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A few reviews

TM2YC

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Enchanted (2007)
It's always a treat to revisit 'Enchanted'. It works equally brilliantly as a heart warming romcom, a hilarious fish-out-of-water caper, a clever satire of Disney tropes and a joyful celebration of Disney magic. It wouldn't work at all if it wasn't for Amy Adams absolutely nailing the movement, mannerisms, speech patterns and a complete lack of cynicism, associated with 50/60s hand drawn Disney animations. She never looks for a second like she is doing it tongue-in-cheek, she just is a "Disney Princess" made flesh. The key to any truly great musical parody (Spinal Tap, The Rutles etc) is having songs as good, or better, than as those you are homaging. So they got in Alan Menken, who did most of those classic 90s scores. "Happy Working Song", "True Love's Kiss" and "That's How You Know" are as good as anything from actual Disney musicals. Some of the intercutting between the secondary plot threads does look a little jumbled in an effort to keep focus on Giselle and Robert's evolving romance but that's a nitpick.





Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story (2022)
This 3-hour, 2-part Netflix documentary cleverly and wisely spends most of it's first part building up and reminding the viewer of just what a ginormous celebrity Jimmy Saville was in Britain. I was just too young to have remembered that, I was very much aware of him but his star was on the wane when I was watching TV as a youngster. Plus if you're younger than me, or not British, you'll need that context to know who he was at all. The doc makers have done a sterling job trawling the TV archives for every bit of footage of him saying weird things and embarrassingly for those featured, the many, many times he was courted by fellow celebrities. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Muhammad Ali, at least three Doctor Whos, Ricky Gervais, Captain Kirk, the Prime Minister, the Queen and even the bloomin' Pope. The probably "very soon to be King" Prince Charles and his then wife Diana come off particularly badly, so does Thatcher, the three of them seemingly viewing Saville as some sort of quasi-official advisor. The film has an extra cheeky habit of finding clips of Saville coincidentally sharing the limelight with other disgraced British celebrities from the past, for various other reasons. Rightly, or wrongly, I felt a bit sorry for 'Jim'll Fix It' Producer Roger Ordish, who is interviewed at length. It seemed like he'd spent 20-years happily making kid's innocent wishes magically come true on a program that is now remembered as the work of the devil.

The second part focusing on Saville's crimes and his victims feels less well put together and more shallow. Beyond simply not give the serious aspects of Saville's story more weight, it lacks any wider discussion of the powerful effect money, celebrity and political influence can have on silencing the truth, recently highlighted by the Weinstein and Epstein scandals. His story also has relevance to things like the Oxfam charity exploitation scandal. As always, I think it's a stupid idea when these retrospective documentaries, which are composed from 100% old square 4:3 TV archive footage, go with a super-wide 2.35:1 aspect-ratio just to look "cinematic", when this means cropping the footage to a ridiculous extreme, especially when it looks to have been newly scanned in HD. This isn't a perfect documentary but it's still "glued to the TV" type stuff.

 

asterixsmeagol

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I begrudgingly watched Enchanted at my girlfriend's request back when it was in theaters, expecting to hate it, but I LOVED it.
 

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Huh. I think I've either specifically avoided it, or it simply didn't appear as a blip on my radar. Now I'll have t o go watch that one.
 

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Jaws 2 (1978)
The other sequels really suck but I probably used to watch 'Jaws 2' as much as the original classic. I remembered it being a bit like 'Die Hard 2', in that it's nearly as good as it's progenitor but looked down on for being a blatant rehash. Revisiting it again, I can see that is not the case, this is definitely a big step down in quality but still a solid water-based "slasher movie". It's very slow to get going and the plotting is muddled but it does succeed in setting up a relatable, believable and likeable group of teenagers for us to want Chief Brody to rescue at the end. Richard Dreyfuss not returning is a big loss but having just about everybody else from the supporting cast of Amity islanders come back really helps this feel like a quality sequel. John Williams returning for the soundtrack is lovely too. A couple of the actresses do some truly world class hysterical screaming, it sounds so genuine and disturbing that it's way more scary than the threat from the shark. Adjusted for inflation, this made the equivalent of an $800million profit for Universal in 1978, which any studio would view as a mega hit today but a year after 'Star Wars' (not to mention the original 'Jaws' making double that) I think this was seen as sub par, leading to less and less effort being put into the sequels.

 

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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954, Disney+)

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I watched Disney's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA the other day with my daughter.

I know this movie is considered a classic, but is it just me, or is this movie feel overly long and dull?

