Based on the picture on the DVD box and a brief description, I was under the impression it would be a Bonnie and Clyde -like movie. That’s not it at all. It’s a story about man who meets a woman, and each portrays themselves as something very different than how they actually are. It’s a good story with good acting. Though it was filmed in 1968, it didn’t feel dated at all, and the cinematography is excellent. I have never been a fan of Anthony Perkins, but he does a good job here. And before watching this I had never heard of Tuesday Weld. Her acting is impressive.
I am now watching Local Hero (1983). Full report soon.
Rewatched 2001: A Space Odyssey with my iPad set to full brightness and sitting on my chest, a foot from my face. Perhaps not how Kubrick envisioned it being seen, but visually pretty intense.
Watched “Contact” with the Family last night and it was very well received. It provoked a lot of conversation afterwards and though it is longer than I remembered it didn’t feel stretched.
The kids particularly loved the signal discovery section.
A while back I set myself a challenge of watching as many of the Sherlock Holmes adaptations on this list as possible. For the record I had already seen all the Basil Rathborne/Nigel Bruce movies in the past and saw the two Robert Downey Jr./Jude Law movies when they came out.
So far I have watched:
A Study In Terror (1965) - which is an exciting story of Sherlock Holmes on the hunt for Jack The Ripper.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) - I didn’t particularly enjoy this movie even though the reviews are very good. The premise was interesting. An attempt to try and dig into the personal and emotional side of the detective and showcase the man behind the legend. I just think it went too far the other way.
Murder By Decree (1979) - another crossover with Jack the Ripper. I enjoyed it again and this was more related to real life theories about the murderer’s identity.
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) - An underrated and wonderful mystery and adventure telling the story of how Holmes and Watson met as teenagers at a boarding school and their first case together. It is very fun but also quite deep in meaning because all the tropes of the Holmes and Watson as we know them as adults gets explored in this movie to provide a backstory.
Without A Clue (1987) - I loved this movie. Michael Caine plays Holmes and Ben Kingsley plays Watson. Two top tier actors and a fun take because Watson is the real mastermind in solving the crimes. He invented the character of Sherlock Holmes as an alter-ego for the purposes of his stories telling of his cases but the character just became too big that he had to hire out an out of work actor to play the part of the great detective in real life to satisfy the public.
Mr Holmes (2015) - A very moving take on an elderly and declining Holmes who is haunted by an unsolved case which is becoming increasingly hard to recall as his faculties fail him and it is this that drives him to attempt to revisit it. Ian McKellen was marvellous as Holmes. And interestingly the actor who played Holmes in the Young Sherlock Holmes movie features in a scene as an actor playing Holmes which the real Holmes (McKellen) watches in a theatre.
And last night I watched Enola Holmes (2020) which stars Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes but who is overshadowed by his younger sister Enola played by Millie Bobbie Brown. She was excellent and it was an interesting adaptation of a personal family story about Holmes including his brother Mycroft. I think a story focused on Mycroft Holmes would make a great movie too. He is one of those characters who has a respected reputation from when Conan Doyle wrote him into the original books but never really explored. From what we know from his literary character he is more gifted than Sherlock but not the inclination to use it. He is a key government official who has used his influence to help his brother occasionally but exactly what and how he does it is open to interpretation. And why. Why is it that a man who is described as being superior to his great detective brother is content in staying in the shadows of bureaucracy? That could spawn a lot of great stories in my opinion.
Included with prime. If I weren’t a big Annabella Sciorra fan I probably wouldn’t have finished it. Slow, not a lot of action, but seemed to get good reviews from women. What’s the saying about everyone watching the screen in hopes of seeing his/her own story up there?
Now, go watch Play It as It Lays and be even more impressed.
Belle
An anime that does a good job of using the trope of an immersive social media to drive the story without getting buried in the online world. Oddly, I thought it would have been better as a mix of live action and animation.
Well, the story, including the main thrust of the ending, actually goes back to the 1930s. Granted the original film of the same name was about a rising/falling pair of actors, not about musical performers of any sort and so featured little or no singing, but yeah, each reiteration of the film (each newish telling of the “story”) seems to come about just to showcase someone who is already famous.
