Last Movie You Watched? 7.0

The Falcon's Alibi/The Falcon's Adventure

so concludes the Falcon trek. Short, hardly matter movies that had their moments least of all the last of them all where Tom Conway engages in a long ferocious fist fight. Almost good to see the likes of Barbara Hale or Ian Wolfe (somehow looks the same here in 1945 as he did in Star Trek, 1969) or Elisha Cook Junior whose face is instinctively familar for whatever he's done really.
Tom Conway resembled Walter Pidgeon in some ways, playing it like his brother George Sanders but with more charm.

Hilly wrote:

..... Ian Wolfe (somehow looks the same here in 1945 as he did in Star Trek, 1969)....

It's funny he's one of those guys that seemed to age to 60 by the time he was 30 and never aged again.

PRIMARY COLORS. Verbally and visually witty, with some terrific performances (in particular that of John Travolta, who's never been better), Mike Nichols' film (which crept out at the end of the 1990s and now seems largely forgotten) is marred only by a couple of moments of apparent implausibility. Otherwise, it's stunning, as well as superior to the recent THE IDES OF MARCH.

Snake Eyes (1998, dir. Brian De Palma)

It's actually a well-thought-out (if over-the-top and unlikely) thriller that is complicated enough to keep you interested. Also, De Palma makes good use of camera movements, split screen and other techniques. Also, it isn't as camp as THE UNTOUCHABLES, FEMME FATALE, or bits of RAISING CAIN. While Cage may be annoying (it is funny to see the contrast between his character here and the one in ADAPTATION), the not-too-one-dimensional characters are better than in most of the thriller fare. The baddie even gets some semi-plausible motivation. What I did not like was the somewhat unlikely and too convenient coinciding of the police and camera team arrival, as well as the hole in the wall, to get things cleared in the end (though all of it is carefully prepared before, yet still unlikely). Also, the following scenes to the very end were a bit of a letdown. Not sure the film will hold up on further viewings.

CARRIE
BLOW OUT
OBSESSION
CARLITO'S WAY
MISSION TO MARS
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
THE FURY
THE BLACK DAHLIA
RAISING CAIN
SISTERS
SNAKE EYES
FEMME FATALE
THE UNTOUCHABLES
SCARFACE
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
CASUALTIES OF WAR

SNAKE EYES has a bad rep, but I enjoyed it a lot. Enjoyable, well-crafted nonsense.

Mr. Arkadin (1955) [Comprehensive Version]

I greatly enjoyed it. A jovial adventure with a pretty breakneck pace. In fact, I'd generally prefer a slower pace. Even within scenes there are hardly spaces without dialogue. Maybe because of Welles' radio background? I'm not a Welles scholar, so that's just my inference.

Alim Tamiroff is a joy.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

SNAKE EYES has a bad rep, but I enjoyed it a lot. Enjoyable, well-crafted nonsense.

Never seen it except for the odd few minutes on TV, but parts ot the soundtrack are really sharp, I even bought it.

Last thing I saw was Richard Brooks' THE PROFESSIONALS, which is one of my alltime go-tos. First time I saw it, i came in on the last halfhour and was immediately riveted, and it was years before i was able to see all that led up to that point, Seen it maybe 30 times since, then, much more than THE WILD BUNCH, which I tend to watch in set-pieces and dialog exchanges.

A producer William Goldman worked for to do HARPER called THE PROFESSIONALS a movie with balls. I'd agree, but I'd add it has heart as well, just not the cloying suffociating sentimentality that dribbles out from most 'heart' in movies. The emotion and pain is there, you can infer it when you don't feel it, and it is handled in a classy way. I often think this is Lee Marvin even better than POINT BLANK, because I think his war experiences -- which John Boorman writes about in one of those essay books on cinema he started back around 1990 -- seriously inform his character's outlook and memories.

Saw this after I saw BITE THE BULLET, and those 2 Brooks films (along with BUNCH) really form the basis for my strong preference in seeing Westerns taking place at the end of the western era or later. If THE LAST HARD MEN lived up to its Goldsmith score, it might have made it in there as well.

off-topic, but does anybody know why movies like BITE THE BULLET and COLOSSUS THE FORBIN PROJECT don't get released in widescreen? I think the same thing about EXTREME PREJUDICE, but it might not make that big of a difference on that. COLOSSSUS needs WS for that opening matte shot and a ton of other scenes, and BITE THE BULLET just feels barely watchable cropped (saw it three times in theater and have been missing those compostions over 35 years now.)

Hmmmm, not sure on the quality: http://www.ioffer.com/i/rare-widescreen-!-bite-the-bullet-with-gene-hackman-519985863

I wanna see FORBIN, but I won't in foolscreen. It's in widescreen in the UK. Same with CHARLIE VARRICK.

I tried getting a widescreen HARD CONTRACT through that ioffer, and was pretty massively disappointed (as in I can't watch it ... and I am fascinated by HARD CONTRACT).

I think maybe they just recorded a movie off TCM and burned it to DVD.

