Very boring Carol Reed movie. Has James Mason, Claire Bloom, set in post-war Berlin so looks good but... Knife-throwing twins and a fight on top of a steam train might have livened things up.
Mandy
Not the mad Nicholas Cage film of late, but a classic 50s film about a young deaf girl and the opportunities or lack of them back then. Bit of a choker really. Shown on the Talking Pictures channel, natch. It's known as 'Crash of Silence' in the States and imdb.
One point of interest: the kindly grandfather in the film I recognised as Godfrey Tearle, the 'kindly' local luminary and pillar of the community in whom Robert Donat's Hannay confides when he makes the long trip to Scotland, only 20 years or so earlier.
Story of Alex Honnold and his attempt to "free solo" Yosemite's El Capitan -- i.e., climb a 2,000+ foot vertical granite wall without support of any kind. Honnold is a quirky guy, and it spoils nothing to say that he is still alive, but the film is not only about him. It's also about those close to him, including the filmmakers themselves, and the toll his quest takes on them.
Recent Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature, and well-deserved. The filming is spectacular. If you're like me, your fingers will be sore from gripping the armrest tightly at numerous points. Highly recommended.
Afraid I'm with the critics on this one. I know someone a few pages back praises it to the hilt, so hats off to the casting director who picked great lookalikes for the band, that said the beautiful Freddie Mercury would sue if he could see how he's portrayed - as the diminutive Prince, basically.
A bunch of gormless lads led by an effete type with his mind on cultural things, why, at times this plays out like The Inbetweeners without the laughs.
And that's a shame, because if it was played as more of a comedy I could get along with it. But the script is awful and the direction is leaden. It forgets the rule of 'show don't tell' but also falls into the trap of most of these songwriting musicals - we trace the genesis of the song like we're supposed to be really excited about it, but of course it's just like telegraphing a joke.
As for Freddie bringing the band back together to help the kids in Africa... I suppose the script skirts around this a bit but according to the band at the time, he didn't give a damn about charity, it only got sold to him because it was the music event of the decade, so how could Queen not be there? Anyway, I'm no Queen expert but if they had fallen out, how come they were playing Radio GaGa, a single from the previous year, and I Want to Break Free was from 1984 too?
Also, a strange kind of homophobia in the film, I mean surely Freddie had some gay pals during his hedonistic days who were not snakes? It seems a deeply conservative film and in all the wrong ways. Or most of the wrong ways, anyhow.
That said, the Live Aid finale was done extremely well.
Pretty good though I saw this at the cinema on the cheap, I might have felt a bit miffed paying full whack. It has its own thing going, a few snags however. I'm not sure a concert audience would be chuffed to have a slot given up for the main man's squeeze even if she has a better set of pipes on her than Yoko. The story is timeless, not least because it's now been filmed four times (originally under a different name in the 30s I think) and much of this could have been set at any time, aside from the references to YouTube and Alec Baldwin.
Lady Ga Ga is a very good actress, nothing wrong there. Her character is a bit young for Cooper of course, and that's never really touched on. Well, more than a bit young if she's supposed to be early 20s and Cooper looks all of 40. That said, Ga Ga has aged very well, she looks young.
Till Death Do Us Hart (1993). Dwight Schultz plays David Davis, a man who marries into a semi wealthy family and ends up covering the death of his wife. Basic standard film but as usual top performance from Schultz.
"You're in the wrong business... leave it to the professionals!"
James Bond- Licence To Kill
The Tremors film series could have been better had they been released theatrically instead of on dvd. Michael Gross and Fred Ward became cult actors because of these films.
"You're in the wrong business... leave it to the professionals!"
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Beneath Us :
Enjoyable horror/thriller. Set in America a small group of
Immigrant workers, are hired to work for a couple. It soon
Turns in to a nightmare for the workers ..........
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
Ingrid Pitt is a lesbian vampire. That really is all you need to know. It is on youtube and well worth your time. It has lots of boobs so it is NSFW or if you have people around you tend to blush.
Last night I watched a film called Callan. It was a secret service thiller. I really enjoyed this film and recommend it to every one. It was opposite to James Bond in every way. Callan was a assasin for the British secret service who really had enough of killing but was sent on a mission to kill a gun runner. I thought the actor who played Callan was very good.
I watched Mads Mikkelsen in a Netflix original, Polar. I have to say, I got this confused with another MM film, Arctic, which has gotten some good reviews. As for Polar. . .Mads is only the good thing in this nasty concoction. Everyone is a hitman or hitwoman, and pretty much everyone dies in a horrible way--and Mads is on the receiving end of a torture scene that makes what he dishes out in Casino Royale look like a child's game of tickling. My opinion of humanity was considerably lowered by this dreck. . .and a film that can do that to a viewer is not good.
I watched this expecting a completely different film. I thought it was going to be some sort of Liam Neeson-esque type retired hitman movie but I was very wrong !!! The synopsis is very misleading.
It's based on a comic book or something and my jaw dropped when Matt Lucas appeared. I watched it until the end though for some reason and totally agree on the torture scene ... made Le Chiffre look like a beginner ) )
Last night I watched 'The Highwaymen' on Netflix starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. It about the Texas Rangers that were brought in to help catch Bonnie and Clyde.