Visually it is still beautiful to look at but narratively... I dunno.... it does not feel like a traditional Disney family film. The ideas and morality play is very adult and cerebral. There is no traditional bad guy and our hero Aronnax is not very engaging.

I kept thinking this movie could be shorter. A lot shorter. Maybe 30 minutes shorter.

I dunno.

I recently watched this flick, in two halves, because daylight/projector reasons, but yeah, it's not great. The first half, with lots of Kirk Douglas clowning around, is pretty fun, but the story really has nowhere much to go in the second half, and I was surprised to find that the famous squid attack sequence wasn't even the big finale. Worth a look for adventure film fans, but a timeless classic, no.

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Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Godzilla_vs._Kong.png


I tried a Redbox used purchase of this one, and, what a disaster! In the default 7.1 sound mix, the action was about ten times louder than the dialogue on my simple stereo speaker setup, and in the 5.1 mix, the volume range somewhat less drastic, but still completely completely intolerable. Why the ever-living %^&#! 🤬 does my American disc have a 5.1 Portugese sound option, but not an adequate option for English stereo?! For those without fancy and expensive 5.1 sound systems, or advanced Blu-ray players that can flatten a 5.1 mix down to something sane, I guess streaming is the only option?!

As for the movie, it seemed deathly dull, so I switched to the commentary, which was somewhat more interesting, but not enough to finish it. I get that the franchises have a long and varied history, lending this movie some cultural interest, but the flick itself is as stupid and pornographically violent as a Bayformers movie, with the sky always in sunset mode, and the "quirky" human characters utterly devoid of interest, spouting abominable dialogue. At one point, the director said this was fundamentally a kid's movie, but I can't imagine a child sitting through this wretched torture and finding any joy in it at all. What a waste of four bucks! 😝
 

Gieferg

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20 000 Leagues under the sea... well, for me it is a timeless classic and always will be. I just love it.

Godzilla Vs Kong on the other hand... dreadfully boring. Watched once and that's enough. Of all those four monster movies only Skull Island is relatively watchable but still not that good.
 
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TM2YC

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Elvis (1979)
I was rewatching Director John Carpenter's nearly 3-hour 1979 'Elvis' ABC TV-movie biopic after reading JC didn't have much control of the editing, or the sound-mixing. The lack of energy, excitement, pacing and shape to the story makes a lot more sense. Everything else is right, Kurt Russell disappears deep into the title role, he's got all the speech mannerisms, moves and the look, with perfect sound-alike vocals, performed with feeling by Country singer Ronnie McDowell. Scenes like the one where Elvis is working on 'Suspicious Minds' in his home studio, or performing in Vegas, look and sound like the real deal. Those bits catch fire but since a lot of the story is quite sombre and introspective, the film never manages to build much excitement, a better edit might have helped that. There are a few shots and scenes along the way that seem like non-sequiturs, so perhaps JC had shot them with something specific in mind but the studio editor just dropped them in there in chronological order. Also if there is a scene of Elvis driving his car up to the house, getting out, opening his front door and going inside, you're going to see every frame of the footage showing it. Is it just me, or is Oscar winner Shelley Winters channelling Edith Massey from John Waters' 'Pink Flamingos' as Elvis' mum? "Elvis, Elvis, get me some eggs!"


 

TM2YC

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The Firm (1989)
I love the intensity Alan Clarke gets out of his actors, the stark realism of his unadorned aesthetic and his trademark graceful Steadicam shooting. The "football hooligan" film has become it's own low-rent, cliched, exploitation sub-genre since 'The Firm' but Clarke has something more intelligent to say. It's definitely a film from and about the Thatcher era, so the hooligan "firm" aren't stupid, poor, racist Neanderthals, like the newspapers would routinely portray them. They're mostly white-collar, mixed race, family men, who finish their respectable jobs in the week, get a 1st-class train and commit horrific violence on the weekend (something that is based on factual research). They're almost classic Thatcherite "yuppies" but there is something about the banal order of the suburban, lower middle-class capitalist system that makes them want to become monsters for a few hours a week. There is a childish, petty and pathetic aspect to their aggressive masculinity. In a key scene Gary Oldman's 'Bex' returns to his little teenage bedroom at his parent's house, extends a telescopic metal rod weapon and starts repeatedly beating the bed with it in frustration. The phallic symbolism is pretty clear. It's all very 'Fight Club'. Oldman is sensational in the lead role.

