WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

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RedRiver
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by RedRiver »

Our regional PBS outlet ran SOME LIKE IT HOT Saturday. I hadn't planned on watching it. But, as happens with classics, all it took was the opening scene. I was hooked! (Note to today's screenwriters: Do that!) This film is so precisely written it's remarkable. There's hardly a line that doesn't serve the story. Often, the seemingly superfluous dialogue returns as an actual plot element.

We all know the movie. I won't go into a lot of detail. Tony Curtis does simply the best Cary Grant I've ever seen. He almost had me believing he WAS Cary! And that Marilyn. Holy cow! Women may admire her for her presence and personality. A man can't take his eyes off her. The woman was breathtaking. I did see something I never really noticed before. As Jack Lemmon observes, "You've walked out on women before. It never bothered you. What's different this time?" What's different is, he's lived with women, as a woman. He's seen life from the other side. This guy will never mistreat a lady again. TOOTSIE spells out this concept. There's no way you can miss it. Billy Wilder lets the audience draw their own conclusion. It's there to be drawn. The great movies don't do all the work for you.

The film is preciously cast. Marilyn, of course. Silly Jack Lemmon. But the anchor for the whole thing is Curtis. He's not my favorite actor. Doesn't have too much range. But nobody played The Ladies' Man like Tony Curtis! Well, except for Mr. Grant. No wonder his stamp was left on this movie.

Thank God for public TV. Imagine the thousands of young people who had never seen this wonder. TV was my introduction to classic film. Had it not been available, I would now be a different person. It was nice to find old movies after school and on Saturday nights. Today, that's all but unheard of.
feaito

Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by feaito »

JackFavell wrote:The bake sale was actually very successful, and ...dare I say it? FUN. Met some other moms who don't seem crazy. Amd the best part is, it's OVER. :D Cane down with the flu this weekend and you know what? That's over too, thank god.

I re-watched RULES OF THE GAME yesterday as I was starting to feel better and I had a hankering to watch more French films, which I seem to have an affinity for lately. On second watch, with a lot of time passed since the last watch, it really hit me strongly, rather than the kind of meh feelings I had the last time, when I didn't understand why this film is considered great.

This time through, after getting used to the film techniques (deep focus completely threw me the last time I think), I found ROTG to be not only about the decadence and crumbling of the class system, I think it's about the decadence and crumbling of everything. The fall of Civilization. It seemed SOOOO fresh and modern, a perfect example of today's TV and electronics age told 80 years ago before they were even a twinking in someone's brain. One could substitute today's obsession with the unreal worlds of electronics for Dalio's obsession with music boxes; and the lack of feeling for human life is, if anything, even more apparent today with our twenty-four-seven monitoring of so-called news. Basically, the things that make the movie great are still around. The moral lack which drives people to value the foolish and fickle above the deep and sombre (sometimes rightly), the class restrictions are coming back, the phoniness and ennui of life are still with us. We dream of a different life, but can't really escape our ingrained habits and selfishness. People are still killing themselves over those who aren't worthy, people are still jaded and shunned by society, people still talk behind other's backs, and people are still strange and crazy enough to kill for nothing at all. Plus ca change.....

And I guess I've seen more of the world now, so I've changed... and the movie, if anything, has become more meaningful.

I hope the next time I watch, I will have changed some more, and I'll find even richer troves to mine in this film.
On target. Brilliant.
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JackFavell
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by JackFavell »

Thanks, Fer! It really is much deeper than I would have ever thought. It's no accident that Octave the artist is actually played by Renoir - it adds a deeply disturbing layer to an already disquieting film.
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JackFavell
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by JackFavell »

I agree with you Red, about Tony Curtis being the anchor. For all his faults, I find his character very believably sincere at the end of the film. I watched it for him specifically last time, and I really liked his character's change. And I love his Cary Grant! Spot on! Not to mention the part where he rises from the bathtub fully clothed abd his one earring still on when he drives up in the yacht. Not to mention the fact that he makes an almost too attractive girl....
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ChiO
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by ChiO »

MikeBSG wrote:
Whatever happened to Neo-Noir? Back in the Nineties, it seemed like Neo-Noir was going to take over Hollywood. Now I can't really remember a recent movie that I would call neo-noir. Maybe "Brick" (2005), and that's nearly 10 years ago now. What happened?
The meaning of "Neo-Noir" is nearly as contentious as the meaning of "Noir" -- "nearly" only because some don't argue over it because they find it to be an unhelpful term (hand goes up). But some post-1999 movies that are sometimes labelled Neo-Noir (or just plain Noir) are:

Mulholland Drive
Inland Empire
Brick
(as you mentioned)
The Departed
Shutter Island
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Sin City
Memento
The Cooler
Suspect Zero
Hostage
Derailed
Inside Man
American Psycho
The Machinist
Million Doller Baby
A History of Violence
Collateral
American Hustle
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
The Killer Inside Me
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
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JackFavell
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by JackFavell »