Very good movie IMO and focuses on the law men and not Bonnie and Clyde themselves. It's a great perspective because of the romanticised notion the couple usually create. Instead it focuses on the brutality and callousness of their crimes.
Armando Iannucci (who I know mostly from Veep) reapplies his talents as a satirist of backroom politics to explain a key moment in realworld Russian history … at a time when Russia is big and bad all over again and something called "fakenews" is a large reason why.
The backroom drama that followed Stalin's death and resulted in Kruschev's rise and Beria's fall is presented as zany farce, with some legendary comic actors making these historic figures look very silly indeed.
For those historians out there, how accurate is any of this?
Steve Buscemi of all possible actors to choose from is Kruschev. I haven't seen Buscemi in anything for ages. For once he is not the one that gets put through the woodchipper in the final scene.
Michael Palin is underutilized as Molotov. I don't think I've ever seen him in a proper acting role before?
Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) is the pathetic would be puppet Malenkov. Shame he got me-too'd, he is a very funny actor.
But best of all is Simon Russell Beale as Beria. I've never heard of him before, but wikipedia says he is mostly a stage actor. Damn does he chew up the scenery, and me not knowing my history I cheered in the last scene as the slightly less bad guys won.
Also in the cast is Olga Kurylenko, who is inadvertently responsible for the sequence of events. She's one of ours!
The main inaccuracies are that events that happen in a week happened in a week or two in the movie took weeks or even months in real life. Obviously what happened was far less funny and more horrible in real life. Kruschev later said he found working under Stalin more stressful and scary than WWII.
Loved this in the cinema when I was a boy, found myself pretty bored with it this morning. For Bond interest, Raquel Welch gets into a girl fight with Martine Beswick who'd had some practice in FRWL while future M Robert Brown is a caveman chief.
Written by, directed by and starring Emilio Estevez, this story takes place almost entirely over one winter night at the Cincinnati Public Library, when the homeless who convene in the library during the day refuse to leave at closing time because the weather is freezing and the city's homeless shelters are full. Estevez has assembled an impressive cast that includes Jeffrey Wright, Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater, Taylor Schilling, Michael K. Williams and Jena Malone. There are several implausible moments and lots of contrived characters, but the story is very earnest and features a lot of humor. As I noted to my wife afterward, the film wears its politics on it's sleeve but doesn't beat you over the head with them (unlike, say, Vice). Nothing too special here, but you could do a lot worse.
The Meg!
Jaws with a bigger Shark, less acting ability, no decent script, cgi galore, but Statham is in it and he's just so reliably Statham! Score is crap, story makes no sense, effects are DAD style iffy. Some nice watches being obviously put I prominent positions so on the whole this was two hours of brain out entertainment.
I took a break from my very busy life to see Shazam! (harumph--HE is the original Captain Marvel!). It's a mostly light-hearted and always fun movie that's built around a premise most superhero movies these days have forgotten: that every kid dreams of having super powers. I've been a fan of this character since my dad introduced me to him in the early 1970s, so I was happy to see a lot of nods to classical elements from the comic book; and it was nice to see DC lighten up a bit. Holy Moley, I guess I liked it!
Comments
Very boring Carol Reed movie. Has James Mason, Claire Bloom, set in post-war Berlin so looks good but... Knife-throwing twins and a fight on top of a steam train might have livened things up.
Mandy
Not the mad Nicholas Cage film of late, but a classic 50s film about a young deaf girl and the opportunities or lack of them back then. Bit of a choker really. Shown on the Talking Pictures channel, natch. It's known as 'Crash of Silence' in the States and imdb.
One point of interest: the kindly grandfather in the film I recognised as Godfrey Tearle, the 'kindly' local luminary and pillar of the community in whom Robert Donat's Hannay confides when he makes the long trip to Scotland, only 20 years or so earlier.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Story of Alex Honnold and his attempt to "free solo" Yosemite's El Capitan -- i.e., climb a 2,000+ foot vertical granite wall without support of any kind. Honnold is a quirky guy, and it spoils nothing to say that he is still alive, but the film is not only about him. It's also about those close to him, including the filmmakers themselves, and the toll his quest takes on them.
Recent Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature, and well-deserved. The filming is spectacular. If you're like me, your fingers will be sore from gripping the armrest tightly at numerous points. Highly recommended.
Not as bad as I'd expected.
Afraid I'm with the critics on this one. I know someone a few pages back praises it to the hilt, so hats off to the casting director who picked great lookalikes for the band, that said the beautiful Freddie Mercury would sue if he could see how he's portrayed - as the diminutive Prince, basically.
A bunch of gormless lads led by an effete type with his mind on cultural things, why, at times this plays out like The Inbetweeners without the laughs.
And that's a shame, because if it was played as more of a comedy I could get along with it. But the script is awful and the direction is leaden. It forgets the rule of 'show don't tell' but also falls into the trap of most of these songwriting musicals - we trace the genesis of the song like we're supposed to be really excited about it, but of course it's just like telegraphing a joke.
