Track the Films You Watch (2005) - Page 63

SteveGon · 11-26-2005, 09:24 AM

September (2003)

Viewed 11/21/2005 (first viewing)

Solid ensemble film, in the vein of Crash, about the effects of 9/11 on various German citizens: a Lebanese immigrant and his German wife, a troubled music teacher, a gung-ho cop with family problems, etc. Even heavier on the style than Crash, to the point of distraction at times, but ultimately rewarding.

out of

King Kong (1933)

Viewed 11/22/2005

Still the best great ape movie out there! Go Kong!

out of

Safety Last (1923)

Viewed 11/22/2005

Harold Lloyd's classic comedy. A funny, if typical Lloyd vehicle, the hair-raising final sequence puts it over the top.

out of

The Intruder (1961)

Viewed 11/22/2005 (first viewing)

Crackerjack little Roger Corman flick. William Shatner stars as a bigot who stirs up all kinds of trouble in a small, recently desegregated Southern town. This ain't the Kirk you know!

out of

The Music Room (1958)

Viewed 11/22/2005 (first viewing)

Satyajit Ray film about the final days of a once-wealthy landowner and his beloved music room. My fourth Ray film and he's still batting a hundred.

out of

Robocop (1987)

Viewed 11/23/2005

Paul Verhoeven's classic sci-fi/action/satire, still a hoot and as relevant as ever.

out of

Falling Leaves (1966)

Viewed 11/23/2005 (first viewing)

Rambling, New Wavish offering from Otar Iosseliani about two friends, one an idealist and one an opportunist, who get jobs at a winery where the owners aren't above selling a substandard product.

out of

Mighty Joe Young (1949)

Viewed 11/24/2005

Entertaining King Kong variant about a little girl and her pet gorilla. Discussed enough already so...

out of

Until the End of the World: Director's Cut (1991)

Viewed 11/24/2005 (first viewing)

First time seeing the director's cut of Wim Wenders' sci-fi/detective/road movie. This runs about two hours longer than the truncated version, but actually has better flow (it also helps that it's presented in three parts on a recently-released German 3-DVD set).

out of

The Invisible (2002)

Viewed 11/25/2005 (first viewing)

Pretty good supernatural suspenser from Sweden, akin to The Sixth Sense. A high school student has a deadly run-in with a group of toughs and arrives at school the next day to discover that no one can see or hear him! So is he dead or what? Actually manages to one-up The Sixth Sense with its twists.

out of

Michael Elliott · 11-26-2005, 11:53 PM

11/25/05

Grass (1925)

First collaboration between Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack who would later go onto make King Kong. This documentary takes a look at 50,000 Iranian nomads and they dangerous journey across mountains and rivers to get their herds to grass. Overall this is a very interesting documentary but sadly the crew was running out of film when it came time to cross a deadly river and climb a 12,000 foot mountain. With these two scenes being the most interesting sadly there’s only a couple minutes worth of footage here.

11/26/05

Death Wish 2 (1982)

Charles Bronson moves to L.A. where his maid is raped and murdered as well as his daughter so he picks up his cute gun and starts blowing thugs away. If you pick up any movie book they call this film vile, poorly made and about anything else that’s negative and I agree with them 100% but the film also remains somewhat entertaining throughout. I’m really not sure what it is about this film but it remains somewhat disturbing and the violence, clearly influenced by Friday the 13th with it’s added gore, packs a nice thrill. Bronson is my favorite action star and I actually enjoy all the DW films. While the first one way a serious drama this here certainly goes the cheap, exploitation route. I viewed the R-rated theatrical cut, which I actually prefer over the X-rated version.

Lifeboat (1944)

Another classic from Alfred Hitchcock has a group of people wondering in a lifeboat after their ship was sunk by the Germans. This is a very good film, although I certainly don’t considering it one of the director’s best films. The big key are the performances, which are all very good and Hitchcock’s direction keeps things moving even though things get somewhat slow after the hour mark.

War of the Worlds (2005)

My second viewing of Spielberg’s latest film is actually getting a half star higher rating since overall I enjoyed the film a whole lot more. As with the first viewing everything dealing with Robbins was incredibly bad in my opinion and I think it was a very bad mistake in slowing the action and suspense down. I also don’t like what happened to the son but the rest of the film is downright brilliant on every level. I watched this with a few friends over and afterwards one of them said that this was the scariest film they had ever seen. The suspense level worked just as good the second time as it did the first so I really hope to find some level of entertainment in the Robbins section in the future.

