I've watched 2046, Brokeback Mountain and Song of the South in the last day or so, but I'm still formulating what on God's Earth to say, but since you all know my head is on bassackwards, I CAN say that Song of the South is easily the best. Probable Grade: B+

Brokeback Mountain is a quietly-powerful film which will undoubtedly have meaning to ALL people who have been in relationships and have tried to balance being true to themselves without hurting others. Some will be hit like a ton of bricks, but I personally feel it's a bit too quiet and mirrors the repression the characters undergo a little too much, but I still recommend it. Probable Grade: B-

2046, after two viewings, is a "beautiful" exercise in pretension, boredom and unsympathy. I guess you can adore the film for the visuals, but I found them too often to be just as boring and pretentious as the mostly unlikable characters. You might enjoy it more if you are some Wong Kar Wai nut who gets off spotting all the references to his other films, but this thing rarely spoke to me on any single level. I really don't understand how anybody can believe it says anything realistic about lost love either. Even so, if I have free time, I'm going to watch it a third time because I disliked it much more the second viewing than the first. Probable Grade: D+

Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005, Grade: B+)

I was pleasantly surprised how well-done this adaptation was. In his feature debut, Joe Wright's direction was quite muscular and extremely well-conceived. One shot during a crowded ball was a three-minute wonder of movement, dialogue, surprises, and audaciousness. The script allowed most of the wit to come through, along with even some "genteel slapstick", and the casting was flawless. Keira Knightley is probably worthy of an Oscar nom, and Matthew McFadyen was equally adept at being offputting and gut-spillingly emotional. Besides the two leads, I especially loved Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland as the parents, and Tom Hollander was something else as the predatory, yet clueless cousin, Mr. Collins. It did feel a teensy bit extended about two-thirds of the way through, but it acquitted itself nicely with a deserved romantic ending. This is much-more entertaining and relevant than I could have imagined.

It Came From Outer Space (Arnold, 1953, Grade: C+)

Now I really understand why Ray Bradbury loves Close Encounters so much. (We talked once for at least 15 minutes at the back of the theatre during FILMEX's Sci-Fi Marathon while Encounters was playing.) It's been so long since I watched this whole film, based on a screen story by Bradbury, that I forgot some of the scenes which were incorporated into Spielberg's epic. It also beats Invasion of the Body Snatchers by three years in its use of aliens adopting specific human form. Plus, when that "meteorite"/spaceship comes flyin' at ya in 3-D, the cable it's on is mighty scary. Actually, this is one of the more thoughtful '50s sci-fi flicks, even if the beginning was stolen by Ed Wood for his intro to Plan 9.

The Blob (Yeaworth, 1958, Grade: C-)

IMDb says this is a "comedy". Well, certainly not intentionally. Twenty-eight-year-old Steve McQueen, playing a teenage rebel without a cause, but with a blob, gives the only decent performance. Everything about the film is sub-par, but it's passed into some rose-colored legend, sorta like the crummy Night of the Living Dead did ten years later. Go ahead and try and shoot me. I bet you can't hit me!!

Usually this is a big movie going weekend for me, but all the films I want to see are still in limited release so getting into them will be difficult. I did sneak in some videos, including a real sleeper film I taped off TCM called SECRET PARTNER. It was made by MGM at its British studio and starred Stewart Granger and has an interesting plot twist that completely fooled me. The plot has Granger falsely/correctly getting charged for robbing his place of employment and the movie takes off from there. I had never heard of this one and it was actually pretty good.

I also took another look at the Streisant/Kristofferson A STAR IS BORN that was one of the big hits of '76 or whatever year it came out. I had seen it years before on video and it remains real campy and is easily the least successful of the three versions of ASIB. Time hasn't been kind to Streisand's curly hairdo. She looked like a French poodle. And attempts to modernize her somewhat frumpy image and bring her in the rock era were ridiculous. Kristofferson didn't so much as act, but mugged and preened through the film. Worth seeing for its camp value. It is so bad, it is good if you know what I mean.

