I saw one of the worst movies I ever saw this weekend.
A few months back in this thread I said that I had finally seen the James Whale film he made for Universal between Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. It was The Old Dark House, which featured Boris Karloff as a silent, menacing, bearded butler named Morgan (think of him as Frankenstein with a beard), Charles Laughton in his first American role, and some other “name” actors. I knew about the film because Forrest J. Ackerman had featured stills from it in Famous Monsters, but the film had been pretty much pulled from circulation (it wasn’t part of Universal’s “Shock” package of films they rented to independent stations circa 1960), so I had never seen it.
I saw it. I thought it was awful.
But now I’ve seen worse.
In 1962 William Castle remade it, in color. You still have the travelers stranded by a rainstorm in the out-of-the-way British countryside, forced to spend the night in an aging house filled with a strange family and its secrets. And there’s a silent bearded threatening character named Morgan. That’s where the similarity ends. The film stars a young Tom Poston and Robert Morley, and lots of other people I don’t know, although I knew Peter Bull by his face – he’s the one who played the Russian Ambassador in Dr. Stranglove. He kind of looks like Robert Morley’s brother, and he plays him. Twice.
The movie is pretty damned terrible. It wanders hither and yon, with no trace of believability or even consistency. It seems as if, at every moment, the screenwriters asked themselves “What’s the most ridiculous thing that could happen NOW?” Highly unrecommended.
Shadow, directed by Yimou Zhang (Hero, House of Flying Daggers). It is a gorgeous film that almost qualifies for the thread on choosing two of the best black and white films (I’d go with Drama:cool:).
If you liked Hero and House of Flying Daggers, you will like this one a lot. The use of thematic colors, the twisty plot, the well choreographed and perfectly shot fight scenes are all there.
I don’t think the ending is ambiguous, but you might, so if you like things locked up tight, this one might disappoint.
You can interpret the bookend scene of Madam Commander at the door as open ended (she hasn’t decided what to say when she opens the door) or conclusive (the final expression on her face as she prepares to open the door indicates that she has decided to throw her lot in with the Shadow). I lean towards the latter.
An actor with a personality disorder deals with a vast array of problems.
The “play with the play” is supposed some lost/reconstructed work of Marlowe’s with apparently just two cast members. The male character in that is a raging … rage-aholic. Which fits one side of his personality well. Not so much the others. (Which leads to an imbalance of the use of the 3 sides.)
The usual problem with such settings arise: we see the actors performing the same material over and over. I don’t see why. They could have just made up some different scenes to break the routine.*
There’s The Woman, a tiny bit of romance, The Shrink, the Goofy Play Director, The Money Guy, etc. You know the roles. Throw in a greek non-chorus of street addicts and, hey, you got a movie. Of sorts.
Give it two pill bottles thrown out the window.
(BTW: I didn’t realize then that one of the actors in Locating Silver Lake I reviewed above is Zelda Williams. As in daughter of Robin. Yeah, she can actually act.)
This reminded of one of the two big problems in All That Jazz with [del]Fosse[/del] Gideon editing the same bit over and over to make it supposedly better. (The other big problem was the overlong, dragged out finale.)
I watched The Highwaymen on Netflix. Excellent movie, very well acted about a fascinating historical figure.
Also watched The Dirt, the Motley Crue story on Netflix. Entertaining but a real 80s throwback vibe to how it treated women that made me uncomfortable.
And of course, Endgame. Seen it twice already.
Non-Fiction (Doubles Vies) is something of a comedy (more sly than funny ha-ha) centered around two french couples who are all cheating on their partners, set in the publishing world, more or less. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though more from the intellectual ideas it sprinkles throughout the film on the rough transition to digital/online publication than the sexual roundelay.
It has one of the most self-referential scenes I’ve ever seen. In the film, while the couples are on vacation,the author is talking to his publisher about an audio-book of his recent novel and the publisher assures him it is in the works and that in fact, his wife has sent a copy to Juliette Binoche. The publisher’s wife is played by…Juliette Binoche!
Amazing Grace is a documentary of the making of Aretha Franklin’s 1972 live gospel album of the same name. It was originally shot by Sydney Pollack, who did not use clappers for his shoot, which meant they couldn’t sync the audio with the film. Fast forward to about 10 years ago and the technology to do this became available and a bunch of producers (including Spike Lee) worked to create what is on the screen.
It’s a raw look at a passion project from one of the great voices of the last 100 years. There’s no voice over, almost no talking heads, just two days of footage in a church with a small but extremely appreciative audience (look for flashes of a couple of the Rolling Stones in the back of the audience). It is currently at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and the rating is very much deserved. IMHO, it is definitely something to see on the big screen, if at all possible.
Long Shot. Romantic comedy with Seth Rogan and Charlize Thereon…and if that sounds like an unlikely couple, that’s the whole point. But it’s surprisingly good - smart and laugh-out-loud funny. And good god, Charlize Thereon is gorgeous.
