Return of the RECENT VIEWING

[Goat Boy]

Once Upon A Time In The West

On the big screen. A great, great film. Charles Bronson was never cooler. The widescreen vistas of the west have never looked better, Morricone’s music is wonderful and lyrical (so much of the emotion is provided by the characters themes) and the whole thing has a tangible end-of-an-era melancholy that it becomes a fitting elegy for men like Harmonica and Cheyenne (an ancient race). I don’t think any movie has used close ups better either.



Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me

This gets better with repeated viewings. I think it’s a great piece of work, one that that expands the Twin Peaks universe brilliantly. There’s lots of great stuff in here. Visually it looks wonderful, Badalamentis music is probably his best and it’s genuinely moving and heartbreaking. Sheryl Lees performance is stunningly good and the ending is one of the most beautiful things Lynch has ever done.

[Geezee]

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me

This gets better with repeated viewings. I think it’s a great piece of work, one that that expands the Twin Peaks universe brilliantly. There’s lots of great stuff in here. Visually it looks wonderful, Badalamentis music is probably his best and it’s genuinely moving and heartbreaking. Sheryl Lees performance is stunningly good and the ending is one of the most beautiful things Lynch has ever done.

Coulnd't agree more, I continue to be mesmerized by it. It's emotional in a way that maybe only Mulholland Drive matches, and does that unusual thing of standing incredibly well on it's own two legs (I watched it before I'd actually ever seen an epsiode of Twin Peaks) while also making sense in the broader context of the series.

I think I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but what is perhaps most incredible about the movie is indeed Sheryl Lee herself - not just that her performance is so jaw-droppingly fantastic, but that she didn't really act before - it's essentially a coincidence that the girl who did nothing but provide a dead body in the series (as impactful and central to the series as ti may have been) could also turn in a performance like this.

[Goat Boy]

Well she was Maddy Ferguson as well, but yeah. I said to the lass last night that you could never have predicted a performance like this based on the TV show. And it's not an easy thing to do, all that crying and wailing but she's brilliant and heartbreaking and adorable too. The scene where Bobby shoots the guy and she cant stop laughing cracks me up. It really deepens the character and gives more emotional resonance to the whole thing. The ending kills me. Her reaction is wonderful.

[Dr Markus]

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me

This gets better with repeated viewings. I think it’s a great piece of work, one that that expands the Twin Peaks universe brilliantly. There’s lots of great stuff in here. Visually it looks wonderful, Badalamentis music is probably his best and it’s genuinely moving and heartbreaking. Sheryl Lees performance is stunningly good and the ending is one of the most beautiful things Lynch has ever done.

Yeah just finished watching the first season, starting season two now. This will also have to be watched.

[Geezee]

Well she was Maddy Ferguson as well, but yeah. I said to the lass last night that you could never have predicted a performance like this based on the TV show. And it's not an easy thing to do, all that crying and wailing but she's brilliant and heartbreaking and adorable too. The scene where Bobby shoots the guy and she cant stop laughing cracks me up. It really deepens the character and gives more emotional resonance to the whole thing. The ending kills me. Her reaction is wonderful.

Ah yes that's true.
It's sort of similar to Mulholland Drive where he selected Laura Harring who is as unlikely a casting as you can get - her only pedigree was from Sunset Beach, somethign which I used to watch religiously so I know how bad it, and she, was in it. I'd say MD is still primarily driven by Watts performance, but I do love the fact that Lynch took someone who was essentially a generic, forgettable soap opera actress for the Rita character, and she really turned in a great performance.

[Goat Boy]

Yeah just finished watching the first season, starting season two now. This will also have to be watched.

Watch it after season 2 and only then. There's quite a bit that links it to the new series as well

[Goat Boy]

Well she was Maddy Ferguson as well, but yeah. I said to the lass last night that you could never have predicted a performance like this based on the TV show. And it's not an easy thing to do, all that crying and wailing but she's brilliant and heartbreaking and adorable too. The scene where Bobby shoots the guy and she cant stop laughing cracks me up. It really deepens the character and gives more emotional resonance to the whole thing. The ending kills me. Her reaction is wonderful.

Ah yes that's true.
It's sort of similar to Mulholland Drive where he selected Laura Harring who is as unlikely a casting as you can get - her only pedigree was from Sunset Beach, somethign which I used to watch religiously so I know how bad it, and she, was in it. I'd say MD is still primarily driven by Watts performance, but I do love the fact that Lynch took someone who was essentially a generic, forgettable soap opera actress for the Rita character, and she really turned in a great performance.

He has a real knack of getting performances out of actors, especially female ones. You can tell that the actors he works with love him.

Sheryl Lee should have had an Oscar nomination for this.

[Dr Markus]

Yeah just finished watching the first season, starting season two now. This will also have to be watched.

Watch it after season 2 and only then. There's quite a bit that links it to the new series as well

I totally forgot that Bowie was in it too, and the dude from the warriors as well.

[Goat Boy]

David Patrick Kelly. Agent Cooper, come out to play-ee-aaa

[Dr Markus]

Laura Harring is hot.

[Matt Wilson]

Yeah, I'm gonna echo the praise for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It was my favorite Lynch film for years.

[Snarfyguy]

I was surprised - this was actually pretty decent, although for something that appears to think it's pretty smart, it doesn't really withstand strict logical scrutiny. That's okay though.

