What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Markgway
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out

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The Girl Who Knew too Much (1963-Italy) **
Mario Bava's black and white murder mystery is regarded by some as the first giallo. The shadows and suspense are nicely effective, but the plot is rather meh (and I guessed the killer almost immediately).
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Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972-Italy) *
Pretentious title for such laughable junk. Sleazy giallo has more sex than violence (not a bad thing when Edwige Fenech is involved) and a twisty revenge plot that drags on and on and defies logical description. Misogynist, racist, and generally repellent.
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ATM (2011-Canada-USA) **
Three work colleagues (one of them the delectable Alice Eve) are trapped in an ATM vestibule by a hooded killer. Low budget chiller is well-enough made, but the script tries too hard to be clever, and leaves us with something that's ultimately unconvincing and unsatisfying.
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Sicario (2015-USA) **½
Cynical, worthwhile thriller about attempts to restore a manageable 'balance' within the Latin American drugs cartels. Tricky to follow if you don't know the background, but arresting most of the way, with a few tense scenes, and a tight finish. Major drawback, however, is with Emily Blunt's unsympathetic central character, through whose eyes we see most of what goes on. She's a good actress, but I'm not so sure she wasn't miscast here. Benicio Del Toro on the other hand is very solid.
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The Long Goodbye (1973-USA) **
Long, indeed! Robert Altman's much too leisurely-paced 'thriller' fits perfectly into that 70s auteurist mould that values self-indulgence over entertainment. Elliot Gould is an OK Philip Marlowe, but a very simple story is drawn out (via subplots and odd scenes that go nowhere) until perfunctory conclusion -- hell, I suppose we should be thankful they actually bothered with an ending.
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Lassiter (1983-Hong Kong-USA) **½
Classy crime caper in which cat burglar Tom Selleck is forced into stealing Nazi diamonds in pre-war London. Nothing special, but worth a look.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out

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Big Game (Finland, 2014) [VoD] - 3/5
Samuel L. Jackson is the president of the United States whose plane gets shot down by terrorists above Finland (not actually filmed in Finland because we lack beautiful mountains). His only hope is a little kid camping in the woods. Director Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports) is a Renny Harlin lite, which isn't an entirely bad thing. He makes energetic but a bit childish pg-13 films and considers Steven Spielberg his hero. Unfortunately he is one of those guys who thinks he can make action epics with insufficient budgets by resorting to CGI. Nevertheless, like one Finnish critic said, this one is so ridiculous it actually works. The US print is apparently slightly censored, lacking one "motherfucker" by Sam Jackson.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out

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Never Say Die (1939: Elliot Nugent)

I like Bob Hope so I am always a bit biased with his films (and I have seen over 30 with him in it). This is one of several films he did with Martha Raye and it seems interesting now to see her billed over him, though she was quite popular at the time and Bob was newer to feature films, though she is nowhere near as known now as Hope. So I enjoyed this for the second time. It’s a playful tale of a hypochondriac millionaire who is in a foreign land trying to get better while at the same time avoiding a black widow (Gale Sondergaard, always good with her mystique, watch her with Hope in The Cat and the Canary which also came out in 1939.) He gets a wrong diagnosis, thinks he is going to die early from high acidity and wants to find out a better use for his money. He figures out a plan to marry Martha Raye’s character and give her the money after he dies. She is avoiding her fiancé (Andy Devine; always fun seeing him in non-westerns.) Cowritten by future director Preston Sturges who directed several really good comedies like The Palm Beach Story and Unfaithfully Yours.

Why Worry? (1923: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor) Silent

Interesting little coincidence here where Harold Lloyd’s character her is also a pill popping hypochondriac in a foreign land. There is a romance brewing her as well, but with his nurse instead of a complete stranger. But Lloyd has to survive a coup taking place on the island while he is there. There are many great silent comedians with nowadays Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin being the most known, but Lloyd who was more popular than Keaton and almost as popular as Chaplin when these were released is ironically somewhat less known today than those two. I am a fan of both (huge fan of Keaton), but I also enjoy Lloyd’s comedies as well (he may not be the director, but he was in charge). This one is a short film, came after the success of Safety Last! (seriously watch this; Criterion has a release), but is quite funny and is recommended for fans of comedy.

