• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

TM2YC's 1001 Movies (Chronological up to page 25/post 481)

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50408520658_51cd8675a6_o.jpg


JFK (1991)
Director: Oliver Stone
Country: United States
Length: 206 minutes
Type: Thriller, Drama, Political

I can't remember what version I watched before but this time it was the 3.5-hour "Director's Cut".  Oliver Stone whips up a wild, engaging, wide-ranging, conspiracy thriller around the 1963 assassination of JFK.  Kevin Costner plays real-life investigator D.A. Jim Garrison, in the same, decent, down-to-earth, clean-cut way that he did for another law man, Eliot Ness in 1987's 'The Untouchables'. When he's doing that folksy Jimmy Stewart-type performance, it's easy to just accept everything his character is saying.  This is important because when some of the headline claims the movie makes like "the magic bullet" and "back and to the left" have been proved to be based on simple misunderstandings, it can be difficult to take any of it seriously. So don't worry if it's true, just sit back and wallow in a meticulously constructed, fast-paced, all-star epic.  I hadn't noticed before that it's almost got a 'Citizen Kane' structure, moving back and forth freely between time periods, to dissect the case. Stone employs different film stocks and black & white and colour to help anchor the times and places, so he can intercut scenes rapidly with total clarity.  Gary Oldman's chameleonic portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald was probably his breakthrough role.  Sissy Spacek has a bit of a thankless task as "nagging, unsupportive wife of selfless hero".  The rest of the cast includes sizzling turns from Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Rooker and Donald Sutherland, to name a few.  John Williams' score is of course terrific.


 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
Pardon me while I ramble on about how much I love this movie... ;)

50411533993_f92606faee_o.jpg


Return of the Jedi (1983)
Director: Richard Marquand
Country: United States
Length: 132 minutes
Type: Sci-Fi, Fantasy

Yeah objectively 'The Empire Strikes Back' is probably the better film and yeah 'Star Wars' was the ground breaking one but 'Return of the Jedi' has always been my favourite.  I love the scale, the drama, the emotion, the imagination, the excitement, the fun, the hordes of weird aliens and armadas of space ships engaged in titanic battles, realised through unrivalled practical FX. RotJ was/is arguably the most abused film in the trilogy "special edition" changes wise. So thank heavens that today I sat down to watch the 4K83 fan scan of a theatrical print for the first time (minimal DNR version of course). I've never seen a transfer of the movie look this detailed, contrasty, clean, colourful and rich with grain. All the matte paintings/glass shots look better than on the Blu-ray, not over exposed and miscoloured but perfectly meshed with the live action. The matte lines are also hardly visible, which puts the lie to the 1997 claims that they needed to recomposite and change everything to "fix" these films. If they ever release a true official version I'll buy it but I can't imagine it looking better than this.

I can never get over the thrill of the Sarlaac scene when Luke catches the Lightsaber timed with John Williams' score and starts wrecking the place.  It's easy to forget that we'd never seen a Jedi be a "Jedi Knight" until that point (before all the Jedi saturated videogames, sequels and spinoffs).  We'd seen two lightsaber duels but not the full powers of these legendary warriors that old Ben spoke of in the first film, able to take on Jabba's entire retinue single handedly (it's literally seeing "The Return of the Jedi").  RotJ was also the first time we saw the Rebels doing rebel stuff (which again is ubiquitous in the spinoffs), a strike team on a covert mission behind enemy lines, using stolen codes from other rebel agents, planting bombs, taking down shields.  I'm not sure but was this the first full-scale space battle on film, the first actual "star war"?  SW had some dogfights and ESB had a ground battle but vast capital ships, cruisers and squadrons of fighters facing off?  The arrival of CG allowed a mid-90s, mid-budget TV show like Babylon 5 to regularly mount battles of the same scale and similar quality (and that was a quarter-century ago), since then we might have gotten a bit jaded with that sort of thing. But to do this back in 1983 with models, motion-control and optical compositing was astonishing. The FX used in RotJ's space scenes will possibly never be bettered. It's not just that they are technically brilliant, the camera movements are so natural and free flowing.  The shot where the camera is following Lando and Wedge racing along close to the Death Star's surface, swerving between pylons and then does a rapid turn and takes us straight down spiralling into the interior of the space station takes my breath away every time.  Then the Falcon blasting back out of the fireball at the last minute with Billy Dee Williams shouting "Yee-haa!" is one of my all time favourite movie moments.  I'd rate Williams' score as his best for the trilogy because he gets to play with all the themes from the last two movies and weave in beautiful new ones. On this re-watch I was really appreciating the Emperor's spider web throne room design, plus all the incredible drama set within it and the intensity of the cold blue lighting.