As for Freddie bringing the band back together to help the kids in Africa... I suppose the script skirts around this a bit but according to the band at the time, he didn't give a damn about charity, it only got sold to him because it was the music event of the decade, so how could Queen not be there? Anyway, I'm no Queen expert but if they had fallen out, how come they were playing Radio GaGa, a single from the previous year, and I Want to Break Free was from 1984 too?
Also, a strange kind of homophobia in the film, I mean surely Freddie had some gay pals during his hedonistic days who were not snakes? It seems a deeply conservative film and in all the wrong ways. Or most of the wrong ways, anyhow.
That said, the Live Aid finale was done extremely well.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Pretty good though I saw this at the cinema on the cheap, I might have felt a bit miffed paying full whack. It has its own thing going, a few snags however. I'm not sure a concert audience would be chuffed to have a slot given up for the main man's squeeze even if she has a better set of pipes on her than Yoko. The story is timeless, not least because it's now been filmed four times (originally under a different name in the 30s I think) and much of this could have been set at any time, aside from the references to YouTube and Alec Baldwin.
Lady Ga Ga is a very good actress, nothing wrong there. Her character is a bit young for Cooper of course, and that's never really touched on. Well, more than a bit young if she's supposed to be early 20s and Cooper looks all of 40. That said, Ga Ga has aged very well, she looks young.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Japanese/American disaster movie with an international cast. One of interest was Cec linder
(Goldfinger )
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Enjoyable horror/thriller. Set in America a small group of
Immigrant workers, are hired to work for a couple. It soon
Turns in to a nightmare for the workers ..........
A wonderful performance from the great Alastair Sim, directed by Guy Hamilton, and
based on the book by J B Priestley.
Ingrid Pitt is a lesbian vampire. That really is all you need to know. It is on youtube and well worth your time. It has lots of boobs so it is NSFW or if you have people around you tend to blush.
It's a Hammer film, and there's a thread in this forum dedicated to those if you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrvAmAKEpeg
I watched this expecting a completely different film. I thought it was going to be some sort of Liam Neeson-esque type retired hitman movie but I was very wrong !!! The synopsis is very misleading.
It's based on a comic book or something and my jaw dropped when Matt Lucas appeared. I watched it until the end though for some reason and totally agree on the torture scene ... made Le Chiffre look like a beginner ) )
Last night I watched 'The Highwaymen' on Netflix starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson. It about the Texas Rangers that were brought in to help catch Bonnie and Clyde.
Very good movie IMO and focuses on the law men and not Bonnie and Clyde themselves. It's a great perspective because of the romanticised notion the couple usually create. Instead it focuses on the brutality and callousness of their crimes.
Armando Iannucci (who I know mostly from Veep) reapplies his talents as a satirist of backroom politics to explain a key moment in realworld Russian history … at a time when Russia is big and bad all over again and something called "fakenews" is a large reason why.
The backroom drama that followed Stalin's death and resulted in Kruschev's rise and Beria's fall is presented as zany farce, with some legendary comic actors making these historic figures look very silly indeed.
For those historians out there, how accurate is any of this?
Steve Buscemi of all possible actors to choose from is Kruschev. I haven't seen Buscemi in anything for ages. For once he is not the one that gets put through the woodchipper in the final scene.
Michael Palin is underutilized as Molotov. I don't think I've ever seen him in a proper acting role before?
Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) is the pathetic would be puppet Malenkov. Shame he got me-too'd, he is a very funny actor.
But best of all is Simon Russell Beale as Beria. I've never heard of him before, but wikipedia says he is mostly a stage actor. Damn does he chew up the scenery, and me not knowing my history I cheered in the last scene as the slightly less bad guys won.
Also in the cast is Olga Kurylenko, who is inadvertently responsible for the sequence of events. She's one of ours!
You know, this one:
Loved this in the cinema when I was a boy, found myself pretty bored with it this morning. For Bond interest, Raquel Welch gets into a girl fight with Martine Beswick who'd had some practice in FRWL while future M Robert Brown is a caveman chief.
Written by, directed by and starring Emilio Estevez, this story takes place almost entirely over one winter night at the Cincinnati Public Library, when the homeless who convene in the library during the day refuse to leave at closing time because the weather is freezing and the city's homeless shelters are full. Estevez has assembled an impressive cast that includes Jeffrey Wright, Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater, Taylor Schilling, Michael K. Williams and Jena Malone. There are several implausible moments and lots of contrived characters, but the story is very earnest and features a lot of humor. As I noted to my wife afterward, the film wears its politics on it's sleeve but doesn't beat you over the head with them (unlike, say, Vice). Nothing too special here, but you could do a lot worse.
Jaws with a bigger Shark, less acting ability, no decent script, cgi galore, but Statham is in it and he's just so reliably Statham! Score is crap, story makes no sense, effects are DAD style iffy. Some nice watches being obviously put I prominent positions so on the whole this was two hours of brain out entertainment.
I would have taken him to see Spectre but not QoS.
Is it generally fast and noisy?
Roger Moore 1927-2017