Least and Most Favorite Movie of the week

[TikiSoo]

Yay! I always liked this thread skimpole!

[laffite]

"Death of a Cyclist is a pioneering Spanish social realist movie about a couple responsible for a hit and run accident. Among its virtues, Carlos Casaravilla is good in a supporting role as a nasty art critic who blackmails them. Lucia Bose is stunningly beautiful, and one wishes she had a bigger role. But since she could only speak Italian it's not surprising she didn't do more. One might think the original ending, in which Bose eliminates her conscience ridden lover and gets away with it, would have been better than the one the censor imposed."

They didn't get the ending they wanted but sure made a nice recovery. The political punch gives way to what one may see as an expedient finale but it was sure entertaining.

[jamesjazzguitar]

Laffite, how do you quote a previous post when posting after it?

Not sure what you're asking but there is a "quote" icon to the left of one's avatar.

[laffite]

Duh. I thought those were two unlocked padlocks instead of quotation marks.

[laffite]

"The 1943 The Phantom of the Opera has the good idea of having Claude Rains play the title character, and the not so good idea of having three lesser actors take up most of the movie. It's not that Susanna Foster is a bad singer. It's just that she's not much of anything. The closing line would have worked better if the two good guys who woo her along with Rains had been played by Abbott and Costello."

Amusing.

[CinemaInternational]

A Dandy in Aspic and That Lady in Ermine are both last movies of directors, in this case Anthony Mann and Ernst Lubitsch, who died while making the film and it had to be completed by others (respectively by Dandy star Laurence Harvey and Otto Preminger). Neither film is successful. In the first film the primary culprit is a confusing script. Harvey plays a Soviet agent who has succeeded in becoming a British agent, only for his British superiors to order him to find the cunning Soviet agent who is in fact himself. One assumes Harvey was asked to play the fox in this scenario so that audiences would be less likely to sympathize with him, and therefore the filmmakers wouldn't be accused of being soft on communism. As such Harvey does a good job, as does Tom Courtenay as the unlikable British agent breathing down his neck. But once the movie goes to divided Berlin, where Mann died, the characters act in a hopelessly confusing manner.

I saw it too this past week, and it is too muddled, with far too many threads left hanging (it is never fully answered if Mia Farrow is an undercover agent sent to tail him, although it seems pretty likely). Harvey's good performance does help quite a bit though.

[TikiSoo]

Again, thanks for this thread. I like that you italicize the titles, but it's also easier to read if you start a new paragraph for each movie. I got a little confused (but blame my addled brain)

RRR is getting surprising critical buzz, from both the National Board of Review and the New York Critics Film Circle, which is a bit surprising since it's an Indian film and three hours long.

I am a big fan of Indian film and started watching this with MrTiki, hoping to get him interested in them, at least try the duration. India has a history of bloody, violent testosterone laden movies almost to counter balance the sparkly feminine Bollywood styles movies. Appreciate your observations, glad you liked it.

I finally watched National Velvet after waiting for more than a decade for it to appear on TCM Canada. As a movie, it captures perfectly the desire of prepubescent girls for horses.

While Elizabeth Taylor is adorable as spunky Velvet, to me the story is really about life decisions, opportunity & choices made. Ann Revere as Mrs Brown is the one who conveys this when she says "Everything has it's right time" which really seems to be the heart of the story. A horsey girl myself, no scene in classic Hollywood touches my heart as this:

(you have no idea how dangerous this is-I'd never try it)

[CinemaInternational]

Last week I saw six movies. Alex in Wonderland is Paul Mazursky's attempt to remake 8 1/2, the sort of movie that hurt Fellini's reputation more than it helped Mazursky's. The attempts at surrealism don't work and come off badly, but Donald Sutherland and Ellen Burstyn do a good job as the couple based on the Mazurskys (their marriage was noticeably long and apparently harmonious.) Payment Deferred's most attractive feature is a good performance by Charles Laughton as an increasingly desperate bank clerk who thinks murder might be a good solution to his problems. Dorothy Peterson is also good as his alternately trying and loving wife, though the movie itself all too clearly shows its stage origins.

I remember the ad campaign for Sphinx when it came out early in 1981, and it had an oscar-winning director Franklin J. Schaffner. It also has what should be a strong cast, with John Gielgud and Frank Langella playing Arabs, as well as John Rhys-Davies. But after a beginning in which we see a tomb raider ripped apart by horses, this is an amazingly bland and uninteresting movie. There is just no reason to care about Lesley-Anne Down, let alone wonder whether she will fall in love with Langella. When Knighthood was in Flower was shown as part of Marion Davies spotlight and tells a tale that, oddly enough, Disney would remake three decades later, about the sister of Henry VIII who was forced to marry the king of France, but eventually ended up with her less regal true love. As such, the movie is OK.

Glass Onion: A Knives out Mystery boasts strong performances with Daniel Craig in the lead, followed by Edward Norton, Kate Hudson and Janelle Monae. The movie starts out amusingly and there's an intriguing twist about halfway through the movie. It certainly benefits from the fact that Elon Musk was the first person to lose $200 billion. But like its predecessor, it hasn't fully thought out things. Trying to avoid spoilers, but for a start, the good guys' basic plan should fall apart the moment everyone arrives on Norton's private Greek island. And second, the last dramatic gesture is likely to have one of the few characters the audience likes lose every penny and face a life sentence in prison. To rephrase the late Meatloaf, I would do anything to bring Musk or Trump down, but I certainly wouldn't do that.

Lost Illusions is the movie of the week. While not showing the auteurist strengths of other 19th century film adaptations as Barry Lyndon,Mysteries of Lisbon or Doomed Love, it does show a certain flair as it makes it way through its two and a half hour running time. Benjamin Voisin is engagingly feckless as the lead. Xavier Dolan and Vincent Lacoste do a good job essentially serving as the angels and demons on his shoulder. Gerard Depardieu has a good brief role as a disreputable publisher, while Salome Dewaels and Cecile de France are fine as the love interests.

Alex in Wonderland is just a bit too diffuse, but you are right, its leads cannot be faulted as they turn in fine performances. Payment Deffered is OK, but Laughton was better in other films. Sphinx lacks character drive, but I will give it this much: it is impeccably photographed and definitely not the worst Orion release of 1981 ( that goes to the dire Under the Rainbow, where Eve Arden is felt up by a short man she mistook for a child, but Rollover, another film with classy credits [Alan Pacula, Jane Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Hume Cronyn] is literally so muddled that its plot is indecipherable)

[laffite]

Cinemainternational wrote : Alex in Wonderland is just a bit too diffuse, but you are right, its leads cannot be faulted as they turn in fine performances. Payment Deffered is OK, but Laughton was better in other films. Sphinx lacks character drive, but I will give it this much: it is impeccably photographed and definitely not the worst Orion release of 1981 ( that goes to the dire Under the Rainbow, where Eve Arden is felt up by a short man she mistook for a child, but Rollover, another film with classy credits [Alan Pacula, Jane Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Hume Cronyn] is literally so muddled that its plot is indecipherable)

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LIKE