I never really had a problem with the Ewoks. Some find them too cute but they are introduced trying to cook our heroes alive and they often get criticised for defeating the heavily armed Empire with sticks and stones, which they don't really do. They create a diversion and in the process of getting half massacred, set the Rebel team free and buy Chewie the opportunity to steal an AT-ST and turn the tide of the battle. It's true that Harrison Ford isn't putting as much effort into his performance but 1983 Harrison easily has enough charm to coast a little and still be enjoyable to watch. RotJ also gets single out for having a 36-minute mini-adventure on Tatooine, before moving on to the main plot, even though ESB opens with a mini-adventure on Hoth before moving on with the main plot, which is exactly 36-minutes long too.  There are lots of original pop-culture trilogies that have a great first movie and some that have a better second film but there are few that have a straight run of three classics and manage to wrap up a continuous narrative with as much crowd-pleasing satisfaction as RotJ (I might include the 'Back to the Future' trilogy, depending on how generous I was feeling towards part 2).  'The Matrix', 'Terminator' and 'Alien' stories all went off the rails, on or before the third movie and Star Trek's fantastic and dramatically weighty "Spock trilogy" concludes with a light time-travel comedy about whales (which I do love). RotJ manages to concludes all the plot threads left over from the last two movies, Han's fate, his romance with Leia, Luke's evolution as a Jedi, the rising rebellion, Lando's redemption, Vader/Anakin's arc, good's triumph over evil and does it all in a big exciting action adventure.  I hadn't really noticed before that in the penultimate shot of the film, a smiling Mark Hamill briefly looks straight into the camera and winks at the audience before turning away, kinda like "that's all folks" and sometimes I wish it was (the moment was removed in all versions after 1997).

As delightfully cheesy as the voiceover is on this vintage 35mm trailer, it absolutely nails what the film is all about. I love that "The heart of a hero... the courage of a rebel... the strength of a leader... the loyalty of comrades" bit:



 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50419075511_7b6ff9859c_o.jpg


The Haunting (1963)
Director: Robert Wise
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 114 minutes
Type: Horror, Drama

Robert Wise directs the first of several adaptations of the 1959 novel 'The Haunting of Hill House' in which a team of paranormal investigators sleep over in a haunted old mansion.  I didn't find it very scary and only a little spooky but the technical merits of the production were entertaining. The use of loud, weird sounds (and only sound) rather than visuals to create the terror, must surely be ground breaking and used by all horror movies of this sort today. Wise also uses unusual camera placements and movements to disorientate the viewer. The scene where a thick wooden door appears to breath in and out as some unseen beast growls beyond it was very cool. I thought three out of four of the main characters/performances were a bit annoying.  Eleanor was too whiny, Theodora was too inconsistent and Luke was a jackass (Julie Harris, Claire Bloom and Russ Tamblyn respectively). The exception being Richard Johnson's head investigator Dr. Markway. His reassuring velvet smooth voice, tweed jackets with leather patches, bushy moustache and a twinkle in his eye were a lot of fun. He's halfway between an authoritative professor and an excited schoolboy. The only other movie I've scene him in was Lucio Fulci's 1979 horror 'Zombie Flesh Eaters', in which he again played a doctor and again was the total highlight of the film. I shall have to watch out for him in other things.

