Last film seen...

1338339341343344413

Comments

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters
    Spybrary podcast had a 2 episode Quiller special a year or two back where the TV series was discussed but I don't recall any of the details of what books they may have been based on.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent
    Golrush007 wrote:
    chrisno1 wrote:
    THE LAST FRONTIER (1955)

    I'll add it to my watchlist. Anthony Mann has become one of my favourite directors in the last few years. I've recently watched a number of his movies, and his string of westerns with Jimmy Stewart are now among my favourite films in the western genre, especially Winchester 73 and Bend of the River.

    Don’t forget the best Mann/Stewart collaboration, The Man From Laramie.
    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    Don’t forget the best Mann/Stewart collaboration, The Man From Laramie.

    Also a very good film, but it's my third-favourite.
  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff
    I've got free AppleTV for a while, so I watched the Tom Hanks-scripted-and-starred WWII adventure, Greyhound. It's technically impressive, and that's the problem--this is a tech film that focuses on ships and subs and pretty well forgets character and plot. It's a bit like looking over the shoulder of someone playing a video game. It turns out the film is based on C. S. Forester's novel The Good Shepherd, and the original title may explain another problem--Hanks's character is often seen praying before he eats and before he goes to bed, but religion plays no real role in the film. I get the feeling that in Forester's novel the captain sees shipping supplies to war-weary Britain as a religious duty. . .but in our cynical age even perpetual nice-guy Hanks can't carry that theme.
    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    Have you read the novel ( The Quiller Memorandum ) by Adam Hall? It's full of tradecraft and zips along at a good pace - it's not Fleming by a long shot, but still very enjoyable.
    I wrote:
    thanks C & D. I didnt know about the book . If you recommend it I'll look for it once I start haunting used book stores again, I need some new spy novels for my To-Read pile. Did Hall write other spy novels?
    Golrush007 wrote:
    Adam Hall is one of the many pen names of the prolific author Elleston Trevor. The Flight of the Phoenix is one of his most famous novels.

    As for the Quiller series, I think there are 19 novels and they are a very highly regarded series. I've read 3 of them so far, and would heartily recommend the series to anybody looking for an excellent spy novel. The Quiller Memorandum is the first (it was originally title The Berlin Memorandum) and it is a very good read, although the style changes slightly in the later books. This style is quite different to other spy books I've read - being a sort of stream-of-consciousness approach and the best that I have read so far is The Warsaw Document. I think the quality of writing is easily the equal of any other spy fiction that I've read, Fleming included. By all means give the Quiller books a try.
    definitely shall look for his books then. I wonder if book stores will file him under Hall or Trevor?

    looking at wikipedia, I see:
    1) Quiller is described as a very capable character, not dull-witted as I assumed while watching the film
    2) the books are first person narrative, so no ambiguity about Quiller's thought processes, whereas the Segal's performance was very opaque
    and
    3) all volumes involve interrogation scenes, which Quiller is good at resisting. That part was central to the film and very well played, so that aspect was faithfully done.
  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters
    I wonder if book stores will file him under Hall or Trevor?

    Hall I suspect, although I think they're out of print so will most likely only be found in the used bookshops.
  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff
    I Care A Lot, on Netflix. Anyone who thinks Rosamund Pike isn't one of the best performers working today needs to check this out. She plays a truly EVIL character--a woman who, working with a shady doctor and compliant judge, gets herself named "guardian" of elderly people whom she promptly throws into a nursing home, cuts off their communication with family, and proceeds to loot their assets. The movie's plot kicks in when she locks up a seeming docile old lady (Dianne Wiest) who's connected with a Russian mobster (Peter Dinklage, again showing he should be a Bond villain). Pike goes into Shakespearean levels of wickedness, so you both want her to fail--and root for her. Give Pike an Oscar already. . .
    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    That sounds like a busman's holiday to me, Ms Pike's character might get a job working for Surrey County Council, and throw in the shady doctors who work for care homes on a retainer worth anything up to £20K a year so are in they're pocket. Why it's almost as if care homes know they have a backlog of elderly to work through and can get blacklisted if they don't comply. (Not sure if this is necessary now after Covid-19 was deliberately seeded into care homes by NHS Chief Executives - Ker-ching!)