Wine Country (Netflix). I really like Amy Pouler, Tina Fey, and all their Saturday Night Live pals, and I had high hopes for this. Dashed. Pouler plays a mean and cranky version of her Parks & Rec character. I kept waiting for it to get funny and not cliched…after an hour, that hadn’t happened and I gave up.
Back to the Oscar nom pool: At Eternity’s Gate. Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh during the last years of his life. With a lot of “interpretation” by film maker Julian Schnabel.
This is one of those “good but could have been a lot better” films. Focuses too much on the insanity of Van Gogh. Lots of extended shots showing VVG, etc., wandering around the countryside outside Arles and such. These become boring after a bit.
Dialogue poor except for a few extended discussions between Van Gogh and Oscar Isaac’s Paul Gauguin, one between Van Gogh and a priest played by Mads Mikkelsen, etc. Theo (Rupert Friend) isn’t really represented well.
Dafoe plays a crazy person well. Go figure.
In short: Van Gogh was crazy, Gauguin was a self-absorbed jerk, etc. What was the non-crazy side of Van Gogh like? Sorry, not in this film.
There’s odd bits in French here and there but generally English. With people switching in the middle of a conversation. What the???
Knock Down the House, on Netflix; a documentary about several women who ran against powerful incumbents in 2018. It’s worth watching, regardless of your politics, as it points to the glaring failings of our political system.
The Battered Bastards of Baseball, another documentary on Netflix. This one is about the Portland Mavericks, the last of the independent A League ball teams in America, who created a huge stir in organized baseball in the 70s. It was created by Bing Russell, the father of Kurt Russell, and it only lasted a few years. But in that time it upset the baseball apple cart. Russell recruited baseball’s rejects and misfits, including Jim Bouton, and put together a team that was mostly out of shape, off-center, and somewhat nuts. But they won games. Lots of games. And their fans were rabid and record-setting in number.
This is a fun movie, with lots of interviews and footage. The Mavericks rise was reminiscent of the movie Slap Shot, and just as improbable.
The Return of the Magnificent Seven – I never saw any of the sequels to Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (and hadn’t seen that film in a long time, either*). I picked up a 4 disc set with all the movies and have just watched the first two. Pepper Mill hadn’t seen the first sequel, either.
I also showed her another film I hadn’t seen in a long time, and she never had – Robert Rodrigues’ Planet Terror, the first half of his Grindhouse. She wasn’t a big fan of the gore, but she’s a Bad Movie Fan from way back, and was making constant comments about who was obviously going to buy it in the near future and who was “out of the Gene Pool.”
*I still very much prefer Akira Kurasawa’s original Seven Samurai to all copies and homages, no matter how well made. But I have to admit that I love Elmer Bernstein’s score, even though it was acquisitioned by Marlboro for their cigarette ads. Bernstein scored the original and all three sequels.
I’m sure Willem Dafoe would have been a great Vincent Van Gogh… 25 years ago. When the movie was made, Dafoe was 62; Van Gogh died when he was 37. That’s worse than Jimmy Stewart as Charles Lindbergh.
I finally saw Avengers: Infinity War the other day and I hated the ending, but loved the rest of it. Talk about your perfect popcorn movie! Can’t wait to see Endgame.
Catching up on some not-first-run stuff (airplane and Netflix)
Green Book. Good, entertaining, historical. I enjoyed it, but didn’t think it was quite “best picture” material. I had just discovered what a “green book” was at the African American History Museum (in Wash DC) last year. So it was a pleasant coincidence that I knew what the title was about when this came out.
Bad Times at the El Royale. Best way to describe this: “Tarantino wannabe”. Seemed like it tried to be a bit too clever with twists (no one is who they seem) and time jumps. I was a bit disappointed.
Triple Frontier. Seemed like the director wasn’t quite sure what story to tell. Starts out like a “Narcos” mission, then turns “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. But then just…kind of goes nowhere. Disappointing.
The Highwaymen. Along others on this thread, I enjoyed this. One of the better Costner roles/movies.
Nymphomaniac I and II (you need to see both). Good candidates for the “strangest movie”. What starts out as soft-medium porn, quickly becomes this interesting examination into the “why”. Cameos from a lot of people you’ll recognize (or not - Uma Thurman kind of threw me). But I don’t think the director/writer quite knew/agreed on how to end the whole thing. So I found the ending very disappointing.
(for the martial arts fans):
Master Z: the Ip Man Legacy. This follows the other Wing Chun master who has the big duel with Ip Man in “Ip Man 3”. This supposedly chronicles his life after the big duel. Decent fight scenes, decent overall.
Headshot. If you liked “The Raid: Redemption”, this has the same star. Not a whole lot of plot to get in the way of the action. Pretty brutal and gory, so be warned.