Movies you have seen recently

[Augusta]

I saw The Package years ago, and I liked it very much.  Good directing work, indeed.  
It's funny because I RENTED that movie a few years after it stopped running in theaters, and within that same renting month I became aware there were about THREE movies that had been produced with that same "Cold War intrusion into the US" mindset, all released in the last of the 80's.  So I rented each,... and I think they ALL turned out to be equally good, well acted, well directed pieces.  

You could do a double or even triple feature movie event in your home.  See any two of these back to back, and you'll like them:

The Package (Hackman and Tommy Lee).
The Fourth Protocol (Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine)
The Fourth War (not to be a pun on the crap that's going on with Ukraine). 

The last one is the most intricate of the three stories, hard to predict where it's going, and hard to blame "who-which" for the consequences.  Director favorite of mine, John Frankenheimer.

It's been so long since I watched any of these, so I can't remember which movie began with this really panicky incident with some innocent skiers who took out concealed firearms and got into a half-botched nasty bloodletting exchange at the very beginning of the movie---but the scene was good, and set up the audience well for the mystery in the story.  Was that The Package?

[ViceFanMan]

I recently acquired the 1953 crime-film noir The Big Heat, with Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Lee Marvin, and Jeanette Nolan. In my opinion, this was an amazing movie for its day...very “dark”, realistic, tragic, and even graphic! 

The acting & performances were in-depth & heartfelt, the plot & corruption of the police department were very realistic—so were the tragic results of one cop trying to do the right thing & then becoming burnt out and going for revenge (I’ll stop there so I don’t give away too much of a spoiler), and the graphic/grotesque torture by a gangster to his moll (one of the pictures below) was totally unheard of in movies for the time!  For 1953, audiences must have been shocked...yet fascinated!

In one of the special features of the restored/remastered Blu-ray from Indicator & Powerhouse Films, Michael Mann himself gives an interview of what he thinks of this superb, hard-boiled/brass knuckle thriller & possibly how it may have influenced some of the films/shows he’s done. Maybe I’m reading too much into this...but I can see themes from this movie & plot in episodes & characters of MV! 

If you like hard-boiled, gritty crime noirs, I definitely recommend checking this one out!  

Edited March 1, 2022 by ViceFanMan

[Vicefan7777]

On 2/28/2022 at 8:49 PM, ViceFanMan said:

I recently acquired the 1953 crime-film noir The Big Heat, with Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Lee Marvin, and Jeanette Nolan. In my opinion, this was an amazing movie for its day...very “dark”, realistic, tragic, and even graphic! 

The acting & performances were in-depth & heartfelt, the plot & corruption of the police department were very realistic—so were the tragic results of one cop trying to do the right thing & then becoming burnt out and going for revenge (I’ll stop there so I don’t give away too much of a spoiler), and the graphic/grotesque torture by a gangster to his moll (one of the pictures below) was totally unheard of in movies for the time!  For 1953, audiences must have been shocked...yet fascinated!

In one of the special features of the restored/remastered Blu-ray from Indicator & Powerhouse Films, Michael Mann himself gives an interview of what he thinks of this superb, hard-boiled/brass knuckle thriller & possibly how it may have influenced some of the films/shows he’s done. Maybe I’m reading too much into this...but I can see themes from this movie & plot in episodes & characters of MV! 

If you like hard-boiled, gritty crime noirs, I definitely recommend checking this one out!  

 

When I saw Fritz Lang's name it peaked my interest.  I have seen several of his films and know he is a genius in film making.  So thanks ViceFanMan for giving me another film to check out. 

[OCBman]

On 2/24/2022 at 8:54 AM, Augusta said:

Was that The Package?

Sorry for the delay.

The Tommy Lee Jones character was the package. After Jones escapes, there's a scene when Hackman goes to see his ex-wife and he tells her "I lost my package", meaning his prisoner.

Edited March 4, 2022 by OCBman

[ViceFanMan]

On 3/3/2022 at 9:24 PM, Vicefan7777 said:

When I saw Fritz Lang's name it peaked my interest.  I have seen several of his films and know he is a genius in film making.  So thanks ViceFanMan for giving me another film to check out. 

What other Fritz Lang films would you suggest? 

[Vicefan7777]

4 hours ago, ViceFanMan said:

What other Fritz Lang films would you suggest? 