It doesn't matter that I hate Football because the film isn't about the sport, it's just a forum for the characters to commit violence. Clarke underlines this by choosing to not film the ball in the opening match. I did need to do some quick Wikipedia reading on the specific time period in which it's set and the context in which it was screened. The characters are portrayed gearing up to fight other "firms" on the continent because a ban on English clubs/fans from competing/travelling in Europe was soon to be lifted in 90-91, after the notorious Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985. 'The Firm' was also originally broadcast just 6-weeks before the dreadful Hillsborough stadium disaster, which for decades was blamed on animal hooligan fans by Thatcher, the Murdoch newspapers and the establishment (and not as was finally accepted, incompetent policing and other factors). It was a story that was too easily accepted by some, for far too long because it fitted simplistic tabloid ideas about hooliganism. Something that 'The Firm' is trying to avoid.

I watched the "Director's Cut" which was reconstructed from Clarke's own workprint copy after his death. It's got about 5-minutes of much stronger and more disturbing scenes of violence, that could not be broadcast on BBC TV. Unfortunately the quality is noticeably much lower for those bits. However, upon also watching the "Broadcast Version" afterwards, with an audio commentary on, I noticed it's got about 5-minutes-ish of scenes not in the DC. Considering the short length of the film, I want to see both cuts combined.

 

TM2YC

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The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
I believe at the time Agnès Varda (then 80) intended this self-Directed/Written/Produced/Presented career retrospective to be her last film but she made a couple more a decade later. It's characteristic of her joyfully inquisitive eye that when she revisits her childhood home in one scene, she's far more interested in the old couple that now live there and their model train collection, than her own connection to the building. Throughout she focuses on the people that her films brought into her life, and the cherished experiences she had with them, rather than the technical details of the films. The motif of the beach, of mirrors and of happenstance, frequently recur in her unconventional approach to the documentary format. After the film finishes she interrupts the credits with some footage she shot the day before the edit was finalised, to remind us that this is only the retrospective of a whole life, from the vantage point of a single moment in time, concluding "While I live I remember".




Gazza (2022)
I'm not a fan of football but I often like documentaries about the history of football because they're usually about something much more than sport. The BBC's new doc 'Gazza' is about the life of 90s football superstar Paul Gascoigne but is much more interested in the truly poisonous effect of British tabloid journalism, pre-Leveson. Some of the paparazzi are interviewed, after having done jail time for their activities. Director Sam Collins allows them to "hang themselves" by playing their callous, shame-free and self-serving comments over footage of the human destruction they caused. Figures like 'News of the World' chiefs Piers Morgan and Rebekah Brooks are featured heavily in the documentary but unsurprisingly don't give interviews. They didn't end up in jail themselves, or suffer any career ill-effects (Rupert Mordoch still employs them in top positions), having claimed ignorance of the massive criminal conspiracy all around them by their employees, even though in Brooks' case she publicly and freely admitted some of her crimes at a March 2003 Select committee. There is a certain four-letter word starting with "C" that I couldn't help thinking every time these two are speaking, or grinning on camera. Gascoigne is portrayed as a young, naive, simple-minded bloke, completely unprepared for the growing media onslaught, blindly surrounding himself with leeches posing as his friends, on a self perpetuating downward spiral into drink, domestic abuse and paranoia. It's pointed out near the end that it wasn't all "paranoia" because journalists were really spying on him round the clock, pretending to be ordinary people he met and illegally tapping his phone lines. Happily all the old archive material has been scanned in stunning looking, uncropped 4:3 HD, even the video tape sources look brilliantly upscaled.

 

Moe_Syzlak

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I don’t have a review. We just need to get this thread to another page so I don’t have to see Hymie’s blasphemous post at the top of the page every time I load this thread. 🤣
 

TM2YC

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The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Katie's Extended Cinematic Bonanza Cut! (2022)
Even though 'The Mitchells vs. the Machines' is a Netflix streamed movie, it was originally made by Sony Pictures Animation (before the distribution rights were passed to Netflix), so it thankfully also has a physical blu-ray release, packed with bonus features. The most interesting of which is "Katie's Extended Cinematic Bonanza Cut!", which replaces nearly half the footage with early, alternate workprint ideas and deleted plot threads. It's surprising how funny and watchable the film still is, with such basic animated rough sketches and temp audio. The more significant differences include PAL CEO Mark having his own (step) father figure issues, the two friendly robots originally being prototypes sent by Mark to help (instead of being malfunctioning damaged units) and the evil super-computer showdown is in Vegas (rather than California), which reminded me of "Mr. House" in 'Fallout: New Vegas'.


