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A few reviews

TM2YC

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The Sugarland Express (1974)
I thought this had a proto-'Raising Arizona' vibe but it felt less sure if it was a wacky comedy, or a serious drama, than the Coen Brothers' later film. 'The Sugarland Express' was Steven Spielberg's first theatrical feature (after the 'Duel' TV movie) but shows little of the spectacular magic he'd soon become known for with his other films over the coming decade. The story is very loosely based on a real life case where a hapless couple kidnapped a Texas Patrol man and took off in his car to try to get their baby back from it's foster parents. The low-speed chase begins immediately and it's an hour before things calm down enough to really explore the characters in any depth. The cast do fine work, particularly an unusually sympathetic and nuanced William Atherton (usually the professional "80s douchebag" character for hire) and Western stalwart Ben Johnson as a wonderfully gruff and morally decent Texas Sheriff. 'The Sugarland Express' isn't a bad film but I can't help wanting, or expecting, a masterpiece from Spielberg. I think this was John Williams' first score for Spielberg, it sounds nothing like his other stuff.




Always (1989)
Richard Dreyfuss
plays a dead aerial firefighter sent back to help a new young pilot get his wings, even as he romances the former love of Dreyfuss' life. Steven Spielberg doesn't make "bad" films but 'Always' is one of his weakest. Almost everyone is miscast; mild-mannered Dreyfuss doesn't convince as the hotshot, risk-taking, veteran pilot he's described as (I'd picture more of a John Wayne type... who is actually referenced in the dialogue); a giant, square-jawed, hunky, meat-head is cast as the shy, bumbling, love-sick new pilot and the usually excellent Holly Hunter overacts in a hysterical lip-wobbling way, quite unlike the tough, no-nonsense, tomboy pilot her character is on the page. Only John Goodman as the loveable, slobby, comedy sidekick convinces but he's kinda just being himself, 100% full-tilt Goodman (him drinking the filling out a pile of Twinkies with a straw was very funny). Spielberg goes head long into slushy sentimentality and melodrama, not helped by John Williams' score laying the emotion on with a trowel. But sometimes the romance does really work and toward the end and I got a bit choked up a few times.


Well that's it, I've now seen every Spielberg film, ready for his new West Side Story remake!
 

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Rocky IV: Rocky vs. Drago - The Ultimate Director's Cut (2021 / 1985)
I'm not familiar enough with the film to know exactly what was added, or taken away (beyond the nixed robot butler) but it feels like a more weighty piece, more in line with the other films. However, it was sadly light on Paulie (and his comic relief) and the uber-80s montages clashed with the new more down to earth tone. Before everything was as ridiculous as everything else, on a consistent level of camp machismo. I reckon re-scoring this thing with the proper Bill Conti Rocky themes and cutting back on the montages would take this to an even greater/deeper level.




Playing Away (1986)
With a racism scandal currently engulfing 2021 British cricket it was an unintentionally timely decision for Channel4 to add their 1986 Horace Ové directed TV movie about a black Brixton Cricket team playing a white country village side to it's streaming service. It also tackles class and age (still very much a factor in the game) and is a complex, nuanced and witty exploration of the subject and characters. It's got Joseph Marcell in it a few years before he crossed the pond to play Geoffrey in 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'.

NSFW language in the clip below:

 

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1941 (1979)
This has the reputation for being one of the films that made Steven Spielberg, in the wrong way and thank that's about right. It's no accident that he followed this undisciplined, chaotic, extravagant misfire with 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', one of the most disciplined and streamlined pieces of action entertainment ever made. John Williams is putting the same thundering militaristic gusto into the score, that he'd bring to Raiders but it falls flat here and only serves to underline the non-excitement on screen. '1941' didn't bomb but it's the only film Spielberg made in the 10-years after 'Jaws' to make less than a $100 million, while costing far more than his other hit films. It feels like there was an idea somewhere that would've worked, about an outbreak of hysteria in post Pearl Harbour Californian (something that was inspired by historical research) but everything in the film is so noisy and goofy that the message is lost.

