We watched It Chapter II
The horror, the horror…of a 2 hr 50 minute movie that will…not…die!!
Seriously, we could have cut an hour out of it and made a better film. Were there no editors available?
I feel bad that I keep coming into this thread and saying basically “Well, uh, like, I had a different experience, man,” but…
Well, uh, I had a different experience, man. My take on Quo Vadis: too preachy, unrealistic characters (on both sides, both the good and the bad), and obviously a train wreck as far as historical depictions go. Oh, and the dialogue sucked (ponderous would be the word I’d use to describe it). But I suppose it was beautifully shot, particularly for the era, so there’s that.
Out of that entire genre of circa-1950s biblical epics, I find Ben Hur tolerable, even enjoyable in parts, but I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it has to do with Ben Hur being more morally gray and changing only gradually throughout the film, and only at the very end going into his final, fully earned, transition. I can’t stand anything else out of that genre, even the other great Heston feature, The Ten Commandments, partly because the transposition of 1950s Americans values is just so blatantly anachronistic as to be distracting, and I find the values themselves, even in the context of the 1950s, to be dubious. One gets the sense from watching these films that people didn’t care much for history, even their own recent history, as they’re all just so damn certain of the bedrock foundation of their morals and the fundamental goodness of some divine plan favoring representative democracy as the best government on earth and peace and goodwill towards all men that they never even heard of the nuclear arms race, Jim Crow, WWII, or the Great Depression. And again, that’s just recent/contemporaneous history. That audiences lived or were still living through whose films came out. How can you live through that, and yet still believe that some Bronze Age peoples had it all figured out over three thousand years ago, and somehow you’re only just now getting around to it again, even as the world seems poised (in the 1950s) to blow itself straight to hell, with no sign of god the creator or any sort of benevolent plan?
Anyway, if you can barely sit through Ben Hur, stay away from Que Vadis. If you can’t even make it through Ben Hur, stay away from Quo Vadis. If you really love Ben Hur and other bible epics, well… use know that I warned you, and you may yet be disappointed.
I think the best thing I got out of Quo Vadis was a better appreciation for Hail, Caesar! when it came out. I saw Quo Vadis years before (alas, I foolishly bought the DVD), found it as described above (tiresome), and then saw Hail, Caesar! in theaters during its initial run and loved it, in part because of scenes that were clearly drawn from Quo Vadis and similarly mocked its ponderous nature and hammy acting. Yes, it drew a lot of Ben Hur, too, but the lead character in the fictional biblical epic (play by Clooney’s character) was clearly based on the lead protagonist from Quo Vadis, as was the march into Rome, and I believe, too, the villa scene shot just before Clooney gets abducted.
But, again, I respect that other people can have different subjective viewing experiences.
Hmmmm…a conundrum. While I enjoy give & take on movie criticism (and thank you, ASL v2.0 for your thoughts on 1950’s sword & sandals) I fear that if it goes unchecked this thread would go way off the rails. So consider me a vote for adhering to the guidelines in the OP: the poster gets to comment on the film s/he just saw, but the line should be drawn there. Or thereabouts. 
Is this by his non-union Mexican equivalent?
I’m not sure what I might have said to give you the impression that I liked it. In fact, I agree with your take on it. It was just campy enough to make it somewhat amusing. The modern dialog (for the time) was jarringly out of place. I’m not sure why my wife wanted to see it, other than she’s doing an online course on Roman architecture.
Last night, she wanted to see Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, which I enjoyed the first time around, but found tedious for a second showing. Far better acting than the old blockbuster-style films, though, and CGI technology made the architecture more realistic. One saving grace is that it had almost no religious component, but the bombastic music was still annoying.
Re-reading your posts, you never explicitly said you liked it or didn’t like it, but you did call it a spectacle, which I took as a positive endorsement, hence my comments. Now that you’ve clarified, I suppose if I were drunk and viewing it with a friend or close companion, I too might enjoy it in a “campy… somewhat amusing” or MST3K sort of way.
Now, thanks to our discussion, others will hopefully have a clearer picture of what the movie will offer them in terms of a viewing experience. IMHO, this makes a fine case for not restraining from comment on movies mentioned in this thread that one has also seen and formed a perhaps different opinion of, and I’m gonna keep on doing it absent moderation to the contrary.
I think people can be excused for not following the wishes of a banned poster who started this thread six years ago and can no longer participate in it.
Yeah, it was common back then to refer to these overwrought, technicolor sword and sandal epics as “spectacles”. They usually had an enormous cast of both stars and extras. For instance, The Ten Commandments had Charleton Heston, Vincent Price, Yul Brynner, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, John Derek, Nina Foch, John Carradine, Clint Walker, Robert Vaughn, and anybody else who wasn’t busy with something else. They were also hugely expensive to produce.