The theme song continues to be stuck in my head 2-months after viewing the original cut:

 

Jrzag42

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The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Katie's Extended Cinematic Bonanza Cut! (2022)
Even though 'The Mitchells vs. the Machines' is a Netflix streamed movie, it was originally made by Sony Pictures Animation (before the distribution rights were passed to Netflix), so it thankfully also has a physical blu-ray release, packed with bonus features. The most interesting of which is "Katie's Extended Cinematic Bonanza Cut!", which replaces nearly half the footage with early, alternate workprint ideas and deleted plot threads. It's surprising how funny and watchable the film still is, with such basic animated rough sketches and temp audio. The more significant differences include PAL CEO Mark having his own (step) father figure issues, the two friendly robots originally being prototypes sent by Mark to help (instead of being malfunctioning damaged units) and the evil super-computer showdown is in Vegas (rather than California), which reminded me of "Mr. House" in 'Fallout: New Vegas'.


The theme song continues to be stuck in my head 2-months after viewing the original cut:

Sony did this too with Spider-Verse, didn't they? I think it's a really cool idea and I'd love to see more of these sorts of things in the future. There was also a similar thing for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, with its bonus "Deleted Movie". In that instance, I believe pretty much the entirety is deleted content (rather than just around half of it like you mentioned above), and it's also not very watchable. But it's still just cool to have. If I recall correctly, The Simpsons Movie has around another movie's worth of deleted content that was cut and hasn't been released. It's just a shame because animation is already a less respected medium, and you have all of these animators who nobody will ever even remember the names of putting all of this work into stuff that will never see the light of day. At least with live action movies, director's cuts or otherwise alternate cuts aren't at all uncommon, whereas I can only think of a couple of animated movies with alternate cuts.

So even if this footage is unfinished and potentially unpleasant to watch, it's still just a treasure to get some insight into what could've been, and the fact that this is something that got released is really awesome.
 

TM2YC

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Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1985)
As Wikipedia succinctly puts it, this a "musical fantasy horror comedy-drama sports film". Director Alan Clarke is more usually associated with gritty, realistic, on-location dramas, not studio-based, German-expressionist Snooker Operas featuring vampires and cowboys. Despite all the intentionally alienating weirdness, the whole thing would still work just fine, if only the songs were better. It actually conforms fairly closely to the familiar "sports movie" structure and the big showdown match in the last act gets genuinely exciting. Phil Daniels from The Who's Rock-Opera 'Quadrophenia' and Alun Armstrong from the original London production of 'Les Misérables' sing the two title roles very well. It all looks great, recalling 'Brazil' (which had just come out) and Stanley Kubrick and it's arguably saying some angry stuff about Thatcherism but it doesn't add up to something I'd care to revisit. Though I have to respect it for being this defiantly odd.

 

TM2YC

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Time Bandits (1981)
I wish I'd seen 'Time Bandits' when I was a youngster because I was into Python, Greek myths, Arthurian legend, Napoleonic wars, Sci-Fi and fantasy, so I'd have loved it. Seeing it for the second time as an adult is still pretty magical though. I hadn't realised before that this came out before all the Steven Spielberg (and his imitators) "unhappy modern day kid finding themselves on an outlandish adventure involving monsters, ghosts, aliens, or time-travel" type of movies. The early scene where our young protagonist Kevin is in his familiar bedroom filled with toys and things on the wall, when a time portal opens in the wall, feels like a Spielberg cliche. Also the spirit of the adventure and the tone of the humour is much like 'The Princess Bride', which came out much later. The cameos from Sean Connery, David Warner and Ian Holm are a treat. Holm's petulant pantomime of Napoleon, in a time-travel movie, can't help but make you think of the same thing in the later 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'. The cameos from John Cleese, Shelley Duvall and Michael Palin are less successful, coming off as unused sketches from a Monty Python movie, that are there for laughs but have little contribution to the plot. The models and matte-paintings look fantastic on the Arrow blu-ray 2K negative scan.


^ The trailer is great, featuring a difficult "trailer voice guy" going off script.
 