The UK's long running and hugely popular 'Dad's Army' TV series proved that a comedy about "home front" incompetence can be very funny when done right. I think Spielberg and writers Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale and John Milius were hoping to make a war comedy like Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove' (casting at least one of the same actors) but it lacks that dry, deadpan style. I got my first laugh 44-minutes in, when Japanese sailors are trying to squeeze a big American wireless into their submarine hatch and remark they should look into "making these things smaller". Robert Stack is very funny (because he's not trying to be), a year before he appeared in 'Airplane!' doing the exact same shtick and all the business with the ventriloquist dummy made me giggle. The main plot doesn't start for the first 1.5-2 hours, when Toshiro Mifune's Japanese sub is spotted off the coastline and the movie actually starts to work when all the characters have something to do together. The many model shots are worth the watch alone, they rival 'Blade Runner' in my opinion. Those shots of planes low flying through night-time Hollywood look amazing, with miniature moving lights, people and cars. I noticed director Samuel Fuller cameos a year before he cast main actor Bobby Di Cicco in a central role in his classic war film 'The Big Red One'. Di Cicco should have starred in more movies, he's so likeable and almost manages to give the overstuffed '1941' a protagonist to get invested in. I watched the 30-minute longer "Director's Cut", I can only assume the shorter theatrical cut is even more frenetic.


^ The vintage trailer is a fair representation of the film = 50% actors screaming in the vain hope that it's funny.

The Making of '1941' (1996)
The feature-length documentary has all the on-set gossip and anecdotes you could wish for but the editing is very basic. It's mostly just people talking to camera with few cutaways but when the people are as interesting as the likes of Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, John Williams and especially John Milius, then it's okay.

Someone should take a stab at editing 1941. Might be a good film in there. I haven't seen it in years.
 

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True Romance - Director's Cut (1993)
I've had a copy of this that I bought used ages ago so I figured I'd finally watch it for the first time. Tarantino writes and Tony Scott directs this violent love story. A cast of tons of well known actors play bit parts and everybody all around is excellent. Everything is well done and has Tony Scott's typical stylish flare, yet somehow I didn't enjoy this all that much. I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with it. I think maybe it's the lack of transitional sequences from scene to scene. The movie frequently just jumps from location to location which certainly speeds up the pace, but maybe this would have been better as a road movie? That might have made it too similar to Wild at Heart or Natural Born Killers though. It makes me want to watch Wild at Heart for the first time because it seems to be more like the movie I'm imagining in my head.

Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot (2020)
A totally garbage movie. It attempts to capitalize on Game of Thrones by using one (or several?) bit actors from GoT and going for that show's gritty, bleak, violent style and completely failing. Arthur and his knights have been away fighting the Romans and now enjoy getting drunk around Europe while Arthur's bastard son with an emo haircut rules Camelot. The son decides to make is position permanent and it's up to Arthur and his knights to take the crown back. I appreciate the concept of this, but the movie is a stinker. The violence is mostly bloodless, the only nudity is a few butts, and there are basically zero characters besides Arthur and his son. The Knights of the Round Table all look exactly the same, are entirely interchangeable, and I had no idea which one was which, nor did it matter. Arthur is the reluctant hero with possible PTSD. The massive cast of main and extras consisted of about 40 people, which doesn't make for a very exciting storming of the castle finale. The editing and story feel extremely chopped up, as if the movie was supposed to be 2 hours or more instead of 90 minutes and they just never filmed the rest because of budget reasons.

On the plus side, they did use at least one real castle and it looks great. The cinematography is very good and IMDB says it was filmed using only natural light. The forests are beautiful and feel damp and miserable and it's great. The Knights rest in a ruined church in the middle of the forest and it looks wonderful. There's tons of beautiful aerial shots of what I assume to be Scotland or Ireland and a cool Viking style boat that lands in a marsh land. They had all these fantastic locations and the skill to shoot them with but they couldn't come up with the movie worthy of using them.
 

TM2YC

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The Day of the Jackal (1973)
You couldn't make a film like this today, a completely engrossing and exciting political/assassination thriller that features no car chases, no gun battles and no action explosions, just grey old men diligently and doggedly going through boxes of files, calling other officials to cross-check information and holding meetings about their progress. I keep having to remind myself it's only fiction because it's so steeped in real world history and politics and filmed with such gravity. Michael Lonsdale plays Lebel (the Sherlock Holmes of the story), a cerebral French detective on the trail of the ingenious and resourceful assassin known as "The Jackal" (Edward Fox). Tony Britton is also excellent as Lebel's gruff Brummie counterpart. Having Jean Martin from 1965's 'The Battle of Algiers' play a character of a similar political persuasion was a nice touch. 142-minutes fly by, even when I've seen it before. I know I first saw it some time before 1997 because that's when I rented the VHS to the abysmal US remake starring Bruce Willis. I remember wanting my rental fee back and wishing I'd just watched the 1973 film again instead.

