I Just Watched...

Discussion of programming on TCM.
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Masha
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Masha »

LawrenceA wrote: January 26th, 2023, 7:03 pm
Masha wrote: January 26th, 2023, 6:08 pm The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

A group of Victorian superheroes is assembled to combat an arms manufacturer intent on starting a world war.

The concept is sublime, the cast is superb and the execution is among the worst in the history of filmmaking.
[...]
Yeah, I didn't hate it. Parts of it anyway.

If you genuinely think it's "among the worst in the history of filmmaking" you should count yourself lucky you haven't seen what I have.
My judgement is on a sliding scale. I do not hold a movie made on weekends when the actors were not working their day jobs, financed by the director's VISA card and shot using three cameras because the pawn-shop purchases kept breaking to the same standard as an eighty million dollar extravaganza with megastars and access to world-class facilities for post-processing. Factoring in the available resources and the number of people who should have known better clearly shows this movie is appreciably worse than: Blubberella (2011).
Avatar: Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya
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LawrenceA
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Re: I Just Watched...

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No More Excuses (1968) Dir: Robert Downey Sr. - Another of Downey's counterculture underground exercises. Ostensibly about the NYC singles scene, this is man-in-the-street interviews interspersed with short, scattershot "comedy" bits. Downey uses a lot of rock and pop songs from the era, from artists like Cream, the Hollies, the Who, Janis Joplin, and the Monkees. He also lifts some music from James Bond flicks. I guess I'm just not on the Downey wavelength, as I found the film irritating. (5/10)
Watching until the end.
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TikiSoo
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by TikiSoo »

LawrenceA wrote: January 26th, 2023, 7:03 pm If you genuinely think it's "among the worst in the history of filmmaking" you should count yourself lucky you haven't seen what I have.
LOL
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Feinberg
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Re: I Just Watched...

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She Said (2022) by Maria Schrader is excellent. It is the story of two New York Times reporters who uncover the Harvey Weinstein story. It plays out like the All the President's Men of the burgeoning Me Too movement. Jennifer Ehle is my current pick for the Feinberg Best Supporting Actress Award.
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Feinberg
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Re: I Just Watched...

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[quote=Swithin post_id=171392 time=1674082281 user_id=349020]
[quote=HoldenIsHere post_id=171369 time=1674074071 user_id=349022]
[quote=Cuthbert post_id=171151 time=1673905373 user_id=349020]


I love The Last Days of Disco. Barcelona is good, though perhaps not as good as the other two (haven't seen it in a while, I should take another look). It does have some sublime moments, like Taylor Nichols' dance to "Pennsylvania 6-5000" as he's reading the Bible. Chris Eigeman walks in unexpectedly and asks: "What is this, some strange Glenn Miller-based religious ceremony?"

Taylor Nichols from Metropolitan has a really small part in Babylon (2022). Like everyone, he has aged! :D
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LawrenceA
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by LawrenceA »

Feinberg wrote: January 27th, 2023, 8:39 am She Said (2022) by Maria Schrader is excellent. It is the story of two New York Times reporters who uncover the Harvey Weinstein story. It plays out like the All the President's Men of the burgeoning Me Too movement. Jennifer Ehle is my current pick for the Feinberg Best Supporting Actress Award.
I thought Samantha Morton was also good in her one scene. Very effective, and subdued for her.
Watching until the end.
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Hibi
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Hibi »

kingrat wrote: January 26th, 2023, 7:46 pm
LawrenceA wrote: January 26th, 2023, 2:07 pm I watched a couple of classic-era turkeys last night.

Wild Girl (1932, Fox) stars Joan Bennett as backwoods tomboy complete with perfectly styled platinum hair and penciled-in eyebrows. She's lusted after by a wide assortment of men, including Confederate veteran Charles Farrell, gambler Ralph Bellamy (replete in full Snidely Whiplash regalia), and sweaty Irving Pichel. Eugene Pallette is also on hand to provide blustery comic relief and self-deprecating fat jokes. Director Raoul Walsh frames the film as being viewed through an old photo album, and the opening is a doozy, with each actor shown as a "page" in the album with their name at the bottom, and they each deliver a line or two about their character along with their character's name. It's very awkward, yet memorable. Many scenes also segue via a "page turning" wipe/transition. There's also some nice location shots of the giant sequoias. Otherwise this is a bunch of overheated hooey.

Flight from Destiny (1941, Warners) features Thomas Mitchell as an aging college professor who learns that he has a terminal illness. He decides to look at his remaining days "logically" and so decides that the best final thing he can do for the world is to murder some one who offers nothing good in the world. He ends up finding a perfect target among those embroiled in his niece's marital turmoil. Geraldine Fitzgerald gets top billing as the niece, Jeffrey Lynn is her troubled spouse, and Mona Maris is a foreign femme fatale. The most noteworthy cast member is James Stephenson as Mitchell's physician best friend Larry. Stephenson would die of a heart ailment a few months after this film wrapped.