TM2YC

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Tideland (2005)
Due to delays caused by disputes with the notorious Weinstein brothers on 'The Brothers Grimm' and delays caused by general disinterest from distributors in regards to 'Tideland', the two Terry Gilliam films were released at the same time. So it was fascinating to compare two completely different films, that were still unmistakably the work of the same artist. One was a compromised adventure film that did $100 million at the box-office, the other, 'Tideland' was a defiantly weird little film that made about 50 bucks. I think the latter is still the better work. You know a movie is interesting when some critics proclaimed it the film of the year and others said they nearly walked out because of how much they hated it. I liked it right away but it is too long at 2-hours and I can understand why some would find the whole concept repellent, rather than strangely beautiful. The Arrow blu-ray comes with a brief introduction from Gilliam imploring the viewer to see the film and it's various horrors as if through the innocent eyes of a child. The fantasy/reality of 11-year old Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), exists in a vast golden hinterland between playing a fairytale gothic Disney Princess and having dinner with the family from 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'. It's an engrossing watch if you ponder the layers of meaning behind Jeliza-Rose's words and actions, and how much of the frightening real world she is perceiving and how much she is obscuring with imagination.

 
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TM2YC

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Finally found the time to delve into the Arrow Video Fear and Loathing boxset...

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'
isn't played as a wantonly unhinged man on a kaleidoscopic cocktail of narcotics, it's played as a man trying to act quite sensibly, innocently and reasonably... while on a kaleidoscopic cocktail of narcotics... that these are self administered is of no importance. Johnny Depp's narration is constantly warning the viewer of how awful and debilitating these drugs are but they get taken anyway, like breathing in and out, it's something that simply has to happen for Raoul Duke/Hunter S. Thompson's life to progress. His partner "Dr. Gonzo" (brilliantly played by Benicio del Toro) on the other hand seems to crave the madness and danger. A difference between the two explorers in experience that becomes starkly clear in one of the final scenes. Where at a late night greasy diner, Dr. Gonzo becomes genuinely threatening in a way that is no longer funny towards a poor, vulnerable, young waitress. Duke never says a word or attempts to stop him but the sheepish look Depp gives her as he skulks out the door is like screaming a heartfelt apology to her on his knees. Part of the visual genius of Terry Gilliam is that it's often impossible to tell what is the pure invention of his singular mind and what is the everyday freakery of the glitzy Las Vegas madhouse. The set dressing is so full of invention and horror that you can spot new things on every viewing. This time I noticed that in the background of one of the wrecked hotel rooms, the two vandals have created a vague American flag out of blue rags, squashed room-service banana skins for stars and streaks of blood, or maybe ketchup, smeared across the wall. The beautiful new Arrow Video 4K scan of the negative helps reveals these details.

There's a sad, poetic scene where Hunter is at his typewriter writing "With the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high water mark, that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back". He's talking about the 60s but 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' is sadly that high water mark for Gilliam's career. After two financial and critical Hollywood hits, he had total creative freedom and final-cut, able to make exactly the uncensored movie he wanted. Sadly it was panned by critics and ignored by cinema audiences, only later being universally hailed as an obvious hallucinatory classic on VHS/DVD. Gilliam's career has arguably stumbled ever since, not without it's gems but not with this same amount of exuberant, unflinching vision.




Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride (2006)
I don't think this is as fulsome a documentary portrait as 2008's 'Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson' but it's focus on the merits (or lack thereof) of the various Thompson related films such as 'Where the Buffalo Roam' and 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' is interesting. The interviews with his friends and colleagues are excellent too. Despite all the outlandish events of Thompson's life and death, the maddest thing in this film is the opening interview with Gary Busey.




For No Good Reason (2012)
One of the best documentaries I've seen about a current artist and how they create their art. It's built around an informal discussion between Johnny Depp and Ralph Steadman, talking about Ralph's history with Hunter S. Thompson and others but the best bits are Ralph just showing Johnny how he makes a painting. Several starting from just a random splotch of ink thrown onto a blank page, evolving before our eyes into powerful and strange images. The Director Charlie Paul cunningly incorporates the layered, distorted, visual techniques of the artist into the style of documentary. 'For No Good Reason' is not your standard career retrospective, it's a creative work of art itself. The transfer included on the Arrow blu-ray boxset of 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' looks stunning, so you can see all that wonderful Steadman art blown up on your TV in HD detail.




By the way, I'd never heard of this Thompson film before:


I might check that one out.
 