 

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I Confess (1953)
'I Confess'
is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best looking films, if you don't like his artificiality (I don't mind it) then this is the one for you as it's unusually shot largely on location in Quebec City. Hitch points his camera up at the city's "châteauesque" spires and towers so they loom over the characters and uses the angles of the architecture to create stunning compositions. In a neat twist on his usual "wrong man" plot, Montgomery Clift plays a young Catholic priest who is accused of a murder but will not disclose the name of the real killer because it was told to him in confession. Hitch is sure to play up the Christ allegory inherent in this premise, placing crucifixes in the shots, while the priest is berated by an angry mob and condemned by the real killer, whose sins he is prepared to die for (murderers were still hanged in 50s Canada). It would make a decent double-bill with 'The Exorcist' for Catholic priest thriller fans. I loved the way the lengthy flashback sequence in the middle was subtlety shot, edited, acted and scored like a mini silent movie (I reckon the frame rate was played with a little too). It's a clever stylistic way to evoke the past, even if you don't consciously notice what is being done. I wasn't too sure what I thought of Clift's performance, there's a fine line between taciturn and inscrutable and just being wooden but I guess I'd come down on the former. I felt a bit more could have been done with Karl Malden's detective character, by exploring why he has a relentless and compulsive need to dig up the uncomfortable facts of the case, resulting in him ironically being blinded to the truth.

 

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The Straight Story (1999)
I always knew I'd love this film, so I don't know why it's taken me 22-years to see it. Most of the story is surprisingly true, about Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) an elderly man who embarks on a 240m journey on a lawnmower to see his sick brother. David Lynch's film about Midwestern backwater folks is very funny but he's not making fun of them, he sees determination, warmth and dignity. The cynic in me is saying that 75% of the film should be people angrily pipping their horns and flipping off Alvin but I really want to believe that every time old Alvin gets in to trouble there's a kind stranger there to help him out. It's so poetic the reserved way the film ends, when you realise that the absurd nature of the journey was a deliberate expression of penance, devotion and love. The slow pace of the narrative and the editing is a marvel, every shot is only as long as it needs to be in order to play the moments to their fullest. When you've got a 2-hour movie with long pauses and lingering shots, how does Lynch have the confidence to not start trimming everywhere? Then again, when the camera is on terminally ill Farnsworth's care worn face, observing every little quiver of emotion, why would you need to cut away? He should have got the Best Actor Oscar that year, Kevin Spacey was nowhere near Farnsworth's level. The supporting cast is perfect too, Wiley Harker is so powerful in the 5-minute scene of two veterans sharing painful war stories in a bar, simply handled in a couple of close ups and a medium shot. It's a shame Lynch doesn't make more "straight" films like this one, he's so good at it, the gazing up at fields of stars was the only Lynch-ian tick I could detect. Although I'd dock him some points for not calling this "A Straight Story" because that would've been a nice pun on the initials of the character.


 

TM2YC

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Inland Empire (2006)
15-years later, 'Inland Empire' is still David Lynch's last/latest theatrical feature film and if experimental 3-hour hand-held low-resolution camcorder surrealism is what he wants to do, then I'm glad he's not made any more. If hardcore Lynch fans dig it then I'm happy for them but it tested my patience to breaking point. If this hadn't been the last Lynch movie I needed to watch to complete his filmography, I wouldn't have bothered. There are some individual scenes that I found amusing and others I found powerful, or entrancing but too few and far between and I wasn't interested enough to possibly fathom what it was all about (if anything). Laura Dern's central performance displays an incredible range and depth, across multiple characters and an array of intense scenes and tonal shifts. Most of the best moments are because of her.