 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
Pardon me while I ramble on about how much I love this movie... ;)

50411533993_f92606faee_o.jpg
F- yeah! Totally, all of that.  To piggyback on what you said, I think people often view the Ewoks as a lightweight addition to the trilogy that represents it being further directed at children. That sells Lucas short. I'd submit to you that he's always looking for things that kids will get that also have a deeper resonance. As much as mutants in X-men stand as an analogy for minorities or LGBTQ members, the way the Empire treats droids and aliens is the parallel in Star Wars. They're second-class citizens, dismissed as "rabble" by the Empire, but welcomed with open arms by the Rebels. The Ewoks contributing to the overthrow of the Emperor is important, because despite their lack of resources, they do their part. It's about finding solidarity and banding together despite differences to fight against the Empire's conformist hegemony. That's why it's also important that the run against the Death Star is being led by Lando and Nien Nunb (such a funny name that I've always remembered it from the action figure).

The emotional resonance of the final showdown with Luke and Vader gets me every time, as well. It's even more powerful if you've watched a marathon of the prequel material, too. Williams' dark choral score battling with the horns of the Rebellion are an aural signifier of the battle of faith between Luke and the Emperor as Vader's soul shifts between Jedi and Sith. Literally everything from 6 films is on the line, as you wonder if Anakin can truly be redeemed, or if his son will succumb to the dark side as his father once did. While I always get a bit annoyed at how much lightsaber battles are broken up and cut away from in the series, the epic confrontation at the end of RotJ is unparalleled in the rest of Star Wars, perhaps in any other film series. The careful work up to that moment alone dwarfs any potential criticisms of the rest of the movie. It's a stone-cold classic.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
mnkykungfu said:
the way the Empire treats droids and aliens is the parallel in Star Wars. They're second-class citizens, dismissed as "rabble" by the Empire, but welcomed with open arms by the Rebels.

SW is a fun fantasy universe. I think it's best to not delve too deeply into, or think too hard about how Droids are portrayed in the SW universe. Having said that... ;)

...They're represented as disposable slaves (they're bought, sold, traded and gifted by the good guys and bad guys) but also as thinking beings with their own personalities and quirks. None of the human characters really seem to give a toss when R2 is potentially killed at the end of SW (they're too busy thinking about champagne and medals), only his "life partner" Threepio is upset, and they don't seem phased when Threepio in turn is potentially killed in ESB (beyond Leia finding his disappearance fishy but not enough to interupt their dinner plans ;) ). Although the alien Chewie seemed to care enough to look for him, put him back together and carry him to safety. Again in RotJ, when Leia gets shot trying to hack the door it's a big deal, when R2 gets shot hacking the door it's just an inconvenience of time.

mnkykungfu said:
it's also important that the run against the Death Star is being led by Lando and Nien Nunb (such a funny name that I've always remembered it from the action figure).

Yes, I think RotJ portrays that inclusive spirit of the Rebellion the best. It's effective storytelling when the Empire is only portrayed as old, white, British humanoid men and the Rebels should be the opposite of that. In SW the rebels are white American male "hippies" of all ages, which is a noticeable difference (Leia aside). In ESB it's that plus a few white women working in the ops room on Hoth. In RotJ the rebels are made up of all sexes, races and alien species (except IIRC they unfortunately overdubbed the one female pilot at the battle of Endor with a man's voice :D ). With a sentient bipedal squid commanding the fleet, Lando leading the fighter assault and a woman in overall command of the Rebels (Mon Mothma). You don't need to get into any politics with this aspect (again this is fun escapist fantasy) but it strongly implies visually that the Empire are the forces of evil and oppression without anybody needing to say it. In my head canon, I like to imagine the Rebels were always like you see them in RotJ and the camera just didn't notice in the first two films :D .

mnkykungfu said:
The emotional resonance of the final showdown with Luke and Vader gets me every time

Yeah, I think I forgot to mention that. For me, the sparring of words matters at least as much as the actual swordplay in a good film swordfight (lightsaber or not). In RotJ the verbal jousting between Luke and Vader is great. It's not just Vader verbally taunting Luke like in ESB, it's both of them trying to turn the other.  Similarly that's one of a number of reasons why the wordless duel in TPM is rubbish in my opinion (beyond the incredible Williams score).

