TV/Movies Megathread

[PRC]

True Detective was fucking great!

[Queequeg]

I'd forgotten how incredibly mean Sunset Boulevard is towards the 20s stars in it. Buster Keaton looks great but still gets called a "waxwork."

[Ideologue]

Director's cut of The Counselor is coming tomorrow.

[katmai]

 

Director's cut of The Counselor is coming tomorrow.

[Ideologue]

It's a divisive film, it's true.

[The Larch]

We watched The Science of Sex Appeal the other night.

It prompted my wife to bust out a tape measure to find out her waist/hip ratio. She was happy. 

You made me watch it and realized that I had already seen it years ago. I love this kind of documentaries.  I think I'll post it on Facebook for Valentine's Day. 

For some reason the point that really stuck in my mind back in the day was the "girls at their fertility peak will show more skin in nightclubs".

[Josephus]

True Detective.

That was a great scene.

[Grey Fox]

True Detective is fucking weird.

Have not watch ep 4 yet.

[Ideologue]

Goldeneye (1995).  Not really as good as I remembered, and probably 90% of that is due to this movie's aggressively bad score, with the other 10% being Brosnan's lack of supreme comfort in the role in his first outing and only one set that even attempts to homage Ken Adam.  Still, the fight on the radio telescope is fucking rad.  B+

Rebecca (1940).  While never really justifying all of its two hours and thirteen minutes, it's a great showcase for Joan Fontaine, and a sweet romance that just happens to involve a conspiracy of lies upon lies.  B+

[Savonarola]

Rebecca (1940).  While never really justifying all of its two hours and thirteen minutes, it's a great showcase for Joan Fontaine, and a sweet romance that just happens to involve a conspiracy of lies upon lies.  B+

The sweet romance is never really believable (largely because the director is Alfred Hitchcock), but the conspiracy of lies upon lies is great (largely because the director is Alfred Hitchcock.)  I read that he secretly told the entire cast to be mean to Joan Fontaine so she'd feel isolated.

[Ideologue]

 

I liked how she actually seemed older and more mature by the end, to an almost physical degree, but in shades so that I didn't really notice until Maxim explicitly pointed it out.  It was a pretty good performance.

I believed very much in the romance, a young kid being swept up in the promise of the elegant life.  The only issue I had was the one little part where--it's a 74 year old movie guys--Maxim tells her "I put her there!", referring to Rebecca's corpse, and she's all "Lol poor baby of course I still love you" before he's explained that he didn't actually murder her.

Which, now that I think about it, might not necessarily be the truth.

I was however confused by the fact that no one ever examined the body and found evidence of cranial trauma.  Perhaps it's an artifact of the age, and I guess if it didn't fracture anything a year beneath the sea would get rid of most of the other evidence.

I suspect I would not have understood that the head maid was a coded lesbian except someone told me she was first, but that seems to be a blindspot for me--I thought the old guy in The Killing was just a really sweet, fatherly figure who didn't want his spiritual son Sterling Hayden going away forever, and I still don't see how it's necessary or obvious that Rope's murderers are gay.

[celedhring]

Just rewatched "Sweet Charity" since I decided to rewatch all of Bob Fosse's filmography - he's one of my favorite filmmakers despite his short film career. This one is an adaptation of the stage musical which on itself is a broadway version of Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria", Fosse had directed and choreographed the Broadway version of it, so he was given the gig.

It's Fosse's first film and it really shows. The "spoken" plot parts are dull and uninteresting, only to then explode in lushness and swagger during the musical parts. You could possibly get by reading the plot online and just skip to the musical numbers to be frank. It's a really uneven film. But the songs (and some instrumentals) are truly great. "The Rythm of Life" might be one of the best numbers he put out, and it's got Sammy Davies Jr in it. There isn't much else to say, except that Shirley McLaine plays a whore again, despite they pretending he isn't a whore.

[Queequeg]

Watching The Apartment.  Shirley MacLaine

[Queequeg]

Goldeneye (1995).  Not really as good as I remembered, and probably 90% of that is due to this movie's aggressively bad score, with the other 10% being Brosnan's lack of supreme comfort in the role in his first outing and only one set that even attempts to homage Ken Adam.  Still, the fight on the radio telescope is fucking rad.  B+

I actually love the soundtrack, but 90s electronicy music is kind of my thing. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Robocop (2014)

Very low expectations helped me. Not the worst remake I have seen, this title still goes to Total Recall.
Padilha still knows how to shoot action scenes but those expecting a "fascist" movie as defined per lefty critics will be disappointed. They would not be, had they watched and understood Elite Squad 2 (@Larch)
This movie is still watered down for PG-13, too much for my taste however, and the new Robocop looks more like a Power Ranger. Too much CGI for my taste (I'm not a great fan of it mind you those jumps argh) but some of it was ok (ED 209 sequence). Yes, he's back.
The satire is still there (Fox News fan and O' Reilly fans go away) but won't be as memorable as the original one.
There are references and lines from the original as per specifications of any remake. Baddies are on the meh side ("Batman" is just ok).
No question that the original is still way better but this remake is more pleasant to watch than Robocop 3, damning with faint praise I know but Robocop 3 was rated PG-13 as well. Can't say it beats Robocop 2, however.
The remake allowed a proper Blu-ray of the original Robocop so all in all, this is somewhat positive for the 1987 movie.