Movies you've seen recently (Part 1)

Cafe Society
9020

Watched 21 Bridges [2020] starring the late Chadwick Boseman as NYPD anti-drug investigator whose cop father had been killed on duty. Formulaic but well done. Much of it shot in Philadelphia. Title refers to the 21 bridges connecting to the island of Manhattan that will be sealed off overnight to prevent departure of suspects in a major drug heist in which several police officers are killed. It evokes memories of 1955’s 6 Bridges to Cross about the Boston Brinks robbery and the 6 bridges connecting mid-town Boston to the world. That starred Tony Curtis and the debut of Sal Mineo.

21 Bridges co-stars Sienna Miller, Stephan James, J.K. Simmons and Keith David with David playing Deputy Chief. Interesting to note that Keith David was mistakenly credited as David Keith in Videohound’s Golden Movie Retriever 2021 Edition.

9021

Keith David and David Keith have been continually miscredited in my head for decades.

9022

Last night I watched, Hot Stuff (1979), starring half the cast of Smokey and the Bandit II with a replacement Sally Field in Suzanne Pleshette. It is supposedly based on a true story, but I think that story is, “did you know that cops sometimes run stings?” and they go from there. It’s madcap and goofy and ridiculous and so much fun. The cops set up a pawn shop where they video tape people selling stolen goods, with the idea of rounding them all up at once and securing a bunch of convictions. But then the mob gets involved and they end up becoming friends with all the criminals that they’re going to arrest and there’s a car chase and a bar brawl and there’s a food fight and Dom DeLuise gets stoned with an old English couple …

Directed by Dom DeLuise as well. Recommended.

9023

My sister recorded The Pleasure of his Company off TCM, and we watched it yesterday. Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds, Lilli Palmer, and Garry Merrill. I hated it.

Astaire is Reynolds’s dad who left the family when she was about 6 or 7 (which would have made her early 20s, but she was really 31 and looked it) to gad about the world playboy style. He had maybe three interactions with his daughter over their 15 year separation, but she’s kept a scrapbook about his gadding and he’s her hero. He came back because she’s getting married, and once back, he tries to break up the wedding and get Debbie to go off with him. His character was not charming. It was rancid. Making Palmer get all giddy when Astaire was around made me nauseated. I actually rather liked Tab Hunter in a small role as the fiance. Avoid!

9024

Late Night with the Devil
Pretty neat little film (90 minutes) about a fictional early 70s late night show that could never get close to the ratings of Carson so in a last ditch effort during sweeps week decides to do a Halloween show and have a psychologist/author and her young girl patient as guests. The girl is the soul survivor of an occult/cult that set itself on fire when the authorities moved in. The girl has a “demon” in her that will talk to the shrink when summoned. Let’s just say things get out of hand.
It plays like a found footage of the show from that night with some backstage footage included.
Has been getting great reviews and while not perfect did a lot of things right in getting the feel of a 70s variety show down and guests reminiscent of Randi and Uri Geller.
RECOMMENDED

9025

Rounders (1998). Matt Damon and Edward Norton are players in the seamy, sometimes violent underground world of high-stakes poker. With John Turturro, Martin Landau and Gretchen Mol; John Malkovich chews the scenery as a Russian mobster/poker player. Excellent; recommended.

I’ve just started learning to play Texas Hold 'Em, so the jargon was 10% intelligible instead of 0%, but that’s not important. (Apparently “rounders” are people who play poker for a living)

9026

My latest six:

The Philadelphia Eleven
An interesting documentary about the first eleven women ordained as Episcopal priests in 1974, just two years before the church’s rules were changed to permit it. I understand their impatience and admire their courage and zeal, but couldn’t help but think that the church might have been better served if they’d waited just a little longer, rather than causing division and controversy.

Top Secret!
I’d never seen this ZAZ spy spoof before in its entirety, just a few scenes here and there. Very funny. Not quite as good as Airplane!, but still very much worth a look. My favorite bit: the band of French Resistance fighters, all with silly names, hiding in Cold War East Germany, and the bad guy with his rubber stamp, “FIND HIM AND KILL HIM.”

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Also good fun, with Leslie Nielsen reprising his role as the dumb but well-meaning detective from the short-lived TV cop-spoof series.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
My middle son had never seen the Capt. Jack Sparrow movies, so I was glad to introduce him to the first and best. Exciting, funny, clever, well-produced and with a great cast - Keira Knightley particularly shines, of course.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
On we went to the next. Not nearly as good as the first IMHO, but with a laugh or two and some great action sequences. Bill Nighy (under a lot of CGI “makeup”) is quite good as Davy Jones.

