I read the book before I saw the movie. I preferred the book. Maybe the movie didn’t do well at the theater because the book had a sequel, and that didn’t get to film.
I hated the sequel, After Worlds Collide
The original When Worlds Collide was interesting for the most part, with then-state-of-the-arts special effects. But it has lots of problems, all of them pointed out by Arthur C. Clarke (!) in a contemporary review. One of the most disappointing things was the final shot, showing the new world they’ve landed on. Not only does it not make a lot of sense*, but, as Clarke notes, it “looks more like washed-out Disney than prime Chesley Bonestell.” It’s hard to believe that the guy who painted so many convincing shots of extraterrestrial landscapes turned out this two-dimensional watercolor of Paradise.
- The new world has come in from far away, and is presumably still pretty much frozen. Even if it had a breathable atmosphere, it’s hard to buy that it already had nice green vegetation growing on it, when it hasn’t had a chance to get warmed by the sun.
She has the same thoughts every day. 
One of my favorites comedians.
I have to admit, a couple months later and very little of the sequel is memorable to me now. It was neat, but had no staying power for me.
Well, Denzel Washington’s performance stands out, but that is about it. No Oscar nomination for him? That seems like a snub.
Then again, Hugh Grant got no nomination for Heretic and he was one of my favorite performances of the year.
“We are talking about…iterations!”
Last night my wife and I watched Let’s Start a Cult.
It was funny. Not a great film by any stretch of the imagination but it did have a few funny moments. Stavros Halkias (someone I knew nothing about) plays Chip, who is in a doomsday cult but is so obnoxious and off-putting in his behavior that the other cult members commit suicide without him. Chip is now lost without his cult and moves back in with his family, but is once again so crass that he doesn’t stay there very long. He then finds the cult leader still alive and they work together to try to build another cult. Like I said, there are some moments where my wife and I really laughed but it is still a pretty dumb movie.
Anything Else (2003). This has all the classic Woody Allen elements – written and directed by him and old enough that he was still usually acting in his own films. And it starts off typically with the soft strains of jazz, and is obviously shot on location in New York – all very Woody Allen-ish.
Jason Biggs is an aspiring writer with a few problems. His psychiatrist barely ever speaks, his agent (Danny DeVito) is incompetent and has him as his only client, and his new girlfriend (Christina Ricci) is a total neurotic. Things get worse when her out-of-work mother and aspiring singer (Stockard Channing) moves in with them in their tiny apartment, followed shortly by her piano. Woody Allen plays an eccentric school teacher who acts as an unreliable mentor to Biggs’s character.
Even Allen’s more serious films (at least, those less wacky than the early era of Bananas and Sleeper) tend to be sprinkled with witty humour. This disappointment lacks even that. Allen’s films tend to be hit-or-miss, and this is mostly a miss. Billed as a “romantic comedy”, it’s more a melancholy reflection on life’s disappointments. The title is a reference to the sentiment that “life is like anything else”. Recommended only for really diehard Woody Allen fans.
A Different Man. Some interesting performances but the subtext eluded me. About fifteen minutes of halfway decent farce at the end, though.
Marine Raiders 1944 Robert Ryan, Pat O’Brien
I don’t remember seeing this film before. I saw a lot of classic Westerns and war movies with my grandmother on the local tv channels or TBS.
Marine Raiders was OK. It’s comparable to the black & white war movies that John Wayne made.
Robert Ryan was a Marine Driĺl instructor from January 1944 to November 1945 at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California.
And later a pacifist.
That all ties together very well in The Wild Bunch, my favorite movie of his.
I want to watch another Robert Ryan war movie. He was in Bombardier 1943 with Pat O’Brien, Eddie Albert, and Randolph Scott. It’s available on Prime.
I want see how they got Scott’s horse on the B-17. Did it wear a parachute?
Casablanca
Is it good? Yep. Is it an all-time great movie? Nope. I mean, it’s impressive, but I just do not get the hype and acclaim Casablanca gets. I have seen Citizen Kane a few times, which is 1 year older, and I find Citizen Kane deserving of all of its praise. Honestly, I stand in awe of what Orson Welles did with Citizen Kane.