I saw Brokeback Mountain the other day, and to my surprise I liked it a lot, one of the best movies I've seen this year (even though there don't seem to be many worthwhile movies out compared to previous years). However, my reasons for liking it differed from those of the reviewers I have read. Most of the reviews have talked about what a heartbreaking love story Brokeback Mountain is, and how the two men are tortured because society does not recgonize their kind of "love." I saw it more as a story of heartbreaking addiction, not love (kind of like "Leaving Las Vegas"). Each man is addicted to the feeling that he gets from entertaining his homosexual inclinations. As the movie goes on this becomes more and more clear as each character speaks of their encounters more in terms of a heroin fix than a love affair. It was this tragedy that I thought made the movie so emotional, not the love.

The Ward, an independent film written and directed by 2 high school juniors. It was a thriller about two young girls who were strangled. The script was very well written and they were able to recruit a couple of high-calibur stage actors. The cast worked. However, the movie was overlong as far too much time was spent on character development. The opening scene portrayed the main character, a 17-year-old, sitting at a bar. This wasn't explained. The main character also had Achromatosis, and could not see color. This seems to be of no significance whatsoever. The biggest plot hole was at the ending. It wasn't really a flaw in the plot, per se, but it ended with a bloody scene in the main character's house. One guy stabs another guy, then someone else comes in and says "Oh my god, you killed him!" and kills the killer. Then this happens again and again until there are 6 dead or dying people on the ground. It was very unrealistic.
But the movie overall was full of action and suspense, and the plot was very intricately crafted for a couple of high school writers.

I mostly watch DVDs. I had 4 days off. So I watched more movies than I usually do.
Batman Begins
The Baxter
The Perfect Man
Millions
Charlie and the Chocolat Factory
Madagascar
I enjoyed them all.
Donna A.

I did get out yesterday to see a flick, one I knew I could get into in a literal sense if not in a figurative sense. It was TRANSAMERICA, the other transgender film out there (BREAKFAST ON PLUTO in the other). This one is basically a road movie where Felicity Huffman, from DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (which I've never seen), playing a man who is changing to a woman. THe film is structured as a road trip with Huffman and his/her son journeying cross country. As you can expect there are incidents along the way and Felicity's son doesn't know Felicity is his father. Not a bad flick and certainly worth seeing. It comes close to mawkishness on occasion, but never quite crosses the line.

I also knocked off a couple of videos, including the terrific, pre-code WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?, which was a big influence if not the outright source of the three versions of A STAR IS BORN (the second of which Cukor also directed). This was racy and terrific and holds up very well since it was made in '32. Good performances from Constance Bennett as the ingenue and Lowell Sherman, who I had never heard of, as the dissipated director. Like the A STAR IS BORN plot, Bennett is rising as Sherman is falling. A good film.

And I watched an intriguing horror flick called MAY, which had a very limited theatrical release back in '03. This one is basically about a nutty girl who offs people to steal their body parts so she can build a "friend." At first it is slow and very self-indulgent, but kind of builds up into a creepy thriller.

I just saw Madagascar and I loved it. I thought David Schwimmer was adorable as usual.

quote:

Originally posted by cojewels:
I just saw Madagascar and I loved it. I thought David Schwimmer was adorable as usual.

My grandson kept bugging me to watch it. I watched it. It was cute.
Just as cute as Chicken Little.
Donna A.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
I've watched 2046, Brokeback Mountain and Song of the South in the last day or so, but I'm still formulating what on God's Earth to say, but since you all know my head is on bassackwards, I CAN say that Song of the South is easily the best. Probable Grade: B+

2046, after two viewings, is a "beautiful" exercise in pretension, boredom and unsympathy. I guess you can adore the film for the visuals, but I found them too often to be just as boring and pretentious as the mostly unlikable characters. You might enjoy it more if you are some Wong Kar Wai nut who gets off spotting all the references to his other films, but this thing rarely spoke to me on any single level. I really don't understand how anybody can believe it says anything realistic about lost love either. Even so, if I have free time, I'm going to watch it a third time because I disliked it much more the second viewing than the first. Probable Grade: D+

OK. I've watched 2046 a third time. All my comments stand, but it's closer to my first impression: a C+. But, it may well have the most beautiful female cast of all time.

i just saw wallace and gromit again on the plane to san diego.
ha ha just as good the second time around.