Maybe the next telling in a couple years (at the rate IPs are getting recycled these days) will realize the novelty of showcasing an actual unknown in the titular role. Because as it stands, I’m tired of watching movies that boil down to famous people staying famous by telling us anyone can be famous (but only if they’re already famous in real life).
Anyway, apologies for the reach-back, I’m catching up on this thread.
Very interesting list. I tried to watch Enola Holmes around Thanksgiving but never could quite get into it. Maybe sometime else. Also, be sure to watch The Seven Percent Solution in your Holmes catchup, I rather enjoyed it, it’s a rather quirky look at Holmes, with a guest appearance by Sigmund Freud. Recommended.
There certainly are several pastiches (novels about Sherlock Holmes written by people other than Arthur Conan Doyle) in which Mycroft is the main character. In fact, some of these were cowritten by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After retiring from playing basketball, he has been writing books, including Sherlock Holmes pastiches.
That’s the formal reason as given by Sherlock in the books but I’d love to see it from Mycroft’s perspective. A government official whose brother is a renowned detective and yet the world does not know is inferior in ability to him.
I always thought that question got answered shortly after it came up: “You are right in thinking that he is under the British government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British government … They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his word has decided the national policy.”
If we take Sherlock at his word, then the question isn’t really Why Does Mycroft Spend His Time Bringing Stuff To The Attention Of The British Empire? Instead, the question is, No, Seriously: Why Did Sherlock Spend The Better Part Of A Month Disguised As A Panhandler Of Chinese Ancestry To Investigate A Single Back-Alley Killing While His Brother Was Ably Solving Global-Ramifications Problems Involving The Royal Navy?
I think Sherlock must have entered the public domain in the 1970s, because there were a ton of adaptations made in that decade. I’d like to rewatch the funny ones like They Might be Giants, Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s Hound of the Baskervilles.
I will watch The Seven Percent Solution next up then, thanks! On Enola Holmes - I too felt initially that this isn’t for me. I think it is clearly made for a younger audience in mind but I watched it with family and so taken as a family movie it is a worth a while. Not a great story but the acting performances are very good. I would say the weakest was Henry Cavill in part because Holmes is a weaker character in the movie but perhaps also in part because if I were in charge to cast an actor to play Sherlock Holmes, he would not be in it. I see him more of a possible James Bond.
Appreciate you sharing this. I wasn’t aware of this but will look into it. Kareem has had a great and very unique career.
That’s an interesting interpretation and now makes me even more determined to see Mycroft Holmes to be in focus. A guy like that will have incredible stories to share so let’s see it for once!
Although I liked the movie version of The Seven Per Cent Solution [sup]1[/sup], I liked the book a lot better. Nicholson makes a good Holmes. Robert Duvall seems an odd choice for Watson, though.
the screenplay was by Nicholas Meyer, who wrote the book it’s based on. He also wrote two sequels – The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer, which aren’t quite as good. Meyer is also the guy responsible for some of the best 1980s Star Trek movies, either writing or directing, as well as Time After Time (speaking of Jack the Ripper). He’s also the King of Made-For-TV Movies, being responsible in some way for The Night that Panicked America, Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders, and The Day After.
Actually, it didn’t. The pastiches published then paid the estate some reasonable amount to use the character. It appears to me that all Sherlock Holmes stories are now in the public domain now.
Actually, it’s four sequels including The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols and The Return of the Pharaoh: From the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D..
Hm. Hadn’t encountered those yet. The first is from 2019 and the other just came out last November (even Holmes sites don’t all have it).
Big gaps in Meyer’s record. The first two books came out in 1974 and 1976, but canary Trainer didn’t come out until 1993. Then a gap of 26 years before Protcols.
It’s weird, when you consider that Meyer wrote another Holmes pastiche that was only one page long, an “endpaper” for the New York Times Sunday Magazine back in the early 1970s in which Holmes was asked to look into – Watergate