    Anyway! Stan & Ollie is one I recall Hardyboy reviewing when it came out, this week it was on telly.

    If you were going to do a film about Laurel and Hardy attempting a comeback tour in the UK in the 50s, you could hardly do better than this and the two actors are very good, they go beyond impersonation. it's good to see Coogan pull it off so well, esp as he missed out on The Life and Death of Peter Sellers to Geoffrey Rush, and Frost v Nixon where he could have had a bash at the chat show host were it not Michael Sheen's already, and of course chat show host = Partridge.

    For all that, and I took my Dad to see Stan & Ollie when it was in the cinemas, it is one of those few films that actually make me feel ill when I watch it. It's depressing, okay, I get that, though it plays upon the pathos a bit too heavily for my liking, so we are rooting for our comic heroes. Perhaps it's the way it's meant to depict dreary 50s Britain while still trying to project itself as a lush looking cinematic film so cinemagoers don't feel cheated at their night out. Consequently, it doesn't quite convince for me. To be fair, it doesn't insist on spoon-feeding us back knowledge all the way along like other movies might. But the dialogue, while not actually bad, doesn't quite convince and the arrival of their wives, while it sort of provides an alternative to stuff, again I just find it all stressful rather than dramatic, it does make me ill. Can't argue with the moving finale dance however, though the tune will give you earworm all next day, though British fans will carry the memory of Tommy Cooper or Eric Morecambe's final performances, so again it's all a bit stress to worry about an obese comic having a heart attack on stage.

    It may be a sign of the hit Covid had given to programming that this movie was shown on BBC 1 on Friday evening in lieu of any dramas or so on, it was like being back in the 1970s.
    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • PPK 7.65mmPPK 7.65mm Saratoga Springs NY USAPosts: 1,227MI6 Agent

    @Gymkata: Yes, ILM was really busying going into 1989, since they were working on both Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and Ghostbusters II both of which were aiming to bank big at the summer Box Office. Ghostbusters II really kept them busy since Columbia Pictures ended up cutting down the SFX work schedule from what ILM was originally promised, as a result they had to work around the clock just before the films opening in June. On the recent Blu Ray release of Ghostbusters II, star/writer Dan Aykroyd even commented how the slime shell covering the art museum at the climax looked really rough since ILM ran short on time and did not get to finish it as it was intended.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    The tall T (1957)

    Randolph Scott made several westerns with the director Budd Boetticher. This is my first, but I think I'll try to watch more of them. The plot is basically a tense hostage situation on a wagon station out in the wilderness. Three bandits hold hostage Scott's character who's an independent ranch er who accidentally hitches a ride with a wagon anewlywed couple. We spend time with the six people and I like how the tension works to reveal the people involved. Early in the movie I thought this was a pretty lighthearted western, but I was really wrong. I actually think the early scenes could have been cut. The movie should have started with the main character on the road carrying his rifle and saddle. It's still a very good western with a tense plot, unusually good characters and the hard and stark landscape working well with the people and story.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    three films screened at Cinema Potts last weekend:


    Escape from New York

    I was inspired to watch it because of a gif posted by @Gymkata. I'd actually never seen it before, turns out it's exactly the sort of thing I like.

    Awesome low budget creative special effects, representing a postapocalyptic vision of New York City, starring Kurt Russel, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and her two jiggly friends, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and Donald Pleasance! (the last named being one of ours)

    I always say New York was cooler when it still looked like Taxi Driver, well this is New York looking even cooler still, like I always imagined Hunger City from Diamond Dogs! though turns out it was all filmed in St Louis, which recently had a major fire destroy several blocks...

    however, Russell does look like a middle school kid dressed up for Battle of the Bands, even with the eyepatch and the Eastwood inspired voice.


    Jason and the Argonauts

    Ray Harryhausen's masterpiece, with Honor Blackman (one of ours) as Hera, Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) as a blind prophet, and Nigel Green (from the Ipcress File, so he's kinda sorta one of ours) as Hercules, amongst others I didn't recognise.

    The mythology is actually pretty faithfully adapted, moreso than most adaptations from written fiction never mind historical dramas. Honor Blackman makes for a nice Goddess interfering with man's destiny.


