What's on your Daily Viewing List?

[Keith Cobby]

Casanova 70 (1965) - entertaining film starring Marcello Mastroianni, Virna Lisi and Marisa Mell. Nice blu ray, should be rereleased with a commentary etc.

 

[Keith Cobby]

Melville's
Un Flic
(a Cop)


View attachment 228230
via Kino Lorber's Blu Ray edition

Terrific film with great work from Delon and Deneuve (as a nurse!).

 

[Robin9]

Slowly I'm working my way through my backlog and last night it was Mr. & Mrs. Smith which I hadn't seen for more than fifty years. I really enjoyed it although I laughed out loud only once. I've been a big fan of Carole Lombard since I was a teenager and I still am. I'd love Warner Archive to release on Blu-ray disc another film she made at RKO, In Name Only with Cary Grant.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Sisu
Originally Released: 01/27/2023
Watched: 08/11/2024
4K UHD digital streaming on Apple TV app via Roku Ultra

Recommended?

Why? It's basically John Wick if John Wick were an old gold prospector in Nazi-occupied Finland, only in the style of a spaghetti western. Ridiculous, brutally violent fun. And it was an interesting and effective choice to have all of the German dialog in English, but all of the Finnish dialog still in Finnish with subtitles.

 

[Keith Cobby]

It's Only Money (1962) - first viewing of this Jerry Lewis comedy. Perhaps the ending of the film was an influence on the development of Pac-Man! Joan O'Brien is a delight, as always.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Amelia's Children
Originally Released: 01/18/2024
Watched: 08/12/2024
1080P HD digital streaming on Hulu, upscaled to 4K via Roku Ultra

Three decades after he was abducted from his cradle in the middle of the night, Ed is reunited with his mother and twin brother at his mother's palácio in the Portuguese countryside.

Recommended?

Why Not? While this demented Portuguese fairy tale in the guise of a twenty-first century horror movie has amazing production design and an enjoyably level-headed heroine in Brigette Lundy-Paine's spunky and resourceful Riley, it's not enough to compensate for a series of twists and turns (some ludicrous, others just plain icky) that the audience can see coming a mile away.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

마녀 (The Witch: Subversion)
Originally Released: 06/27/2018
Watched: 08/13/2024
HD digital streaming on Peacock, upscaled to 4K via Roku Ultra; Korean with English subtitles

Recommended?

Why? A kind farmer and his wife find a young child with extraordinary abilities among the fields of their bucolic rural community. They raise the child in a home full of love and salt of the Earth values. But then the child must venture out into the larger world once the past comes calling. Sound familiar? The Superman-esque origin story aside, this is a densely packed revenge thriller that also calls to mind Firestarter and "Stranger Things". It's anchored by a tremendous performance from Kim Da-mi (in her first leading role) as the titular witch, Ja-yoon, who is many different things to many different people. When the time comes, Kim is also credible as a full-on action hero. I'm bummed that the sequel is only streaming on Shudder, a service I don't subscribe to. I'll have to keep my fingers crossed for a price drop on iTunes.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Wristcutters: A Love Story
Originally Released: 10/19/2007
Watched: 08/14/2024
HDX (1080P) digital streaming on Fandango at Home (Vudu) app, upscaled to 4K via Roku Ultra (free with ads)

Distraught after a brutal breakup, Zia kills himself by cutting his wrists in the bathroom of his apartment. Unfortunately for him, the purgatory for suicides is a lot like the world he left behind, only a little bit shittier -- with starless nights and days that are uniformly just a little too hot and muggy to be comfortable, and random little bits of the supernatural that are more often than not hindrances rather than marvels. But when he discovers that the girl he offed himself for has offered herself too, he sets off on an adventure to find her.

Recommended?

Why? First, any road trip movie that features Nick Offerman, Tom Waits, and a soundtrack by Gogol Bordello can't be entirely without merit. But while it started out feeling a bit too sardonic in a detached hipstery sort of way, it won me over by the end. As Zia, Patrick Fugit brings that same deer in headlights quality that worked so effectively in Almost Famous. The central trio of him, Shea Whigham (as a Russian immigrant who failed as a rock star) and Shannyn Sossamon (as an addict with a bone to pick with upper management) is strange but it works. And the supporting cast is a who's who of great character actors, some you know by name but all that you'll have seen in something.

 

[Robin9]

Outside The Law yesterday. It's a pretty routine crime story which could have been a lot better if the screenplay had been given to a top writer with instructions to "re-imagine" the story and start again, making it more suspenseful and more emotional. Ray Danton again demonstrated that in the right role he had screen charisma. Leigh Snowden was not at her best. I blame the director for that more than her.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Brimstone
Originally Released: 01/12/2017
Watched: 08/17/2024
1080P HD digital streaming on Amazon Prime Video, upscaled to 4K via Roku Ultra

A mute midwife living with her farmer husband, stepson, and daughter in the Dakota territory in the late nineteenth century finds her life thrown into upheaval when a new preacher arrives in town.

Recommended?

Why? This Dutch-made Western with an international cast works as both psychological thriller and as gothic horror. Despite its lengthy runtime, it held my attention the entire way through. Told in four acts, presented out of order, the movie provides a haunting look at how religious fanaticism can be just another form of patriarchal entitlement. Guy Pearce, cold and controlled yet lustful and vengeful, is horrifying as the preacher. Dakota Fanning is fierce and resourceful as the midwife. And a young Emilia Jones is riveting as the adolescent girl at the center of the preacher's animus toward the mute midwife. In smaller roles, William Houston, Kit Harington, and Adrian Sparks provide counterbalancing models of masculinity to the preacher. It's a pretty bleak movie that speaks to the good, the bad, and the ugly of human nature.