Brook K · 11-27-2005, 01:44 PM

5x2 (2004) - Francois Ozon's film presents 5 stages of a couple, told in reverse from divorce to their chance meeting. Works as an interesting intellectual excercise theorizing about the nature of love and relationships. It displays the precise technique of his earlier films. Yet it never becomes an emotional experience due to the unsympathetic nature of virtually every character in the film. - B

Bewitched (2005) - For the first hour this offers light entertainment due to the charm and energy of its leads. In the last forty minutes, it resorts to replaying the situations of the first hour twice more in a clumsy effort to pad out the rest of the film to feature length. C+

An Angel at My Table (1990) - Jane Campion's biopic of New Zealand poet Janet Frame is a multi-layered, emotionally powerful journey. The story is told in 3 parts with 3 different actresses portraying Crane (though the casting and performances are so good you'd almost swear it was the same person filmed over 20 years). From hardscrabble beginnings, to 8 years spent in an asylum after being falsely diagnosed as schizophrenic, to a trip to Europe where she overcomes her painful shyness to find first love, Campion's film present's a woman whose inner artist and love for writing creates a refuge from the bitter blows life offers. B+

Happy Endings (2005) - Another complicated multi-character, multi-story film from writer-director Don Roos. Among this film's ensemble is a woman (Lisa Kudrow) haunted by giving up her son for adoption as a teen mother, a young man trying to blackmail Kudrow with info about her son's whereabouts so she'll let him film their reunion, a male homosexual couple (Steve Coogan is one) who becomes convinced their lesbian friends (Laura Dern is one) lied to them about using one of the men's sperm to father a child, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a singer/hustler who beds the guilt-ridden homosexual son and his wealthy father (an out-of-his-comfort zone Tom Arnold).

While displaying some of the sharp writing and wit of his earlier films (Bounce, The Opposite of Sex), it offers none of those films' energy with each character's near hopeless mess of problems overwhelming the small displays of humanity the film allows for. Roos does his film no favors by interrupting the flow with a stream of title cards commenting on the action, aptly described by one critic as the equivalent of having someone in the seat next to you talking in your ear the whole film. C+

Masculin feminin (1966) - Jean-Luc Godard's incisive portrait of 1966 France beat films like American Beauty and Fight Club to the punch 30 years ago. Its teens are poised on the brink of a sexual revolution that will irrevocably change the male-female dynamic and culturally on the brink of a consumer revolution that will overwhelm political idealism. Godard may portray a bit too much of his own cynicism and wounded viewpoint, what with the boys talking strikes and spraypainting political slogans while the girls are into shopping and pop music, but as with many of his 60's films, it displays a comic touch and sensitive emotional quality that is too rarely recognized today. Jean-Pierre Leaud's rush to the projection booth to explain that the film they are watching is being shown in the wrong aspect ratio would warm the cockle's of any HTF'ers heart. While the pop music sung by the film's female lead lend an airy optimism to scenes not present in the underlying narrative. - A-

The Stationmaster's Wife (1977) - Kurt Raab is the titular stationmaster who's wife cuckholding turns him into a town laughingstock and a wreck of conflicted emotions in Rainer Werner Fassinder's 1977 work. This was 85 minutes longer in it's original TV version and feels like it is missing this material in several places. Michael Ballhaus' usually sweeping camera is more consticted to reflect those TV origins in ways that do not compare favorably with the powerhouse artistry of their previous film, the astonishing Chinese Roulette. A reworking of his themes of love equating to powerlessness tied to a Madame Bovary-like story, the film doesn't rise as high as past works, but still has much to offer as a firey melodrama whose characters are a mass of childish wants and bitter recriminations. Elisabeth Trissenaar continues a long tradition of outstanding female performances in Fassbinder films and Raab brings his usual talent of being both pathetic and endearing. - B+

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - Finally caught up with this Christmas classic and was swept along in its vision of the spirit of Christmas through a child's eyes. With charm and wit, it cleverly balances the world of self-serving adulthood and the boundless optimism of children. A-

Haggai · 11-28-2005, 10:07 AM

Le Samourai (1967) 8/10
Jean-Pierre Melville's distinctively impassive take on familiar crime movie themes has some great scenes, but I think it's a little too-cool-for-school at times, certainly with respect to the ending. The contrast between the brooding, silent hit man and the garrulous cop works very nicely, and a few influences on some later films are pretty apparent, like The French Connection and The Killer.

Strange Impersonation (1946) 6/10
One of Anthony Mann's earlier films was this short little plastic-surgery noir, which has some fun ideas but a super-clunky script. An industrial scientist (Brenda Marshall, from The Sea Hawk) with a devoted fiancee is set up for a face-scarring accident by her jealous assistant, but she returns to plot revenge after leaving town and getting plastic surgery (and, naturally, nobody recognizes her when she comes back). It's a good enough concept for some over-the-top thrills, but a few of the (admittedly silly) plot devices are handled pretty badly, the cast isn't too inspiring, at least one directorial flourish (a montage near the end) stands out as being particularly pointless, and the ending is pretty lame. Still, some of the fast-paced sequences in the middle of the movie are quite good.

King Kong (1933) 9/10
I had somehow never managed to see this one all the way through, just some clips here and there in various documentaries. I largely agree with Mike's point about the slow start, as I was surprised by how long it took them to even get to the island. But there's still some good stuff in those early scenes, like the bit where Denham directs Ann to look up and scream after seeing something shocking, an ominous bit of foreshadowing while the other characters still don't know what they're getting into. The exploits of Kong himself are still pretty stunning, even after all these years and all the advances in special effects techniques. The thrills and scares never stop, once they get started.