<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />

50429090802_d957309f42_o.jpg


Shock Corridor (1963)
Director: Samuel Fuller
Country: United States
Length: 101 minutes
Type: Drama, Horror

Reckless and ambitious Journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) fakes mental illness in order to be admitted to a particular asylum where a murder took place and so hopes win the Pulitzer Prize. In there are three patients who witnessed the crime but as Johnny works to get some lucid answers out of them he starts to lose the grip on his own sanity. The three patient's fractured psyches appear to be symbolic of traumas from American history. Stuart was a disgraced Korean war POW who now believes himself to be a Confederate General, Boden was an atomic scientist who has regressed to childhood.  Most disturbingly, there is Trent who was one of the first black students at a desegregated southern university, tormented by the constant abuse, now believes himself to be a rampant white suprematist. There must be a solid hour of characters ranting and raving to quite terrifying extremes. Stanley Cortez, the famed Cinematographer of 'The Magnificent Ambersons' and 'The Night of the Hunter' provides some gorgeous shadowy expressionist black & white visuals, although unusually the patient's dreams are apparently so mad that we switch to colour film. There are a few sequences that look distinctly Lynchian and the scene with torrential rain indoors looks amazing.

 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
^That's an interesting one.

Not to turn this into an ROTJ thread, but yeah, in short I agree with most of what you said. There are for sure differences in SW and aliens and droids for minorities and LGBTQ is not a direct swap. I don't think Lucas intentionally meant them to be the same. But I do think he wanted to get across the feeling of themes, exactly as you took them. For me, that Luke talked to the droids like people and that Han's co-pilot was an alien and he stood up for him to Ben marked Han and Luke as rebels (lowercase R.) They were more humane and inclusive than the general, oppressive attitudes of the time, e.g. "No droids allowed! They have to wait outside!"  But yes, it definitely was made more explicit over the course of the series. (Though, side note, I think when Vader is willing to employ alien bounty hunters in ESB and his admirals refer to them as "scum" and question him, it's a hint at this same attitude, and that Vader is a bit different.)
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50432386433_9240bb301d_o.jpg


Point Blank (1967)
Director: John Boorman
Country: United States
Length: 92 minutes
Type: Crime,Drama

I do love a good revenge thriller and 'Point Blank' is one of the best. When I first wanted to see it I had to import it from the USA, it was quite hard to come by on DVD in Europe, the blu-ray is now thankfully widely available. Lee Marvin plays the enigmatic Walker, a man shot, betrayed and left for dead by his friend Mal (and Walker's wife), who tried to kill him to keep his share of a heist, $93k. Now Mal is near the top of a criminal organisation but Walker wants his $93k back and he doesn't care how many people he has to go through to get it. It's all about Marvin's menacing performance and the way Director John Boorman shoots Los Angeles. He finds ways to make the city look like a bleak desert of concrete, giving it the feel of a Western. Marvin projects menace and violence without hardly raising his voice, or moving a muscle. Walker's a man who is to stubborn to die. He lounges back in chairs listening to others talk, not in a casual, relaxed way but in the manner of a man who knows nobody in the room is a threat to him, they'll all soon be dead by his hand. There is a dark sexuality to Walker's actions too. In his first explosion of violence, he bursts into his cheating wife's bedroom, empties his gun into her mattress, at point blank range in a thrusting motion, then ejects the spent cartridges onto the floor and flops back on the couch, the phallic gun hanging limply from his band. When he finally gets to the man who has usurped his place in the marital bed, he tips him out of his bed sheets and drops him naked off the balcony of a tall building. There is also a long shot of Walker striding through LAX's iconic mosiaced walkway, his footsteps loudly clacking like the tick of a clock, counting down the lives of the people who have wronged him. Boorman structures the film in an experimental flashback, or flashforward dreamlike way, leading some to theorize it's really what Walker is imagining as he dies from the bullet wounds inflicted by Mal. A theory that Boorman hasn't discounted, although it's not one I've been much troubled by. FYI: Brian Helgeland's 1999 movie 'Payback' (starring Mel Gibson) is an adaptation of the same novel 'Point Blank' is based on.