The Unbeliever (1918: Alan Crosland) Silent

This is the last film on a Kino DVD set of Edison films. Edison’s company which was vastly important in the early part of American cinema had fallen in disfavor when feature length films where becoming more important (for a variety of reasons including everything from lack of retention of talent to just not making enough money.) I have an interest in World War I films and this one has a few intriguing facts about it. It is surprisingly not as biased (though Erich von Stroheim’s performance was one of pure evil; great to see him young, he would become a bigger star as both a director and actor later on) as one would have it, especially when this was made at the tail end of the war. I cannot imagine a film during World War II being as non-biased (when Alfred Hitchcock tried in Lifeboat he was criticized for it at the time, even though it too had its biases.)

But one of the reasons I went through this entire set was to learn more about the filmmaking methods of the East Coast factory. For years the earliest films would keep a theatrical approach to filmmaking (some writers call this a proscenium approach) where the camera is placed in front and there tends to be very little cutting. Now with this last film there are a lot of cuts (sometimes too much), close-ups and a variety of newer additions to filmmaking that were non-existent a decade previous. The director is now know mostly as the director behind the early sound film The Jazz Singer (not a complete sound film, nor the first, just the most important which led quickly to the adoption of sound to all the studios; compare this to how slow all color filmmaking was; remember there was color film or use of color since almost the beginning of cinema), but he is a director worth watching. However, since time is valuable, I would first recommend to watch if you are interested such silent WWI classics as The Big Parade or Wings. Or even sound WWI films such as Wooden Crosses (several uses of double exposure especially the marching soldiers), All Quiet on the Western Front, The Grand Illusion (which also has Erich von Stroheim) and The Dawn Patrol (the 1938 remake.)
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out

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Oblivion (2013-USA) ***
I'm giving this sci-fi adventure 3 stars, because not only is it technically very well made, but it's brimming with smart ideas and visuals (at least half a star is for the gorgeous Olga Kurylenko though). I'd be lying, however, if I didn't confess to finding the plot a tad confusing... anyone else? Give Tom Cruise credit: He knows how to bring entertaining blockbusters to the big screen.
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Markgway wrote:Oblivion (2013-USA) ***
I'm giving this sci-fi adventure 3 stars, because not only is it technically very well made, but it's brimming with smart ideas and visuals (at least half a star is for the gorgeous Olga Kurylenko though). I'd be lying, however, if I didn't confess to finding the plot a tad confusing... anyone else? Give Tom Cruise credit: He knows how to bring entertaining blockbusters to the big screen.
I loved seeing this on the big screen. A little confusing though (possibly because) it has several homages to various sci-fi films from 2001, Solaris to Moon. I thought it was interesting, well made and I also bought it on BD/DVD. I've actually liked more of Cruise when he got older and past that cocky youth phase (though there are films like Top Gun I do like.) Now Tarkovsky's Solaris did confuse me a little more than this.
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Not even remotely confusing, probably because there's not a single original moment in the entire thing. I enjoyed it as disposable entertainment, it's too derivative to be anything more. Edge of Tomorrow was much better imo.
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Shingster wrote:Not even remotely confusing, probably because there's not a single original moment in the entire thing.
Smart arse. ;)
I enjoyed it as disposable entertainment, it's too derivative to be anything more.
I don't watch much sci-fi so I probably missed the steals.
Edge of Tomorrow was much better imo.
Haven't seen that yet.
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Markgway wrote:...
Edge of Tomorrow was much better imo.
Haven't seen that yet.
I also like Edge of Tomorrow (my Dad liked both films as well but he favored Oblivion; thinking about it I know several who preferred Oblivion) so I'm curious on your reaction to the film.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out

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Casanova’s Big Night (1954: Norman Z. McLeod)

Yet another Bob Hope film I recently rewatched. Definitely light fare, but good if you like this style of comedy. In some ways this is quite similar with an earlier Hope film in Monsieur Beaucaire. It is a costume comedy dealing with a scared Bob Hope (when ishe not scared) forced to do an impersonation of a more powerful character. Here he has to double for Casanova, the great lover and swordsman, played unbilled by Vincent Price. The plot is pretty trivial, but you get your normal amount of Hope one-liners, in-jokes (a great one with Lon Chaney Jr.), some visual humor and I always find it fun to see Basil Rathbone acting (he is also the narrator; he was quite a good fencer in real-life, though he does a little but not enough here.) The lead love interest is Joan Fontaine (who is used better with Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz.) The biggest annoyance is I did not find one Bing Crosby joke (one of the biggest ongoing gags in cinema was between Crosby and Hope where they would also plant something about one or another in dozens of films.)
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Wild Card (2015: Simon West) ***/****

