rate the last movie you saw

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AndyDursin
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2956 Post by AndyDursin »

JOHN WICK - CHAPTER 2
8/10

Man, if you are looking for two hours of pounding, bune-crunching action, John Wick 2 delivers it in a dizzying fashion. A bigger/better sequel that's not necessarily any more cultivated narratively than its predecessor (despite an additional half-hour running time), this Keanu Reeves vehicle offers one of the largest body counts in film history, plus some choice bits of humor to break up its bombastic, blazing gun battles.

That said, at over 2 hours, the movie does become somewhat repetitious, and boasts precious little character development, story or dramatic engagement. It's basically just cool, well-choreographed fight sequences strung out with a throbbing musical score -- yet if you're into it, the movie is undeniably exciting for what it is, not so much ending but rather stopping as the door is left ajar for Chapter 3.

Definitely a way to shake the winter doldrums -- or clear your sinuses, provided the volume was as loud in my theater as it could be in yours!

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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2957 Post by Eric Paddon »

The Time Machine (1960) 7.8 of 10

=Picked up a Blu-Ray upgrade on the heels of my listening to a more recent BBC Radio version (which I didn't think was as good as the Leonard Nimoy Alien Voices one). I got a kick out of finding that thanks to freeze-framing and the better image of Blu-Ray, I could identify the book in the Eloi library that crumbles to dust in Rod Taylor's hands. "The Marvelous Career of Theodore Roosevelt" by Charles Morris, published in 1909. (unlikely that would be a title to last 800,000 years!) :D

-Wells' purists I'm sure dislike the movie for the fact that it totally eliminates the socialist propaganda undercurrent which attributed the division of the Eloi/Morlocks to an extension of capitalists exploiting labor. The atomic war in 1967 sequence also with hindsight comes off as cheesy though on another level necessary to justify the next part of the journey being encased in molten rock rather than seeing civilizations rise and fall over the course of 800,000 years. But overall, the film does capture the basic reason why the story has endured as a grand form of sci-fi entertainment. The story is more important than the message ultimately. Rod Taylor is likable and engaging that its surprising that he never had a stronger career as a film lead.

-The vintage 1993 documentary looks weaker on Blu-Ray but it's still a vital supplement, not just for the documentary but for the wonderful sequel vignette which was done just right on all levels. It's great they were able to get Taylor and Alan Young to do it.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2958 Post by Monterey Jack »

-The Great Wall (2017): 6/10

More like The Okay Wall. :| Good-looking period production from Zhang Yimou is fairly generic, routine stuff, with a miscast Matt Damon (speaking in a vague Irish[?] accent that comes and goes) coming across like a glorified extra in his own movie. Anyone else sick to death of seeing CGI armies swarming over walls like squiggling insects? It was novel to see such vast armies twenty years ago in movies like Starship Troopers, or even fifteen years ago in the LOTR trilogy, but now it's old-hat, not helped by the off-the-rack monster designs and flat digital photography. Clocking in at barely ninety minutes (once you subtract an absurd TWELVE-MINUTE end-title run :shock: ), The Great Wall is wanly watchable (and boasts a very attractive leading lady), but coming from the gifted Yimou, it's pretty disappointing all around. No wonder Universal is giving it the same brush-off as the equally-expensive 47 Ronin from a few years back. At least that film had more varied and interesting creature designs and cooler action sequences.

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AndyDursin
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2959 Post by AndyDursin »

Reading your review, it's more and more obvious to me we have reached the wall (no pun intended) in terms of special effects. They can throw all the CGI enhancements at us they want -- when was the last time anyone sat there watching a movie and said "these effects are AMAZING!"?? It's nearly been a generation since a truly groundbreaking movie like JURASSIC PARK. Since then the FX have gotten "better" and more refined, sure, but they are all variations on the same effect, more or less.

The "artistry" involved with FX has also greatly, greatly diminished. Douglas Trumbull's FX were always gorgeous to look at. Nowadays we get a hundred serpents or robots on-screen, but it ain't anything we haven't seen before over the last 25 years.