I have talked about his film Metropolis previously.  That is a great silent movie. Just make sure you find the long restored version to get the full appreciation of the story being told.  The only other film of his I have watched and highly recommend is from 1931 and starred the unknown actor  Peter Lorre in his first starring role.  It is M. It is a film about a child killer on the loose in a German city.  Lorre is brilliant as the killer being pursued by both the police and the criminal underworld.  

By the way I watched The Big Heat today and enjoyed it.  Lee Marvin knows how to play a villain we can despise.  

[ViceFanMan]

1 hour ago, Vicefan7777 said:

I have talked about his film Metropolis previously.  That is a great silent movie. Just make sure you find the long restored version to get the full appreciation of the story being told.  The only other film of his I have watched and highly recommend is from 1931 and starred the unknown actor  Peter Lorre in his first starring role.  It is M. It is a film about a child killer on the loose in a German city.  Lorre is brilliant as the killer being pursued by both the police and the criminal underworld.  

By the way I watched The Big Heat today and enjoyed it.  Lee Marvin knows how to play a villain we can despise.  

I’ll have to check those out...I’ve heard of M, but haven’t seen it yet. Another one of Lang’s films I’ve not seen but plan to get a hold of soon is Scarlet Street (1945), with Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea.  

Edited March 7, 2022 by ViceFanMan

[Augusta]

On 3/6/2022 at 8:32 PM, ViceFanMan said:

I’ll have to check those out...I’ve heard of M, but haven’t seen it yet. Another one of Lang’s films I’ve not seen but plan to get a hold of soon is Scarlet Street (1945), with Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea.  

M in the original German with Mr Lorre is wonderfully creepy, grown-up (American Hollywood was never good about being up-front and mature about themes like child molestation and such....it's hard for Hollywood to be mature at all, LOL), and Lorre is one of the only actors who can make you sympathize for "what this villain is going to go through".  They made a color remake of this film in Hollywood, but it was weak.  Something about the German language makes this ESSENTIAL to see in it's native language.   

Fury, is also a really good Lang piece.  You see Spencer Tracy get mean, I say really MEAN.  I guess I'd want the revenge that the character wants in this movie if I were him, even though I know it's wrong to want it.  

To both of you, I want to suggest one other movie, that is NOT Fritz Lang, but has so much of the human rage that Fritz was great at showing, that you'd almost swear Fritz had directed it.
It's an interesting "caper film" called Brute Force.  Burt Lancaster was star, the story leads the audience towards a master plan that's jeopardized all along the way by everyone's emotions instead of cool-heads... but it goes through with the plan at the end, and the end sequence just leaves you without many words to say.  Hard, all-in, and angry, like Fritz did this---but Fritz didn't do it.

DON'T wiki the movie!  Those blockheads on wikipedia tell the entire story in detail for no reason---duuuh!  

[ViceFanMan]

26 minutes ago, Augusta said:

M in the original German with Mr Lorre is wonderfully creepy, grown-up (American Hollywood was never good about being up-front and mature about themes like child molestation and such....it's hard for Hollywood to be mature at all, LOL), and Lorre is one of the only actors who can make you sympathize for "what this villain is going to go through".  They made a color remake of this film in Hollywood, but it was weak.  Something about the German language makes this ESSENTIAL to see in it's native language.   

Fury, is also a really good Lang piece.  You see Spencer Tracy get mean, I say really MEAN.  I guess I'd want the revenge that the character wants in this movie if I were him, even though I know it's wrong to want it.  

To both of you, I want to suggest one other movie, that is NOT Fritz Lang, but has so much of the human rage that Fritz was great at showing, that you'd almost swear Fritz had directed it.
It's an interesting "caper film" called Brute Force.  Burt Lancaster was star, the story leads the audience towards a master plan that's jeopardized all along the way by everyone's emotions instead of cool-heads... but it goes through with the plan at the end, and the end sequence just leaves you without many words to say.  Hard, all-in, and angry, like Fritz did this---but Fritz didn't do it.

DON'T wiki the movie!  Those blockheads on wikipedia tell the entire story in detail for no reason---duuuh!  

Hollywood couldn’t even spell the word ‘mature’. 

But, cinema didn’t always want to show perverted or disturbing themes, as it deemed them too inappropriate and “dark”. However, nowadays we’ve gone completely the other way...where everything is allowed & shown to sick detail. I don’t necessarily need to see that either. Can’t seem to find the proverbial ‘happy medium’. 