The story is dopey, the film drags even at 75 minutes, and while Mitchell and Stephenson are fine in their roles, no one is given much to work with. Willie Best and Libby Taylor appear briefly in stereotypical "help" roles. Not one of director Vincent Sherman's highpoints. I saw this on the Movies! channel, where it was presented as film noir.
Hey, they should show Wild Girl as a double feature with Katharine Hepburn in Spitfire.

Flight from Destiny, which you have described very well, is based on the novel Trial and Error by the British crime novelist Anthony Berkeley, best known for The Poisoned Chocolates Case. If you like Golden Age British mysteries, Berkeley is usually pretty good. Trial and Error might have made a good film had it been produced at Ealing in the 1950s with someone like Robert Hamer or Alexander Mackendrick directing. But Flight from Destiny is not that film.

Yes! That sounds like a good double bill! :D
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Detective Jim McLeod
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Detective Jim McLeod »

Portnoy's Complaint (1972) TCM 4/10

A sex obsessed Jewish neurotic (Richard Benjamin) talks of his life to his psychiatrist

First time viewing for me, mostly out of curiosity due to the controversy of the material and the fact that it got really bad reviews, Leonard Maltin gave it a BOMB rating. I don't think it is that bad, I was actually laughing quite a bit for the first half hour, the sex talk was outrageous and the over top Jewish humor was very funny at times. Jack Somack plays Benjamin's constipated father and gets most of the laughs. Somack was most famous for his Alka Seltzer commercials as an Italian eating a "a spicy meat-a ball-a".

However after the introduction of Karen Black as character called the Monkey, it goes downhill and no longer that funny. I was a bit surprised when I heard the unmistakable voice of John Carradine at the end where he says things he could never say in 1930s and 1940s.
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Feinberg
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Feinberg »

LawrenceA wrote: January 27th, 2023, 11:15 am
Feinberg wrote: January 27th, 2023, 8:39 am She Said (2022) by Maria Schrader is excellent. It is the story of two New York Times reporters who uncover the Harvey Weinstein story. It plays out like the All the President's Men of the burgeoning Me Too movement. Jennifer Ehle is my current pick for the Feinberg Best Supporting Actress Award.
I thought Samantha Morton was also good in her one scene. Very effective, and subdued for her.
Yes, she is my number two!
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LawrenceA
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by LawrenceA »

Image

Deep End(1970) Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski - A teenage dropout (John Moulder Brown) gets a job at a bathhouse where he falls for the older girl (Jane Asher) who trains him. This English language British/German co-production is set in London but was shot mainly in Munich. Most of the dialogue is looped in, with the same guy providing many of the male characters' dialogue. The film is very much a piece of its time, with songs from Cat Stevens and Can, and lots of late 60s fashions. I found it passable, but many seem to love this one a lot more than I did. (6/10)

Source: Criterion Channel
Watching until the end.
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laffite
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by laffite »

Detective Jim McLeod wrote: January 27th, 2023, 11:48 am Portnoy's Complaint (1972) TCM 4/10

A sex obsessed Jewish neurotic (Richard Benjamin) talks of his life to his psychiatrist

First time viewing for me, mostly out of curiosity due to the controversy of the material and the fact that it got really bad reviews, Leonard Maltin gave it a BOMB rating. I don't think it is that bad, I was actually laughing quite a bit for the first half hour, the sex talk was outrageous and the over top Jewish humor was very funny at times. Jack Somack plays Benjamin's constipated father and gets most of the laughs. Somack was most famous for his Alka Seltzer commercials as an Italian eating a "a spicy meat-a ball-a".

However after the introduction of Karen Black as character called the Monkey, it goes downhill and no longer that funny. I was a bit surprised when I heard the unmistakable voice of John Carradine at the end where he says things he could never say in 1930s and 1940s.
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Bronxgirl48
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Bronxgirl48 »

I missed PORTNOY but it seems almost worth it to hear John Carradine in his familiar sonorous voice talking about sex. (if I remember correctly, Henry Daniell makes a few unexpected comments along those lines in THE CHAPMAN REPORT)
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Fedya
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Fedya »

Masha wrote: January 26th, 2023, 6:08 pm The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
The League of Gentlemen (1960) is much better.
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LawrenceA
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by LawrenceA »

Image

Bone (1972) Dir: Larry Cohen - Wealthy Beverly Hills couple Bill (Andrew Duggan) and Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) are lounging around their pool one day when menacing Bone (Yaphet Kotto) appears out of nowhere. He threatens the couple, and sends Bill out to get money to pay him to leave. While Bone and Bernadette verbally and physically spar with one another at the house, Bill goes on a soul-searching journey while gathering the money to pay Bone off. With Jeannie Berlin as "The Girl" and Brett Somers.

This was Cohen's first directing effort. Kotto is good in the difficult title role, and Berlin is noteworthy as the free spirit that gets Duggan to lighten up. In that way the film resembles other middle-age-white-guy-finds-himself-thanks-to-younger-women films like Breezy or Save the Tiger. (6/10)

Source: Criterion Channel
Watching until the end.
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