The Silver Screen Oasis

kingrat wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 12:20 pm I also agree about the lube. If a film doesn't want to get into the mechanics of who does what to whom, fine, but if it does, then a little more realism is called for.

kingrat wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 12:20 pm
I've always liked Anne Hathaway's performance in Brokeback Mountain. Here's this spunky gal so full of life when we first see her, and then we see her drained of life because of what her marriage has been. I don't like the scene where the guys meet and Jake Gyllenhaal poses gay-bar style against his car in a seductive pose. Gene Shalit got roasted for calling this a seduction scene, but that is what we see on screen. An awkward sense of attraction seems to me what the story calls for. If Gyllenhaal has the experience to pose this way, what is he doing in rural Wyoming? It's out of character.

I also agree about the lube. If a film doesn't want to get into the mechanics of who does what to whom, fine, but if it does, then a little more realism is called for.

Lorna wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 2:12 pm if a film is set anytime in ENGLAND ca. 1800-1940 and features A DRAWING ROOM, then I'm in- (bonus points for A CONSERVATORY)

Lorna wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 2:12 pm [...]
according to wikipedia, this thing DEBUTED IN SOVIET RUSSIA IN 1945 (????!!!!!)

CinemaInternational wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 4:13 pm Lorna, few notes.

ME IN RED (and GIFS)- LHF

1. Your comments on... Kelly McGillis made me laugh a lot (in fact I am laughing as I write this sentence).

and yet, no other actress has managed to have more chemistry working opposite TOM CRUISE (or any chemistry at all, for that matter) make of that what you will...



4. Shadow of the Vampire, fair enough. No film is for everyone and I'm sorry for bringing back bad memories by mentioning it. Be assured though that the man who directed it has only made one film since, and it was slated.

eh, no problems. when i lived in LA, I mentioned how much I disliked this movie to someone in the industry and they mentioned that they knew the writer and he DESPISED the director. I am thrilled to hear he has not worked mostly again thank God there is some justice in this world. the film really does have SUCH POTENTIAL though- even if they had gone into MEL BROOKS TERRITORY, but it refuses to mine for COMEDY (EVEN BLACK COMEDY) when there is GOLD ALL AROUND. Still, I do love the scene where WILLEM DEFOE takes pity on COUNT DRACULA and imagines how humiliating it must have been for him to have to entertain a human in his castle- it's deep and it gets into something that lies beneath the STOKER NOVEL. And then, as I recall it, he bites the head off a bat.

5. The woman who directed Boys Don't Cry has only made two films since: the Iraq War film Stop-Loss and a panned remake of Steven King's Carrie. I recall that the former played TCM a year or two ago, and there she was dropping f-words in a TCM intro in discussion with Alicia Malone (I think). It made a statement.

Oh my Lord, and that statement was "I WAS RAISED IN A CAGE." That CARRIE remake was AAAAAWFUL BTW.

6. Yeah, Sexy Beast was too much style, but then again, that seems to be the director's mainstay. He certainly carved out a niche in provocative cinema though for being only one of four filmmakers who got a subliminally fast shot of a full-on erection into a film that wasn't rated X/NC-17. He also was just Oscar nominated for directing the alarming sounding The Zone of Interest (a film concerning the banality of evil, focusing on the callous family of a Nazi commandant in charge of executions at Auschwitz.)

INTERESTING! I actually watched the trailer for ZONE OF INTEREST and it looked REALLY INTERESTING- it hit a lot of notes with me. I looked into watching it, but it was only available to buy for $20

8. I never read the book of Lovely Bones but it's not surprising if the book was lacking then the movie would be too.

my main issue with book, and i remember this very clearly even though I read it over a decade ago, is that the family is hyper-idealized, they seem almost like some kind of NPR LISTENER'S FEVER DREAM of the perfect family and it's a little too much.

8. As for A Single Man.... the six closely bunched close-ups of a sweaty male tennis players abdomen and nipples, or the salivating quality of the close-up of the male gigolo's pouting lips as cigarette smoke suggestively billows out. I mean if I didn't know better, this whole film could have been directed by Betsy Faye as it's basically this song of desire for the male physique.

CinemaInternational wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 2:12 pm Another bleak round of dealing with the Oscars, and with the glum 2000s, and with uncomfortable issues such as Nazis, concentration camps, cloning, serial killers, warfare, govermental corruption, and sundry other issues.

I wish I could give this post 2 thumbs up.

Your writing is succinct with thoughtful observations that tell me EXACTLY what I need to know before choosing whether to see it since
I agree 100% with what you've written of movies I have seen.

CinemaInternational wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 2:12 pm

The Boys from Brazil (1978) -- Ick. Pulpy story imagines that the infamous Dr. Mengele (Gregory Peck, uncomfortably cast) was making dozens of exact genetic clones of Hitler, as Nazi hunter Lawrence Olivier tries to track him down and untangle all the disturbing secrets. The film is a tawdry mess, in extremely bad taste, and the film is artless in its staging.



American History X (1998) -- Just what the world didn't need: a film about Neo-Nazis. Edward Norton plays a former skinhead who gets out of prison to find that his brother is drifting into the same poisonous beliefs. He then tries to save his brother, to no affect, as the film doubles back for black-and-white flashbacks of Norton's own days of hate. Performances are fine, but the film is loathsome and a waste of time.

CinemaInternational wrote: ↑March 22nd, 2024, 2:55 pm

kingrat wrote: ↑March 22nd, 2024, 1:05 am Since we've been posting lists of 1981 films in CinemaInternational's thread, I've had occasion to recall, from the deepest repressed memories, Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), starring Miles O'Keeffe. If you've seen the movie, and God bless you if you have, you may recall that he doesn't speak. According to acquaintances who said they had seen and heard him in the bars in New York, he had a high-pitched voice that seemed to contradict his manly physique.