Been watching some black and white 30s and 40s mystery movies that are on youtube during the last week.
The 39 Steps (1935) starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A wonderful film that easily stands the test of time and in fact is one of the best adventure mysteries I’ve seen. I have previously watched the Kenneth More version made in the 1950s and enjoyed that for its colourful scenery of rural Scotland but the 30s version was far more thrilling and quick paced than the 50s.
The Ninth Guest (1932). I am assuming this was Agatha Christie’s inspiration for Ten Little Indians since the premise of having an unknown host invite a group of people to a house party that turns into a whodunit was the plot. She developed that plot far more and wrote one of the greatest mystery books of all time that produced, in my view, one of the greatest big screen adaptations of all time in 1945. This move in 1932 was much shorter and basic but still enjoyable.
Most of the movies from that era are short in duration. Many are little over an hour. But there is something very pleasurable about watching them. There was an elegance and naivety about them that I enjoy more than all action movies.
I’m on a real cheesy action flick jag.
Fast Five (2011) - I thought I needed a little more context on the franchise. As far as I can tell, this is the one where The Rock’s character is introduced. Sure, it’s no whatthefucktastic shit-show that Hobbs and Shaw was, but only because there were no cybernetic warriors on fucking Tron bikes. Ridiculous story line, coincidence piled upon coincidence to carry the story, some the worst delivered lines in the history cinema … it’s really bad. But it was kind of fun.
The Green Hornet (2011) - another flick that I don’t understand why it caught such shit. I love this movie. Seth Rogan is hilarious, as always, and he does good job as a rich slacker trying to be a super hero. Jay Chou as Kato, though barely understandable, was awesome - I love those slow motion, analyzing the shots, fight scenes. It’s no award winner but it doesn’t suck. Good actors trying earnestly with what they have to work with. Oh and I enjoyed the concept of having Christoph Waltz’s evil as shit character complaining throughout the whole movie about needing a better motif.
Okay, time to make my own original submission to this thread:
Kingdom of Heaven - Directors Cut. I was pleasantly surprised. I saw the original in theaters and walked away disappointed as characters seemed to do things for “reasons” that didn’t really seem to make sense. Overall, I had the sense that the characters weren’t fully hashed out and they just sort of did stuff to allow stuff to happen, not because it made sense internally for them to do it. I was skeptical that adding 45 minutes to an already long movie would improve it, figuring they’d probably just make the battles longer or something, but there’s actually quite a bit more to it than that. Other scenes are added or extended so that there’s more depth to the characters and fewer “huh?” moments due to the greater fidelity in the narrative helping to account for their actions and their relationships with one another. In short, it fills in some pretty important gaps that create more of an A to B to C to … etc. narrative, where previously it seemed like you got an A to D to “wtf, Z already?” narrative (bad writing).
So if you thought the theatrical cut was utterly terrible and unredeemable, well… I can’t promise the director’s cut will be any better. But if you found the original “merely okay” and the sort of thing you might watch to fall asleep to or as background noise on a quite afternoon but overall disappointing, I think you’d appreciate sitting through and watching the director’s cut.
Just watched The Court Jester tonight. A rewatch for me, I thought, and then I learned there was a whole bunch at the beginning I’ve never, ever seen.
I wonder how many other movies there are out there that I think I’ve seen in toto but actually usually come in halfway through.
Watched the recent adaptation of Little Women, directed by Greta Gerwig. I really liked it. I’ve never read the book, and I know there have been many film and tv adaptations over the years, but I haven’t seen any of them so I had no preconceptions going into it, and I have no idea how faithful it is to the book.
The cast is great. I think Saoirse Ronan is always terrific (see also the Gerwig/Ronan movie Lady Bird) and she is true to form here. The other young actresses are good, too, and it’s hard to go wrong with Meryl Streep, Laura Dern, and Chris Cooper rounding things out.
The back-and-forth timelines were a little confusing at times, but I understood the choice a little better after watching one of the extras with an interview of Gerwig. I liked how one of the final scenes (with Jo and the publisher) kind of ‘lampshades’ the ending of the movie itself.
Yes! I first saw that in college, and it’s long been one of my favorite Hitchcock flicks.
My most recent five:
Emma
The newest Jane Austen remake, with a charming and funny cast led by Anya Taylor-Joy and Bill Nighy. Great to look at, with a noticeably bright color palette. Not quite sure it’s my favorite version (I think the Gwyneth Paltrow one might still hold that prize), but it’s up there.