De Palma's SNAKE EYES is underrated. But I do wish I could see the film with the original climax.

Loomis wrote:

PRIMARY COLORS. Verbally and visually witty, with some terrific performances (in particular that of John Travolta, who's never been better), Mike Nichols' film (which crept out at the end of the 1990s and now seems largely forgotten) is marred only by a couple of moments of apparent implausibility. Otherwise, it's stunning, as well as superior to the recent THE IDES OF MARCH.

I'm wary of newer Nichols stuff--I don't like CLOSER at all--but I've always been somewhat interested in PRIMARY COLORS.

Harmsway wrote:

De Palma's SNAKE EYES is underrated. But I do wish I could see the film with the original climax.

Are you talking about with the big weather visual effects from ILM? (think it was supposed to be a tidal wave or something coming down the street?)

Cinefex wanted to cover the film in a short article, but when I called ILM about it, their lead PR person said it wasn't worth bothering about ... and this was WAY before it fell out of the picture, because the mag used to need a lead time of something over half-a-year on most articles.

That's the only time ILM ever even implied a trashtalking of an upcoming movie in my earshot.

But the same thing happened with different people on BATTLEFIELD EARTH, urging us to not cover it. We did drop it for about two days, but then it got put back on because Travolta made himself available for 20min. (Magazines are such whores.) I was already on something else, THE CELL I think, but they had me do the interview anyway, then passed everything I had on to the editor's wife to assemble the piece.

trevanian wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

De Palma's SNAKE EYES is underrated. But I do wish I could see the film with the original climax.

Are you talking about with the big weather visual effects from ILM? (think it was supposed to be a tidal wave or something coming down the street?)

Yeah, that one.

The Trial (1962, dir. Orson Welles)

Terrific experience on first viewing. A nightmare told with great visuals. I'm planning to rewatch it in a couple of weeks. I bought the version in which a couple of scenes (or parts of these) aren't dubbed, but displayed with subtitles, because the completely dubbed version would have cost twice as much. I don't mind these little interruptions of the illusion. Some day I'll buy the other version, but I didn't want to wait much longer to finally see the film. It's a pretty rich film, story- and dialogue-wise, as well as visually. Orson is almost as great an actor as he is a director. Also liked Anthony a lot. I haven't read the novel; I only made it through THE CASTLE at a young age. It was hard to read back then, wouldn't be these days. It's an unfinished work, and that's how it felt.

My favorite Welles film, though I've not yet seen CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.

Decision at Sundown (1957)

Excellent flick. Puts a great spin on the traditional "Western hero rides into town for revenge" story.

The Matrix (no bloody RELOADED or REVOLUTIONS or FLIGHT OF THE OSIRIS)

I'm not usually big on movies that rely on mythology being throughly imbedded in their plotting, since the deus ex machina aspect that gets invoked in the name of destiny seems to often be a story cheat (coughLUCAS, cough cough GEORGE!!.)

But in this case, I just don't care about any of that. The movie has always worked for me, even when I am at my most cranky or picky. This time out I didn't even get distracted by the green tint.

It's amazing how much they got right. Just as amazed about how much they got wrong ever since. Even dropping the Tank character in the sequels because they wouldn't give the actor a raise is indicative of how wrongheaded they got, because the guy really does a better job of well-representing the whole of Zion than all the humping throngs we see in the sequels. Don't want to think about that now, it'll harsh my mellow.

I've only seen the first one, and not since 2000 probably. May be worth checking out again. I've seen the DVD of the trilogy and Animatrix for 10 bucks at Target. Maybe even 5 bucks. It's one of those "4 film favorites" packages that can be great.

Seems one of the Wachowskis saw BOUND a few too many times.

Do you know the story of how the Wachowskis 'scouted' their vfx guy John Gaeta? Story was they interviewed him in a chat room, pretending they were teenaged girls interested in visual effects.

That has always sounded more creepy than funny to me.

Wow. I wanted make some kind of Felix Gaeta reference, but I'm too tired to think of one.

Killer Joe

WTF

And I thought my reviews were short ...

Drax wrote:

Killer Joe

WTF

That's one that interests me.

Mission: Impossible (1996, dir. Brian De Palma)

Hadn't seen this since perhaps the late 90s. It has some annoying Hollywood blockbuster jokes, but they are only few and rather harmless compared to most entertainment stuff. The train and helicopter action sequence is ludicrous, yet still entertaining. De Palma makes some efforts to not overbloat the film with mindless over-the-top action (the finale aside), but instead delivers some suspenseful low-key set-pieces and, for a spy action thriller, not too shabby dialogue/interpersonal scenes. It's quite enjoyable, but spy thrillers can be much better (no, not NuBond).

CARRIE
BLOW OUT
OBSESSION
CARLITO'S WAY
MISSION TO MARS
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
THE FURY
THE BLACK DAHLIA
RAISING CAIN
SISTERS
FEMME FATALE
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE
THE UNTOUCHABLES
SCARFACE
CASUALTIES OF WAR

The opening 15-20 minutes is my favorite part. Still pissed about what they did to Phelps.