 

[Robin9]

Last night I watched The Midnight Story which I like a lot. I have the DVD but Kino's Blu-ray disc is a worthwhile upgrade. The film stars Tony Curtis but there are several familiar faces too. I thought Marisa Pavan did well as the female lead.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Scrapper
Originally Released: 08/25/2023
Watched: 08/18/2024
1080P digital streaming on Paramount+, upscaled to 4K via Roku Ultra

Recommended?

Why? This movie picks up with its 12-year-old heroine in extremely grim circumstances. Weeks after her mother's passing, she is living alone in the flat they shared on a housing estate in East London. She has managed this feat through a combination of industriousness and a social services system that is cheerfully oblivious. But one day a man she's never met hops over the fence into her backyard and changes everything. It's two coming of age stories in one, as father and daughter must figure out how to be what one another needs. It features an astoundingly good debut performance from hearing-impaired young actress Lola Campbell. And despite the heavy subject matter, it never feels bleak or depressing.

 

[Dave Moritz]

August 17th, 2024 Saturday

Speed
1080p Blu-ray
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Rebecca
Originally Released: 04/12/1940
Watched: 08/19/2024
1080P Blu-ray disc, upscaled to 4K via Panasonic DP-UB820

Recommended?

Why? Alfred Hitchcock's first American production was an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's quintessentially British novel. It's an unusual thriller, because nearly all of the tension in internal: the outcome depends not on what occurred but on what each character is thinking, feeling, believing. The gothic production design and cinematography manage to be both dreamy and unsettlingly oppressive, aided by Franz Waxman's score which is at turns romantic and hauntingly atmospheric. And the title character is a powerful example of the weight and power that can come from absence. The ending of the book is deliciously tawdry in its particulars, and the innovations that Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick deployed to evade the restrictions of the Production Code are deft and creative, even if they rob the big reveal of some of its power. I don't always connect with Laurence Olivier's style of acting, but he's terrific here; the movie doesn't want you to know what's going on inside Maxim de Winter's head, but Olivier never feels like he's being artificially opaque. Joan Fontaine does about as well as anyone could with her unnamed protagonist, who takes crucial action at the very beginning of the story and the very end of the story but is necessarily passive for all of the story in between. And Judith Anderson is iconic as Mrs. Danvers, the foreboding housekeeper who was enthralled by the late Mrs. du Maurier.

 

[Robin9]

I watched the Network Blu-ray disc of The Outsider yesterday. It's an early (1939) George Sanders movie and he plays with a Germanic-type accent throughout. The ending took me by surprise. In truth, it a cliché but it works and I didn't see it coming!

 

[Jake Lipson]

I pulled this out today for the first time in a while just because I felt like it for some reason. This movie (really, almost anything to do with Peanuts) is a shot of joy.


It's kind of weird to think that this movie is now old enough that the kids in it have aged out of their roles, but I think they did a really good job. They sound enough like the voices from the old TV specials that it doesn't seem too weird or out of place, but it also doesn't feel like they're doing an imitation either. I also remember being concerned when this was first announced that the characters would look weird in CGI, but they still feel like themselves.

 

[Robin9]

Warner Archive's newish Blu-ray disc of They Drive by Night yesterday, Raoul Walsh demonstrating yet again that he was a really good director of actresses. It's the performances of the cast that make this film work so well because the story is very routine. Even George Raft was good!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Jackpot!
Originally Released: 08/15/2024
Watched: 08/21/2024
4k digital streaming on Amazon Prime Video via Roku Ultra

In the near future, a cash-strapped California turns Los Angeles into a thunderdome of death and mayhem as its denizens seek to murder the latest month lottery winner to claim the grand prize. Katie Kim, a former child starlet who only recently returned to LA, finds herself the center of the maelstrom.

Recommended?

Why Not? This movie feels like an idea someone posed while getting high with their friends watching one of the Purge movies, and the execution feels similarly half-baked: Why would adding a murder element to the lottery help California's finances? Wouldn't less people buy tickets if they knew that they had to fight for their survival in order to claim the prize? Who pays for all of the destruction of property that occurs? My favorite part of the movie was the first act, with its dystopian depiction of Los Angeles that takes everything that's bad about the city now and turns it up to eleven. Awkwafina and John Cena have an enjoyable enough rapport as Katie and Katie's self-appointed freelance bodyguard, but the script doesn't give them a whole lot to work with. While I did laugh out loud a few times, this is a script with way more misses than hits. If the movie had more fully embraced the Idiocracy of it all, and been a bit sharper with the satire later on, the result would have been a lot better. It also hurts the film that a story so centered around Los Angeles was shot in Atlanta, so instead of real landmarks we get weird off-brand knockoffs of those landmarks. And Simu Liu turning up here as the douchey CEO of LA's top protection agency just made me miss the magical chemistry between Awkwafina and Liu in Shang-Chi.

 

[Robin9]

I watched Idiot's Delight yesterday. I don't recall ever having seen this film before and I'm delighted to get to know it. I'm going to watch it again tonight to clarify my thoughts on some details. The Warner Archive Blu-ray disc has superb picture quality..

 

[Thomas T]