Johnny Guitar, with Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, I have lotsa movie review books by Danny Peary, Roger Ebert, and others and like to read about classic movies and their history…anyway, I hated it and don’t see what all the fuss was about.
I love anything with Jean Harlow in it, but especially Red Dust. And Dinner at Eight - she is just AMAZING in it. So shrill, so lively, and so beautiful. Shame she died so young.
I just saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the first time and didn’t care for it at all, except for the cinematography. I don’t like Robert Redford, and although I usually like Paul Newman, I found his character to be over-the-top smartass and grating. I also didn’t care for the corny “Laugh-In” style musical bits here and there.
I Netflixed the Taylor/Burton 1960s version of “Cleopatra” last weekend. I’d seen little bits of it in childhood, but had never sat through the entire movie before (and at 4+ hours, it takes a whole lot of sitting through!)
It isn’t the greatest sword & sandal all-star epic extravaganza of the era–IMO, that would be “Spartacus”–but it wasn’t as bad as its reputation. In spite of the length, I was entertained through most of it.
One notes that Cleopatra really knows how to make an entrance: her arrival in Rome takes 10 minutes of dancing extras coming in before she finally appears atop a huge sphinx dragged along by about 200 slaves. Later on, she arrives at wherever it is Marc Antony is aboard a huge golden barge with her handmaidens singing and tossing gold into the water (“It must be Cleopatra,” says one of Antony’s men–as if someone else might show up in similar extravagant fashion.)
One is also delighted to note that Richard Burton wears some very, very short skirts, and has the legs for it.
My local library has a great DVD section, and they evidently rotate their collection because I see new titles all the time. Given such a golden opportunity, I have endeavored to fill in some of the more obvious gaps in my cinematic education as well as to instill a healthy respect for the classics in my daughter, 10 year-old Kizarvexilla. She has since become a nut for the Marx Brothers (so much funnier than the Stooges), got her first sampling of Laurel and Hardy, and is a major fan of Cary Grant, Gene Kelly, Howard Keel, and Gregory Peck. A couple of weeks ago I sat her down for a viewing of Kiss Me Kate. She and I have been singing duets of Wunderbar ever since – I sing in Howard Keel’s range (though certainly not with his talent) and she does a Kathryn Grayson voice that you’d never believe could come from a 10 year-old.
The last film I remember picking up that neither of us had seen before was Sunset Boulevard Boy, were we both in for an education. :eek:
It may be too long ago to qualify as “recent” and the movie may not qualify as “classic,” but I saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about 6 months ago for the first time, and enjoyed it greatly. It was a lot funnier than I was expecting.
Finally saw Citizen Kane about a month ago. Man, was that ever a depressing movie! Damned good, too, but I guess that goes without saying.
Before that, it was Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. My first Chaplin movie, and I was pretty underwhelmed. I thought the Mussolini character was great, though. The big fight at the buffet table between him and “Hitler” was hilarious.
I expect to be gunned down, but I watched A Bridge Too Far a couple of months ago and was underwhelmed. I enjoyed seeing appearances by (now) well-known actors, but I guess I was expecting a deeper story, given the film’s acclaim. I enjoyed Bridge on the River Kwai and the modern Saving Private Ryan much, much more.
I can actually make it through the Sexy Rexy/Julius Caesar half just fine; it’s the Richard Burton/Mark Anthony that just seems to go on longer than the Roman Empire itself. Especially the after-Actium scenes, which make me go "Elaine at THE ENGLISH PATIENT- “You’re defeated, there’s no hope of escape, would you DIE already!”
I don’t know if I’m misremembering this factoid or not, but ISTR that that one scene nearly bankrupted the studio and caused them to seriously rethink ever doing any big “epic” films again.
Interesting, I just saw it for the first time and rather liked it. This is notable because I A) rarely like old movies and B) rarely like foreign movies. However the cinemetography was excellent for a movie made in 1950 - especially the scenes in the rain at that temple or whatever it was where they were telling the story. And the patchwork storytelling device it used seemed way ahead of its time.
I recently watched Le samouraï, with Alain Delon, and absolutely loved it. A complete pleasure from start to finish. Highly recommended.
I also recently watched The Seventh Seal. Worth it for the uniqueness, weird lighting / sets and young Max Von Sydow, but I can’t say it was all that incredible.
Finally, I watched Marnie, a Hitchcock movie with Sean Connery. There’s exactly one good Hitchcockian scene; the rest is treacly crap.
I think a lot of the film’s acclaim was due to its daring to be a WWII movie with an anti-war slant. That was my reading of it, and my theory as to why I, too, was underwhelmed. Even in the cynical 70s, WWII films were supposed to be about high adventure and noble purpose, not meditations on war’s devastation or the consequences of upper brass clusterfucks.
I’m pretty sure you’re right. In fact, there’s even a quasi-scientific term called the ‘Rashomom effect’ that deals with differing perspectives of the same event. While I appreciate that this may have been groundbreaking 60 years ago, it fell a little flat for me.
That said, I’m looking forward to listening to the commentaries and perhaps gaining new respect for what is considered a classic. I really, really want to like it.
It’s been a month or two, but I caught The African Queen on TCM a while back. And it was fantastic.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
I wasn’t expecting much, since a friend told me how disappointed she was with this movie. But it was a rainy day and I figured I’d see for myself. I liked it well enough; Audrey Hepburn’s character was stunningly beautiful and elegant, even (or especially) when she wasn’t trying to be. The guy character had no personality, and I didn’t care for him too much. But the story was simple and sweet and endearing. I started sobbing at the ending scene; Holly’s running through the alley in the pouring rain, desperately searching for her lost cat, and just when you think it’s lost forever, she finds it. I’m such a sap.
Quoth Miller:
That was the last-but-one disc I had out from Netflix. Clearly a great movie, but not the greatest movie of all time. What it is, however, and this is not to be minimized, the first great movie of all time. Before Citizen Kane, movies were basically just filmed plays: Nobody had yet realized all of the things you could do with a movie that you couldn’t do in a play. Pretty much all of modern cinematography dates to Kane, and since we’re so used to it now, it’s lost some of the impact it must surely have had to audiences of the time.
Of course, I already knew going in what “Rosebud” signified. I have to also wonder how it would have been different if I hadn’t.
The impression I got was that the movie was shallow. Not that it was a statement about a shallow culture. I guess that comes from knowing nothing about Italy in the 1960’s.
It is one of my absolute favorite movies … so much so it is the only video i have on my moto 9m.
Did you know it is part of a sort of series? In the aspect that it shares a location, and a number of characters in common with the Dr Mabuse movies of the time. I have one, The Testament of Dr Mabuse and I am trying to lay hands on a good copy of Dr Mabuse - the Gambler a silent from 1922 that was the first Mabuse.
If you liked M, really - get Testament, it is just as engrossing.
I just watched The Maltese Falcon, starring Bogart and Astor. I had seen it before on television, but I think this is the first time I saw it straight through uncut. I loved it, and I was really impressed with Bogart playing a tough guy. Deservedly considered classic.
A few months ago I saw *Manhattan *for the first time. It is a really good movie, but seeing Woody Allen dump Diane Keaton for an insipid high schooler kind of took me out of the movie.
Yasujiro Ozu’s *Tôkyô monogatari *(1953) aka Tokyo Story. Considered as one of the top 10 films of all time, I can’t believe it took me so long to see it. I saw it on TCM and loved it. Then I watched it again with the Criterion commentary and enjoyed it all over again. However, like Roshomon, I do believe that Japanese films are not for everyone and you have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate them.