Rent (2005) 6/10
I didn't realize going in that the original show was all sung-through, with no regular dialogue, but the movie changes this by adding some regular lines in between songs. But this is an unhappy medium that doesn't work too well, as the movie ends up seeming like it has a very over-stuffed collection of songs. There's some dialogue here and there, and then suddenly they're singing about fairly banal stuff that they were just talking about two seconds before. "I'm going to start a cybercafe, guys...and now I've just gotta SING about it!" They must have figured that a movie wouldn't be accepted by general audiences if it's all singing. But, if they had done it like a decently constructed movie musical, where the songs enhance the story in a way that's different from what the dialogue does, they would have had to cut quite a few of them out, which they didn't want to do either. So the result is only "faithful" to the show in terms of keeping most of the songs, but it falls pretty flat overall. Not that crazy about a lot of the music, either, none of which I had heard before, although I did like the cast. It would have been better just to stick with the all-singing structure of the show, since I don't think any people who might be willing to go see a movie musical are going to stay away just because there's no regular dialogue.

Brook K · 11-28-2005, 04:36 PM

What Michael doesn't mention is that The Lost World takes even longer to get going. IIRC, it's about 45 minutes before you glimpse a dinosaur. It spends twice the amount of time Kong does in setting up the love story and getting the expedition organized.

Joe Karlosi · 11-28-2005, 05:40 PM

I find no problem with the pacing of KING KONG, and think the first scenes in the film are all important and lead up to a satisfying payoff by the time we get to the island.

Michael Elliott · 11-28-2005, 05:46 PM

THE LOST WORLD does take longer to "get going" but I think it builds up the idea of finding dinosaurs millions of years after their death. With KONG, there wasn't anything interesting going on to make me wanna wait.

Michael Elliott · 11-28-2005, 08:54 PM

11/27/05

Legend of Bigfoot, The (1979)

Incredibly bad Bigfoot film has a redneck trapper narrating 73-minutes worth of footage about how he discovered the creature. This is probably the worst film I’ve seen dealing with Bigfoot and comes as a major disappointment considering I somewhat enjoy nearly every film of its type. There really isn’t a single interesting thing said in the film and the narration is quite annoying. There’s some nice scenery footage and some nice shots of various wildlife but that’s about it. When Bigfoot is seen you can’t help but laugh at his disco walk.

Slashed Dreams (1974)

The producer’s tried to sell this off to the horror crowd in the Last House on the Left vein but it’s more of a mix between Love Story and Deliverance. A guy and girl go into the woods of Northern California to look for a friend who has moved there. That night, while in the cabin, two rednecks beat the hell out of the guy and rape the girl. Will everything be okay? This is one of those movies that keep you entertained because you expect something to happen but when it never does you hit yourself for staying with the movie. Robert England plays the friend living in the woods.

Big Alligator River, The (1979)

Another Jaws rip-off from Italy has a rich man building a resort in the jungles of Southern Asia only to have the locals call in a huge alligator to eat everyone. This is from director Sergio Martino who is best known for his giallo and cannibal films but this thing here is quite bad and easily the worst of any Jaws rips I’ve seen. The film is incredibly slow moving and the first hour is nothing but talk, talk, talk. The alligator attacks go into high gear at the end but by then it’s way too late. The cinematography and music score are the only saving grace.

Absolute Quiet (1936)

Semi-rip of The Petrified Forest has a plane full of people crash landing on the field of a man (Lionel Atwill) being held captive by a couple robbers. There’s a few good laughs but overall this thing falls flat on its face even with its great cast. There’s very little suspense and Wallace Ford playing the tough guy is a bit hard to believe and leads to some unintentional laughs. J. Carroll Naish and Irene Hervey co-star.

Bohemian Girl, The (1936)

Laurel and Hardy end up taking care of a six year old girl not knowing she’s really a princess. This isn’t the best L&H feature out there but there’s enough smiles and laughs to make it worth viewing once. I doubt I’d ever watch this one again but the potato scene with Laurel is hilarious as is the wine drinking scene. The film really picks up towards the end.

That’s My Wife (1929)

Hysterical Laurel and Hardy film has enough gags for two films. Hardy’s wife leaves him because she can’t stand Laurel living with them. This causes a problem because Hardy’s rich uncle is coming over to meet the new wife. With nothing else to do Laurel dresses up as the wife and everything goes to hell. This is now one of my favorite shorts from the duo because of the non-stop physical gags ranging from Laurel falling down a flight of stairs to a crazy scene involving a dance floor. This short is also something new because it adds quite a bit of sexual, Pre-Code laughs including the boys trying to give Laurel breasts and another scene where the two appear to be having sex.

Laughing Gravy (1931)

2-reel version

Laurel and Hardy try to hide their pet dog from the landlord. I wouldn’t say this short is overly funny but there’s enough fun moments to keep it entertaining. All the stuff with the landlord is good but the stuff with the dog doesn’t work as well. Hardy falling in a barrel of water is certainly the highlight.

Laughing Gravy (1931)

extended 3-reel version

Foreign markets got this extended version with an extra reel, which really hurts the film. Nothing in this added reel is funny so it’s no wonder why it was cut out in most places.

Fixer-Uppers, The (1935)

Laurel and Hardy are c