WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[charliechaplinfan]

I haven't seen The Asphalt Jungle in the longtest time, I remember trying to watch it on a night when the kids were ill and completely missing the point. I'll rent it again and Crime Wave too, if they are anywhere near as good as The Killing I'll be a very happy girl. I feel I didn't do The Killing justice in my review, guess I was just running out of steam by that point.

You're absolutely right about Robert Harris, I agree with everything said. I haven't yet watched The Ghostwriter, I have it cued to watch though, I'm hoping it's one that I can watch with hubby. He doesn't really do old movies, mores the pity.

[ChiO]

Here's Part 1 of CRIME WAVE. Incredible cast, screenplay by Crane Wilbur, and one of Andre de Toth's best.

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[RedRiver]

"Asphalt" is very much like "Killing." I mean, remarkably so. The rounding up the players. Laying out the plot. Executing the scheme and, well...While Kubrick's film is fine, John Huston's classic is the superior effort. Characters are stronger. Story a little tighter. And the driving force of the thing. All that poor guy wants is to go home. To Boone County, Kentucky!

Does he make it? As you said, you should watch the movie again!

[JackFavell]

WHOA. Gene Nelson looks hot.... I'm confused.

I saw J. Edgar last night too, kingrat, and thought it was a good film. I wish they had retained a little more mystery surrounding whether the events in J. Edgar's life were in his head or real. The lines at the end of the story explaining that the narration was taking place all within Hoover's mind was overkill and was clumsily written. I think the writers should have gone back to the old adage never explain, just show.

I thought the hotel scene worked, thanks to DiCaprio and Hammer, and agree about Naomi Watts, who was great. I kind of wish I undrstood better why she and Tolson went along with everything Hoover did, when they obviously knew some of it was wrong. I liked that Hoover's greatest accomplishments had nothing to do with making arrests - he was the first person to organize law enforcement, take fingerprints in order to have a database of criminals on record, and make kidnapping a federal offence, but seems to have doubted his own worth, except in comic book terms, probably due to his mother (according to the movie).

Definitely saw the Citizen Kane comparison, which was obvious but didn't bother me either. Loved the costuming. I thought Armie Hammer out-acted DiCaprio, but I may have been bowled over more by his stunning looks. The man was born to be photographed with the light in his eyes. To me, he was much subtler than DiCaprio. I wish the old age makeup had been less... obvious. Wasn't sure where it was going, but I like the way it ended up being a love story.

[ChiO]

I've been wanting to see J. EDGAR if only to compare how Hoover is portrayed in it
versus Larry Cohen's THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER (1977).

Sounds as if Eastwood was, at least at times, more lurid (he pauses as he thinks
about the implications of Eastwood being more lurid than Cohen).

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[RedRiver]

I still don't say "fashion forward." What does it mean?

[charliechaplinfan]

I don't know the answer to that one either, I haven't heard it before.

I had heard off someone else that J Edgar was the most dissappointing of Eastwood's films, to the point of boredom, so I appreciate your opinion. I don't think it's been released here yet but the subject matter interests me.

[JackFavell]

I think if you went to this movie with any preconceived notions about it being historical or "important" in any way, you would think it was awful. However, as fiction, I found the movie worked just fine. It was certainly not political, or a true to life recreation of any particular events, because the events are filtered through Hoover's mind's eye, we realize through the course of the film that they are completely unreal. It's Hoover as Hoover wishes he were, for the most part, until the love story kicks in toward the latter part of the film. I found it easy to follow, and the triangle of Naomi Watts, DiCaprio and Hammer worked very well. I felt it was basically a simple fictional love story of two men (and a woman) set against a historical background. I did like the oddness of some of the filming - there was some weight given to certain events - elongated endings to Hoover's mental tableaux that led me to think that Hoover himself might have been involved in the shady bombings and crimes that he cut his teeth on as a young FBI agent. I had a feeling that he might have planned crimes in order to capitalize on solving them.

[Gary J.]

I caught up with THE DESCENDANTS last week and it was every bit as entertaining as I had heard. No small feat considering the cast spends half of the films running time trekking back and forth to the hospital where their wife and mother lies in a coma. It's an emotional roller coaster but it is never maudlin or saccharine. Director Alexander Payne is too intelligent of a writer to stoop to anything so basic. As a director he believes in a languid, leisurely pace in which his characters quietly reveal more layers of their personalities - as was demonstrated in ABOUT SCHMIDT (02), SIDEWAYS (04) and ELECTION (99). What all of those films also have in common is their sense of humor. It's sometimes dark, sometimes satiric (CITIZEN RUTH (96)) but mostly it's true honest laughs that act as a cathartic release for the situations that the performers find themselves involved in.