 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50438424761_abeec572e5_o.jpg


The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Country: Italy / Algeria
Length: 120 minutes
Type: Historical, War

Italian Director Gillo Pontecorvo's film about the then quite recent uprising against the French colonial government in Algeria (1954 to 1957) is incredibly powerful. Shot in the actual locations, documentary newsreel style, with historical characters, it has an unparalleled level of realism. I first heard about and watched 'The Battle of Algiers' when it was widely reported that it had been screened for Pentagon staff in 2003 to help them understand similar issues in the Iraq war. You can see why, it shows the inexorable escalation of both side's methods, the Algerian rebels into increasing levels of unpredictable violence and terrorist atrocities and the occupiers resorting to torture and more brutal oppression. The shots of the aftermath of those bombs on public places, showing mangled bodies buried in rumble is almost too real in hand-held black & white. The pain on the face of a humiliated and defeated torture victim in the opening scene, shouting "Noooo" is hard to watch, even when you know it's staged. Ennio Morricone's militaristic score adds further power and dread to the images.

For a while 'La battaglia di Algeri' joined a list of 50s/60s films banned in France for being critical of military history such as 1950's 'Afrique 50' (the director was also jailed), Stanley Kubrick's 'Paths of Glory', Jean-Luc Godard's 'Le Petit Soldat', 1961's 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' and as late as 1988's 'The Camp at Thiaroye'. This seems a very odd practice to me, I can't think of any films banned in the UK for being critical of British history (or the USA either)... plenty have been banned for sex, violence, blasphemy and general "immorality" but none for "sedition". I might be wrong and forgetting some examples? It's interesting because from what I've seen, in most respects French film censors in the 50s/60s were way more liberal, pragmatic and realist than the prudish, heavy-handed censors in the UK (and US).


 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50441620253_7177d8eea4_o.jpg


Targets (1968)
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Country: United States
Length: 90 minutes
Type: Thriller, Crime

Producer Roger Corman said writer/director Peter Bogdanovich (on his first proper movie) could do anything he wanted, as long as he stayed under the tiny budget, used Boris Karloff for 20-minutes (because the veteran actor owed Corman 2-days work) and used 20-minutes of footage from the Corman/Karloff movie 'The Terror' to fill out the runtime. Bogdanovich came up with a genius plot to work within those constraints. Bogdanovich himself plays an enthusiastic new Director 'Sammy Michaels' on his first job working with an elderly Universal-Horror-type star 'Byron Orlok' played by Karloff, who is fed up with the movie business and eager to retire back to England. So they just had to play themselves. 'The Terror' becomes the movie-within-a-movie that they have just finished and are promoting at a Los Angeles drive-in theatre.

Running alongside the Orlok narrative is the life of a seemingly clean-cut, all-American, suburban young man 'Bobby Thompson' (Tim O'Kelly) who is actually a cold blooded psychopath. There's a chilling early scene where he arrives home from the gun store and silently surveys the photographs of his family on the walls as if they are of strangers in somebody else's house. Armed with a sniper rifle he goes out and calmly and dispassionately tries to kill as many people as he can before the police can catch him, inevitably ending up at the same drive-in premiere as Orlok. Bobby's killing spree is based on the 1966 Charles Whitman and 1965 Andrew Clark cases, plus 'Targets' was made in the wake of the JFK assassination, a year before the Manson slayings and released the same summer as the shootings of Robert Kennedy and MLK.  So Bogdanovich cleverly brought the old-fashioned spooky gothic monster represented by Karloff, face-to-face with the too-real modern monster of the 1960s. Unfortunately it still feels very, very relevant.

Karloff was always more fortunate than fellow Universal star Bela Lugosi.  For one his very last films, Karloff got Peter Bogdanovich's stylish and daring 'Targets', where as Lugosi got Ed Wood's 'Plan 9 from Outer Space', the "worst film ever made".


This monologue by Karloff is a treat on it's own:

 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
Thanks for putting The Battle of Algiers on my radar!
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
TM2YC said:
76 years ago...

28888491298_d6cdcdaf84_o.jpg


The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Director: John Huston
Country: United States
Length: 101 minutes
Type: Film-Noir, Drama, Detective, Romance

I've watched quite a few Humphrey Bogart Film-Noirs and seen so many imitations, parodies and homages (e.g Star Trek: TNG) to 'The Maltese Falcon' that it took me a little by surprise when I pressed play on this and soon realised I had never actually seen it before. Bogart plays a hard-boiled Private-Eye in a world where everybody (except his trusty secretary) is a pathological liar. We watch him wade through this fog of deception, with murders round every corner to find the titular MacGuffin. Peter Lorre is deliciously slimy and Sydney Greenstreet plays the main bad-guy with such charm, you want to love him. It's funny to note that Bogart's 'Sam Spade' character dislikes guns and does not carry one but is pictured in many of the promotional posters duel-wielding two 45s :D .