    Hound of the Baskervilles

    the version that introduced the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce team. Great scenery on those moors. They did one sequel still set in Victorian times, then updated the Holmes concept to then-present WWII setting (why? so audiences could relate? to save money? for WWII propaganda purposes?). I may try to watch the whole series over the next couple of weeks.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    Wow this quote thing sure is weird.

    Caractacus, love Jason and the Argonauts. How did that not win an Oscar for special effects? Good score from Bernard Herrmann too.

    Also love the original Hound of the Baskervilles. Rathbone was excellent as Holmes and shared great chemistry with Nigel Bruce. As a kid I was terrified by the dogs ! The BBC ran a Friday tea-time series of Sherlock Holmes movies (in about 1979 I think) and I watched the whole lot. The best were this one, the follow up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, & later ones The Scarlet Claw and The Pearl of Death. There was one set on a train as well, but the title escapes me. I much prefer Rathbone's version to Cushing's Hammer cut. Tom Baker made a good Holmes in a BBC adaptation of Baskervilles.

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters
    edited March 2021

    @caractacus potts I highly recommend checking out the whole series of Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films. I found pretty much all of them to be enjoyable. As you say, only the first two are set in the original time period of Doyle's stories. I think at that time the norm was to set Sherlock Holmes adaptations in the contemporary period. I seem to recall reading that Hound of the Baskervilles was the first Sherlock Holmes film done as a period piece which is quite strane considering how many times Holmes had already been put on screen before this.

    The shift from period pieces to contemporary 1940s-set films co-incided with the series being taken over by Universal, who I assume had a different vision of what they wanted to do with Holmes on screen. I'm really glad they stuck with Rathbone and Bruce in the lead roles. Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are probably two of the best in the series, however, I personally have more of a soft spot for the WWII set ones, such as The Voice of Terror and Sherlock Holmes in Washington (which is a nice little spy thriller despite it's very boring sounding title). My other personal picks are The Scarlet Claw (possibly my favourite of the series) and The Spider Woman. But as I said, all of the films are enjoyable, and most of the Universal films are just over an hour in length so they are short and snappy little adventures. And of course Rathbone is superb in his portrayal of Holmes...definitive one might say. Highly enjoyable stuff!

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    World War II wasn't that long after Doyle wrote his last Sherlock Holmes story (1927 I think). Fifteen years really.

    Whereas our Bond films are still set in the ever-evolving present day 55 years after Fleming's last book, and when the debate occasionally comes up a majority resist the idea of a period Bond-film set in the 50s or 60s.

    (fifteen years actually only takes us back to Craig's debut, to really put things in perspective. ah, those were the days....)


    I think its more from our 21st century perspective it looks strange to see Holmes in WWII rather than travelling in hansom cabs. At the time it might have looked strange to suddenly see a character who wasn't that old suddenly surrounded by outdated period trappings.


    That said, I think the Cumberbatch series is near unrecognisable as Sherlock Holmes. I want my Sherlock Holmes to be sending messages by street urchin, not fiddling with a cell phone!

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    I just watched "Sherlock Holmes in Washington". Thanks for the tip!

    It's not a masterpiece of cinema, but enjoyable. It was strange to see Holms in the 1940's, we usually see him in the time the books were written or in our age. I think it works fine, but the final exchange is on the nose WWII propaganda.

    I liked how the McGuffin changes hands frequently while most have no idea of its importance. It surprised me that the existance of microfilm wasn't secret at that time. I liked how Holmes was portrayed, but Watson was shown as too slow.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    The way the McGuffin worked reminded me very much of Hitchcock himself.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    I just checked on Wikipedia, the fountain of all knowledge. Microfilm is much older than I thought and used for much more than espionage by WWII. For example censored mail from US soldiers overses was microfilmed to save weight on air planes and printe out in full size in the states!

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    edited March 2021

    I said:

    Escape from New York

    I was inspired to watch it because of a gif posted by @Gymkata. I'd actually never seen it before, turns out it's exactly the sort of thing I like.