Casablanca is just a pretty good movie to me. On Letterboxd, I gave it 3 out of 5 stars, could possibly be persuaded to up it to 3.5.
I…yeah, I actually find the opening 30 minutes or so quite dull. I like the ending a lot and if the whole movie lived up to the final 30 minutes or so, it would be overall better.
Am I wrong? Anyone find this to be one of the best movies of all time? Anyone else had a similar experience to me?
For me, it isn’t that the art is head-and-shoulders above everything else at the time; it was, after all, just another film on the studio assembly line.
But the plot, the performances, the charisma of the actors, the timing (filmed during WW2), it all just clicked, almost by coincidence.
Yeah, some people do:
Roger Ebert wrote of Casablanca in 1992, “There are greater movies. More profound movies. Movies of greater artistic vision or artistic originality or political significance. … But [it is] one of the movies we treasure the most … This is a movie that has transcended the ordinary categories.”[106] In his opinion, the film is popular because “the people in it are all so good” and it is “a wonderful gem”.[16] Ebert said that he had never heard of a negative review of the film, even though individual elements can be criticized, citing unrealistic special effects and the stiff character of Laszlo as portrayed by Paul Henreid.[72]
Critic and film historian Leonard Maltin considers Casablanca “the best Hollywood movie of all time”.[107]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 99% of 136 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.5/10. The website’s consensus reads, “An undisputed masterpiece and perhaps Hollywood’s quintessential statement on love and romance, Casablanca has only improved with age, boasting career-defining performances from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.”[111] On Metacritic, the film has a perfect score of 100 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.[112] It is one of the few films in the site’s history to achieve a perfect aggregate score.[113]
Yeah, I meant on here, the SDMB.
Well, I’m pretty lowbrow. I admit I don’t “get” Casablanca. But I’m willing to give it another try sometime.
Yes, and yes.
I’m not big on this “best movie” stuff, as it’s difficult to properly compare movies that are very different, as indeed Casablanca and Citizen Kane are. Which is also the reason I often find “Best Picture” Oscar winners rather arbitrary and sometimes downright puzzling.
What I would say is that these are both very fine films that have become famous for different reasons. Casablanca is beloved because it’s a romantic story with an emotional punch, while Citizen Kane is admired for its many production innovations, its deep story line, and its daring, thinly veiled critiques of the powerful media barons of the day, most notably William Randolph Hearst. I wouldn’t mind seeing both of them again.
You’re neither wrong nor right. It’s your opinion. Not long ago I was talking with a woman I’ve known for years who I consider an intelligent, cultured person. “Casablanca” somehow came up, and I was surprised when she flatly stated that she hates the film. I don’t recall exactly why, but I think she finds it too melodramatic. OK, that doesn’t alter my opinion of the film, or her for that matter.
What’s fascinating about that film is that the script was literally being written hours before it was to be shot, and no one in the cast had any clue as to how it would end until they got the day’s lines. I’ve seen “Casablanca” many times. It’s one of my top two or three. But then, I’ve always been a Bogart fan. Our cat is even named “Bogie.”
I’ve at times been disappointed when I finally see a film that seemingly everyone on the planet considers a masterpiece. Case in point: “Double Indemnity.” I hated it. So did my wife. I thought Fred MacMurray was dreadfully miscast, and I’ve never cared for Barbara Stanwyck. Edward G. Robinson was OK. We just think it failed to hold up to its reputation. Many people will strongly disagree, but that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
Same. Watched many times. Hope to watch many more times before I die. I do love Citizen Kane, but I’m not champing at the bit to watch it many more times. I think it comes down to what speaks to you on an emotional level.
Just saw the new Captain America: Brave New World. I liked it, but then Sam Wilson has always been one of my favorite superheroes of the MCU films, and I liked his development in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier series into the new Captain America. I also like the Isaiah Bradley storyline and the “new Falcon” sidekick.
A lot of it was pretty formulaic, unsurprisingly. And it’s weird that a script that can build in some genuinely affecting dialogue about what the characters are going through can also be lazy and clunky enough to describe the villain’s strategem as “mind control”. Surely they could have come up with some neuropsychological technobabble to make the concept sound less simplistic and comic-booky.