I liked the film, found it very thought provoking, but, again, I’m not sure I know anyone that I could recommend it to – without adding multiple disclaimers. As you say, “It could be your life that you’re watching.”
Much of the “thoughts provoked” involved how much friendship, family, and animal ownership add meaning to existence – which is not a profound insight, but the film (Nomadland) illustrated it very well.
This. I’ve seen several versions of The P of P, and this is my favorite. With Linda Ronstadt and Angela Lansbury. I also saw the original 1980 live production with Estelle Parsons.
Fair enough. I used to run the construction department for a public housing entity. Whenever an employee would say something derogatory about the people living in our units, one of my guys (it was always the same one) would say “Listen to me: NONE of you is more than a couple of paychecks away from being in the same position as those folks, so how about you just shut the fuck up and do your jobs!”
Like many actors, he needs the right part. He is great in Pirates, but is also amazing in A Fish Called Wanda and is criminally overlooked for his amazing performance(s) in Fierce Creatures.
Vince : I-I’m your son! You have to leave me something.
Rod : Why?
Vince : 'Cause you… you screwed up my whole childhood!
Rod : How could I have? I wasn’t even there.
Kevin Kline more than earned his Oscar as the over-the-top villain Otto in A Fish Called Wanda. I think it’s a great comedy. He’s also excellent in my favorite political comedy, Dave.
I saw it for the first time in its entirety not long ago. The ridiculousness of Sinatra’s fight with the Asian martial-arts guy pretty much ruined it for me.
My latest five:
The Inventor
Not bad, not great 2019 documentary about the Theranos big-bucks, fortune-losing, reputation-destroying corporate scandal. A fascinating story, just not all that fascinatingly told. Could’ve been much better.
Groundhog Day
Rewatched this favorite comedy, as I do every couple of years on the day itself. Funny premise, great cast (with Bill Murray at quite possibly his career best) and a gazillion quotable lines.
The Queen
Boring title but a great movie, with Elizabeth II dealing - badly, at first - with the aftermath of the tragic death of Princess Diana. Helen Mirren doesn’t look much like Her Majesty but is very good in the role.
One of the finest movies about the British monarchy ever made, I’d say, with remarkable Scottish countryside scenes.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
One of my favorite movies of the new century, a Ruritanian comedy about the fussy, imperious concierge (Ralph Fiennes, who deserved and should have been given every acting award available for the role) of an elegant Thirties hotel and his friendship and comradeship, there and later while on the run, with his loyal lobby boy.
Blood Simple
Hadn’t seen the Coen Brothers’ first movie in many years, but having just read Barry Sonnenfeld’s autobiography (he was their cinematographer for it), I wanted to take another look. Meh. Some memorable images, but it was underwhelming as a bit of latter-day noir.
You GOTTA be shitting me! It didn’t go over that great, and it’s been what, seven years? (googles) NINE years!
I liked it. The actors did a great job, and it was like getting together with old friends again - not the same as it used to be, but enjoyable nonetheless. I find it hard to believe there will be a sequel though.
Brain Donors, from 1992, is a Marx bros comedy tribute in the same vein. I liked that one as well.
From IMDB:
From 2016 but we can only hope.
The apocryphal last line wasn’t on the DVD I watched. But, as several people have remarked (I looked up discussions of this on the internet after watching the film), the film does end abruptly, and it looks as if there ought to be a last line. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people filled in the blank themselves.
I Care A Lot, Netflix. Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage. This is the first movie I think I’ve watched where there was not a single redeeming character. Nothing but assholes on top of more assholes, all treating everyone around them like assholes. Well acted, but a real slog.
The Damned United
One of the best real life sports films I’ve seen. You don’t need to be a fan of English football (soccer) history and culture to understand it but it helps if you do.
The story is about a man named Brian Clough. A legendary manager who took provincial club Derby County from the Second Division to First Division champions for the first time ever inside three seasons. Then he eclipsed that accomplishment by taking provincial Second Division club Nottingham Forest to the First Division title and back to back European Cups inside four seasons. Taking these regional outfits to becoming the best team in England, and in the latter case, the best team in Europe was his legacy.
