Movies you've seen recently (Part 1)

The Lighthouse (Amazon Prime) - Saw it last night on a whim. It’s was worthwhile, it’s 4/5 star rating is fair. Definitely would recommend for people who have seen and liked Eraserhead and are general fans of H.P. Lovecraft. Daniel Defoe can act, that wasn’t a surprise, but his costar, Robert Pattinson, was also gripping and I had never heard of him. After it I started High Life which he also stars in. Not threw with that yet, but halfway in I am still willing to finish it even though it’s a slow burn.

Pattinson is probably best known for the Twilight vampire movies, and for his role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He’s also going to be the next Batman.

The Painted Bird, a fairly horrifying Czech film about a Jewish kid in Poland near the end of WWII, trying to make his way westward to find his parents. Animal cruelty, child cruelty, pedophilia, rape, murder, suicide, torture: it’s got all of that and more. On the plus side, the cast is great and the B&W cinematography is excellent, so the three hours goes by quickly. On Amazon.

If you saw a movie starring Daniel Defoe, that would be really interesting. I suspect you didn’t though. I suspect you saw Willem Dafoe in that movie.

Yeah, I IMDBed him after writing that. Never had an interest in the series so makes sense I’d miss that. It’s cool he was able to branch out and mature as an actor.

I tried like hell to watch Sweet Charity from 1969, starring Shirley MacLaine. I like movie musicals, but Lord that was tedious. The musical numbers were all far too long, and several of them didn’t advance the tale whatsoever.

I loved Big Spender, but then it went downhill fast. Couldn’t finish it.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things on Netflix. I watched this last night and I have no idea WTF it was supposed to be about. The acting was terrific (Toni Collette and Jesse Plemons), but I was completely baffled by the plot (or lack of one).

The Most Dangerous Game (1932) (HBO Max). It’s been remade and ripped off and parodied forever, but I don’t think I’d ever seen the original. Wacko big game hunter lures ships to wreck on his remote South Seas island so he can turn the survivors loose in the jungle and hunt them down.

Meh. Not exactly thrilling…but at least it’s short (62 minutes).

Made the same year as King Kong, with the same director, cast (Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson) and sets. Leslie Banks steals the show as Count Zaroff. Fay Wray is only there to follow our hero – Joel McCrea – around.

Noble Johnson, who played the native chief in King Kong (“O tara vay, rama Kong!”) plays Zaroff’s cossack servant. Yes…he’s in whiteface.

I seem to be on a violent comic book theme lately - not only have I been watching The Boys but I watched Project Power starring Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon Levitt. It surprised me by being better than I expected (although I didn’t expect much); that said, it would have been improved by the removal of Foxx’s character’s catchphrase (“Am I lying?”) and the big climax on the boat was fairly predictable. Excellent turn from Dominique Fishback as the disaffected teen with a heart of gold though.

I tried. Twice. I just couldn’t get into it. It doesn’t help that I personally can’t stand David Thewlis as an actor.

I was quite disappointed as I generally like Charlie Kaufman’s stuff.

I had to look it up too. Confused, but I liked it quite a bit.

Kings of the Sun (1963)

Wide-screen epic with interesting set-up: Mayans flee their homeland, sail across the ocean and wind up in pre-Colonial U.S. where they intend to continue their human sacrifice-based culture; conflict with Native Americans ensues. Apart from Yul Brynner as Chief Black Eagle, the casting was unusually atrocious even by Hollywood standards. Brad Dexter (with dyed skin) and Barry Morse (he hunted Dr. Richard Kimble on TV) as Mayans? The leading Mayan babe was Shirley Anne Field, who spoke in her native British accent! George Chakiris made a poor son of Mayan leader. Worst of all was the “man-bun” wig on high Mayan priest Richard Basehart.

Notwithstanding the bad casting, irregular pacing, silly melodramatics and the fact that everyone could understand each other in English, this film features some of the coolest headwear of any film I’ve seen in a long time:

That’s a better explanation than the other website I looked at. Thanks.

Thanks - that was very funny.

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012). This has been discussed here before. It’s a quirky dramedy about a reporter who answers a want-ad for a time travel companion. Great cast and some moving performances. I mostly liked it but I didn’t care for the ending. To have the time machine actually work seemed discordant, and also a bit of a cop-out, as it avoided dealing with many of the characters‘ real issues.

American Psycho (2000). No, I’d never seen it before. Great breakout performance by Christian Bale in a sort of tongue-in-cheek psychological thriller. Most of you have probably seen it, but I’ll spoiler it anyway. Things get more and more surreal as it goes on, and we gradually begin to realize that what we’re seeing is not necessarily what’s happening. The conceit works, I think, and ultimately makes the film more thought-provoking than it would have been otherwise.

I finally watched Clue (1985), the movie based on the board game which met with initial poor reviews and a dismal box office, but has since cultivated a robust cult following.

May I posit that the initial review and box office were warranted? This movie fucking sucks. The triple ending is the worst! No solution really made any sense and I thought they’d present it a little more deftly than - “that’s what might have happened!”

Here’s a clue … this movie is shit.

I saw Lawless on Netflix last night. It was pretty good. Loads of quality actors: Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain. Even Shia LaBeouf was in it and didn’t get on my nerves. Guy Pearce was especailly skeevy. I could have used more Gary Oldman, but I guess his character wasn’t central to the plot. It’s longer, at 2 hours, but kept me entertained thoughout.

It started with his roles in Peaky Blinders and Taboo, but I swear Tom Hardy does that grimace/grunt of his now in every role as an inside joke.

A few days ago I watched Hacksaw Ridge (2016) - it’s free with ads on Tubi, I believe. It’s the true story of Desmond Doss, the pacifist medic who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for action on Okinawa. The movie doesn’t take too many liberties with Doss’s life though I think the battle was a little sensationalized - not in violence, but just in how that escarpment and the main battle field just felt almost like a theater set. It focused the horror of the battle too narrowly. Mel Gibson loves to do shit like that and the more limbs, heads and entrails flying through the air the better.

At any rate, I really do enjoy this movie and I recommend it. Now, me being fifty-five years old means that I am rapidly turning into my dad and every since I watched the movie I have been absolutely obsessed with the war in the Pacific during WWII. I’m ashamed at how much I didn’t know - especially since my maternal grandfather served (in a non-combat role) in that theater. I have been watching documentaries on Prime and on YouTube endlessly this last week.

What do you need to know about the war in the Pacific - I probably got you covered.

But holy hell, the amount of times in the last week I’ve been just at the edge of my couch, tensed up, muttering, “Jesus Fucking Christ, this is insane!” has been off the charts.

I first saw Sleuth onstage on Broadway (with Patrick MacNee playing Andrew Wyke!), and I have to disagree that it’s “just transferred to the screen.” They did an awful lot to move the film away from its single-set design (and to make some of the UK assumptions more clear to a US audience). There’s also an awful lot of camera movement, so I don’t understand your complaint about not having a “proper cinematic approach”

I agree with you about the remake, though. Anthony Shaffer’s film was a witty criticism of and homage to Old Detective Novels. The remake was Harold Pinter not knowing or caring about them.