Am I totally misremembering this, or didn’t Netflix recently (like within the last couple of months) add all of the James Bond movies? And now they’re gone already? I was going to watch all the Daniel Craig Bond movies because I had only ever seen Casino Royale way back when. I watched C.R. and Quantum of Solace back when they first showed up on Netflix, and was going to go watch Skyfall recently and it looks like all the Bond movies have disappeared. That’s gotta be shortest interval between Just Added and Leaving Soon that I’ve ever seen.
Over the last decade or so, the Bond films have been pretty promiscuous when it comes to streaming platforms. They would drop enmasse on one for a few months and then on to another. But a few months ago I noticed they were only available PPV on Amazon. Since they have bought the rights, I suspect Prime will be their next (and for the foreseeable future, final) stop.
True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino, is on Netflix right now. A strong cast, several iconic scenes (Christopher Walken’s interrogation of Dennis Hopper, Patricia Arquette’s bloody fight with James Gandolfini) and a small and hilarious role for pre-megastar Brad Pitt as Floyd the stoner.
In The Grey - mostly by the numbers adventure flick with Henry Cavill/Jake Gyllenhall.
Well enough done, 6 or 7 out of 10.
I have a tradition. The first movie I watch on a new dvd player is Casablanca, which is my favorite movie. I got a new dvd player this week, so I just rewatched Casablanca.
The second movie I watched was Honey Don’t. Which I greatly enjoyed up until the ending; the movie had seemed to be running two parallel storylines and you expected they would meet. But they didn’t.
The final scene also seemed ambiguous to me. Where we supposed to see that Chere was setting up Honey to kill her? Or was Honey setting up Chere? Or were they just going to have sex?
I think the abrupt ending and loose ends were more in service to the homage than to storytelling. And not a second over 90 minutes so the drive-in/grindhouse has time for the second feature.
I have to admit I’m not seeing that.
The usual ending in a detective movie is the protagonist bringing all of the characters together and revealing who the culprit is and how the clues tied them to the crime. And by implication, how the protagonist’s dogged pursuit had finally succeeded.
That didn’t happen in Honey Don’t.
The movie ran the two parallel storylines of Honey trying to figure out what happened to Mia and then looking for Corinne alongside the story of Reverend Drew bungling his way through running his drug business. You expected at some point Honey would find out that Drew had killed Mia and was holding Corinne prisoner.
But instead, Drew was killed by Chere for reasons that had nothing to do with the missing women. And Honey stumbled across the fact that MG was the real villain without having any previous suspicions about her. So the two stories never connected.
It wasn’t an homage to detective movies in general. It was an homage to low- budget exploitation films of the 1970s.
Okay, I can see that. Sudden abrupt endings were a common feature in low budget exploitation movies.
Can you remind me which movies based on Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and countless other hardboiled detective stories follow this usual ending?
If you want examples specific to those two authors, Murder, My Sweet ends with a scene where Marlowe, Grayle, Helen, Moose, and Ann are all in a room together and The Maltese Falcon ends with a similar scene with Spade, Gutman, Cairo, Wilmer, and Brigit together.
Okay, this movie won’t be to everyone’s liking, but I thought it was a real hoot. The Bride! on HBO, produced, written, directed, etc. by Maggie Gyllenhaal, starring Jessie Buckly, who is absolutely and maniacally brilliant throughout, Christian Bale as the monster and a bunch of others who were equally talented. If you thought every slant on Mary Shelley’s book had been done to death, you’d be very wrong. I’m not sure I even have the words for it, but I really loved it. Now, if you’ve read the Tomato reviews or seen an article about this being a box-office flop ($90M to produce), I suggest you make up your own mind. What a wild ride.
Mother Mary
Not recommended.
David Lowery can do great stuff. Great, weird stuff. This, unfortunately, was about 30 minutes of great stuff and over and hour of dullness.
Skip.
Limelight (1952) on HBO Max
This might actually be the first postwar Charlie Chaplin film I have ever seen. The highlight is Chaplin’s amazing expressiveness. It’s stagey and deliberate but amazing to watch. The story is fine and rather nuanced for the melodramas of the time. The ending even choked me up a bit. Very enjoyable and never boring despite a running time of well over two hours.
I saw The Godfather Part III, or actually the 30th Anniversary recut of it, now titled The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. Spoiler alert, guys! (Though the manner and timing of his death in the film is somewhat surprising.)
It was not terrible. Sofia Coppola was . . . odd, but her character was ultimately not that important. (Apparently, Winona Ryder had been cast in that role but, per Wikipedia “eventually left production due to other commitments and nervous exhaustion.” That would have been interesting.)
I found it interesting that Vatican politics played such a major role in it (that aspect of the plot was loosely based on real events surrounding the death of John Paul I and the Banco Ambrosiano scandal.)
Pacino did a nice job and was not in full ham mode.
It does have the famous line “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.” Though I suspect that line is more famous from its repeated quotations on the Sopranos than it is in its own right.
Definitely not a classic, but worth a view, especially if you can find it on TV—I just DVR’d it.
Hmmm…if you saw the re-edit:
Michael does not die in that edit, I thought. He looks at the camera and the end. If you have not seen the original edit, he falls over(orange tumbling out of his hand) and is indeed dead.
What I saw was as you describe in the final sentence of your spoiler. Strange.
I see there’s also a The Godfather III: Final Director’s Cut from 1991. I wonder if what we’re talking about is in that one?
OK, so I remember the theatrical one.
1991 cut I had no idea. I mean, it only came out in 1990.
The really recent “new edit” is the one called “death of Michael Corleone”.
Incredibly Bright Creatures(Netflix). What a beautiful movie. It’s been awhile that a film made me laugh and cry as much as this. Sally Field deserves an Oscar for her performance, just incredible.
Well, crap. When I exited out of Netflix the movie Wonder was just starting on MGM+. My tear ducts will be dry for a week.