Wife and I saw Aquaman, the Lost Kingdom today. I’m watching and thinking I’ve seen all these action scenes before in Star Wars. A watery environment sure, but the setups and action are essentially the same. Bar scene, big fish-like thing (Martin Short) as Jabba the Hutt as examples. Aquaman’s jailed asshole brother is freed and resurrects himself. Heartwarming I tells ya. I stayed awake the whole time so that gets a C. Don’t overpay if you must see.
I picked up a couple of older DVDs and watched them over the weekend
The Thin Man (1934) I saw the first Nick and Nora Charles film eons ago. My wife had never seen the whole thing. Based on Dashiell Hammett’s book (which I’ve never read). Supposedly the dialogue between Nick and Nora was based on the interchanges between Hammett and Lillian Hellman. The screenplay was written by a married couple, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, which probably helped. The mystery is nowhere near as important as the interplay between Nick and Nora (and Asta, the Visible Soul of their marriage). Nick and Nora are unapologetic lushes and are clearly having a lot of sex. Their indulgence must have seemed a relief to Depression-era audiences seeking a ninety minute vacation from their woes. It still works.
This first film was “pre-Code”. I haven’t seen any of the sequels (the last one was made in 1947!), and don’t know how well it fared after the free and easy years of sex and booze were smothered. According to the internet, the next three were pretty good (the second had a young Jimmy Stewart and was Oscar-nominated), but the fifth film ditched the drinking, and the last film lacked the original director sand writers.
Wizards (1977) – for a complete change of pace. This was Ralph Bakshi’s try-out for making Lord of the Rings. It’s a soimetimes brilliant, sometimes disappointing mishmash of scenes and styles. It’s not entirely clear what the hell Bakshi thought he was up to. Some scenes are gorgeously animated. In others it’s as if he’s too lazy to bother, and just rotoscopes horns and things onto scenes from some European medieval story. He’s got scenes of bitter satire (the President is literally a clown, and his REligious Leaders appear to lampoon as many religious ideas as possible, while being completely useless at preventing a massacre). The cutesy shots of Tolkeinian fairy tale creatures are jarringly at odds with the gory violence. The tough, workaday female characters are interesting in working against the fantasy stereotype, but they have to fight against the aggressively fanservice character of Elinor, with prominent nipples and abbreviated outfit. And, of course, the ending makes no sense at all, with the Peter Falk/Colombo-esque wizard Avatar first going lovey-dovey crazy as they approach their goal, then contradicting the whole premise of “Love vs. Technology” by killing his brother Blackwolf with Technology.
It looks as if Bakshi wasn’t trying for a coherent story line, but simply trying out different ideas and styles and sort-of stringing it together with a D&D-esque plot.
In any event, it didn’t really help when he made his Lord of the Rings movie. He went over to the Daek Side of literal rotoscoping (some scenes just look as if he color-washed high-contrast black and white film). There are moments in his LoTR that shine, when he let his animation fly free, but mostly the film is a huge disappointment.
I also watched the 1910 Frankenstein and The ? Motorist to get my fill of silent films.
We watched Oppenheimer (2023), streamed on Amazon, although it’s still playing in the local theaters. The fun part: the name-dropping of famous physicists (plus Kurt Gödel!) and trying to remember their equations (we’re both physicists). The rest of the movie: terrible.
The effort of the director, Christopher Nolan, is total hackwork. It’s like he had a knob labeled “DRAMA!” that he kept having to dial up to 11! in order to keep the audience awake. The actors obliged, switching from believable characterizations to Total Scene Chewing! right on queue. The sound editing was the same, regular to LOUD!, and sometimes _{toosoft}. Overall the movie feels like local community theater, except insincere.
It’s not new that the Academy has completely different ideas of what makes a good movie, but the contrast here is extreme.
We rewatched Frozen (2013) as a palate cleanser. Now that is good craftwork.
House of Games (1987). Written and directed by David Mamet. I know it’s generally well regarded, but it just scores an “okay, it’s watchable” from me. A psychiatrist gets mixed up with a grouop of con men, with some twists and turns along with the deal where you can’t be sure who’s screwing who over. I like the premise, and there’s some psychological stuff going on. On the other hand, I do wish a couple of the nuts-and-bolts elements of how the pieces of the story fit together could have been tweaked out to make it a little “tighter.” And I was distracted by the feeling that the main character was emanating “character from an eighties Cronenberg movie” vibes all the way through. Nothing specific; not sure why. Maybe her general attitude and her body language. Whatever; that’s just a “me thing,” though.