Such a great film, totally holds up! Yeah, I was thinking back to the film and trying to remember when he ever held two guns?! lol  This isn't exactly action-packed like the poster makes out, but it's pretty riveting nonetheless. Almost as good as Casablanca!
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50491063373_4655dbe1d9_o.jpg


The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Director: Jim Sharman
Country: United Kingdom / United States
Length: 100 minutes
Type: Musical, Comedy, Horror

As a nipper, I danced to 'The Time Warp' at many a working men's club disco and Christmas party, it was a guaranteed floor-filler but this was the first time seeing the musical it was from. I really wished I'd familiarised myself with the rest of the soundtrack before seeing the movie because 'The Time Warp' seemed to overshadow every other song.  From the costuming, I'd have sworn this was inspired by the UK Punk scene but this actually slightly predates that, so maybe the Punks modelled themselves on Dr. Frank-N-Furter's motley crew?  Then again, the UK Glam rock genre (and it's cross dressing) bled over into Punk.  Tim Curry fearlessly plays Frank-N-Furter, an outrageously fun bisexual/transvestite version of Frankenstein.  Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick gamely play 'Janet and Brad', two parodies of clean cut all-American youngsters, who chance upon Frank-N-Furter's castle and his bizarre world.  Richard O'Brien, who wrote the musical, plays one of the castle's denizens, an Igor type.  A pre-fame Meat Loaf also appears and sings a number, probably providing a template for the similarly gothic-horror Rock vibe for his debut album two years afterwards.  Charles Gray is a scream as the ridiculously overacting narrator.  If you go in with a working knowledge of Universal monster movies, Hammer horror (it was filmed at their studios and locations), Marlene Dietrich films and schlock sci-fi, then you'll enjoy the visual allusions to the full. It's had a 4K transfer from the camera negative, allowing the bright colours and details to really fly off the digital cinema screen. But I wonder what those old grindhouse prints that ran on the midnight-movie circuit looked like?  Apparently 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' is still technically in it's original theatrical run (the longest on record) because it's always been playing somewhere. So far it's made a 12,000% profit on it's tiny $1.4m budget.

 

asterixsmeagol

Well-known member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
2,012
Reaction score
924
Trophy Points
128
I've so disappointed that I can't go to a live screening this year. I've been to at least one every year for the past 20 years.
 

mnkykungfu

Well-known member
Donor
Messages
2,279
Reaction score
747
Trophy Points
123
^Wow, bizarre to "hear" someone describing RHPS for the first time after all this time. I used to go to showings fairly often in high school and college, though I've never seen a bar/club play The Time Warp! lol In my experience, that was like a wedding reception thing.

Oh, and I don't think much of anybody cared about the visual fidelity of the print until recently. The audience is too busy throwing things.
 

asterixsmeagol

Well-known member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
2,012
Reaction score
924
Trophy Points
128
TVs Frink said:
I'm going to watch 2001 movies in chronological order. Should only take about 4.5 hours.

I'm disappointed that 2010 didn't do better in the box office, I would have liked to have seen 2061 adapted as well. 3001 too, but I didn't like it as much.
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
asterixsmeagol said:
I've so disappointed that I can't go to a live screening this year. I've been to at least one every year for the past 20 years.

I did watch it in a cinema but it definitely wasn't the packed party atmosphere I've heard about. Almost empty, socially distanced and nobody was in drag ;) .

mnkykungfu said:
I've never seen a bar/club play The Time Warp! lol In my experience, that was like a wedding reception thing.

Where I grew up there is a type of popular party DJ that you always get at works outings, Christmas parties, New Years parties and weddings that plays fun pop records. Only records that everybody of all ages knows and will get up and dance to together. If they didn't play 'Time Warp, 'Monster Mash', 'Billie Jean', 'Dancing Queen', Get It On' and 'YMCA' there'd have been trouble :D .

asterixsmeagol said:
TVs Frink said:
I'm going to watch 2001 movies in chronological order. Should only take about 4.5 hours.