Surprisingly (to myself) I enjoyed this. It is funny because after watching it I choose my score on IMBD and then check out the average rating (lower than I thought) and then go and read the rogerebert review (**½, though if you read it, it really sounds like a *** film) and I am wondering to myself why did I enjoy it more than most. The film is certainly filled with clichés such as the obvious “paid to get beat up” scene, but the pacing and the acting keep me interested throughout. But the film and direction does play against some of the stereotypes as well (thank goodness.) A lot of this I think is Simon West’s influence.* He is a solid director with Con Air as his most well known. Like the review stated on rogerebert.com, Jason Statham gets to have a lot of dialog and he is pretty good at it. It is a character driven film, previously done with Burt Reynolds in Heat, based on the William Goldman novel and it feels like it. Statham’s character Nick Wild is in the John Wick, Robert McCall (The Equalizer), Donnie Yen (both in character and real life :D) mode. He’s mostly unstoppable. The only thing that can stop him is him (or maybe the mob or some sniper though that was not used here). Corey Yuen’s choreography here is done well even if a bit short, especially the last scene with the cutlery (like the talked about but not seen scene in John Wick with the pencil). Stanley Tucci plays a mob boss that seems more realistic and is pretty effective similar to Francis Ng’s brilliant performance in Infernal Affairs 2.

Notes: the card scenes are done quite well. Interesting use of cameos. I was not sold on Dominik García-Lorido’s performance.

* There is some interesting use of flash forwards. There is a lot that is understated and West feels the need not to explain everything. There is some teasing as to how angles are going to go, but puts them out more logically than some possible expected twists.
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I didn't rate Wild Card myself, I think I slightly preferred the Burt Reynolds original.
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Markgway wrote:Haven't seen that yet.
It's just as derivative as Oblivion but where Oblivion tries to be this hard-hitting twisty-turny sci-fi thriller Edge of Tomorrow is more about having fun with the format. That's really my only problem with Oblivion, if you know the films its ripping off then you see every twist coming, with Edge of Tomorrow it doesn't really matter so much.
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Re: What general film/series have you just seen.. marks out of 5

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Whiplash (USA, 2014) [DCP] - 4/5
I missed this during the original theatrical run due to limited interest in the subject matter. Big mistake. No interest is jazz music or music schools is needed to enjoy this intense and challenging film. The ending is especially good and doesn't go for an easy solution
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The Two Faces of January (2013-UK-France-USA) **½
Intriguing, but pat suspense thriller set in early 60s Greece, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel.

The World's End (2013-UK-USA-Japan) **
Repetitious, sporadically funny sci-fi-action-comedy mash-up from the Wright-Pegg team.
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The Seven-Ups (1973-USA) **½
Gritty NYC crime thriller in the vein of The French Connection; memorable for its car chase.
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Truth or Dare (2011-UK) **
Five obnoxious students are lured to a secluded cabin for a game of... horror ensues.
Low budget Brit horror flirts with torture porn, but is relatively restrained; competent, but saddled with an uncomfortably ugly twist.
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Jaguar Lives! (1978-USA-Spain) *
Dismal Bond rip-off; an inept action vehicle for karate champ Joe Lewis, whose thespian skills make Chuck Norris seem like Laurence Olivier. Familiar supporting cast appallingly wasted.
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Spartan (2003-USA-Germany) ***
Val Kilmer is solid as a hard nut military advisor in David Mamet's kidnap thriller; imagine a more cerebral version of Taken.
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Nightmare (1981-USA-Italy) *½
Cheapjack splatter picture is just off-kilter enough to pass muster as exploitation (if you like that sort of thing). The over-the-top twist ending, I admit, I didn't see coming.
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The Negotiator (1998-USA-Germany) ***
Gripping police corruption/hostage thriller; Sam Jackson and Kevin Spacey are excellent leads.

Falling Down (1992-USA-France) ***½
The most unfairly overlooked film of its year come Oscar time (releasing it in Feb probably didn't help). Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, even Frederic Forrest could've/should've been nominated. Powerful, potent urban drama, leaves you with plenty to think about.
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