 

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Dial M for Murder (1954)
I've seen about half of Alfred Hitchcock's extensive filmography but 'Dial M for Murder' is one of the few really famous ones to completely escape my attention. I'd tried watching a DVD copy I've had for years but it looked atrocious (flickering like a kaleidoscopic strobe light), so I ordered the blu-ray remaster. It was originally a 3D film, so I assume that is the reason for the exterior FX shots looking very blurry, while the interiors look incredibly sharp. 'Dial M for Murder' is a first rate murder mystery and like all the best ones, it blatantly calls out the clues, confidant that you won't know how to put them together. Ray Milland plays a husband plotting his wife's murder with a delicious joy at his own Machiavellian ingenuity. He's matched by John Williams' (no not that one... no not that one either :LOL: ) poker-faced detective, barely concealing his sleuthing skills beneath an absent-minded veneer (very Columbo). It's exciting because of the way he can instantly see any inconsistency in the evidence, meaning Milland has to try and keep one lie ahead of him.

 

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Interstellar (2014)
Seeing 'Interstellar' in 1.90:1 70mm IMAX was one of the most powerful cinema experiences I've had, so I wasn't sure if it was going to hold up on the small screen. So I made sure to crank up the surround volume to ear-bleeding levels and played the blu-ray on a 65" 4K TV... and it really held up! Yeah in 16:9, sequences like the journey through the wormhole didn't reproduce the illusion that I was actually feeling g-forces like it did with the wrap-around IMAX screen but the story, the characters and emotions all still hit home. The "no time for caution" scene is still one of the most exhilarating action sequences ever, aided by Hans Zimmer's thundering ecclesiastical score. I somehow only just got that the Endurance spacecraft, as it rotates through the stars, looks just like a clock (with 12 modular sections)... in a movie about time.


 

TM2YC

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Leave No Trace (2018)
Will is an Iraq War veteran and widower who lives in a forest park with his 13-year old daughter Tom, they try to minimise contact with the outside world, to avoid being found by park rangers and because Will's PTSD leaves him unable to interact with others and all the complications of the modern world. Debra Granik's sombre, introspective and low-key film quietly explorers the two character's realisation that something is broken about the way they are living. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie's physical performances are wonderful, he's hunched over and cautious, she's inquisitive and wide eyed.

 

mnkykungfu

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Legend (1985)
Unfortunately it's all in service of a rather weak script, forgettable ill-defined characters and general Fantasy nonsense.
I've always read this as being "about" just telling an iconographic Fairie Tale, the perfect live-action realization of the images from European mythology of many past countries. It's purposefully non-specific, with each character and animal representative of a role in nearly every Grimm story since early times.

Blue Thunder (1983)
I was obsessed with 'Blue Thunder' when I was in my tweens.... It's also about corporate militarisation of the police force...
I was obsessed with the TV show "Air Wolf", which I just recently found out was an attempt to make a Blue Thunder TV series. The producers/writers developed it and brought it to the studio, who passed because they wanted to do their own version. So the team went ahead and did it off-license and had a huge hit. Whereas Blue Thunder did get a series but was canceled after one season because it couldn't compete with ...Air Wolf.

Four Hours at the Capitol (2021)
The capitol police/guards/DC-police got some flack.... I think a lot of less restrained police forces in darker parts of the world would have just opened fire
In fairness, US police often have just opened fire. But they've done it at Occupy rallies, at BLM protests, at Anti-Fascist gatherings... there are 100s of cases of people sent to the hospital with deadly and life-threatening injuries because they were protesting. It's just that none of those protests were from people that the cops would've been right alongside if they didn't have to work that day. Seems like the film didn't cover that aspect.

Always (1989)
Only John Goodman as the loveable, slobby, comedy sidekick convinces
Damn, you made me remember how much I loved John Goodman in this movie. He was just on fire in the late '80s, early '90s!
 

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I've always read this as being "about" just telling an iconographic Fairie Tale, the perfect live-action realization of the images from European mythology of many past countries. It's purposefully non-specific, with each character and animal representative of a role in nearly every Grimm story since early times.
Agreed. It's very much a blend of tropes. In some ways that dilutes the movie and makes it generic, in others, it avoids getting tied to any one known fairy tale. I've always enjoyed it.