I'm disappointed that 2010 didn't do better in the box office, I would have liked to have seen 2061 adapted as well. 3001 too, but I didn't like it as much.

'2010' is near the top of my pile of films to see next.

<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />

50495030793_47006719ed_o.jpg


The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
Director: Sergei Parajanov
Country: Armenia / Soviet Union
Length: 78 minutes
Type: Art, Religious, Biopic

A critic on Wikipedia says "If someone sat down to watch The Color of Pomegranates with no background (knowledge of the film), they would have no idea what they were seeing" so that at least partly excuses my total bafflement. I think the way to approach 'The Color of Pomegranates' is to go back and be born a practising Christian, study an Armenian-History degree, read several books about the 18th Century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova and watch some documentaries about the film's Director Sergei Parajanov. I didn't do any of these things, so the 78-minute series of cryptic, symbolic and avant-garde religious, historical and biographical tableaux conveyed almost nothing. Yes, every one of them is ecstatically beautiful, entrancing and artfully composed but without meaning, it's still a bit of a slog to get through. The frustrating thing is that I'm pretty sure every frame of it does have a literal meaning, it's not abstract.

Criterion have uploaded a representative scene in HD where some stuff happens...?


I wish the whole film was cut to some scorching Turkish psychedelic Folk-Rock like in this trailer (FYI: it's 'Ince Ince Bir Kar Yagar' by Selda Bagcan). It'd be much more exciting that way:


Lady Gaga did a video based on TCoP:

 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50502672597_133efe5427_o.jpg


Vagabond (1985)
Director: Agnes Varda
Country: France
Length: 105 minutes
Type: Drama

Director Agnes Varda loves her wordplay titles and 'Sans toit ni loi' ('With neither shelter/roof nor law') is a double pun but it doesn't translate into English, so it usually goes by the literal title 'Vagabond'.  The film begins on a frozen farm field and the discovery of the body of Mona, a homeless drifter.  Then Varda takes us through time, showing various pieces of Mona's travels during that winter and exploring the lives of the rural people she encountered (sometimes in detail, sometimes no more than glimpses).  Faux interviews to camera from these people express what their feelings, recollections and assumptions were about the enigmatic stranger.  Patrick Blossier's Cinematography is stunning, using a palette of earthy autumnal colours, it somehow looks grim, grounded and bleak but beautiful and painterly at the same time, it's one of the best looking films I've seen.  Varda moves people and scenery past the camera in a way that evokes a Zoetrope but at other times composes shots with the stillness of a photograph.  Sandrine Bonnaire's central performance is achingly sad, yet totally defiant.  'Vagabond' is a work of genius that could only be the deeply empathetic vision of Agnes Varda.


 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50510212368_1f0fbf2e9a_o.jpg


Psycho (1960)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: United States
Length: 109 minutes
Type: Horror, Thriller

This was my first time seeing Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' at the cinema but unfortunately it looked like they'd thrown up an old soft, edge-enhanced, retail blu-ray, instead of a proper 4K transfer (which has been recently created in a new "uncut" version).  So it was far from optimal but hey it's still a great movie.  Everybody gives a fantastic performance (except John Gavin... as always).  Obviously Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates is a masterclass, weaving on the line between quirky and likeable and deeply unsettling for reasons you can't always fathom.  This time I was really appreciating Martin Balsam's cocky, calculating private eye.  He's almost doing a proto-Columbo, all smiles but we the audience know he's working things out all the time and only feigning credulity.  I'd forgotten that it wasn't just Janet Leigh's "main" character that we get suckered by, Hitchcock tricks us multiple times with the same gag and we fall for it because we're conditioned to believe our protagonist will win through.  Hitchcock brings together techniques from his other films, close up eye ball shots like in 'Vertigo' , the tone of 'Shadow of a Doubt' and the roving one-take camera of 'Rope'. Arguably this is the director's peak, he'd make 6 more films after 'Psycho' and they were decent but none would top it.