I was putting together some furniture in the living room and put on something that didn’t require a whole lot of attention. Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster probably wasn’t the best choice because the Criterion edition on MAX is only available in the original Japanese with English subtitles. Nonetheless, I paid attention to the opening scene which is just hilarious. A bunch of UFO “experts” are on the roof of a building with their telescopes and machines that go “ping” and they are chastising the one woman among them (a reporter, I think) for being the reason they haven’t spotted any UFOs yet…because she doesn’t believe! It was the Great Pumpkin theory of Ufology. The pumpkin patch, er, rooftop just wasn’t sincere enough for the UFOs to make an appearance. I barely paid attention to the rest of the movie, but that first scene just tickled my funny bone for the rest of the day.
I generally really enjoy Christopher Nolan’s films but here’s an interesting personal factoid: I’ve been trying for weeks now to watch Oppenheimer and somehow I just can’t get through it. It just doesn’t grab my attention for some reason and the length of it is pretty daunting. Part of it is that I already know much of the story, part of it is that I was expecting more science and less political drama in the film, and part of it is I think some of the reasons you’ve identified.
Also, as little science as there was, there were elements of it that seemed to me to be quite wrong. IIRC, in one scene Oppenheimer blithely states that “we don’t know” what happens when massive stars burn out and begin to collapse. Surely he must have been aware of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar’s work in the late 20s and early 30s on this very subject, and the famous confrontation with Arthur Eddington in 1935, in which Chandrasekhar’s work foresaw both neutron stars and black holes. I also recall that Nolan wanted to introduce silly unscientific dreck in Interstellar, and it was only the fortuitous fact of having Kip Thorne on board that kept things reasonably on track.
He did introduce silly unscientific dreck in Interstellar, remember “Love is a quantum phenomena”?
It was an active field of study at the time. “Don’t know” is over simplifying, but there wasn’t a consensus yet. I’m not sure when the term “black hole” started getting widespread use by physicists.
I was disappointed by the lack of science, but didn’t really expect it. I have low expectations of movies these days.
I’m working my way through the Randolph Scott Ranown cycle Westerns. 5 were directed by Budd Boetticher. They’re considered more creative and gritty than the typical B Westerns from the 50’s. Budd Boetticher was able to direct quality films on a low budget. They don’t look like low budget films.
The Tall T with Randolph Scott and Maureen O’Sullivan
Is very good. A cowboy and a rich heiress get captured during a stage holdup. Bad guy Richard Boone is convinced to spare their lives and seek ransom from the woman’s father.
Comanche Station Scott rescues a captured woman from the Indians and tries to return her to her family. Scott has to fight off outlaws who want the woman for a $5000 reward.
They’re much better and more adult themed then other westerns. Great introduction to Randolph Scott.
I bought a Blu-Ray with the 5 Budd Boetticher movies. The other two films are on Prime.
Link Randolph Scott & The 7 "Ranown Cycle" Movies Mostly Westerns
LOL Scott made several dozen Westerns. Many were formulaic and forgettable.
The Ranown Cycle films are the exception. But they’re still low budget.
His best is still Ride The High Country.
Well, in some sense everything is a quantum phenomenon, but yeah, that was a weak point in the movie. But remember that Kip Thorne did write a book – The Science of “Interstellar” – to explain why the main scientific ideas in the movie were at least theoretically possible, even if sometimes implausible.
What was their scientifically possible take on Matthew McConaughey advancing a year in time for every second he spent standing on that planet?
That’s bog-standard gravitational time dilation. When you’re near a large mass, your local time runs slower than when you’re far from masses.
Sure, if you were standing on a Black Hole. Or is that the ‘implausible’ bit?
Looking at Christopher Nolan’s filmography, I’ve only watched two: Batman Begins and Oppenheimer. I guess I never got past the trailers of any of the others.
Yeah, implausible. Any body could have a large gravitational field–it’s just a matter of “engineering” to keep it from collapsing in on itself.
At the event horizon, time comes to a complete stop relative to an outside observer. Further out, as on a hypothetical planet orbiting the black hole, time would be severely dilated by the enormous gravity. Quoting directly from Thorne’s book:
The first planet that Cooper and his crew visit is Miller’s. The most impressive things about this planet are the extreme slowing of time there, gigantic water waves, and huge tidal gravity. All three are related, and arise from the planet’s closeness to Gargantua …
… Time slows near Gargantua, and the slowing becomes more extreme as we get closer and closer to Gargantua’s event horizon. Therefore, according to Einstein’s law of time warps (Chapter 4), gravity becomes ultrastrong as we near the horizon. The red curve in Figure 17.2, which depicts the strength of the gravitational force, turns sharply upward.
Nyad (Netflix) Chronicling Diana Nyad’s repeated attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida at the advanced age of 60+.
Completely engrossing. Annette Bening and Jodie Foster were nominated for Oscars, and deservedly so. The film doesn’t try to decide for us whether Nyad was filled with competitive fire, or just batshit loony.
I happen to be reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air at the moment (about a disastrous expedition on Mt Everest), and it struck me that there’s a connection to both (true) stories: people willing to put themselves through horrific trials to reach some goal.