Recently saw the following:

21 grams A+
great acting, amazing performance by Naomi Watts, love the non-linear story format..Makes you pay real close attention

King Kong B+
Great cinematography, some good scenes, some truly awful scenes, great ape characterization, fantastic end sequence

Duel A+
Wow! This is a forgotten Spielberg masterpiece. Tense, taut, terrific..

Dodgeball C+
Breezy enterainment, nothing else

Without a Paddle C+
see notes from Dodgeball :-)

The Woodsman B+
A very very strong subject handled just right. Kevin Bacon was good, but it wasn't an Oscar worthy performance

The Machinist A+
Great story, simply brilliant, tortured performance by Christian Bale..Now, this was an Oscar nomination worthy performance

The Forgotten D+
Awful crap with Julianne Moore the only good thing about this movie! What on earth was she thinking? Go see Dark City instead with Rufus Sewell

Key Largo B+
Humphrey Bogart isn't really a heroic hero in this, just like he wasn't in Casablanca. Edward G Robinson is great and Lauren Bacall smoulders and oozes sexuality...

The Hustler A++
This is an amazing piece of movie-making. Paul Newman gives an Oscar worthy performance, so do Piper Laurie and Jackie Gleason. I cannot fault this movie. If anyone has seen this movie, the picnic scene with Paul Newman explaining passionately to Piper Laurie what "pool" means to him just made me cry, it was so real...

These are my opinions, no one else's :-)

Recently caught a good romantic thriller, Dot the I, on dvd. The movie begins with Carmen (Natalia Verbeke) who is soon to marry her wealthy boyfriend, Barnaby (James D'Arcy). At a bachelorette party, she has one last kiss of her single life with a stranger, Kit (Gael García Bernal). The film gets into quite a few strange and silly plot twists which drew me in, even though they were mostly predictable. I enjoyed Natalia Verbeke here, who reminded me somewhat of Penelope Cruz.

I took a look via video of David Lean's OLIVER TWIST, which is the definitive version of the many versions of that Dickens classic that have been filmed.

I had seen it back in '93 in a theater, but didn't remember much about it. Since then I learned more about the film, including the fact that Alec Guinness' performance as Fagin was controversial. In fact, all the kerfuffle over the performance delayed release of the film in the U.S. and then only a cut version was released.

Well, this was Lean's version and it is just riveting. Great acting from the Brits, which, I guess, is stating the obvious because the Brits are great actors. I did believe that Guinness was way over the top and can see how his character could be viewed as an anti-semitic caricature, but just a great job, much better than the recent Roman Polanski version that came and went in theatres last year in about a New York minute.

Robert Newman as Mr. Sykes was outstanding as was the actor who played the beedle, Mr. Bumble.

Inherit the Wind - 1960 by Stanley Kramer

This courtroom drama is based on the Scopes trial in the mid 1920's. A teacher was arrested for teaching Evolution in school and the trial became a national event. I found out about this movie while reading a Rolling Stone article on the recent battle over teaching intelligent design in school. The country has certainly come a long way. The movie had superb acting. Beware of getting catchy tunes like "Give Me That Old Time Religion" drilled into your head when watching this. I succombed to downloading a version of it off itunes. It's addictive and I don't know of any cure yet. This was sung by townsfolk in a parade who were hoping to keep evolution far from their schools. I did think that the film had a rather cruel portrayal of the Christians in Hillsboro, Tennessee. They were basically shown to be ignorant hicks. However I was pleased with the way the film concluded in it's sensitivity to religion in the face of scientific pursuits. 3.25/4

MATCH POINT, Woody Allen's latest, opened wide today and I caught it at my local multi-plex. The film was well received when it screened at Cannes and crix have been calling it Woody's comeback film and his best film in at least a decade.