I was obsessed with the TV show "Air Wolf", which I just recently found out was an attempt to make a Blue Thunder TV series. The producers/writers developed it and brought it to the studio, who passed because they wanted to do their own version. So the team went ahead and did it off-license and had a huge hit. Whereas Blue Thunder did get a series but was canceled after one season because it couldn't compete with ...Air Wolf.
Same here, I loved that show. But, you didn't realize it was a Blue Thunder takeoff? It seemed obvious to me. I watched Air Wolf first, then watched Blue Thunder and realized where the TV show got its inspiration.
 

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House of Gucci (2021)
'House of Gucci'
is too long, is excessively melodramatic, it's got a few questionable performances and it could've been a lot clearer with the way it conveyed story progression, status and class through its costume, makeup/hair and set design. However the central duo of Adam Driver and Lady Gaga portray a genuinely fascinating and unexpected power dynamic that felt fresh in the clichéd rise-and-fall movie sub-genre. Plus although Jared Leto is astonishingly awful, he's at least entertainingly bad. It's a glitzy, glossy and well crafted romp, not Ridley Scott's finest but not his worst either.

 

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Stray Dog (1949)
If it wasn't for the rough sound, 4:3 aspect ratio and black & white image, you could easily mistake this Akira Kurosawa detective drama as a totally modern noir. Toshiro Mifune plays an intense rookie cop who has his gun stolen and so gets partnered with an older, seasoned, more mild-mannered detective (Takashi Shimura) to help him get it back... and maybe his honour too. The search takes them down into the seedy underbelly of deprived post-war Tokyo during a punishing heatwave, where rice ration cards are swapped for weapons. The relationship between the two detectives is beautifully played, you couldn't ask for better actors than Mifune and Shimura. The visuals are so stylish, they're crying out for a Criterion blu-ray restoration one day.

 

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Alien 3 (1992)
I'd forgotten the laughable scene where the deprived prisoners are sitting round drinking bottles of Coca-Cola which they've somehow got, any excuse for product placement.
I'm with you on most of your comments on this one, but the Coca-Cola part totally hit with me as well. It fits with the cynicism of religion and corporate overreach, implying that in this future, of course Coca-Cola is easier to come by than water.

Same here, I loved that show. But, you didn't realize it was a Blue Thunder takeoff? It seemed obvious to me. I watched Air Wolf first, then watched Blue Thunder and realized where the TV show got its inspiration.
I wasn't allowed to watch the movie when I was young, and then by the time I finally saw it in my teen years, it was pretty tame and uninteresting compared to Cyborg, Nemesis, The King of New York, and all the other great B-movie stuff perpetuating on video. Never really gave it a second thought, though Air Wolf hit my kid brain at exactly the right time.
 

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For some reason I paid attention to a child's film that deserves no attention.
Albert (2016?)
On Paramount+
A Nickelodeon funded Christmas themed Toy Story ripoff in which plants are sentient, mobile, and capable of speech. Not content with remaining simply an existential crisis for vegans, the main character sets out to become the "Empire City Tree" , the biggest non copyright offending Christmas tree in the land. Along the way the little evergreen and his tiny palm tree girlfriend who believes in him go on a road trip, make enemies with a cactus, and eventually finish the plot. I checked out after the girlfriend died from too much cold weather but was revived instantly when a caring child gave up her scarf for the plant on the ground in the middle of a crowd in generic brand New-York-esque City.

Almost so bad it's good, ultimately off-putting. Avoid, even with children. There are some off tone fart and sex jokes that are simply dumb and make it unacceptable for REALLY little ones.
 

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Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)
The "never seen" before marketing and subtitle of this wonderful concert documentary is literally a lie because the concert was actually televised
I have no dog in this fight, but in the reviews of it I've heard, the point was that it was put together as a black response to Woodstock and was supposed to be a huge event, widely-covered, really breaking through Black culture to mainstream America. However, once the station had the rights, they decided mainstream America wouldn't be that interested in watching, and decided not to air the whole thing. It was very disappointing to the organizers. What was aired was only aired in limited markets at off times. So the African-American community felt that they were having a revolution, but there wasn't enough interest by white America to see it or show it. Hence the "could not" rather than "was not televised."
and it being sold as equivalent to "The black Woodstock" is also a bit of a stretch because it had about a 10th of the audience
This part was meant to be about the "who's who" of performers at the event. As there had been very few Black performers at Woodstock, the mission was to put together the kind of lineup for the African-American community that would make the Woodstock performers jealous. While the music at Woodstock is more my bag, I'd say that the lineup here probably was more titanic for the community.
 