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AndyDursin
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2960 Post by AndyDursin »

HACKSAW RIDGE
8/10

Mel Gibson’s personal demons be damned; the man can clearly direct, and that “Hacksaw Ridge” has re-established Gibson’s directorial career – after helming unforgettable pictures like “Passion of the Christ,” “Braveheart” and “Apocalypto” – is clearly one of the happiest developments in cinema over the last year.

An absorbing profile of Desmond Doss – the first “conscientious objector” to win the Congressional Medal of Honor – “Hacksaw Ridge” is also one of the strongest war films to come our way in some time. Gibson’s film takes its time setting up Doss’ home life in a bucolic Virginia town with a troubled father (Hugo Weaving) haunted by WWI and a devout mother (Rachel Griffiths) who raises Doss to shun violence. By the time Doss (Andrew Garfield) applies to join his fellow Americans in WWII, he’s convinced he can help the military as a medic while staying true to his Seventh Day Adventist beliefs and never touching a gun. This, naturally, causes major friction with his commanding officers (Vince Vaughn and a particularly good Sam Worthington) and fellow soldiers, but when Doss is finally brought to the test on the bloody battlefield in Okinawa, his bravery outshines any questions they may have.

“Hacksaw Ridge” works in pretty much every facet: as a story of a young man living up to his convictions, it’s earnest and believable. As a war picture, it’s also potent and stirring, horrifying and moving at once. This isn’t so much an “anti-war” film as it is the story of one individual who still desired to join his country’s fight while holding true to his own, non-violent personal beliefs. Gibson handles all the battle sequences with the appropriate visceral intensity you’d anticipate, yet it’s the central performance of Andrew Garfield that seals the deal. Bogged down in – if not buried by – the bombast of two “Spider-Man” misfires, “Hacksaw Ridge” provides the perfect vehicle for Garfield’s heartfelt charisma, enabling one to gain an emotional connection with Doss’ plight as the thunder and fury of WWII are ramped up in the film’s second half. It’s a marvelous picture that both ranks with 2016's best and serves as a reminder of Gibson’s formidable talents as a filmmaker.

Lionsgate’s 4K UHD presentation of “Hacksaw Ridge,” with its HDR enhancements, outshines its perfectly good Blu-Ray counterpart, though both presentations are occasionally marred by some inconsistent cinematography and mediocre CGI work (this was not a huge budget production, and its modest origins occasionally show). The Dolby Atmos audio offers a supportive – if standard-issue – score by Rupert Gregson-Williams that replaced a John Debney score late in the game, while extras include four scant minutes of deleted scenes, a featurette, the trailer, a Digital HD copy, and Gibson’s introduction to Veterans Day theatrical screenings of the film. Highly recommended.

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Monterey Jack
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2961 Post by Monterey Jack »

AndyDursin wrote:Reading your review, it's more and more obvious to me we have reached the wall (no pun intended) in terms of special effects. They can throw all the CGI enhancements at us they want -- when was the last time anyone sat there watching a movie and said "these effects are AMAZING!"?? It's nearly been a generation since a truly groundbreaking movie like JURASSIC PARK. Since then the FX have gotten "better" and more refined, sure, but they are all variations on the same effect, more or less.
Precisely...I honestly think we're never gonna get another F/X breakthrough as game-changing as CGI was in the late 80's and early 90's. Primitive as they look today, remember how GALVANIZED audiences were back then for stuff like The Abyss, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park and Toy Story? Nowadays it's all variations on the same stuff we've ben seeing for two decades...just slicker and more...more.