But what's up with Forest Whitaker's accent?

[never/ever]

With Pirates Of The Caribbean getting so much traction lately, it is good to see a movie like this that takes sea battles to an epic level.
Awesome flick!

[...]

A college grad gets a job as a customer service assistant at The Circle, a big internet company with its own Facebook-like social network site. She soon discovers that it is run like a cult based upon sharing of information, where employees are actually shamed for not living their entire lives online, and are taught that not recording and posting all of your RL experiences deprives little disabled kids who are unable to do the same. Meanwhile, management of The Circle keep promoting new technology that will essentially ensure that all human rights abuses around the world will be revealed and all escaped criminals will be found, with the attendant realities that (a) everyone will constantly be under surveillance and (b)someone, somewhere has access to every little detail of your life, which would seem more scary and prescient if we didn't already know that Facebook, Ebay, Amazon and various retailers, the U.S. government, the Russian government and any number of foreign governments weren't already doing this.

I really, really liked the novel, so I'm quite intrigued to how the film turns out, it doesn't read like an obviously cinematic book. The main character is my biggest problem, her motivation and lack of question didn't ring true. The ex boyfriend who symbolises freedom and self reliance has the coolest name, too. Mercer. Something like that.

The flim was fucking awful. Unimaginably bad. I've seen better TV movies

[...]

I had high hopes for this as I loved the first one, but at the end of the day, meh. The story and individual storylines falling in to place were fine, but their use of humor was over done. Moments when you were suppose to be worried or someone was suppose to come across as evil or menacing were ruined by needless jokes. This caused the characters building up to be seen as evil or menacing ruined with one line of humor. It also got a bit too touchy feely at the end as well. The song choice for certain scenes were so wrong and badly chosen it's was awful.

It was enjoyable but nothing new.

Saw this in HK last week. OK, but not a patch on the first one and could have been much better with 20 minutes cut out

[hippopotamus]

Woman of the Year

I love these two, and this could be their best work together (not that I've seen them all). It does have some issues though. I don't think there's too much wrong with the Hepburn character, but 'old Spence does - and this being a film from 1942, he has to domesticate her in order for them to be happy. The picture condones it and the ending is awkward - but the chemistry is there. And wasn't Kate beautiful?

I'm really late replying to this, but when I was I considered this as an inclusion in my top 100 films.
It's not really great, though.

I think I might have seen everyone they did together (I made a point of doing so, once, back in the old-days when you had to make do with what you could find at video stores and such.)
This was their first, of course. I think that's the real magic of it. There are some brilliant touches, like the very first shot of when Spencer Tracey first sees her. She's wearing a skirt, which almost jars knowing her in all her other roles. Her Femininity is so pronounced.

(edit: Youtube! I forgot about youtube!
)
There is some spectacular acting. That scene when he's in the car with the aunt (Whatever her name is) and he says his little speech, which I Love, and really THINK on sometimes where he says something like " I like to think my small things matter in a big way. "
(youtube was no help)

"then why don't you marry the girl"
"i think I will. "

I like the contrast of the characters, which I think echo-ed the appeal of their individual characters on screen.
He was always the lovable, down-to-earth, everyman.
She was always the quirky, pants-wearing, opinionated, jaunty-voiced Lady from on High.
I like that they worked like that in real life, and I like seeing that on screen.
I think that's why this film works.

But as you say, there are strange bits. I don't REALLY think he's trying to domesticate her. But it does what a few George Cukor films do, and seem to end, half way through the argument. (Imagine what a film Sylvia Scarlett might have been if it didn't have such a strange strapped-on happy ending?)
I don't think this film resolves. And it asks more questions than it answers (How is a woman supposed to be an international reporter extraordinaire and be everything she needs to be in the home?) I'm not sure it suggests she HAS to give up everything so she can make a decent waffle. But it's a bit left open.

Of course, I think that it picks up the pieces a bit in Adam's Rib, which is a bit more Complete.
I'd still like to watch it again soon.
She really IS very endearing in this film.
I

[joels344]

[joels344]

[Matt Wilson]

Long Strange Trip

Anyone seen this yet? A four-hour Dead doc currently streaming on Amazon for free. I've only watched one episode and it was great. But of course, I would say that, right?

[Snarfyguy]

There's actually a lot to unpack here, but I'll keep it brief: In the Citizen Kane of Hamburger movies, Michael Keaton plays Ray Kroc, the founder of the McDonalds franchise empire. He's ambitious and driven, but also a scoundrel and something of a cipher, as if the movie couldn't quite go with an anti-hero angle; we never really quite know what makes him tick aside from simply possessing a quality of rapaciousness.

Kroc swindles the business away from the McDonald brothers, who he finds operating a West Coast burger stand with a kind of Henry Ford approach to assembly, and whose naivete toward him is their downfall (terrific supporting cast for these characters, by the way), but he's not actually smart enough to know what to do with it even as he plays the franchise angle. Needless to say, it all works out (for him).

Of course he divorces his dud of a wife (a game Laura Dern) and takes up with a younger model and eventually crushes the hapless McDonald brothers, but the audience never really warms to his character, despite a very strong performance by Keaton, and honestly, who wants to root for the guy, or for McDonalds, for that matter? Who even likes McDonalds, really?

Anyway, it kept me pretty entertained, even if I wasn't really sure how.