Hitchcock's extended teaser trailer is a short film in it's own right:


 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50513914243_bb03be7681_o.jpg


The Hustler (1961)
Director: Robert Rossen
Country: United States
Length: 134 minutes
Type: Drama, Sports

'The Hustler' is bookended by scenes of Paul Newman's "Fast Eddie" Felson in competition against Jackie Gleason's formidable 'Minnesota Fats', the "greatest pool player in the world" but the film is really about Felson's war within himself.  Those games and the others sprinkled throughout represent different levels of Felson's self destruction.  The other two characters in the piece are George C. Scott's sadistic gambler and Piper Laurie as Sarah, Eddie's tragic, alcoholic girlfriend.  Laurie is sometimes absolutely brilliant but overplays the role at other times. She was nominated for an Oscar but wouldn't act again until 1976's 'Carrie' (playing the insane mother), for which she was also nominated.  Director Robert Rossen makes full use of the CinemaScope frame, composing the angles of rooms, like angles on a pool table.  At 134-minutes, it could perhaps do with some trimming to the love plot to bring it closer to two hours.  When I sit down to watch a film called 'The Hustler', which begins top-heavy with two exciting extended pool hustling sequences, I don't expect 90% of the rest of the movie to not be about pool playing.  The tempestuous relationship between Eddie and Sarah is brilliantly written but not what I was expecting the subject of the film to be. This would make a great double bill with 1955's 'The Man with the Golden Arm', instead of pool and alcohol, it's got poker and heroin.  That film's star Frank Sinatra actually had an optioned on 'The Hustler' novel, perhaps as a thematic follow up but it didn't happen.


 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,871
Reaction score
2,384
Trophy Points
228
50525847891_fcbb66fe17_o.jpg


The Evil Dead (1981)
Director: Sam Raimi
Country: United States
Length: 85 minutes
Type: Horror

I thought I'd seen 'The Evil Dead' before I sat down in the cinema but soon realised I had not.  It's easy to be confused when documentaries have discussed it endlessly, the sequel (which I have seen) partially remakes it and I'd watched the 2013 version.  'The Evil Dead' had a long and complicated history of censorship and bans in the UK.  Notorious right-wing media campaigner Mary Whitehouse branded it "the number one nasty" but it plays totally uncut in UK cinemas in 2020.  It still carries a full 18-Certificate, which is an achievement for a 39-year old film and still manages to look hardcore next to horror movies of today.  The gore FX exist in a thin margin between grimy, ugly realism and outlandish and comedic splatter, making them really disturbing. IIRC the sequel went way over that line and in to a more comfortably over-the-top area.  The film looks as cheap as it's tiny budget suggests, set almost entirely within a small cabin.  Director Sam Raimi overcomes that by making it endlessly eventful, wasting no time from the first shot and constantly escalating the levels of insanity, so that it never feels limited and small scale.  The other factor that helps it "punch above it's weight" is the dense and powerful sound mix.  Without that it's just a camera moving through a wood but with the sound it's a primeval, terrifying force of evil, that you can feel pressing against the walls of the cabin, trying to get in.

https://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/evil-dead


<hr style="border: 1px solid white;" />

50525847911_e545e26e2f_o.jpg


The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Director: Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez
Country: United States
Length: 81 minutes
Type: Horror, Found Footage

I thought 'The Blair Witch Project' was a bit boring and pointless when I saw it at the cinema back in 1999 and I still don't find it particularly enjoyable but I've got a lot of respect for it as a piece of film-making. "Found footage" films often irritate me when they don't stick to that conceit but 'The Blair Witch Project' holds true to the aesthetic down to the tiniest detail, right to the end. It looks like cr*p, badly shot, uncomposed, out of focus and poorly lit.  I can see why some early viewers, before all the worldwide hype, reportedly mistook this for a genuine documentary and were scared out of their minds because you see and hear nothing that would break the illusion of it being real.  There is no added spooky "sweetening" of the rough audio mix, no added "jump scare" soundFX, no demon creatures leaping out, no CGI manipulation and no obvious horror makeup, not even for a second.  Just happening to re-watch this back-to-back with 'The Evil Dead' was interesting, as they approach a somewhat similar premise and problem, "how do we make our debut indie horror film about boys and girls terrorised by an evil force in an autumnal wood with little money and resources?", with diametrically opposite approaches.


 
Top Bottom