But, there were some earlier American films that dealt with themes such as child abuse or even incest...such as with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. You actually ended up feeling sorry for Norman, even though you knew he was “psycho”. 

Ill have to check out the other films you suggested!  

Edited March 8, 2022 by ViceFanMan

[Vicefan7777]

11 hours ago, Augusta said:

M in the original German with Mr Lorre is wonderfully creepy, grown-up (American Hollywood was never good about being up-front and mature about themes like child molestation and such....it's hard for Hollywood to be mature at all, LOL), and Lorre is one of the only actors who can make you sympathize for "what this villain is going to go through".  They made a color remake of this film in Hollywood, but it was weak.  Something about the German language makes this ESSENTIAL to see in it's native language.   

Fury, is also a really good Lang piece.  You see Spencer Tracy get mean, I say really MEAN.  I guess I'd want the revenge that the character wants in this movie if I were him, even though I know it's wrong to want it.  

To both of you, I want to suggest one other movie, that is NOT Fritz Lang, but has so much of the human rage that Fritz was great at showing, that you'd almost swear Fritz had directed it.
It's an interesting "caper film" called Brute Force.  Burt Lancaster was star, the story leads the audience towards a master plan that's jeopardized all along the way by everyone's emotions instead of cool-heads... but it goes through with the plan at the end, and the end sequence just leaves you without many words to say.  Hard, all-in, and angry, like Fritz did this---but Fritz didn't do it.

DON'T wiki the movie!  Those blockheads on wikipedia tell the entire story in detail for no reason---duuuh!  

Whenever a film is recommended to me I try NOT to look up any detailed information about it.  I do peak at the IMDB site to find out the basic premise, but that is all. It is much more entertaining for me.  I will be watching Brute Force and Fury.  

[ViceFanMan]

11 hours ago, Augusta said:

DON'T wiki the movie!  Those blockheads on wikipedia tell the entire story in detail for no reason---duuuh!  

 

12 minutes ago, Vicefan7777 said:

Whenever a film is recommended to me I try NOT to look up any detailed information about it.  I do peak at the IMDB site to find out the basic premise, but that is all. It is much more entertaining for me.  I will be watching Brute Force and Fury.  

Wikipedia is lots of times much more in-depth, and provides a lot more production info & trivia than IMDB...so, in some instances this can be very helpful and entertaining. But, the flip side of that same coin is, lots of times the full & detailed plot is included as well.  Some people want to know what happens. But, you don’t have to read the plot if you don’t want to...you usually have to click on that option to have it appear. You can ignore the ‘Plot’ option if you don’t want to know anything that happens. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by ViceFanMan

[OCBman]

Watched Arctic (2018) last night. Highly recommended.

[OCBman]

I watched In the Shadow of the Moon the other day.

I didn't find it to be particularly great, but the movie (made in 2019) did have a Miami Vice reference.

The film takes place in stages and each stage is nine years apart. 

In the stage from 1988, a police officer states something another officer already knows and this was his sarcastic reply:

 

 

 

[Vicefan7777]

Tonight was a double feature of classic films.  First up from 1953 The War of the Worlds.  This film about a Martian invasion of the world was based upon a radio broadcast from 1938. That broadcast actually caused a panic.  The special effects were outstanding.  Real models were built to represent the Martian warships.  None of the weapons being used to defend the Earth's population could take out any of the invaders. It looked like the Earth would be destroyed in six days. Then the smallest of molecules saves the planet. 

After that movie my wife and I watched The Time Machine.  A film made in 1960.  A movie that features a scientist in 1899 who invents a time machine and travels 800,000 years into the future. The actual time machine itself is a true work of art.  When he learns the human race has not advanced, but gone backwards he tries to go back to his time. But there is a problem which must be solved first.  

Both films get my highest rating for excellence.

 

[OCBman]

I recently watched, for the first time, The Vast of Night (2019).

A small town in New Mexico, 1950's. What could be causing bizarre noises and strange lights in the sky?

Highly enjoyable, especially if you're a fan of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone".

 

[sdiegolo78]

This is for me one of the best James Bond movies of the whole saga. Criminally underrated. It didn't do very well when it was released. Though as time goes by it's becoming a cult movie. And Timothy Dalton is my second favorite bond after Daniel Craig. True to they way Ian Fleming intend him to be.
What i like about this flick are story-line (so relevant at the time being with the cold war over and contemporary to Vice S5 ) and the grittier atmosphere. Robert Davi was a great villain and he would have been great as MV baddie.