The one good thing that might come out of the F/X boom finally stagnating is that studios might realize that story and character will bring in audiences more readily than eye-candy that's no longer novel. It's why the Independence Day sequel tanked...back in '96, there was a novelty to seeing such mass-scale devastation done with such a high level of technical polish (especially compared to the elaborate-yet-unconvincing miniatures and mattes of the disaster movies of the 70's). But in 2016? You can see comparable levels of destruction pretty much every other week. :|

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Paul MacLean
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2962 Post by Paul MacLean »

AndyDursin wrote: The "artistry" involved with FX has also greatly, greatly diminished. Douglas Trumbull's FX were always gorgeous to look at. Nowadays we get a hundred serpents or robots on-screen, but it ain't anything we haven't seen before over the last 25 years.
ILM, WETA, etc. can cunjure-up all sorts of "cool things", but they definitely lack the artistry and imagination of Trumbull's work.

I can't condemn Trumbull for following his dream of being a director, and later trying to develop his "Showscan" process...but I'd have preferred he'd continued to produce optical effects, as no effects creators have ever equaled the surpassing artistry of his work on Close Encounters, Blade Runner, etc.

A few years ago I showed Blade Runner to a friend of mine -- a movie fan, but one who doesn't follow or read-up on production processes. At the end of the film he commented "Why does this movie look so much more amazing than anything made today?"

Eric Paddon
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2963 Post by Eric Paddon »

A couple more Blu-Ray upgrades for me.

Touch Of Evil (1958) 6.8 of 10

-I watched for the first time the "preview" cut and then listened to its commentary track. After awhile I'll revisit the "memo" cut. I certainly would agree that the opening shot benefits more with no credits over it as the "memo" cut gives us. Overall though if this film didn't have such terrific personalities on-screen who are fascinating to watch, I'm not sure I'd rate it too high because in his zeal to show us how much he could direct and come up with fascinating techniques, did Welles ultimately drain too much of the story out of this? Unfortunately, yes. Too many important points are zipped along in throwaway fashion and on repeated viewing this starts to stick out a little too much for my taste.

-I have noticed in the commentary for this cut and what I remember from the commentary for the memo cut is that these film scholars are really so PC that they are determined to minimize the final point about the suspect being really guilty of the bombing, which I know isn't the focal point of the film but it *is* important to give the Quinlan character a nuance that his corruption that's led to his downfall is the fact that he feels a need to use false evidence against those who really are guilty in the end. The way these commentators try to brush this point off by saying "well we really don't know if he just confessed because of the third degree etc." reeks more of them trying to be PC because in their minds the frightened Mexican suspect *shouldn't* be guilty in the end. It does make me wonder if we know if the actor who played the Sanchez character is the one whose hands are shown putting the bomb in the trunk in the opening shot? Seems to me if we knew *that* it would make the question potentially not so ambiguous!

Wait Until Dark (1967) 8.5 of 10

-I've said this before, but thank goodness this film snuck in during the last year of the Production Code or else Alan Arkin would have been given all kinds of foul language imaginable and in the process removed a lot of the natural air of psychotic menace that makes his character one of the most terrifying ever seen on a screen IMO. This is Terence Young's best non-Bond film. Great as Audrey Hepburn is in the role, I do at times wish I could have seen how Lee Remick did the part on-stage since she too had a vulnerable quality that would have been right for the film as well (as "Experiment In Terror" demonstrated).

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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2964 Post by AndyDursin »

Trying to watch ALLIED while fighting off sleep. My god is this thing lifeless. Sandman is winning.

Eric Paddon
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2965 Post by Eric Paddon »

Watched the memo cut of "Touch Of Evil" tonight and I'd rate that a couple tenths more for being better edited and paced than the preview cut but the draining of the story is still a problem. I find that my reaction was identical to what Heston's reaction was the first time he saw it as he wrote in his 1958 journal entry. Each shot is brilliant and fascinating and yet the story seems gone.

Heston's view of the film would change and the commentary track with the restoration producer having Heston and Janet Leigh is a must-listen. Since both Heston and Leigh are gone now their recollections are precious to hear and the support they get means this will be a track that won't fall into much awkward silence or fishing for recollections.