Ennio
Engaging, heartwarming documentary about the late, great Italian film score composer Ennio Morricone, who gave such a distinctive sound to A Fistful of Dollars, The Mission, Days of Heaven, The Untouchables and Cinema Paradiso, among many other great films. It includes interviews with John Williams, Clint Eastwood, Hans Zimmer, Bruce Springsteen, Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone and others. Any fan of movie music really should see it.

9027

If you like sight gags, I know of no better movie than this.

9028

I watched this recently with the family. My favorite bit was leaning over to Kid Cheesesteak and saying “you know that’s a real cow, right?” he’s all “waitaminute… what???”

9029

Well, sometimes it was… and sometimes it wasn’t. Hooray for Hollywood!

9030

Sounds awfully similar to the TV movie Ghostwatch. Which, incidentally, was pretty good. Also occurs on Halloween, also is an attempt to track ghosts on live TV, and also turns unexpectedly and horrifyingly real.

9031

I definitely thought it has some parallels to Ghostwatch! (Which is also a really excellent film I’d recommend )

9032

To get granular, since I’m a Cinematographer and such things jump out at me, Panavision is a company and branded name of cameras and lenses.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was shot using the Cinerama system. Cinerama was invented by Panavision. This yielded a 2.76:1 aspect ratio ( quite narrow top to bottom, quite wide side to side ). It was one of the attention-grabbing systems that various companies came out with mostly in the 1950’s to combat the popularity of television sets at home and try to keep people going to the movies.

Relevant Link

9033

Probably a good thing Harlan has passed, because he would have sued them for ripping off his short story “Flop Sweat.”

9034

The American Society of Magical Negroes

Strongly not recommended.

Wow, this was a disaster. I know it did not get good reviews and even has a 2.5/10 score on IMDB right now, but it really is quite bad.

I’m just going to link to a fuller review than I could write. It’s really bad. Honestly, a bit embarrassing.

9035

Cool! I’ve been looking forward to seeing this, and given how much you disliked American Fiction, which I thought was very enjoyable, I’m thinking TASMN might be pretty good too.

9036

The Last Witch Hunter. This has such a fearsomely bad reputation that I watched it for the hell of it, and I kind of liked it. I mean, that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations, but I’ll take it.

9037

Please post your review here after you watch it and @ me when you do.

9038

Permit me to correct your correction.

Panavision is a company and branded name of cameras and lenses.

Correct, but it has also lent its name to a number of cinematographic processes. More below.

Cinerama was invented by Panavision.

Incorrect. Cinerama was invented in 1952 by Fred Waller. It premiered in 1952 with This is Cinerama, two years before the Panavision company was founded. Cinerama used three 35mm strips, shot with a special camera and projected from three projectors, to display an image with about a 2.6:1 ratio (varied by theater). The frame rate was 26 fps – yes 26, not 24.

Needless to say, the system was extremely complicated and only a handful of films were made and exhibited in the original format. Other companies introduced competing similar wide-screen systems using single systems, usually with anamorphic lenses.

By the early 1960s,

Rising costs of making three-camera widescreen films caused Cinerama to stop making such films in their original form shortly after the first release of How the West Was Won [1962]. The use of Ultra Panavision 70 for certain scenes (such as the river raft sequence) later printed onto the three Cinerama panels, proved that a more or less satisfactory wide-screen image could be photographed without the three cameras. Consequently, Cinerama discontinued the three film process…

Cinerama continued through the rest of the 1960s as a brand name used initially with the Ultra Panavision 70 widescreen process (which yielded a similar 2.76 aspect ratio to the original Cinerama, although it did not simulate the 146-degree field of view). Optically “rectified” prints and special lenses were used to project the 70 mm prints onto the curved screen. The films shot in Ultra Panavision for single lens Cinerama presentation were It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), The Hallelujah Trail (1965) and Khartoum (1966).

Wikipedia

So IAMMMMW was shot in Ultra Panavision 70 and presented as a Cinerama film. Not the other way around.

As for @Crafter_Man’s assertion that The Russians Are Coming was shot on Panavision, that’s what the IMDb entry says, a 35mm Panavision anamorphic “scope” process. Whether that’s the official name of the process or IMDb has it wrong, I haven’t looked into.

9039

Men

Essential. Highly recommended.

I saw this movie the first time in July of 2022 and while I liked it quite a bit(it even made my top 10 list of the year), I don’t think I fully appreciated it until I watched it again just now. I think it actually helped having experienced it once. And you definitely both watch…and experience Men. I was able to more fully enjoy the middle chunk of the movie that seemed a bit dull the first time. I was able to more fully appreciate both the male and female lead actors’ performances.

For some reason, this did not get the critical acclaim it deserves and I hope it gets a critical re-evaluation by people over time because I think it really deserves it. It isn’t just a great movie from 2022; I think it was probably the best movie I’ve seen from that year.

It’s a weird, great movie. I hope more people get to see it.