Payne also casts his films with his eye on the story. He doesn't like to use top stars just for the sake of box office insurance. They need to fit the part, such as Jack Nicholson's over-the-hill retiree in ABOUT SCHMIDT. So here we are given George Clooney as a rich, successful Hawaiian-based attorney. This sounds like typecasting for Clooney, who has made a career playing suave, sophisticated, successful men. However, from his first appearance onward you would never know that Matt King was successful at anything outside of getting out of bed each morning. You never see him in a suit and tie. His constant mode of attire are those of a beachcomber - shorts, Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. He looks and acts like a typical 50 year old dad - meaning he is in a perpetual state of bewilderment. This would be understandable considering his wife's state but even if she was healthy Clooney plays him like a man overly dependent on his spouse to run his family. This is a man who is lost without his wife's presence, who is scared of acting as a father to his his two daughters and is too eagerly pliant to appease his very large clan of relatives- even to the detriment of his own beliefs. And so the journey begins.

The film is expertly cast but special praise goes to Shailene Woodley as the Kings' rebellious college age daughter. Like everyone in the cast her character is allowed to grow and mature as the film progresses, lending emotional support to her dad at a time when he desperately needs it. Together they make a believable father-daughter tandem, especially when they both hover over the youngest child in an attempt to deflect the pain that is swirling around everyone.

Overall, this is a most perfect movie of small, intimate moments concerning one of life's most devastating times - the loss of a family member.
My only complaint is that Alexander Payne doesn't work often enough.

[charliechaplinfan]

I didn't realise it was fiction, the assumption is when a film is about someone well known that it is truth, that said I have seen nothing to promote the film over here apart from the Saturday paper having a two page segment on the seamier side of Hoover's life. He's someone who crops up an awful lot in other people's biographies, makes me think he was the world's biggest nosey parker but an interesting subject nonetheless. I wonder how many people have played Hoover and how many he would have approved of?

[JackFavell]

kingrat,

I think there were just too many places that a film about Hoover could go, and so Eastwood opted for the one that appealed to him - an intimate, more character driven story with a simple theme about repression of certain members of society. He hid that theme till the end by using some very basic film techniques - flashback and the fallibility of memory or narration. A very tiny bit of F for Fake is added. The film seems at the outset to be lurid and sensational, or tricky, but really isn't. Eastwood has a way of appearing to push the envelope while actually not doing it at all, presenting the public with exactly what they want somewhere in the middle. This is not to knock Eastwood in any way, it's well done and I liked it. Having a big budget doesn't hurt either. I liked the implied comparison between Hoover and Nixon, but it didn't really go anywhere. Eastwood is not maybe as inventive as I might want him to be, or thought he could be when Bird and Unforgiven came out. He never dives off a cliff head first, but maybe no mainstream filmmaker can do that anymore.

Of course, this leaves the door wide open for other movies to be made about the same subject - ones that take a more complex view of political history, or take on more complex emotional and psychological issues. Maybe issues is the wrong word....

Alison, when I say it's fictitious, I mean that they filled in gaps in public knowledge with what the author thought might have happened. There is especial care taken to show Hoover and Tolson's relationship, and since I assume their private life is pretty much unsubstantiated...we are left with a lot of conjecture. They surrounded the love story with known facts about the man, and historical situations that did happen. I haven't read specifically about the trial of Emma Goldman, or about the wiretapping of Martin Luther King, so I can't say that he was really vindictive towards Goldman, or that he sat in his office listening pruriently to recordings of the civil rights leader he hated. However, they took few chances depicting any events that are murky like this, by showing them mostly through Hoover's filtered memory, or his PR department's spin on the subject.

[MikeBSG]

I just watched "Don't Bother to Knock," the 1953 film directed by Roy (Ward) Baker, with Marilyn Monroe as the disturbed babysitter.

I was really impressed. The film zoomed along in fine fashion. (It almost takes place in "real time," which made me think of "High Noon.") Monroe was very good. I am used to seeing her in comedies, and I thought she handled the dramatic demands very well. Both here and in "Niagara," I thought she was fine playing villainesses.

Richard Widmark holds the movie together as the hero who comes out of his emotional shell. A splendid performance from this fine actor. I liked seeing Elisha Cook Jr. in a key role as well.

I like Roy Ward Baker's films a lot, and this one was extremely well done. I like how we gradually see Monroe's instability unfold, and the way the scars on her wrists were revealed to the audience and to Widmark was very skillfully done.

An underrated gem.

[JackFavell]

I really like Don't Bother to Knock, Mike.

It's great as you say to see Elisha Cook with a little more meaty role, his kind unease with Marilyn's situation really makes me appreciate him as an actor. He's a nice guy, but kind of dumb. He could have taught a master course in those kinds of characters. He handles her all wrong, only exacerbating her problems. And Marilyn is just great, I totally believe her all the way through the picture. Widmark takes just the right tone.