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AndyDursin
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2966 Post by AndyDursin »

ALLIED
5/10

Apparently working with live actors hasn’t entirely been the solution for director Robert Zemeckis, whose output since his burst of disappointing CGI-animated fare (“Polar Express,” “Beowulf”) has yielded highly mixed results. Case in point is “Allied,” a lifeless WWII espionage thriller/romance about a Canadian Air Force pilot (Brad Pitt) who falls for a French Resistance agent (Marion Cotillard) in Casablanca during the war. Years later they are married, living in London with their daughter when Pitt’s supervisors determine that his wife is really a German spy, living the life of a woman killed for the Nazi cause.

With a bleak ending and constant lack of passion, “Allied” is a moribund disappointment from start to finish. Steven Knight’s script may have read better than it does on-screen, but whether it’s the overly restrained tone or lack of chemistry between the leads, “Allied” plods along, straining credibility as it falls apart in a dire second half that doesn’t work at all.

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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2967 Post by Eric Paddon »

The Rains Of Ranchipur (1955) 5 of 10

-One of my bargain TT orders I got around to. This film has an incredibly good F/X scene depicting a catastrophic flood and dam break. Unfortunately it comes after 80 minutes or so of boring and I mean *boring* soap opera melodrama centered around bad girl tramp Lana Turner setting her eye on noble Indian doctor (a not convincing Richard Burton) as she cheats on henpecked hubby Michael Rennie. The secondary subplot of Fred MacMurry and Joan Caulfield is even less interesting. But I did get something of an insight as to why I have seen so few movies with Turner over the years because she just doesn't have a very strong screen presence IMO compared to so many of her contemporaries.

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AndyDursin
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2968 Post by AndyDursin »

ARIA
5/10

A highly uneven anthology of short movies told, mostly, without dialogue and with a series of operatic arias supporting them, the 1987 release “Aria” makes its Blu-Ray debut on March 7th from Lightyear Entertainment.

The movie is not, really, at all a film for opera lovers – instead, it’s more like an attempt by a series of directors to produce MTV-like music videos with the novelty of opera as opposed to pop music appearing therein.

For the most part, the arias have little (if anything) to do with the action on-screen, though there are a few exceptions: a particularly beautiful Erich Wolfgang Korngold selection from “Die tote Stadt” is “performed” by a nude Elizabeth Hurley and Peter Birch in a Bruce Beresford-directed film set in Bruges, and sections of “Rigoletto” make for a comedic vignette by Julien Temple with Buck Henry, Anita Morris and Beverly D’Angelo starring.

Other sections of the movie, though, either come off as brazenly bizarre – like Ken Russell’s weird take on “Nessum Dorma” from “Turnadot,” or a Jean-Luc Godard film with a pair of gorgeous (mostly naked) cleaning women working alongside body-builders to Jean-Baptiste Lully selections – or strike-out altogether, such as Robert Altman’s weird portion involving asylum inmates attending the opening of a Parisian theater, or framing sections with John Hurt that culminate in an embarrassing performance of “Pagliacci.” Meanwhile, a young Bridget Fonda and Tilda Swinton also appear with Theresa Russell starring in her husband Nicolas Roeg’s opening segment, while other sections are helmed by the likes of Bill Bryden, Derek Jarman, Charles Sturridge and Franc Roddam.

“Aria” hasn’t been seen a whole lot since its original 1987 release, which generated mixed reception among critics on this side of the pond. It’s certainly not a cohesive viewing experience, relying on the self-indulgent whims of its various directors to carry it forward, but devotees of ‘80s cinema as well as any of the individual filmmakers may find it to be worth a solitary viewing.

Lightyear’s Blu-Ray includes an attractive 1080p transfer that shows its vintage at times but is generally acceptable. The LPCM stereo audio is okay, but because the operatic selections originated from pre-existing RCA Red Seal recordings, the fidelity of the music is surprisingly limited in scope. The trailer and a photo gallery round out the disc (a UK DVD edition did feature a commentary as well as a documentary).