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by sdiegolo78

[Vincent Hanna]

Been watching some new-ish movies ahead of the Oscars.

Nightmare Alley, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Last Duel, The Power of the Dog. Have a feeling the latter is going to win best picture 

[ViceFanMan]

10 minutes ago, Vincent Hanna said:

Been watching some new-ish movies ahead of the Oscars.

Nightmare Alley, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Last Duel, The Power of the Dog. Have a feeling the latter is going to win best picture 

In my opinion, Nightmare Alley deserves Best Picture! Superb film in every way!!  

[ViceFanMan]

9 hours ago, sdiegolo78 said:

This is for me one of the best James Bond movies of the whole saga. Criminally underrated. It didn't do very well when it was released. Though as time goes by it's becoming a cult movie. And Timothy Dalton is my second favorite bond after Daniel Craig. True to they way Ian Fleming intend him to be.
What i like about this flick are story-line (so relevant at the time being with the cold war over and contemporary to Vice S5 ) and the grittier atmosphere. Robert Davi was a great villain and he would have been great as MV baddie.

 

Although I love all the actors playing James Bond, and have all the movies (except the newest one No Time To Die...did not care for it! But will eventually acquire it to add to my collection), my favorite Bonds/007s are a tie between Roger Moore & Pierce Brosnan. My favorite 007 film is probably a tie between The Spy Who Loved Me & For Your Eyes Only. But all (except the last one) are amazing in their own way! 

[Kladdagh]

13 hours ago, sdiegolo78 said:

This is for me one of the best James Bond movies of the whole saga. Criminally underrated. It didn't do very well when it was released. Though as time goes by it's becoming a cult movie. And Timothy Dalton is my second favorite bond after Daniel Craig. True to they way Ian Fleming intend him to be.
What i like about this flick are story-line (so relevant at the time being with the cold war over and contemporary to Vice S5 ) and the grittier atmosphere. Robert Davi was a great villain and he would have been great as MV baddie.

 

100% Agree with your statement! LTK is on my Top 3 of Bond Movies Favorites. The critics were rude at the time, and even now, I still don't understand why! 

[Augusta]

AAhhh, the Bond discussion returns.  License was bummed by critics MOSTLY because of Dalton's portrayal of Bond.  Whether you personally like him or not, Connery set the reference-mark for what critics "understand" Bond's attitude and outlook to be (HA, which is kind of a laugh, because even the author/creator of James Bond didn't like Connery's portrayal at first...and I suspect most of the professional critics never even read one of Fleming's novels to get the intent of James Bond before they criticized any actor in the movies).  

Connery made "Bond" self-assured, slightly smarmy, roguish with the villain's women, able to to be caught off-guard and frightened down to his stomach, able to be confused and out of his depth on rare occasions, and on VERY rare moments willing to resort to quiet personal murder.  Not ruthless killing like a hitman would be doing it----Connery nearly always found a way to make it seem like a payback that he's resorting to in return for something exceptionally nasty the bad guy did or tried to do.  
Critics now expected that same "bond" from all actors thereafter.

Dalton (who played Bond really well in my opinion), ran through the movie more like a cool-blooded hitman.  Trained like a military operative, relentlessly vengeful, and even when he smiled.... not really a playful smile like Connery that could warm the audience to what body count he was leaving behind him.  Not Dalton's fault that his devilish face just isn't as "warmly" devilish as Sean's.  In the Living Daylights he had enough humorous scenes to compensate for it.  But in two hours of License, the critics came away saying "his killing style is too mean and ruthless to be the right Bond--Dalton is just too damn ruthless for the role".  

Dalton's not nearly as brutal as Craig's explicit, machete-missing, motor-oil swallowing, femoral-artery bleed-out, ugliness of murder when he plays 007----and folks LIKE violent Mr Craig... so in a way Dalton may have been just too far ahead of his era.  

[RedDragon86]

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

A+

It's the most impressive film I have seen based on Jesus final 12 hours on earth. Jim Caviezel's performance truly was astounding.

