Last Movie You Watched? 6.0

Hilly wrote:

The Saint in New York

the first Saint adventure on film and a far cry really from the Roger Moore adventures -so far the only incarnation of the Saint I have seen fully. Louis Hayward has a certain charm as Templar but on the whole it lacks something. Perhaps what it lacks is Roger Moore or the Saint theme every time someone goes "Aren't you Simon Templar?"
BBC have showed a fair number this week, most feature George Sanders so should be a blast.

And they are really. But this was 2 decennia before Roger Moore came to the paty of the Saint.

I really like the 9 b/w Saint movies and it is great they are shown again on tv.

You should look at the Falcon series where George Sanders did continue his Saintlike role but with a different name. In the 4th movie the part gets taken over by Tom Conway as his brother (who in real life was George Sanders brother). who later did lend his voice to the Saint radioshows. And so the circle is complete.

saint mark wrote:

Hilly wrote:

The Saint in New York

the first Saint adventure on film and a far cry really from the Roger Moore adventures -so far the only incarnation of the Saint I have seen fully. Louis Hayward has a certain charm as Templar but on the whole it lacks something. Perhaps what it lacks is Roger Moore or the Saint theme every time someone goes "Aren't you Simon Templar?"
BBC have showed a fair number this week, most feature George Sanders so should be a blast.

[]

And they are really. But this was 2 decennia before Roger Moore came to the paty of the Saint.

I really like the 9 b/w Saint movies and it is great they are shown again on tv.

You should look at the Falcon series where George Sanders did continue his Saintlike role but with a different name. In the 4th movie the part gets taken over by Tom Conway as his brother (who in real life was George Sanders brother). who later did lend his voice to the Saint radioshows. And so the circle is complete.

I'll check out the Falcon's one day. Worth a look.

Thus, straight in (such is the beauty of the length of these Saint adventures) to

The Saint Strikes Back

Sanders is an unbridled joy as Templar, seemingly playing with utmost charm, devil may care attitude and bravado. His toying of Fernack (Teal in the novels) is quite something but Sanders is always a joy even in the small scenes he had in Quiller. One other joy of the film is the sighting of a pre-Batman Neil Hamilton (Commissioner 'Great Scott!' Gordon), here the tender young age of 39 (incredible to think he started acting in 1918). The Batman connection is of course Sanders, one of the various Mr Freeze incarnations that cropped up in the series.

Manhunter wrote:

Raising Cain

This has it all, the elements of the cheapest of B-movie psycho-thrillers: the split-personality killer, the trauma inflicted on him by his father - a ridiculous trash film impersonation of a to-the-bones evil father-figure, at the same time a mad scientist, all with ludicrously fake foreign accent. It has the same non-working approach that CASUALTIES had, presenting an (in the case of CAIN: pulpy and hardly credible) dramatic story in an unpleasantly semi-satirical way. It's not a full-fledged satire (if you want to see how that works you will have to look at FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS or SCREAM), nor is it a straight psychological horror thriller. I don't see a reason why De Palma doesn't take his material seriously - I don't buy at all into that allegedly superior satirical approach in making such a movie - PSYCHO showed how a film can be straight and tense in spite of its pulpy content.
De Palma once again unashamedly rips off PSYCHO and other Hitchcock and also Argento stuff. His expansion on the "dump-corpse-within-car-in-lake" scene from PSYCHO is particularly silly, but also nastily thrilling and entertaining, like other bits from CAIN and also CASUALTIES and FEMME FATALE. The ending is highly unoriginal, and Lithgow's self-parodying facial expression is silly as hell, but De Palma often gets the cheap thrills out of these moments.
There are scenes like the one with Dante's wife in the hospital - perhaps my favourite in the movie - that are pleasantly shocking and disturbing, or the scene when Carter (or whoever) spots his wife on the "baby-TV", with her looking like a bog body. His escape scene from the interrogation room and the police station is a very poor man's Lecter escape scene. But, it all is still nastily entertaining, it's just a poor approach not knowing whether to be a thriller or a spoof. The plot is tricky and complex, but there is next to no psychological value and credibility to it. I could go on stating how the fake spoofing doesn't work, and what better treatment such a dramatically charged story would deserve - PEEPING TOM, anyone? - but I'll leave it at saying that this is yet another 'neither-here-nor-there' De Palma "movie".

http://vimeo.com/35398338

Save the Tiger (1973)

Really just a showcase for Jack Lemmon's dramatic chops, but I'm a Lemmon fan. And if you ever wanted to see Felix Leiter 4.0 Norman Burton get serviced by two prostitutes and have a heart attack while being covered in red paint, this is your film.

I know I've always wanted to see that.

Belle de jour

A very imaginative study of a woman with sexual frustrations. Her activities as a prostitute are psychologically convincing, but also entail adventure-like interpersonal complications. In the end, when it's revealed that all of it

Spoiler:

, the events become, understandably, more credible, and are still a fine examination of a woman with sexual frustrations. There's a lot to like about how the film is written and directed, but there were also two bits perhaps that I did not quite understand. My first Buñuel, I am very pleased and looking forward to more of him.

The Saint in London

George Sanders strikes again. A bit more verve and charm than Hayward. Would've been something if he had ever guest starred in the Roger Moore series. Vive Sanders.

