TV/Movies Megathread

[jimmy olsen]

 

[Eddie Teach]

McLintock!

Really didn't like this movie. I could probably handle the sexism, but when it's combined with a faux-Western setting, moralizing, mean-spirited humor and a subplot about the jock stealing the girl from the nerd... On top of all that, it was rather long for a comedy(3 hours with commercials).

[Syt]

I'm gonna use good judgement. I haven't lost my temper in forty years, but pilgrim, you caused a lot of trouble this morning, might have got somebody killed... and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won't, I won't. The *hell* I won't!

[Eddie Teach]

That was a good line. The five minutes of townsfolk hitting random others in the mud that followed was pointless and unfunny.

[Tonitrus]

That's 50's slapstick fight humor.  Of course the humor is lost in our times.

[Zanza]

Watching some episodes of "Tatortreiniger", a German series on a guy whose job it is to clean crime scenes after the fact. Hilarious stuff for those that speak German.

[Syt]

Watching some episodes of "Tatortreiniger", a German series on a guy whose job it is to clean crime scenes after the fact. Hilarious stuff for those that speak German.

Someone else who has gone for the Netflix trial, it seems?

I'm re-watching Breaking Bad. 

[11B4V]

McLintock!

Really didn't like this movie. I could probably handle the sexism, but when it's combined with a faux-Western setting, moralizing, mean-spirited humor and a subplot about the jock stealing the girl from the nerd... On top of all that, it was rather long for a comedy(3 hours with commercials).

The Quiet Man

You might like that one better.

[Zanza]

Someone else who has gone for the Netflix trial, it seems?

Nope. I am currently considering one of the streaming services though. Amazon seems to have the best catalogue in Germany.

[Eddie Teach]

The Quiet Man

You might like that one better.

One day.

I've seen other John Wayne films. Usually they're ok.

[Syt]

Someone else who has gone for the Netflix trial, it seems?

Nope. I am currently considering one of the streaming services though. Amazon seems to have the best catalogue in Germany.

Yes, looks like it. Unfortunately, not available in Austria. We have Maxdome, Snap and Netflix atm.

[The Brain]

Snap!

[Josquius]

X Men, Days of Future Past- Well, that was awesome. The scene with the fast guy doing his thing was particularly brilliant (did they have walkmens then though?...I don't think so...). The typical mid movie lag that superhero films seem to especially suffer from was kept to a low. All worked pretty well. One of the best superhero films.

[Josephus]

I watched the world premier of Irreversible many years ago at Toronto Int'l Film Festival...I remember liking it. but I was still young then, and I appreciated that kind of stuff.

[Ideologue]

The Notebook (200x).  I like the old people part, though it chickens out by using later drafts of the script than the one where [spoiler]Old Noah asphyxiates Old Ellie and then takes his own life.[/spoiler]  Some of the period romance is okay in terms of its individual scenes, except that what we actually see over the entire film are characters who seem to exist with no continuity in regards themselves, or in regards each other, which makes it difficult to parse or feel their relationship in any sustained or deep sense.  The structure is also extremely problematic, in that the film attempts to draw some kind of pathos from the inevitable mortal end of their lifelong love, without, you know, showing more than 5% of their lives.  Finally, the early scenes are unintentionally funny thanks to a story that equates profound sexual harassment and emotional dysfunction with courtship, made all the more humorous by Ryan Gosling's hilariously creepy acting choices and a piece of production design and cinematography that recalls serial killer thrillers and haunted house movies more than a coming-of-age romance.  Overall watchable, but mediocre in the individual parts and disjointed in the whole.

C

Network (1978).  I may review this formally because it is FUCKING GREAT.  Maybe CDM and I can agree on a non-Wes Anderson movie for once. I'll cop that I'd never seen it before, which was clearly my mistake.  Initial observations include:

1)Paddy Chayefsky has almost too strong a voice as a screenwriter, and there are phrases and to an extent whole monologues recycled, barely changed, for Altered States the next year--and since he'd already written the novel, in a very real sense he was recycling Altered States here, which is why some of the word choices seem to fit more organically there.  Though by no means is any line or even single phoneme actually bad!  I just really love Altered States.  (I'm also even more impressed with Russell than I was previously, because he dampened the declamatory style that so dominates Network, differentiating the two very nicely, and over Chayefsky's most strenuous objections.  I've never been more convinced that Russell was right about his approach to Altered States and Chayefsky wrong.)

2)Faye Dunaway is so pretty.  Great performance too, possibly (probably?) her best.  Beats the fucking stuffing out of Bonnie Parker.  P.S. I gave Bonnie and Clyde a B because I was more immature then and still had a tendency to bump up so-called classics half a letter grade, rather than giving them a bad one, but that movie stinks.

3)It's hard to take Howard Beale ironically.  It probably was then, too.  Things are fucked up and bullshit, even if he is nuts.

4)Something like 50% of the films from the New Hollywood era that are supposed to be classics I actively dislike--see Bonnie and Clyde, above, also The Graduate, Bullitt, Robert Altman movies, etc.--or are molasses-slow mediocrities--The Conversation, The French Connection, The Exorcist--so I've avoided a serious education in the period.  And besides, I've been rather ensconced in the 1950s.  My temptation is generally to treat 67-76 as something of a dark age, when everything that is considered great is actually dull or worse, but then Spielberg (and soon Lucas) made everything okay in a kind of renaissance, where the highly-touted movies were once again about cool things like sharks and spaceships.  Of course, there were great movies to come out of this movement, but they all seem to have in common a rejection of boring Boomer crap and a return to classicism, just without the content restrictions of the Golden Age (Chinatown is a 1940s-style detective noir set in the 1940s that just happens to have some explicit sex stuff; THX 1138 is a dystopian science fiction tale of no particular thematic novelty but of perennial value; Marathon Man is a great but cognizable thriller that could've been done in 1946 and was when it was called The Stranger; Blow Out is simply a well-paced, interesting, involving, romantic, classicist redemption of the Antonioni's lame-ass Blow Up and Coppola's merely-passable The Conversation; American Graffiti is itself explicitly nostalgic; and motherfucking Duel is of course motherfucking Duel).  The only real New Hollywood qua New Hollywood movies that I really love and come immediately to mind are Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now; I don't think Carrie counts.  Anyway, given that Network was made in 78 and directed by Sidney Lumet, it's not necessarily something I have to worry about all that much anyway in regards this particular film.

A+