Well, the critics were right. Maybe moving the locale from Manhattan to London reinvigorated Woody, but he was back on top of his game. The film was called "Hitchcockian" so I had some idea of what it would be about and it has been compared to A PLACE IN THE SUN.

I went into the film cold and I would recommend to people not to read any reviews ahead-of-time because it may spoil the surprise(s). I had no idea where this film was going. Woody continually turned the tables on me and there is this great plot twist at the end.

Scarlett Johansson looks like she is going to be a full-blown movie star and looks even lovelier in this film than she did in LOST IN TRANSLATION.

Laughed my butt off at The Wedding Crashers tonight. Vince Vaughn & Owen Wilson crash weddings to meet women for one day/afternoon/night stands. Then they're knocked for a loop when they crash a wedding given by Secretary of the Treasury (Christopher Walken) for his daughter. Wish they had played up Jane Seymour's character more, she was great. Nice, nice eye candy and fine performances by Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher as Walken's daughters. Please Lord let me dream about Isla Fisher tonight.

I caught up with Heath Ledger's "other" movie yesterday, CASANOVA. I didn't fare too well on metacritics.com, but A.O. Scott, "The New York Times" film critic, liked it so I took a chance.

It was a dud sort of what I expected. It was directed by Lasse Hallstrom, who made some interesting films early in his career like MY LIFE AS A DOG, but has kind of evolved into a Hollywood hack, churning out treacle for Miramax like CHOCOLATE and THE SHIPPING NEWS.

This was just too silly about Ledger as the legendary lothario and his attempts to hook up with rising star Sienna Miller, who was playing a feminist role. One interesting part of the film is how religion and specifically the Catholic Church was excoriated in the film. It won't make those in Red States happy, which, I suppose, isn't all that bad a thing.

I've been laid up with the flu despite balmy weather in NYC. What to do? Watch videos:

The Happy Road. A strange film directed by and starring Gene Kelly from the late fifties about two kids, one Kelly's kid, who run away from boarding school to make it to Paris. Kelly and the other kid's mother chase them. The film was shot in France and is an oddity. I didn't think it was all that compelling. The other kid was played by Brigitte Fossey from FORBIDDEN GAMES.

Something in Common. This was a made for tv/cable flick from the 1980s where Ellen Burstyn's 22-year-old son gets involved with 42-year-old Tuesday Weld and all the complications this relationship entails. An interesting premise, but just not delivered very well.

The Salton Sea. Well, I struck out with the other two films which I hadn't seen so I went to a film that I caught on its original theatrical release. This film held up very well. There are some spoilers here regarding plot developments so I'll tread carefully. Val Kilmer is a drug dealer/informant who gets involved in various scraps. A great cast including a terrific performance by Vincent D'Onforio playing another drug dealer without a nose! Luis Guzman, Peter Scarsgaard, Kara Unger, Anthony LaPaglia are also in the cast. One of a series of underrated films Kilmer has made in recent years that includes WONDERLAND & SPARTAN.

Billy Rose's Jumbo. This is a circus film from the early 60's that stars Doris Day & a very wooden Stephen Boyd. Jimmy Durante plays Day's father and a little bit of Jimmy goes an awful long way. I just don't get Durante. He wasn't an actor as much as a personality, a very annoying personality who did the same schtick in film after film after film.

Play it as it Lays. I think I caught this one years ago on video and also read the Joan Dideon novel on which it was based. One again the lovely Tuesday Weld stars as a troubled actress. Tony Perkins plays her pal and a producer. I like films set in the film colony, though this one was only passable. Directed by the very underrated Frank Perry.