Films : No one mentions any more?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by alexpop, Sep 5, 2020.

  1. TheNightfly1982

    TheNightfly1982 Forum Resident

    Location:
    The New Frontier
    Robert Altman’s 1984 film Secret Honor. It’s a shame this film is largely forgotten because Philip Baker Hall’s portrayal of Richard Nixon is nothing short of mesmerizing.
     
  2. Onkster515

    Onkster515 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Gizmo!

    and

    Brother Can You Spare A a Dime?

    Both omnipresent on HBO in the late 70s, and feel like they’ve vanished from the face of the earth.

    Both delightful.
     
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  3. Onkster515

    Onkster515 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Also: I thought The World According to Garp felt like it would be an all-time classic when it came out. Now it’s ignored and only has a bare-bones DVD release.

    Mystifies me.
     
  4. Spokeless

    Spokeless Roaming Member

    I recall this coming out, but never saw it. Thanks for returning it to the radar!
     
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  5. CatchAsCan

    CatchAsCan Forum Resident

    I just thought of the limited-run filmed plays in the '70s, some of which wound up at suburban multiplexes. Three I remember are "The Iceman Cometh," "The Man In the Glass Booth," and "Rhinoceres." Also, one not in that series but also a filmed play, "Give 'Em Hell, Harry, " with James Whitmore as Harry Truman.
     
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  6. Spokeless

    Spokeless Roaming Member

    Standup Guys - 2012

    Apparently, my wife and I liked this much more than the critics. But .. Pacino doesn’t eat the scenery, Arkin isn’t constantly falling into a shtick .. and Walken just melts into the character. We both thought it was very enjoyable.
     
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  7. SmallDarkCloud

    SmallDarkCloud Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    Another movie that was a frequent staple of HBO programming in the 1980s - It Came From Hollywood. In this case, it’s been forgotten for an understandable reason - the cost of relicensing the movie clips has prevented any home video editions. You can watch an unauthorized upload on YouTube, though.
     
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  8. Rich-n-Roll

    Rich-n-Roll Forum Resident

    Location:
    Washington State
    Boys from Brazil
     
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  9. JFS3

    JFS3 Senior Member

    Location:
    Hooterville
    Prior to Ted Turner buying up all the old studio archives, there used to be a number of films that seemed to be regulars in local late night/weekend syndication - One that comes to mind offhand was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I remember as a kid it always seemed to be airing somewhere on almost a weekly basis.

    As before, once Turner got his hands on them, and TV stations went to infomercials, almost everything made prior to 1970 just seemed to disappear from public view overnight, and subsequently from the public consciousness as well.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2021
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  10. MekkaGodzilla

    MekkaGodzilla Forum Resident

    Location:
    Westerville, Ohio
    I liked "Popeye" quite a bit when I saw it in its first week of release in 1980, but then again I was just ten years old. I caught it again a year or so back and it certainly isn't the dreadful career-killer folks were calling it at the time of release. I think the cast is still solid and those sets are absolutely wonderful, as is the soundtrack. I imagine if HBO ran this ad nauseam in the 80's it would be better remembered today. I think "the critics" were not impressed with Robin Williams as an actor, and only saw him as Mork from a crass, puerile sitcom and nothing more.
     
  11. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI

    I know someone who loves that movie, so you and your wife are not alone in enjoying it...
     
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  12. tonyballz

    tonyballz Roogalator

    Location:
    arizona
    The Ninth Configuration (1980), written and directed by William Peter Blatty (author of The Exorcist) and starring Stacy Keach. A creepy little psychological thriller about soldiers losing their minds. Lots of unsettling weirdness and some neat plot twists. Great ensemble cast.

     
  13. mcnpauls

    mcnpauls Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    I love this movie, and, you're right - no-one ever mentions it, but I am not sure they ever did! It is so obscure it does not even have a trailer.
     
  14. Jazzmonkie

    Jazzmonkie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tempe, AZ
    One that I recently got on blu:
    [​IMG]
     
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  15. Wildest cat from montana

    Wildest cat from montana Humble Reader

    Location:
    ontario canada
    Good movie.

    There's an interesting shot in it. I may not be remembering this with 100% accuracy but the gist is correct.

    Walther Mathau is seen walking up a flight of stairs. The next shot shows him entering a room. But he looks completely different.
    What had happened was Mathau got sick and lost a lot of weight. It's very noticeable.
     
  16. Jazzmonkie

    Jazzmonkie Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tempe, AZ
    True, the commentary mentions that. He had a heart attack and lost almost 40 lbs. Luckily his overcoat obscured that.
     
  17. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    Shows regularly on more than one of my streaming services.
     
  18. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    ... with reason, IMO.
     
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  19. spencer1

    spencer1 Great Western Forum Resident

    Proving once again how subjective film appreciation is.
    "The Long Goodbye" got good reviews on release and I love it. I've long been a Chandler fan and have read all he has done many times. I had no problem with Altman's re imagining.