TM2YC

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Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)
The "never seen" before marketing and subtitle of this wonderful concert documentary is literally a lie because the concert was actually televised
I have no dog in this fight, but in the reviews of it I've heard, the point was that it was put together as a black response to Woodstock and was supposed to be a huge event, widely-covered, really breaking through Black culture to mainstream America. However, once the station had the rights, they decided mainstream America wouldn't be that interested in watching, and decided not to air the whole thing. It was very disappointing to the organizers. What was aired was only aired in limited markets at off times. So the African-American community felt that they were having a revolution, but there wasn't enough interest by white America to see it or show it. Hence the "could not" rather than "was not televised."

My problem was that they choose not to explain that to the audience because "not" shown sounds more powerful than "was" shown. An amazing bit of TV being shown only once in the 60s/70s was not a rare occurrence and is a whole different kettle of fish to the film's implication that the footage was never shown and hidden away. Remember this was the era when the BBC would routinely broadcast Doctor Who once, then wipe the videotape because they didn't think it would have any permanent commercial or artistic value. The fact that the concert footage didn't suffer the same fate (videotape was super expensive) and was preserved for us to enjoy now, means a few people actually did recognise it's worth then.

There was a legendary bit of videotape of Hendrix from the same year (1969) rescued from being binned. The guy who saved it being interviewed:


and the amazing footage (colourised):


Pop culture stuff just wasn't valued back then, regardless of who it was.

and it being sold as equivalent to "The black Woodstock" is also a bit of a stretch because it had about a 10th of the audience
This part was meant to be about the "who's who" of performers at the event. As there had been very few Black performers at Woodstock, the mission was to put together the kind of lineup for the African-American community that would make the Woodstock performers jealous. While the music at Woodstock is more my bag, I'd say that the lineup here probably was more titanic for the community.

It's the way the film deliberately fiddled the numbers to make it seem as big as Woodstock, by combining multiple concerts that presumably had many of the same attendees and comparing that to the massive single Woodstock audience. It was trying to say that the two were equal. They weren't equal but both should have been celebrated. I'll reserve judgement 'til I've watched the Woodstock documentary but I have a hard time believing it could be better than the awesome musicians in 'Summer of Soul'.



The Hidden Fortress (1958)
'The Hidden Fortress'
isn't as epic as 'Seven Samurai', it's not as action-packed as 'Yojimbo' and nowhere near as stylish and refined as 'Ran'. It might be my least favourite of all of Akira Kurosawa's "Jidaigeki/Chanbara" films. That's not to say it's bad, in fact I rather enjoyed it but just less than all the others. I was also a bit disappointed after hearing all the "heavy influence" on 1977's 'Star Wars' comments over the years, to find that boils down to little more than it's also got a couple of bickering secondary protagonists who get mixed up in a war, involving a renegade princess. I couldn't detect any other major plot similarities.

A nice 'The Force Awakens' fan trailer:

 

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Matrix Resurrections. Since the movie is so new I’ll put this in spoiler tags, but I don’t feel the review is overly spoilery. But, fair warning, I didn’t like it.

I love the original Matrix. I really wanted this one to be a return to form. But I admit I was worried by the trailers. It’s not Neo as Keanu Reeves, an actor who starred in a “movie” called the Matrix 20 years ago, but it’s close. Just because you acknowledge that you’re repeating something doesn’t make it cool to rehash things. In fact the meta nature of it makes it decidedly less cool in my opinion. I had a hard time during the first hour deciding if this was intentionally a joke; a parody where the joke is on the audience. And then this movie, just like the first two sequels, gets bogged down in its own complexities and spends way too much time with characters simply spewing exposition. There’s no show and all tell. There’s a seed of an idea about the current culture of social media and conspiracy theories that is interesting but is so inconsequential to the plot as to be pretty much a throwaway. The original movie’s strength was in its simplicity, its finding a unique way to tell a familiar story. This sequel, like its two predecessors, is needlessly complex and often downright silly. A hard pan from me.
 
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