously asia origin).
The sets are interesting, with a heavy Art Deco feel to them. Just looking at the sets alone is an experience. Several of the effects are pretty good for the time, and being in color actually adds to it all.
The story had been done several times before Cooper, and was remade at least twice afterwards (once as a post-apocalyptic story), but I don’t see it being done again. Haggard’s story of the Evil Immortal Queen who falls for the Hero who is the Reincarnation of her Lost Love just doesn’t sell these days.
Is this streaming anywhere? I’ve only seen the Hammer version with Ursula Andress.
I don’t know. I stumbled across a used DVD myself.
Evidently it’s on Roku and Amazon Prime. The bottom link shows other platforms
Thanks!
Defending Your Life, 1991, Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, and a host of 80s "that guy"s star in a film about reckoning with your life’s choices after death. Not too sure this film is as deep as some people claim, and the scene where Brooks rejects investing in Casio for totally racist reasons is pretty cringe (but not as cringe as the fact that the racist reasoning behind his decision wasn’t condemned, just the fact that he lost out on $37 million), but it was an interesting way to spend a couple of hours.