    I've also long been an Altman fan. "MASH", "Brewster McCloud", "McCabe ...", "Nashville", "Three Women", "The Player", "Shortcuts", all personal favorites.
    He's got some stinkers but so do DiPalma, Mann, Lumet and just about everybody.
    Working in feature film sound editing and design for over 30 years I know we owe him a debt of gratitude for revolutionizing on set recording with his multiple mic technique. He changed things.
    There's a reason the best actors and actresses wanted to work with him, especially actresses as he was pretty successful at directing them to Oscar nominations.
    True he's not for everybody, maybe why I like him so much.
    Gawd I love "The Long Goodbye" ...
     
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  20. PhilBorder

    PhilBorder Senior Member

    Location:
    Sheboygan, WI
    I wonder if you love it as much as I detest it!)

    Anyways, I do like some of his films. I've seen most of them, and they mostly seem like misses. It seems to me his idiosyncracies are better when they serve stronger narrative. Not completely linear story telling, but at least an impulse to go forward. That's why California Split works - those guys just keep bouncing like pinballs, and it has real energy.

    But I also think Altman is often overshared by his own b.s. - If you want I can dig up an interview with IIRC Lou Lombardo, the editor of McCabe, saying the 16 track audio dialogue system was messed up and Altman tried to characterize the symphony of mumbling as intentional. There is dialogue in McCabe that should be heard clearly (and I'm guessing Warren Beatty wasn't happy with the how the dialogue on the film was obscured). I really would like to see a 'remixed' McCabe with clearer dialogue

    So, yes, an idiosyncratic talent. I'm glad he served as a corrective to conventional Hollywood, but I think he was only successful about 1/3 of the time, and a filmmaker that self indulgent, willfully cynical, intuitively resourceful should have had a higher batting average.

    And the cat offends me, and I think Chandler would have vomited at the thought of Marlowe having a cat. Why not give Ahab a puppy, Jay Gatsby a gerbil, and Richard the Lionhearted a salamander?
     
  21. SmallDarkCloud

    SmallDarkCloud Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    It is awful. There’s one musical number I remember, “Question Me an Answer,” that is a musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. The premise is that Bobby Van sings an “answer” and a classroom of children respond by singing the “question,” or something along those lines (shades of Jeopardy!). The song doesn’t work and it’s incredibly grating.
     
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  22. tonyballz

    tonyballz Roogalator

    Location:
    arizona
    Since discovering Robert Altman as a filmmaker, I can find something to enjoy in nearly every one of his pictures. The Long Goodbye does take a while to get off the ground, but when it does it's fantastic. The ending comes out of nowhere too.

    Another one that takes a while to unfold is Three Women, which is now one of my favorites. Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duvall are tremendous.

    Watching certain Altman films with the subtitles can help. I didn't understand half of what was happening in Gosford Park until I did this. It even brings out nuances in McCabe And Mrs. Miller I had missed because they're so buried in the mix.

    One to avoid is Quintet (1979) with Paul Newman, mainly because it's excruciatingly dull. I got through it exactly once and it was a chore.

    A buried gem in Altman's catalog is Images (1972), starring mostly-forgotten British actress Susannah York. Another is Secret Honor (1984). Philip Baker Hall's performance as Nixon is a tour-de-force.

    Of Altman's later works, Pret-A-Porter (1994) and Dr. T & The Women (2000) are quite underrated, as is his second-to-last film The Company (2003), which is short on plot but contains many exquisite sequences of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet (and I'm definitely not a "dance" person).
     
  23. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    We rented Iceman this year, wife never saw it. Lee Marvin caught some **** for his version of Hickey, but I liked it a lot. Robert Ryan was perfection; he only lived a short time after it wrapped. Knowing he was dying really gave his performance oomph. We went to see Rhino with Zero in hs. It went way over our heads, Godot would have been a better choice. I think A Delicate Balance was also in that series
     
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  24. Dave112

    Dave112 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Carolina
    A pretty cool film from 1981 is Road Games starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis. It's an action/suspense thriller in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock films.

    [​IMG]
     
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  25. The Snout

    The Snout Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    Once you lose the confidence of the studios you've got a tough climb ahead. After Black Dahlia failed to set anything on fire he's been forced to rely on European money to get the few pictures he's done since made (I was surprised to discover he had one out in 2019, Domino, that I had never heard about, and I read a lot about movies), and the couple I've seen have been very much the personal projects he once did between blockbusters. Those were always too quirky to expect much of a boxoffice but generally seemed to find their audience, and if you know the director could be exciting viewing. Without those rousing successes in between, though, I suspect it's hard to keep your own confidence up long enough to continue what anyone could call a career the likes of which he had. Shame, because when he was on there weren't many as dazzling, passionate and complex as he can be.
     

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