Raising Cain (Re-cut)

It clearly is superior to the original version (although this estimation may change as soon as I've rewatched that version). I liked that Carter wasn't presented as the lunatic from the beginning. It felt better to first make the viewer familiar with his wife, her back story with Jack, and to give a clue regarding Carter's odd interest in bringing up Amy himself.
It all made perfect sense until Jenny reappeared some time after Carter

Spoiler:

But, after a while, I realized that would be explainable if the part after that incident was a jump back in time. And indeed, soon after that they did me the favour of presenting it as a flashback Carter has

Spoiler:

Another great difference is that, since I was compelled to watch the original English/American version, I heard that Lithgow was speaking as the different characters much better than his voice actor in the dubed version, so it didn't feel as cheesy anymore. This was particularly noticeable when speaking as Cain and as Dr. Nix with his accent that suddenly was not so campy anymore.
The way the film is written, and the way the suspense scenes are filmed, is as expertly as you can get it. Now everything made sense, particularly now that I knew that

Spoiler:

I also loved

Spoiler:

one of the greatest moments I have seen in a film ever. Donaggio delivers an admirable score, too.
I suddenly liked everything, note: everything about this film. It is eye-to-eye with CARRIE, BLOW OUT and PSYCHO. It's brilliant!

I know Harms prefers the chronological version, but I also prefer the ReCut. CARRIE and BLOW OUT are my favorite De Palmas. I dunno if I'd put this with those, but I do enjoy the film as just being well made and another of De Palma's clever twists on PSYCHO. And that long take is excellent.

My Darling Clementine (1946)

I love the heroic quality of the film. The Americana. The texture of it. Fonda is a fine, upright movie hero. Just great classical filmmaking.

I'd say the 70's are my favorite decade for cinema, but in terms of what I look to when thinking of how I'd like to make movies I think mostly about the best Hollywood films of the 40's.

Now if we could resurrect John Ford to make a good Superman movie. He'd be perfect, even if it's no longer legal to show an American flag in a Hollywood movie.

I've been neglecting this thread, largely because I'm getting less keen on making pronouncements about films I watch for the first time (which accounts for most of my viewing). But I just saw Gerd Oswald's A KISS BEFORE DYING and found it fascinating. It rarely gets discussed, but I found it a vastly more compelling colour-noir than either LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN or NIAGARA, and all in a glorious CinemaScope frame to mark it out even more among its contemporaries. It's like a hysterical, psychotic rendition of AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY/A PLACE IN THE SUN, and it's perfectly thrilling.

HJackson wrote:

I've been neglecting this thread, largely because I'm getting less keen on making pronouncements about films I watch for the first time (which accounts for most of my viewing). But I just saw Gerd Oswald's A KISS BEFORE DYING and found it fascinating. It rarely gets discussed, but I found it a vastly more compelling colour-noir than either LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN or NIAGARA, and all in a glorious CinemaScope frame to mark it out even more among its contemporaries. It's like a hysterical, psychotic rendition of AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY/A PLACE IN THE SUN, and it's perfectly thrilling.

That's on Netflix Instant. I'll have to see it.

Saw TDKR tonight and while the was a lot of spectacle, the movie was very predictable and similar to BB where BW goes on a search for himself. Bane a cheap-Darth-Vader version and he never got betond his 2D character, so the pay-off was always easy to predict.

And the ending was sh*te and like Nolan likes to do left in a sort of limbo where his groupies like to go into a big discussion how it should be interpreted.

Overal a dissapointing movie, TDK was so much better and original imho.

Looking forward to Total Recall (Jessica Biel reasons) & The Bourne legacy. The trailers showed far more promise.

The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947)

I quite liked it. Almost loved it. I loved the story, and I loved the ending.

And of course Herrmann's score. He's almost as good as Hanz Zimmermann.

Wuthering Heights (2011)

Well to be fair I gave up after 20 minutes, somewhere between the appalling acting and the abysmal camera work (Bourne-esque in that its never steady, never more than 6 inches from its subject and never actually focussed on what you want it to be) my initial giggles became abject nausea......

After that we all needed some cheering up so we went to an old favourite....my personal favourite Hitchcock....

The 39 Steps (1935)

Its one of my 'desert island discs' and a solid 10/10, Donat one of the unsung all time greats, Carroll just the right foil and the whole package is poetry in motion.... This was the Criterion Blu Ray so it was far and away the best I have ever seen it (and I had already seen it on the earlier Blu-ray release), not particularly sharp but with great contrast, plenty of detail and surprisingly clear soundtrack.

I'd get that Blu-ray, but I've got the older Criterion DVD already.

De Palmathon...

Sisters (1973)

It's very interesting to see in light of having seen his early films, but this one just doesn't grab a hold of me. I like the idea, and it's done nicely. But it doesn't grab me very much.

I thought Jennifer Salt was really hot in an offbeat way, though.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On the Stranger Tides

A very good movie, I enjoyed it from the beginning to the ending, and my favourite of the whole saga. I'm really looking forward next episodes (according to the producers, they want to make a new trilogy, which means another 2 movies).

Phantom of the Paradise

I had seen this more than 20 years ago, but all I really remembered was the looks of the Phantom.
I hadn't expected anything special, but actually I ended up loving most of it. It's an imaginative, colourful and lively film in which the comedy elements work pretty well, better than in CAIN, certainly. Phoenix is rather selfish, she's only interested in her career, not at all in the Phantom, but, in spite of the farcical style, one cannot help but feel strongly affected when Winslow screams in agony over her love affair with Swan.
The music in its various forms is appealing, the story is conceived well, the cinematography and editing are excellent, most notably in the final sequence, which is gripping and affecting in spite of the humorous tone running throughout the movie.
De Palma is simply able to do it just the right way. An impressive comedy horror musical, that has scenes running through my mind a day after vewing, and probably beyond. It's a superior film to ROCKY HORROR and to SUSPIRIA as well (note the Harper connection).
The only thing I didn't get was

Spoiler:

Of the De Palma films I've seen, I'd make a ranking as follows:

CARRIE/BLOW OUT
OBSESSION
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
RAISING CAIN
FEMME FATALE
THE UNTOUCHABLES
SCARFACE
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
CASUALTIES OF WAR

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