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Paul MacLean
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2969 Post by Paul MacLean »

AndyDursin wrote: The movie is not, really, at all a film for opera lovers – instead, it’s more like an attempt by a series of directors to produce MTV-like music videos with the novelty of opera as opposed to pop music appearing therein.
I actually saw this turd in the theater, with a good friend of mine who is an opera director.

We both despised it. I agree, this film had less to do with the medium of opera than that of the music video. It was literally nothing more than a collection of 80s era "music videos", few of which had even cursory references to the operas on which they were based (and, if you'd turned off the sound, were virtually indistinguishable from what you'd have seen on MTV and VH1 at the time).

In fact I'd go as far to say that Aria was aimed at people who disliked opera, given the way it worked overtime to denigrate some of the some of the most profound music ever written, by juxtaposing it with some the most tawdry imagery imaginable (like Bridget Fonda and her boyfriend driving to Las Vegas, where they have sex and slit their wrists when they're done).

Also, despite the trailer's claim of "ten outstanding directors!", few of those filmmakers are what you could consider "great". To be sure, Altman, Roeg, Russell and Beresford have impressive work to their credit (and Godard is "important" I suppose), but great directors of international cinema at that time were people like Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Ridley Scott, Roman Polanski or Milos Foreman. It is also telling that filmmakers who had directed acclaimed opera adaptations for the screen, like Joseph Losey (Don Giovanni ) and Franco Zeffirrelli (La Traviata and Othello) were not involved with this movie.
Last edited by Paul MacLean on Mon Jul 10, 2017 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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AndyDursin
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Re: rate the last movie you saw

#2970 Post by AndyDursin »

CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER
8/10

At the top of the list of Twilight Time's February Blu-Rays is CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, a film that charts the on-again/off-again relationship between a Utah office worker (John Heard) and a fellow clerk (Mary Beth Hurt) who’s engaged in an unhappy marriage. Joan Micklin Silver adapted Ann Beattie’s novel for this 1979 drama filled with comedic elements and sharp chemistry between its leads, with Heard sporting one of his strongest lead roles as Charles, a guy who is haunted entirely by the charms of Hurt’s discombobulated Laura, in some ways the living embodiment of the “Me Generation.”

Released as “Head Over Heels” in 1979, this United Artists release was atmospherically lensed in the wintry Salt Lake City landscape it’s set in and offers a uniformly fine ensemble cast, with Peter Riegert being notably on-point as Charles’ best friend, Sam. The movie didn’t initially fare well at the box-office, but was re-released under the original title of Beattie’s book in 1982 and found appreciably more commercial success at the box-office via the art house circuit (check out this archival New York Times piece for a story on the re-issue: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/s ... hilly.html)

What’s most interesting about the movie’s re-release was that Silver excised the movie’s final three minutes which – as executed – came off as being at odds with the rest of the picture. In fact, while offering what was conventionally seen as a “happy ending,” the original finale actually played out as more of a nightmare for Charles, making its “harder,” more realistic new conclusion also more hopeful in most respects.

That cut of “Chilly Scenes” – which Micklin Silver feels is the one that audiences truly embraced – has made its way to Blu-Ray in a warmly recommended Twilight Time limited-edition. The 1080p (1.85) AVC encoded transfer looks to be derived from an older MGM master, with some sections appearing softer than others, while the DTS MA 1.0 mono sound is passable. An isolated score track houses Ken Lauber’s jazzy underscore, and extras include the trailer and a fine new commentary featuring Silver and producer Amy Robinson. (Note: the original ending can be seen on Youtube via a tape of an old HBO broadcast)

One of those small gems that’s likely to go overlooked, “Chilly Scenes of Winter” is a film I warmed to during a Turner Classic Movies airing back when I was in college in the ‘90s. It’s a unique and interesting “slice of life” picture that they don’t make anymore, and its preservation on Blu-Ray makes it one of TT’s most appealing recent releases.

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