Which movie did you watch today and how would you rate it?

I think we need to suspend Elixir's membership here at IIDB until he watches both Alien and Aliens (in that order). Its for his own good, and he will thank us later.

Funny thing about Bill Paxton. Both he and James Cameron worked for B movie horror film director Roger Corman in the late '70's, early '80's doing models, special effects, gopher boy stuff, etc. I don't think either one had formal acting, film making education or training. Cameron's previous job to that was as a truck driver. Cameron hired his friend Bill on for a brief role on Terminator (he pulls a switchblade on Arnie and says, "Fuck you, asshole!" when Arnie demands his clothes) and the rest is history.

Session 9

Men get hired to remove asbestos from a long condemned insane asylum. Eventually horror ensues.

This isn't a bad movie. However, it's more interesting to me as an examination of how a lot of little shortcomings can cause what could've been a good film to be not so good.

Story, character development, atmosphere, pace, consistency, etc. This film is on the cusp of getting all of those things right, but falls a little short in all of them. There's lot of potentially interesting story elements that appear to be coming together in order to make a tidy whole, but it just doesn't happen. Each character is unique/not irrelevant, and each has a relevant role to play, but they end up like the frayed end of a shoelace.

In short, everything is there for a good horror-suspense film, but it's poorly assembled.

It might be interesting to film school students on a technical level with respect to something like editing and reshoots, which seems could've made the difference between this movie being really good instead of the disappointing slog it turned out to be.

"Leonardo da Vinci"- Ken Burns

blastula said:

Jimmy Higgins said:

Tried to watch High Anxiety and it wasn't working for me. Brooks can be hit or miss at times. He has had some dogs out there. He is also responsible for some of the best as well.

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That's one of my favorites. I still think about the blowup homage scene.



Found some other goodies.

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And there was the phone booth scene

Lawrence of Arabia - Been wanting to re-watch this. Think this is my third time with the film. Reading more into it, seems like the movie is a bit overly fictional. It is much like the Great White Hope with too much needless fiction, but contains remarkable acting, and cinematography that rarely ever is topped even with all the technology available today. They shot that film at a very small aperture which probably sucked for the actors because that meant they needed it to be brighter (and hotter) to shoot the film. The movie also has one of the best scores, which John Williams lifted appreciable quantities. One of the best films ever made. 4 of 4

It's treatment of history is absurd, but Lawrence of Arabia is still one of my favorite films. Everything from the match blowing out to the storming of Aqaba is just perfect; I don't know what a person could do to improve a single scene.

As it happens, I was also watching an old Alec Guinness film last night, though he's almost hard to spot under all the prosthetic Jewface as Fagin. Yes, I spotted the 1948 version of Oliver Twist in the streaming recs and thought I would give it a shot. Being much more familiar with the musical, I missed some of emotional insight that comes from having the characters sing their hearts out. Since they sing the way Dickens writes more or less, in a lot of ways I'd say that later version is oddly more faithful to the novel. This version was also greatly curtailed by the Hays morality code, then at its most strictly interpreted phase. Kinda hard to tell Oliver's story with all the illicit pregnancies, prostitutes and murders all happening delicately off screen and out of the script.

That said, I genuinely enjoyed the film. What it lacks in content it makes up for in mood, painting a dreary below the rooftops London in shades of shadow, darkness, and ever present fatal consequences. Nancy's desperate situation, and the lower and middle class characters all straining at the boundaries of their station in an England that wasn't ready to let them go, was all written and well portrayed. Both of the child leads ended up going into directing themselves later on, and I wonder whether working on a stellar Lean/Green production early on helped spark that bug. I can see why this one made the Criterion collection despite its problems and the usual disadvantage of having been popular with the public.

Rating, 7.5 Alec Guinesses out of 10*

*- where 10 in Lawrence of Arabia, and 5 is Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Colonel Sanders said:

You can reduce the plot of any story to make it sound lame.

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Didn't we have a whole thread devoted to that? Wish I could remember the thread title... it might be fun to start it up again.

I just watched Roman J. Israel, Esq. (a 2017 American "legal drama") and would give it much less than its 6.5 IMDB score. A typical review says "[Denzel Washington's excellent performance] leaves us with a character you won't soon forget, but you wish that the movie were as haunting as he is." I would give it an even worse review, arguing that the hard-to-portray character is quite forgettable despite Washington's skill.

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Regarding some films recently mentioned here:

Lawrence of Arabia would be one of the greatest movies, but the last several scenes drag on. Queen of the Desert tells a (true?) story about Gertrude Bell in the same place and time as Lawrence. Was she Lawrence's superior? Queen of the Desert gets only 5.7 IMDB points; I'd give this and any movie starring Nicole Kidman more points than that. (Apocalypse Now is another great movie where the final scenes let me down.)

OTOH I think the final scenes of Mystic River (which was also mentioned in a different thread) were an outstanding way to close the story.

Swammerdami said:

Mystic River is a great movie, filled with much poignancy.

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Elixir said:

Colonel Sanders said:

You can reduce the plot of any story to make it sound lame.

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Didn't we have a whole thread devoted to that? Wish I could remember the thread title... it might be fun to start it up again.

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A lot of entertaining fiction is centered around crimes that seem rather silly. e.g. Murder plots that are overly complex and risky.
Oftentimes we love these stories because of the portrayal of the characters involved, the plot itself becomes somewhat secondary.

Swammerdami said:

I just watched Roman J. Israel, Esq. (a 2017 American "legal drama") and would give it much less than its 6.5 IMDB score. A typical review says "[Denzel Washington's excellent performance] leaves us with a character you won't soon forget, but you wish that the movie were as haunting as he is." I would give it an even worse review, arguing that the hard-to-portray character is quite forgettable despite Washington's skill.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Regarding some films recently mentioned here:

Lawrence of Arabia would be one of the greatest movies, but the last several scenes drag on. Queen of the Desert tells a (true?) story about Gertrude Bell in the same place and time as Lawrence. Was she Lawrence's superior? Queen of the Desert gets only 5.7 IMDB points; I'd give this and any movie starring Nicole Kidman more points than that. (Apocalypse Now is another great movie where the final scenes let me down.)

OTOH I think the final scenes of Mystic River (which was also mentioned in a different thread) were an outstanding way to close the story.

Swammerdami said:

Mystic River is a great movie, filled with much poignancy.

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Mystic River... oi... I felt that the final scene robbed the movie of any legitimacy. It was good up to that point and then Sean Penn does the ole "Who me" look and Kevin Bacon is "Ohhh... you." and Tim Robbins is all like "WTF?!"