On the Beach 1959. 6/10 Gregory Peck ava Gardner Fred astaire Great plot but the slow pacing makes it kind of boring . Found it on you tube
8/10 Very good but not quiet great, which it should be with all that star power and De Palma directing. It's two hours long, but somehow the relationships amongst Costners group seem under developed.
I know what you mean. I like it, it's easily watchable but falls a bit short of greatness. Connery makes it.
8.5/10. You know what you're getting when you see Keanu saddle up as the tenacious Mr. Wick. Excellent fight choreography, with some interesting locales for battle including the Arc de Triomphe--absolutely wild and frenetic. For a three hour film, it only felt like it was five minutes in length. "Loving Husband." - siyt
Death Race 4: Beyond Anarchy- 3/10 A bit different from the first 3, and nowhere near as good. The main hero has somehow and for some reason become the main villain for this flick, which is weird. The new main hero is boring. Lots of T&A. Crappy heavy metal soundtrack. Not as campy, gory, or entertaining as the first 3. Oh well.
Night Moves (1975) - Blu-ray 7/10 Good neo-noir starring Gene Hackman as a private detective on a case concerning a runway girl played by a young Melanie Griffith
Missed this when it was released, so very glad I caught up with it now. A very moody film with a Cronenberg vibe. Too few times these days do I feel I'm watching a piece of art as opposed to just another film, but this was such an experience. It creates a cocoon around you, tunes you in to its story. I think some might struggle with it a bit, this a long way from cinéma-vérité, and is none the worse for it. Plot? Well, it's woven around the banking crisis of the early 2000's, but honestly it's more about the mental disintegration of someone who see's all his work being undermined by greed. There's a small cast, and the protagonist is on screen almost the whole time. There are too few movies as good as this these days, imo.
Forgot to mention the audiophile callout. There's a scene in the movie where Gene Hackman's character is listening to the stereo owned by the guy his wife is cheating on with. He turns up the music and asks " Are those the new Advent speakers? They really fill up the room." I got a kick out of that.
Haha, yeah! I still think Carrie beats Grease, because those HS kids in Carrie have full on porn staches and beards. I guess I give musicals a pass because usually you're not going to find people of actual HS age who can do all that's required of them on stage and film. There are exceptions to the rule, yes, but by and large the folks in musicals have spent years working in these skillsets.
Every had a night where you thought that you were all set for the evening to watch a good film, but then everything ends up sucking? Last night... Try #1 Moulin Rouge (1952) - Garbage. I got through 55 minutes and had to turn it off. 4/10 Try #2 I Cover the Waterfront (1933) - Unbelievably hakeneyed. I couldn't even take 13 minutes of a 75 minute film. A C-list film. 2/10 Try #3 Red Dust (1932) - 7.5/10 Damn, this was more like it! I was getting sleepy by this time, but the movie woke me right up. Sexually charged, risqué to the max, full of unsavory acts and characters, and I couldn't help thinking about Clark Gable's pimp days. He was stellar, by the way. This is probably the earliest film I've seen where the screen acting took more of a realistic approach than that of stage acting, which was still very prevalent in films at the time (gee, all the way through the 1950s in most cases). Gable was really ahead of his time with his acting approach. Jean Harlow is Jean Harlow, which is always fun. Everything else was just how many outlines of nipples you could count underneath a blouse. However, the story had real substance, even though the subject matter was racy. I don't know about y'all; I'm far from prudish, yet I get a bigger kick out of what's not shown, as opposed to full nudity, because, c'mon, life today, you can see as much nudity as time will allow. There's no fun in that.
The Lady From Shanghai (1947) - Blu-ray 8/10 Film noir starring Orson Welles and his then wife Rita Hayworth. Welles wrote the screenplay, produced and directed (uncredited) what one film critic famously called the weirdest great movie ever made.
I've been waiting to read reviews of Kino Lorber's new release of this, before I watch it again. In fact, I should check to see if any reviews are up yet.