Moe_Syzlak

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My former business partner in Colorado was a friend of HST. He had been the editor of Soldier of Fortune magazine at one time and, to no one’s surprise I’m sure, HST was a fan of the magazine. He has told me stories about Thompson that are every bit as insane as you might expect. I think Thompson actually toned down his escapades in his writing as the truth likely wouldn’t be believable. 🤣
 

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The Fisher King (1991)
Terry Gilliam's
direction and Richard LaGravenese's script weave together captivating romance, horrific tragedy and Arthurian fantasy in a film that recalls 'City Lights' and 'It's A Wonderful Life'. It's brilliant the way Jack's (Jeff Bridges) more everyday mental turmoil, self-pity and selfishness, is subtly contrasted with Parry's (Robin Williams) more obvious, wild, delusional, fractured, madness. Like in the scene were they sit exhausted after chasing a manic Parry's imaginary "Red Knight" and Jack shouts at God in frustration, so the now becalmed Parry asks quizzically "Who are you talking to Jack?". There are many scenes that Gilliam sprinkles with magic and romance, like the whole of Grand Central station waltzing, backing two lovers with the sparks from a distant welding torch, or the enchanting slow pull-back on the Chinese restaurant scene as Williams sings the Groucho Marx song 'Lydia, the Tattooed Lady'. The only tiny lapse in taste in this whole masterpiece is in the last act, by showing exactly what the "Red Knight" represents, when the clarity of the direction and storytelling had successfully implied what it was from the first instance. 'The Fisher King' is a real pleasure to re-watch.

 

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Dead Poets Society (1989)
There is undoubtedly a lot of fine movie making from Peter Weir and uniformly excellent performances from the young cast (plus the magical Robin Williams) in 'Dead Poets Society' but it rubbed me up the wrong way from the start and I never got back on board. It's set a couple of years after desegregation, at an exclusive, all white, all male, private school, based on writer Tom Schulman's alma mater, which was apparently proudly still racially segregated into the 1980s, somehow? (and still does not permit girls). It's also set a few years after the publication of Allen Ginsberg's era defining poem 'Howl' but despite being a film about poetry, never mentions that, or the then current "Beat Generation" poets shaking the poetry scene up. To ignore the latter when a central theme is supposed to be the benefits of nonconformity, seems a bizarre decision to me. The boys are encouraged to rebel against the stuffy, rigid, repressive school system but the fact that it's a highly privileged school system, existing within a larger deeply repressive system of subjugation along lines of race, class and gender is never addressed for even a second. In a slightly creepy scene one of our primary antagonists, the rich future lawyer Knox feels entitled to molest a passed out girl at a party, something that the film plays as sweetly romantic. This is intercut with the rest of the group of rich boys mocking two working-class girls because they lack the same privileged education due to their social status and gender in the 1950s. Again this is played as harmless, boyish good spirits. Later, one of the boys, the rich future banker Charlie, proposes girls be admitted to the school but this isn't from a place of egalitarian ethics, it's as a show of mocking, arrogant, impious, superiority. The last famous scene mistakenly thinks it's about individual defiance but is actually about peer-pressure conformity. As the film's own script puts it earlier in the film "Well ask yourselves why you were clapping?". This hasn't aged well.

 

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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
The 1993-1997 series of Sean Bean 'Sharpe' TV-movies left me with an extremely high-bar when it comes to Napoleonic War action-dramas, so 2003's 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' (also based a long run of historical-fiction novels) coming fairly soon after, struck me as just good. In the two decades since, it seems to now be regarded as a total cinematic classic, so I've always meant to revisit it. I'll upgrade my opinion to very good and something that I plan to rewatch a little sooner than every 20-years but it's not without some flaws. The post-'Lord of the Rings' era CGI and green-screen looks ropey, although there isn't that much of it but the real problem is the pacing.

It immediately begins with a super-exciting battle (surely styled after 1998's 'Saving Private Ryan'), after which the hunt is on, but then we meander around for two hours, before a second battle with the same foe right at the end. That material is all lovely stuff, full of well drawn and endearing characters but when you've started on exhilaration and promised a chase, you can't help but feel the energy dissipating from the story. The script should've had the confidence to spend time slowly introducing us to the characters before the first battle. Perhaps if the Hollom morale/superstition/suicide subplot was removed it wouldn't drag so much in the middle? That subplot combined with the Galápagos Islands diversions is too much. I was reminded of 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' (which Nicholas Meyer had modelled on this type of Naval adventure), which has many of the same plot elements but has them in the perfect amount and the proper order. All the historical nomenclature, minute details of life on board ship, observation of the class and power structures of the crew and the interplay of relationships was engrossing

I loved the way 'Master and Commander' ends, with a knowing smile and the promise of another adventure soon to begin. I see some people saying it's a setup for a sequel that sadly didn't happen but to me it's like that warm, wonderful bit that might happen at the end of a Holmes story where Watson is with Sherlock playing the Violin in 221b Baker Street, only filling some time until that next game of "cat and mouse" inevitably begins.

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