Jane Withers knocked me out with her acting in The North Star.
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CineMaven
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by CineMaven »

[u][color=#FF0000]ChiO[/color][/u] wrote:The meaning of "Neo-Noir" is nearly as contentious as the meaning of "Noir" -- "nearly" only because some don't argue over it because they find it to be an unhelpful term (hand goes up). But some post-1999 movies that are sometimes labelled Neo-Noir (or just plain Noir) are:

Mulholland Drive
Inland Empire
Brick (as you mentioned)
The Departed
Shutter Island

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Sin City
Memento
The Cooler
Suspect Zero
Hostage
Derailed
Inside Man
American Psycho
The Machinist
Million Doller Baby
A History of Violence
Collateral
American Hustle
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
The Killer Inside Me


I see one of Robert's favorite films ( starring the unsung Michelle Monaghan ) makes the cut: "KISS KISS BANG BANG." I've got to try and check it out yet again. I haven't been able to get through it though Bob says there's a female hero that I will like.

For my money these are best "NEO-NOIR" films I've seen. If you click on the posters you can see the films' trailers. If you click on the stars, you will see the IMDB synopsis.

BODY HEAT ( 1981 ) * * * KILL ME AGAIN ( 1987 ) * * * COLD AROUND THE HEART ( 1997 )

Image Image Image

The second best film I saw in 1997 was "Cold Around the Heart."

Image Image Image
"You build my gallows high, baby."

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RedRiver
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by RedRiver »

John Dahl (KILL ME AGAIN) took steps toward bringing the genre to modern audiences. THE LAST SEDUCTION is a chilling TV movie. RED ROCK WEST is well written. Then came projects like UNFORGETTABLE and JOY RIDE. He hasn't been heard from since! I'm kidding, of course. But I haven't heard much.
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Rita Hayworth
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by Rita Hayworth »

I watched SOME LIKE IT HOT last Saturday Night - RED RIVER too and it's was a treat seeing again after 10-15 years after the last time I watched it. I couldn't believe my eyes it was on PBS. Great Movie and a Terrific Cast too.
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by MikeBSG »

I have to say that Tony Curtis "as" Cary Grant is terrific in "Some Like It Hot." As was said earlier, it is almost as if Cary himself were in the film. (I guess Billy Wilder always wanted to get Cary Grant in one of his movies, and Cary kept turning him down, particularly "Love in the Afternoon.")

Thanks for the list of post 1999 neo-noir. I've heard of many and have seen several. I really can't see "American Hustle" as a neo-noir, though, unless we have reached the point in film history where every crime movie set in the Seventies is automatically neo-noir. To me, "American Hustle" was too much of a comedy to be noirish.
MikeBSG
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by MikeBSG »

Today I saw "Two for the Road" (1967) directed by Stanley Donnen.

This was terrific. I can't believe it has taken me so long to catch up to this film. I LOVED how it skipped between different points in the characters' lifetime. Very funny and also very wise. Loved Audrey Hepburn in this one, and (to my surprise) I also liked Albert Finney a great deal. Usually his charms are lost on me.
LadyEveSidwich
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by LadyEveSidwich »

I recently watched The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and I really enjoyed that film.
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JackFavell
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Re: WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

Post by JackFavell »

I love heist films! Ocean's Eleven was in 1960. Topkapi was in 1964. The Thomas Crown Affair was 1968.

It does seem that certain types of movies are made during certain times, doesn't it, Masha? I don't really remember the economic climate in 1966, I was too young. I imagine it was a pretty good year financially, so heist films don't seem to reflect a want of money in the movie going public. In fact, thinking about the genre in general, I would say that heist films made their appearances in economically more well off or flush times rather than in poor ones. Except in the seventies....though I don't remember that the seventies were a particularly bad financial time.... except for inflation.....so I guess I don't really know. Maybe it's more about corruption in high places than it is about whether people are rich or poor? If someone else has any thoughts on the subject I'd love to hear them. The only other thing I can think of is that it was a last ditch effort by film studios to recapture the sparkling elegance and perhaps a bit of the innocence of the Kennedy era movies and those that came before it, in their heyday. Maybe I am just reaching?

By the seventies, the heist films changed, they have more bite, and mean something different, as in Dog Day Afternoon... more about social issues than about romance. The heist has always had dark 1984-ish overtones, with gov't or bureaucracy or lackadaisical society in general as the enemy. THE MAN or entropy will get you in the end no matter what. Or they are about taking on that system we all hate so much, or ruffling the status quo. I think the seventies films hearken back to The Killing a little bit, or The Asphalt Jungle, the fifties gritty films more than the more romantic 1960's heists.
Last edited by JackFavell on January 29th, 2014, 8:41 am, edited 5 times in total.
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