But this movie doesn’t focus much on that. It focuses on his infamous 44 day spell in between those jobs when he took over the best team in England at the time, Leeds United. They had been a powerhouse for the last decade under long-serving manager Don Revie who left to become the England national team manager. Clough despised Leeds style of play. He thought they were cheats. He openly attacked Revie’s tactics, his personality and on the flip side Revie thought Clough was an arrogant lightweight who had a fluke at Derby. This story made for great entertainment.
“Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honours there are to win under Don Revie. But as far as I’m concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you’ve never won any of them fairly. You’ve done it all by bloody cheating.”
I finally re-watched The Mysterians last night.
If you’re not aware of it, it’s a Japanese science fiction flick made by Ishiro Homda in 1957, four years after he made Gojira, and with several of the same actors and the same special effects team. Only this movie was made in color, and looks a zillion times more impressive.
I saw it as a kid at a matinee in our local theater, and the giant robot (it’s called Moguero, although you’d never know that from the film) coming out of the cliff wall freaked me out as a kid. The movie showed up many times on TV after that, but then it seemed to disappear. The DVD of it was, for some reason, very expensive, but recently the price came down, so I bought a copy, and finally got to see it again.
Its plot wonderfully ludicrous, but the effects aren’t bad for 1957. The invading Mysterians (from the exploded planet that became the asteroids) claim a smal chunk of Eath land in Japan. They also want the chance to breed with earth women, because there’s too much strontium-90 in their bodies and they’re not fertile.
This brings up a bunch of questions:
1.) They’re interfertile with humans? How does that work? As Larry Niven famously put it (with regards to Superman having a kid with an Earth woman) “He could as easily mate with an ear of corn.”
2.) How come it’s only the men who need to breed with Earth people? What about their women?
3.) Why can Mysterians only obtain women by abducting them? I guarantee there are women out there kinky enough to want to breed with Mysterians. You just need to put ads on the right websites.
4.) How come this is only coming up now? Wouldn’t a better time for this be when the planet exploded?
5.) Why do the Mysterians who abduct the women wear a completely different outfit than the Mysterians in the base?
But there’s no time for this. Earth people don’t want to be bullied, so they throw lots of munitions at the pink dome that is the exposed part of the Mysterians’ base. It’s ineffective. The Japanese and the Americans both come up with weapons to use against the Mysterians – a Rocketship-mounted Electron Beam and a set of autonomous things that look like radar dishes mounted on treads. These can be air-dropped near the dome. They not only reflect the Mysterian’s ray gun beams back at them, but also project their own rays. These devices have the most wonderful name:
MARKALITE FARPS
I definitely don’t remember that from my childhood. I guarantee you that I would have.
That’s a great Dopername. Or – as we always say – “Band Name!”
Markalite Farps
Markalite Farps
Markalite Farps
Markalite Farps
Markalite Farps
Markalite Farps
My immediate thought was that this was a Japanese attempt at a typical English Language high-tech weapon name that probably worked well in Japanese, but fails abysmally in English.
It turns out that this translation is not QUITE correct. According to various internet sites, the correct name is “Markalite F.A.H.P.s”, and that it is only the particular dub that I bought that mistakenly renders this as “Farps” (the “Markalite” part is correct, although the DVD spells it differently). I could easily see them mstaking “FAHPs” spoken in that rapid-fire Japanese for “Farps”.
“F.A.H.P.”, by the way,m is supposed to stand for “Flying Atomic Heat Projector”
See? It all makes perfect sense.
In any event, the two young heroes get into the Mysterians’ base and use the Mysterians’ own ray guns to bring down parts of the base, while the FAHPs and the ray cannon blast from the outside. One of the scientists heroically dies to destroy the base. The Ray Cannon blasts several of the alien flying saucers.