If you check out his list of acting credits on imdb, the average ratings are hilariously low, with the exception of--wait for it, you know what it has to be--an episode of--what else????--MURDER SHE WROTE.

I have been fortunately been spared the spectacle of Tarzan, the Ape Man with Bo Derek, but the film is legendarily horrid. I recall Leonard Maltin's movie guide candidly admitting that it was so bad that it nearly forced the editors of the book to create a rating lower than BOMB. As a matter of bleak record, when the film showed up on TCM a couple of months ago, it stayed in the cable company's on demand section for a whole month.....


I loooked up the episode of Murder She Wrote that O'Keefe was in.... that episode was something.... Season 9's "The Sound of Murder" where Jessica investigates a death at a music recording studio where the dead body turns up in the middle of shooting a music video. It's one of the few episodes of the show that my father hated..... And the music video in the episode is the epitome of cheesiness; but then again that was to be expected because for some reason, they decided to hire the choreographer whose very bad dance designs helped to make the otherwise surprisingly strong Cop Rock (alright some of the lyrics were bad, but the show was well-written and acted) into a TV laughing stock for the ages in 1990.

Lorna wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 1:18 pm

kingrat wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 12:20 pm I also agree about the lube. If a film doesn't want to get into the mechanics of who does what to whom, fine, but if it does, then a little more realism is called for.

If they'd used lube, it would've won BEST PICTURE.

(Those of you still mad about CRASH all these years later- think about it.)

Lorna wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2024, 2:29 pm I came across a real obscurity on AMAZON PRIME, "A GREEN JOURNEY" aka THE LOVE SHE SOUGHT.



it appears to be a TV MOVIE from 1990, we all know I love ANGIE, but I also love DENHOLM ELLIOT, so I gave it a watch and found myself pretty into it, even though there are issues.


ANGELA LANSBURY plays a deeply committed, stern, SPINSTER-b****-GODDESS MIDWESTERN CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER (without a whit of accent and NO PRODUCT IN HER HAIR!!!!)- very much the sort of role EDNA MAE OLIVER or MARIE DRESSLER or HELEN WESTLEY would have done for RKO/MGM back in 1933. She takes in a pregnant teen played by CYNTHIA NIXON (!!!!!!)- also without a hint of accent, but looking very charming and pretty good in her part. The film at this point seems like it is going to be episodic rather like ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, but no- we leap ahead four years and LANSBURY is on her way to IRELAND on a CATHOLIC SCHOOL TRIP- while there, she plans on meeting up with a LONG TIME PEN PAL PLAYED WONDERFULLY by DENHOLM ELLIOT in the strange fleeting moments of screen time he gets (i DON'T wanna spoil anything, but his character has a secret and is something of a queer (in the classic sense of the term) duck, ELLIOT is of course perfect for the part.) The real "romantic lead" by default becomes ROBERT PROSKY (also without a Midwestern accent) who costars as THE WORLD'S CHILLEST CATHOLIC BISHOP.

(SERIOUSLY, he gives "COOL POPE" a run for his money, it's...weird.)

The movie is clearly a rushed affair- in better hands and with a better script, something interesting could have happened, and while it was filmed partly (and cheaply) in the UNITED STATES (I think BURBANK stands in for MINNESOTA), it was also filmed on location IN IRELAND and I would like at this point to say that I have been to IRELAND and it is ONE OF THE LOVELIEST, IF NOT THE LOVELIEST PLACE I HAVE EVER SEEN.

You would not know it from this movie, it's GENUINELY IRELAND, i can tell, but it's like the LOCATION SCOUT was a MANIC DEPRESSIVE- they film in some of the most KUBRICKIAN and HIDEOUS LOCATIONS IN THIS AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY.

AGAIN, this was obviously a rushed affair and it was helmed by JOSEPH SARGENT- three years after JAWS THE REVENGE- so he was no stranger to rushed affairs.

the end credits to this thing are SO CHEAP.

LANSBURY does get TWO BIG EMOTIONAL SCENES, which I know was the point of her doing TV MOVIES (I have a strong suspicion that WORD CAME DOWN FROM ON HIGH over at CBS that JESSICA FLETCHER was NOT ALLOWED to EMOTE on MSW- it must'vde been confining for a performer of LANSBURY'S talent and range and even though she ACES both her BIG CRYING SCENES, they are not worked into the plot organically AT ALL and they stand out as more FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION than anything else.

it's still an interesting hour and a half, and it's on AMAZON PRIME and for some weird reason there were NO COMMERCIALS!!!!

Hibi wrote: ↑March 25th, 2024, 10:53 am
I thought I'd seen all of Angela's tv movies, but I missed this one. I wonder if it ran on another network besides the Big 3??

Masha wrote: ↑March 24th, 2024, 4:22 pm
The play was anti-capitalist and anti-class. It was important at this time for: A. Tairov to stage productions which adhered to soviet beliefs as he and his theatre had been labeled bourgeois. This significantly hurt his professional and financial positions and it limited severely his access to materials and personnel necessary to stage plays. I believe that the play did not aid his standing greatly because I believe that the theatre presented its last major offering the following year.

It has been many years since I have watched any of the movie versions of the play and I doubt that I have watched the play herself since the 1960s. It is due to this that I can offer no insights into which of the movie versions followed the play closely. It would not have been a great leap to add a bit of Marxist ideology as the basic play portrays bourgeois capitalists as leeches and predators.