The Holdovers was another of our weekend movies. I didn’t have high expectations other than it’s got Paul Giamatti being a curmudgeonly school teacher which can’t go wrong, and I expected a typical grumpy teacher, troubled kids, everyone gets their moments and live happily ever after story.
It was a whole lot better and I am glad they took it off in a slightly different direction and managed to focus on a smaller set of stories .
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
We put on the play back in high school, and in all these years I never watched the movie.
It was entertaining enough, but I was disappointed that they cut so many of the songs, and the chariot chase scene at the end just went on and on and on.
The performances were all good, and it was remarkable to see Buster Keaton nearly a half century after his film debut. I thought he looked quite well, but sadly, he had passed away before this film was released.
The Lost Weekend (1945). A golden oldie film noir that I was seeing for the first time. A similar theme to Days of Wine and Roses about the downward spiral of alcohol addiction, but even more hard-hitting, at times seeming almost like a horror thriller. A classic from the golden age of movies that was well worth watching, but very dark subject matter.
It’s funny, I see Wikipedia lists this as a film noir, but I think of it as a straight drama… it’s not clear to me what makes it noir.
I guess it’s not really classic film noir which is traditionally a crime drama – very often a detective drama – involving sleazy, cynical characters in a dark underworld, but the definition of “film noir” is pretty loose. It’s perhaps applied to this move because of its vintage and the dark subject matter.
Movie night Monday. Saw The Holdovers. Great movie. Dead Poet’s Society meets Sideways.
Things I loved:
-Paul Giamatti’s withering insults
-Paul Giamatti’s performance
-Paul Giamatti trying to run
-Paul Giamatti trying to throw a football
-Total commitment to a 70s aesthetic right down to the way it was filmed, and the smoke haze covering just everything
-Great breakout performance by Dominic Sessa, who as far as I know has only been in one movie so far - this one
-Excellent supporting cast
-Funny
-Moving
The story isn’t treading any new ground. But it tells the story it wants to tell exceptionally well. It takes its time to get there.
Recommended.
Lethal Weapon 1987. Mel Gibson, Danny Glover
I saw it in the theater and maybe once on cable 25 years ago.
I rented it on Prime tonight. I was surprised at how well it holds up.The chemistry between Mel and Danny makes it work.
I still don’t like the first 15 mins when Gibson is acting suicidal and deranged. The movie gets much better as the two men get serious about solving the girl and her father’s murders
I recommend it as a bit of movie nostalgia. Watch it uncensored. The cable version cuts out the funniest lines because of the profanity.
Lethal Weapon also suffers from one of the worst cuts in any movie I’ve seen. There was some sort of version, I think airplane cut, where all the violence and swearing is cut out. I bought it on dvd in Germany (I was living there and short of english language entertainment around 2000), and it was that version. The fight at the end is about ten seconds long. Sometimes this cut makes it onto television, so perhaps it might be on some streaming services now. It’s brutal.
Maybe the film is still good, but not sure a maniac cop who uses excessive force and is suicidal makes for a sympathetic protagonist.
Sasquatch Sunset
Recommended
A great little movie featuring Sasquatches and their life together. No dialogue, just grunts. Touching in parts, also very funny in other parts. Just a very cute little movie that comes in under 90 minutes. You basically just follow a little family of Sasquatch and experience their joys and sorrows together for awhile.
I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Abigail (2024). The young daughter of a very rich father is kidnapped in an elaborately organized scheme in order to extort $50 million in ransom. The gang of six bring her to a secluded mansion where they’re briefly joined by their secretive, shadowy leader.
So far it’s a standard crime movie, but then strange things start to happen. If you’re going to see this I recommend not reading anything about the plot or watching trailers because there’s a lot of spoilers out there. All I will say is that a seemingly routine crime movie soon turns into full-on supernatural horror with some rather innovative twists, and some bits of humour thrown in. Just be prepared for lots of blood and gore. Certainly not a movie with any depth, but overall not bad for the horror genre.
I agree everyone should go in blind. I also liked it a lot more than expected. Fun movie.
Re Abigail; when did Kevin Durand turn into Elon Musk? You can’t tell as well from the image but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Bull, a revenge fantasy movie on Amazon. Not the jury selection / legal TV show. I’m not sure I recommend it.
It’s violent, surprisingly violent, almost casually violent. It’s well done, I guess, the reviewing community seemed to like it quite a lot, 93% on RT. There were a lot of flashbacks, enough that it was tough to keep track of when they were flashing back and when they weren’t.
The flashbacks also result in it taking quite a while to understand the backstory, so things go unexplained for a long time, and I was dissatisfied with that, but ultimately they tie up the narrative so I guess I was being a bit unfair.
This has been noted about Durand’s character in “The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”:
Kevin Durand Apes Elon Musk For Key Role In ‘Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes’ (deadline.com)
Hilarious. I didn’t know him/ hadn’t seen him before and when I mentioned it afterward my friend knew him from something else and she said he never looked like that before. I’m assuming it’s not deliberate yet none of the older pics of him look anything like he did in Abigail.
Debuts May 24th. I don’t have Netflix. Preview looks very, very good. I’m curious to read people’s reactions. I’ll watch whenever Prime offers it. This is a intriguing take on humans and AI.
Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare 2024
I enjoyed it. It’s obvious from my earlier posts that I watch a lot of WWII movies. This movie reminds me of The Guns of Navarone which is also a special forces mission.
Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a bit slow paced. I didn’t mind because the suspense builds nicely with a satisfying payoff. It is loosely based on real people and a fictional version of a real mission.
Next, I’ll listen to the non-fiction audiobook that inspired the movie. The book was written by Damien Lewis.
Hard to tell, but I’m a bit skeptical. I hoped that the AI connection might be something more cerebral, but this looks like it might be just another dystopian-future type action flick. I’m certainly going to check it out, though, but not with the highest of hopes.
The Scarface Mob (1959). I should note here first of all that as a kid I loved The Untouchables (it might have been in reruns even back then), with Robert Stack as the unflappable Eliot Ness, and Bruce Gordon appearing as Frank Nitti in many episodes. I still like to watch them from time to time. There’s one real classic whose title I’m not sure I remember, but I think it’s something like “The Frank Nitti Story”.
Anyway, this 1959 movie is essentially a prequel to The Untouchables, and it has all the key features: Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, Bruce Gordon as Frank Nitti, and the distinctive narration by Walter Winchell. It covers the initial formation of the elite “Untouchables”, their enforcement work while Nitti is in charge because Al Capone is briefly in prison, and then the events after Capone returns to head the gang once again.
IIRC, the Untouchables TV series deals with the post-Capone era, with Ness pitted against Nitti and a whole bunch of other bad guys in other episodes.
This was initially a two-part TV movie, but was later released theatrically. Fans of The Untouchables would definitely appreciate it; for others, it’s pretty good but nothing exceptional.