It’s weird to see the usual stable of Toho actors.
Takashi Shimura, who plays the lead scientist, was an awesomely talented actor with many great roles behind him. He played Kambei Shimada, the leader of the Seven Samurai.He was the doomed and tragic protagonist Kanji Watanabe in Ikiru. Yet he also played the lead scientist in Gojira and in several other kaiju films. It’s as if Sir Laurence Olivier had appeared in Ray Harryhausen’s Gwangi. I know that Olivier appeared in lots of lesser films near his death (including Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans), but that was when he needed to provide for his wife and others. I couldn’t see him doing it at the peak of his career.
Akihiko Hirata had played DR. Serizawa in Gojira, the brilliant young scientist who sacrifices himself so that the “oxygen destroyer” would never be used. Here he plays Ryoichi Shiraishi, the brilliant young scientist who sacrifices himself so that the Mysterians won’t complete their base and destroy human civilization. In both Gojira and Mysterians, his love interest is played by Momoko Kochi . No point in breaking up the set, I guess.
Eiji Tsuburaya handled special effects (as in most of the Toho kaiju films, including Gojira), and inside to Moguera suit was (at least some of the time), Haruo Nakajima, who’d been the guy in the original Gojira suit.
Lots of fun, and very colorful.
And, yes, apparently ? and the Mysterians (“96 tears”) did take their name from this film
Great post, Cal. That was most righteous.
Markalite Farps!
Very good summary. According to IMDB: “Shortly before his death in 1993, director Ishirô Honda was said to have mentioned that this was his favorite of all his films.”
As I recall (from whatever version of the film I saw multiple times on late night TV), the Mysterians meet with some Earth scientists who are asked to put on special protective gear - i.e., motorcycle helmets and capes - to enter the ship. Not only do the Mysterians want to mate with Earth women, they have 8x10 glossy stills of the specific Earth women they want to mate with…and they happen to be the girlfriends of the Earth scientists.
I also enjoy the random shot of the woman taking a bath as the Mysterians (or possibly Moguera) menace Japan. Mention should also be made of Akira Ifukube’s usual great score; and that an updated Moguera (a.k.a. “Space Moguera”) appeared in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994).
Lastly, we should never forget the film’s timeless message delivered by Prof. Shiraishi: “Science in and of itself has no value; it is how it is used. The Mysterians used it for evil.”
#Markalitesrule.
In Godzilla Raids Again, aka Gigantis the Fire Monster, a pilot crashes his plane to start the avalanche that buries Godzilla/Gigantis. Heroic sacrifice seems to be A Thing.
I know almost nothing of English football and enjoyed it, too. Michael Sheen is terrific in the lead role.
I remember really enjoying The Damned United as well. I also know very little about professional soccer, let alone the Premier League. It’s off-topic (they’re TV shows, not movies), but I recommend both “Ted Lasso” (on Apple+) and “The English Game” (Netflix). If you don’t have Apple+, it’s worth $5 for a month to watch it (and watch “The Morning Show” while you’re at it.)
Michael Sheen is one of the most underrated actors. His ability to pull of biographical roles is pretty impressive. In this movie as Brian Clough, Tony Blair in The Queen, and TV anchor David Frost in Frost/Nixon, it’s remarkable how he filled the part of three uniquely different people.
I’ve seen Ted Lasso but not The English Game or The Morning Show. I’ll definitely check those two out. Lasso is very amusing and I look forward to the new season.
For what it’s worth one of the scenes in The Damned United which shows Brian Clough and Don Revie arguing in a live TV interview after Clough got fired was based on a real event. It is now on Youtube in its entirety and I enjoyed thoroughly watching it after watching the movie. It is TV gold.
If you can, catch a screening of Affliction. Great underratted flick with a fantastic cast (James Coburn, Nick Nolte and Willem DaFoe). Gripping story and tragic enough to suit any morbid person’s lust. Watch it when you need to Cheer Down.
And one of the best movie quotes of all time. You’ll know it when you hear it.