    Awesome low budget creative special effects, representing a postapocalyptic vision of New York City, starring Kurt Russel, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and her two jiggly friends, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine and Donald Pleasance! (the last named being one of ours)

    I always say New York was cooler when it still looked like Taxi Driver, well this is New York looking even cooler still, like I always imagined Hunger City from Diamond Dogs! though turns out it was all filmed in St Louis, which recently had a major fire destroy several blocks...

    however, Russell does look like a middle school kid dressed up for Battle of the Bands, even with the eyepatch and the Eastwood inspired voice.


    Gymkata said:

    Glad you liked ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK! Some budget issues aside, I think it's a pretty great film. It's a nice, slow burn vs an action fest which is something that I really appreciate.

    I'd respectfully suggest avoiding ESCAPE FROM L.A., though. It's essentially a remake of EFNY with a larger budget and more of a campy tone. Some people like it (and Carpenter himself says that it crushes the first film) but I don't think it works at all. It was certainly one of the more disappointing theatrical experiences of my life. That said, the ending is kinda great...nice and nihilistic.

    I like the lo-budget special effects, I much prefer creative use of practical effects vs CGI.

    I also really like anything where the characters are exploring a landscape, that sense of geography and the vaguely implied backstory that explains why everything's just a bit different from the New York we know. I actually lived in the Lower East Side for a year when I was 21, mid80s, and hanging round the punkrock bars in that neighbourhood when it was still a bit dangerous everything felt almost like that film looked.


    So was your use of that gif to reference the recurring line "I heard you were dead"? that was immediately after the forum went down for a whole day

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    I think that is what appealed to me most when I watched it. It's about time I went back for a second viewing. I've only seen most of the Holmes films once.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    Mighty Joe Young, 1949

    Having just enjoyed Jason and the Argonauts, I went back to Harryhausen's first film, which I've never seen before.

    A sort of remake/re-envisioning of King Kong, with that films Willis O'Brien returning for more giant gorilla animated effects, and Harryhausen working as assistant to his childhood hero. Underlying plot components are roughly similar, a tale of a beautiful girl and the giant gorilla who loves her, and the rise and fall of a failed showbiz career ending with panic in the streets.

    This lacks the Gothic Haggard-liness of the original though, its all much more 1950s sunshine and and optimism. Jill's ranch in Tanzania could be smalltown America except for the black natives walking down the street willing to trade a baby gorilla to an eight year old child, otherwise there's none of that sense of the dangerous exotic Other we indulged in so deeply on Skull Island. The showbiz sequences are spectacularly staged, making up much of the last half of the film. I want a ticket to that nightclub!

    And instead of ending with tragedy on the Empire State Building, Joe is hailed as a hero for saving toddlers from a burning orphanage

    Apparently this was remade in 1998 with Charlize Theron as Jill, that must have been early in Theron's career. I like Theron, anybody seen the remake?

  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,418Chief of Staff

    Yes, I saw the remake...it was ok from what I remember...but I much preferred the original Mighty Joe Young...

    I’ve seen all the films you mentioned and that was one hell of a good set of films 🍸

    Basil Rathbone will always be Sherlock Holmes for me 👏🏻

    YNWA 97
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    Long way north (2015) orig. "Taut en haut de monde"

    This French/Danish animated movie is different, something some will look for after being forced to watch Frozen 50 times.

    It's about the girl named Sasha who is searching for her grandfather who dispeared with his ship in the Arctic. She ran away from an aristocratic life style in St Petersburg near the end of the 19th century. There are no power ballads, no talking animals and little humor. The animation style is stylised and striking. I really liked the simple beauty of it, very fitting for the sea voyage and the Arctic landscapes. I haven't tested it on kids yet, but I liked the movie.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    An odd film from 1980 called 'Dangerous Davies' and starring gruff English character actor Bernard Cribbins. He plays a bulky ageing copper who never gets promoted, actually I only saw the second half. It's directed by Val Guest of Casino Royale 67 fame but also has our own Bernard Lee was a copper at front desk, looking not young but in better shape than in Moonraker.

    It's a watchable British film with a good many English names you'll recognise. But some odd stuff in it, namely seeing the loveable Cribbins beat up a much younger and fitter witness in a deserted train carriage. Playing a drunken prank on a woman by letting a horse into her house in the dead of night - not having seen the build-up she didn't seem to deserve it. Or a 'that can't be right can it' scene where a young woman in her 20s seems to be giving him the come-on, I mean she's not Grace Kelly and he's no Cary Grant.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    The big trail (1930)

    I wanted to see John Wayne in a pre- Stagecoach western. I got the impression he worked in B-movies before he got his breakthrough in 1939, but I was curious. I chose "The big trail". It was his first leading role, in fact he had mostly been an extra in previous movies and Wayne was discovered by the director while working in the props departement. The director also gave him the stage name John Wayne for this movie.