Every critique surrounding this film is about The Antisemitism claims. Perhaps the movie was a bit harsh on Jews, and I will admit it. But if you read the Bible, which probably most of the critics who said this did not, the entire movie is accurate. The guards of the Temple were the ones who arrested Jesus, not the Romans. It was the Jewish High Priests who wanted to kill Jesus, not the Romans. Personally I didn't see anything wrong with that, and I don't think that Mel Gibson was trying to make an Antisemitic film.

[Augusta]

On 3/17/2022 at 12:06 AM, Vicefan7777 said:

Tonight was a double feature of classic films.  First up from 1953 The War of the Worlds.  This film about a Martian invasion of the world was based upon a radio broadcast from 1938. That broadcast actually caused a panic.  The special effects were outstanding.  Real models were built to represent the Martian warships.  None of the weapons being used to defend the Earth's population could take out any of the invaders. It looked like the Earth would be destroyed in six days. Then the smallest of molecules saves the planet. 

After that movie my wife and I watched The Time Machine.  A film made in 1960.  A movie that features a scientist in 1899 who invents a time machine and travels 800,000 years into the future. The actual time machine itself is a true work of art.  When he learns the human race has not advanced, but gone backwards he tries to go back to his time. But there is a problem which must be solved first.  

Both films get my highest rating for excellence.

 

NICE double feature.  No, I mean it---Really Nice.  I considered myself fortunate to see War of the Worlds IN A MOVIE THEATER with the big sound and screen.  This was long after I'd already seen it on tv a dozen times. If I recall, it was a surprise pre-entertainment that was shown when I went to see Star Wars Ep-4 one last time in a theater---cool surprise double-feature!  When you see it in-cinema, you realize why some sci-fi movies are just leagues beyond the rest.  George Pal's respect for "sound" as a story-telling device, as a THRILL-device for manipulating the audience, was as astounding as George Lucas' respect for sound design in his movies.  The eight or nine distinct sounds associated with the Martian vehicles (the meteor crash-ins, the hovering motors, the probe that lost its head in the farmhouse, the sound of the machine scanning, and then identifying a target, the two types of death rays, Holy-Wow!!)  In the theater, the noise made you scrunch down in your seat before the next beam was fired.  I still think it is the BEST movie interpretation of that novel (which is understandably hard to make into a movie if you ever try reading it).

Everything in War that shows how merciless and violent George Pal can be, The Time Machine shows how damn poignant and gentle a movie he can make.  I read somewhere that HG Wells family estate considered that movie the most faithful, sensitive and worthy tribute to HG Wells works ever filmed.  You could watch that movie and well up with tears--the actors played their parts like the most moral and humanitarian parts of a bitter Charles Dickens story.  I was shocked that rough Aussie Rod Taylor could be so... forthright and kind character.  Such sweet "heart" in a science fiction is rare.  
I keep looking at us today surfing the net on our phone while we sit on the public toilet seats, and wonder if we are already on our way to becoming the Eloies.  No, Really!

[Augusta]

17 hours ago, ViceFanMan said:

In my opinion, Nightmare Alley deserves Best Picture! Superb film in every way!!  

I don't watch the Awards anymore, but I heard a newscaster say last night that:

...."movie____ is clearly the better filmed, better performed film, but CODA is likely to win because it can make you cry and that's what the population wants right now"....

  
I heard the newscaster say that, and I thought, I've seen years when the awards made a pretty biased slant in their choices, but NO WAY the Oscar/Hollywood people could be THAT shallow, and award the year's winner based on THAT superficial a reason!!
...Oh boy, was I wrong.  Look who won best picture. LOL!!!

[ViceFanMan]

2 hours ago, RedDragon86 said:

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

A+

It's the most impressive film I have seen based on Jesus final 12 hours on earth. Jim Caviezel's performance truly was astounding.

Every critique surrounding this film is about The Antisemitism claims. Perhaps the movie was a bit harsh on Jews, and I will admit it. But if you read the Bible, which probably most of the critics who said this did not, the entire movie is accurate. The guards of the Temple were the ones who arrested Jesus, not the Romans. It was the Jewish High Priests who wanted to kill Jesus, not the Romans. Personally I didn't see anything wrong with that, and I don't think that Mel Gibson was trying to make an Antisemitic film.

You are 100% accurate...this film was a literal portrayal of what happened & who did what to whom. The Jews did it & brought it about, and that’s truth even if some think they’re “offended”. This movie is supposed to be “rough”, brutal...but accurate, and it was! The most impactful movie ever made!!