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened
Pretty good documentary about the notorious 2017 rock festival flop/scam, and an on-the-nose cautionary tale about the power and reach of social media.
One Man, Two Guvnors
James Corden stars in this filmed stage performance of a British farce. A little slow getting off the ground, but it soon becomes, and stays, very funny.
Ford v. Ferrari
Gripping film about how the stodgy Ford Motor Co. decided to break into car racing in the late Sixties. Matt Damon and Christian Bale are both very good as the frenemies who make it happen. I’m not really into racing, but enjoyed this movie.
Time Bandits
A little boy with a big imagination helps a ragtag band of time-traveling thieves who’ve stolen a map to the universe from the Supreme Being (“You mean God?” “Well, we don’t know him that well”). Zany hijinks ensue. One of Terry Gilliam’s best, and with a terrific cameo by Sean Connery as Agamemnon.
I felt a need to watch Bad Monster Movies.
A year or so ago I finally obtained a copy of The Flesh Eaters, a wonderfully bad low-budget film made on Long Island by a couple of guys, one of whom was a comic book artist. It shows up in the way he frames his shots (which has won the film a cult following – they’re pretty innovative for a low-budget flick) Of course, the effects are pretty poor, even for the time. Although I am impressed by the way they apparently actually punched holes in the film to create the effect of the “Flesh Eaters” glowing and shimmering (A Hollywood production did something similar in the 1940 film [i[The Mummy’s Hand*, where they made the eyes of the Mummy (played for the one and only time by no-name actor Tom Tyler) “glow” It’s an appropriately eerie effect.)
Anyway, I’d known about the film ever since it made the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland back in 1964
Issue 29 on this page
https://www.famousmonsters.com/cover-gallery/volume-1/
(Incidentally, that blurb about Jerry Lewis and the Monsters on the cover refers to the DC comic “Jerry Lewis”, which the co-creator of Flesh Eaters was doing at the time. Not a coincidence.)
Last night I re-watched Killers from Space, a wonderfully awful 1950s flick starring a young Peter Graves. The aliens all wear very unflattering leotards, lightning-bolt cummerbunds, and have ping-pong ball eyes, which freaked me out as a kid, but to an adult me just looks silly. It’s as if they’re trying to cosplay as Muppets. It’s low-budget film-making at its best, using lots of stock footage and some moderately neat science fictional cities and spaceships that they got from somewhere.
The edition I watched was commented on by “The Film Crew” – an effort by Mike Nelson and some other MST3K guys before they started RiffTrax, and their comments are great. They even went to the trouble to undo the “backward masking” used to “create” the alien language used in the film. I always had wondered what they were really saying.
Some pix from the film :
1776 (1972) - the musical of the revolution before Lin Manuel Miranda. I remember having watched a screening of it in middle school - I can’t remember if they brought the film into school or if we went to a theater, but I remember being really taken with it then. Not so much that I ever watched it again between then and now, but I thoroughly enjoyed it once again. I forgot how touching it was in spots as well as how ribald it was as well.
And another classic - Funny Face (1957) - starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Full disclosure, I have such a crush on Audrey Hepburn. I think she is one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen. Fred Astaire plays a fashion photographer who is charged with making Audrey a star for his boss, Maggie Prescott, THE fashion maven of New York. There are many great musical dance numbers that are just quintessential movie musical romance fodder. Fred’s toreador dance (or whatever it is) in the courtyard, juggling his umbrella, hat and coat to impress Audrey. Fred’s, Audrey’s and Kay Thompson’s (Maggie Prescott), “That’s For Me” number culminating at the top of the Eiffel Tower and of course the sexiest dance scene ever filmed, Audrey Hepburn’s bohemian dance in the Parisian underground cafe. My god, I could watch that number on a loop for the rest of my life and never get sick of it.
Another scene that really stuck me is the beginning of the “That’s For Me” number where Fred exits a taxi out to the sidewalk before breaking into the number and strolling down the Champs Elysees. It looks like it’s done with a steadi-cam, which didn’t exist in 1957, and you can see no trolley tracks as they pan back. On location and it looks amazing.
I was in a college production of the musical (playing the Rev. Jno. Witherspoon of New Jersey) before I ever saw the movie, and had a great time, and also really enjoyed the film when I finally got around to seeing it. I have long wished someone (LMM himself?) would do a musical about the Constitutional Convention.
Here’s that number I was talking about - “That for Me” which is actually entitled, “Bonjour Paris”. The whole clip is fun, but check that opening shot I was talking about:
Bonjour Paris