    The movie is about a group of settlers going from the Mississippi to Oregon around 1840. Wayne plays a trapper working as a scout for the settlers. I soon discovered this movie was no B-movies at all. It's mostly shot on location and not in a studio, visiting several states. There are lots of actors, extras, horses, oxes and wagons. The wagons are huge and correctly drawn by oxes. This is not long after sound became common in movies, but it's in widescreen! This is actually the reason "The big trail" did badly at the box office and wasn't the big breakthrough it should have been for John Wayne. Most cinemas didn't have the equipment to show widescreen movies. A normal ratio version was filmed at the same time, as well as foreign language versions with their own actors and crew, but the widescreen version is far superior. This is an epic with wide landscapes, thunderstorms, dramatic ricer crossings and a snow storm. There is a scene werea large number of wagons and livestock are lowered down a cliff by ropes that has to be seen to be belived! This is how it was done in the 1840's and ninty years later they did it again - for real! This scene is still impressive.

    The plot isn't to complicated and the acting is of its day, but this is a western epic made while some of the oldest members of the audience could still remember the events on the screen.

    This movie is so big and well made it's enjoyable to watch it and not just as movie history curiosa. I'll go as far as to say "The big trail" is a hidden western gem. Wayne is good in it too, his movie star qualities are already there.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    I think only two cinemas were equipped for a 70mm projection. The Chinese Theatre in L.A. and some theatre in New York, so The Big Trail would barely have stood a chance of making money. I saw it at the BFI and it looks really great on the big screen. The problem is with the stagey acting and shot composition which betrays the formal studio bound nature of Hollywood at the time. Raoul Walsh though would develop into a very fine director of westerns and despite this early hiccup we all know how popular John Wayne became.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent

    I noticed the camera was always static. I don't know if it was because of the heavy camera equipment, the style of the day or or the director's choice.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI

    2017

    Michael McDonagh’s well-acted drama has too much violence and an uncertain resolution. To have an anti-hero and anti-heroine in the same movie spending most of their time on opposite sides of an argument is highly unusual. The problem it presents the director and writer is where to take them.

    The first half of the movie is a little like In the Heat of the Night, with tensions being flamed between a cop (Woody Harrellson, rarely better) and his local nemesis, a divorcee still grieving for her murdered daughter (Frances McDormand, a good but one-note role). You are unsure where our sympathy should lie. This unsettling position persists as incident piles on incident with growing hysteria.

    I figured one character twist fairly early, but the one oblique reference to it, via a suicide note, isn’t utilised to anywhere near its full potential. The ending disappointed. As the film progressed the unsympathetic nature of the characters grated. This is a very hard, self-centred bunch. Every learned lesson seemed to be negated by future actions. There’s no happy centre to this tortured bitter film. In the end I couldn’t decide if what I’d watched was a serious study of obsessive grief or a series of over-indulgent character studies.

    Good, but not that good.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    You're meant to go off the lead character aren't you? As you learn more. Then start to like Woody Harrelson's character a bit more. It's all about changing perceptions and then redemption of sorts.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE (1994)

    I love Steve Martin movies but this one had escaped me until last night. Apparently it is based/inspired by the classic novel, Silas Marner. Having not read this, I have no idea how it compares to the 19th Century novel, but from the basis of the movie I can imagine some of it being pretty close.

    A series of events leads to the Martin character adopting a small girl, and then the real paternal father goes to court to reclaim her. I enjoyed this movie, it shows Martin in a more dramatic role but with a few of his usual touches. It must have been a personal favourite for Martin as he writes the screenplay and co-produces. I found it a warm hearted movie albeit with large doses of sentimentality, which I’m not adverse to, so all in all an enjoyable couple of hours of undemanding entertainment.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    I saw that when it came out, Gmykata, as you say, it’s a good movie.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Sign In or Register to comment.