I Just Watched...

[Lorna]

okay, gird your loins, this might be a long one here...

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I AM GOING TO POST THIS REVIEW IN INSTALLMENTS, PART 2 TO FOLLOW THIS (I HOPE) IN A TIMELY MANNER.

I rented HIGH AND LOW (1963) directed by AKIRA KUROSAWA on AMAZON PRIME. I started watching the movie on TUBI, where I think it is still free, BUT I GOT SICK OF THE COMMERCIAL BREAKS AND I WILL NOT STAND TO HAVE KUROSAWA INTERRUPTED BY ****ING FLO FROM PROGRESSIVE.



apparently, in JAPANESE, the title is HEAVEN AND HELL, which is MUCH MUCH MUCH BETTER AND MORE APT FOR THIS MOVIE.

This movie is 2 hours and 29ish minutes and- JESUS CHRIST FORGIVE ME- it needed to be shorter.

I regret to say that I DID NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE.

Mind you, I am not saying it was a bad movie, I am saying that I unequivocally did not like it. At all.

And I feel bad about that, because (sorry to repeat this)- but RAN, RASHOMAN, KAGEMUSHA: THE SHADOW WARRIOR, SEVEN SAMURAI and SANJURO are PERFECT FILMS, I have NO NOTES, they are 10/10, [and in the case of RASHOMAN 11/10.]

I was therefore STUNNED TO SEE that HIGH AND LOW has a higher IMDB rating than all of those movies except for SEVEN SAMURAI, which just....(shrug emoji)

for me personally it was 6/10, it rallied at the end, but by that time, several of the choices made by KUROSAWA for what I know were good reasons just made for an unrewarding experience- really, the first KUROSAWA film I have seen. where I haven't felt invigorated, but instead defeated.

[Lorna]

PART 2 OF HIGH AND LOW (1963) REVIEW



THIS FILM involves a WEALTHY YOKOHAMA BUSINESSMAN played by TOSHIRO MIFUNE, who dresses like BING CROSBY but makes it work. He manufactures HIDEOUS WOMEN'S SHOES WITH KITTEN HEELS (ugh!) but they are apparently WELL-MADE HIDEOUS WOMEN'S SHOES WITH KITTEN HEELS so he is committed to running his father's company HIS WAY and not cutting corners or compromising (by maybe putting ACTUAL HEELS on the shoes.)

I guess the JAPANESE just love A KITTEN HEEL.

TOSHIRO is trying to ward off a HOSTILE TAKEOVER of the company by an unscrupulous trio of STOCKHOLDERS BY LEVERAGING ALL HIS HOLDINGS FOR CASH to buy up the remaining stock and get a controlling interest which he will then use to take over the company himself.

he is putting it all on the line for these uglyassed kitten heels, but TOSHIRO MIFUNE don't do things halfway.

and then his son gets kidnapped from his home which overlooks YOKOHAMA....except, wait, it's THE CHAUFFER'S KID, the kidnapper discovers this and STILL DEMANDS a ransom, which puts TOSHIRO IN A REAL PICKLE.

I am used to KUROSAWA taking a while to set the scene, but in the case of HIGH AND LOW, the ENTIRE first HOUR OF THIS MOVIE IS RUTHLESSLY, STRICTLY (and unforgivably) CONFINED TO THE LIVING ROOM of MIFUNE'S hilltop house and:

OH MY GOD, IT IS THE MOST HIDEOUS, DRAB, VISUALLY UNAPPEALING SET IN ALL FILMDOM.

EVEN STANLEY KUBRICK WOULD BE LIKE "JESUS CHRIST! THIS PLACE GIVES EVEN ME THE "ICK" GET A SNAKE PLANT AND SOME THROW PILLOWS!!!"

The room is SO DRAB with only drapes for walls- and for some reason the patternless overstuffed chairs have ANTIMACCASSARS (SP?) and they are SO ****inG UGLY.

also, everyone in the film WEARS WHITE AT ALL TIMES, which makes it tough to read the subitTLes which are also white and imposed over the screen, not the letterboxing (not AKIRA'S FAULT THOUGH)

[Lorna]

THIRD AND FINAL PART OF MY HIGH AND LOW (1963) REVIEW

GENUINELY AND TRULY, I apologize for giving AKIRA a hard time about the set- but it underlies the fact that the first act of this 2 hour and 39 minute movie is oppressive.

After that, we FINALLY get out of the house and see some of YOKOHAMA, except KUROSAWA goes out of his way to make THE ENTIRE CITY LOOK LIKE...well, not a nice place.

it is an AMBITIOUSLY UNASTHETIC MOVIE, so much so, that when we are later introduced to vibrant scenes of the kidnapper and his two accomplices- a pair of heroin addicts who live in THE ONLY IDYLLIC SPOT IN THE MOVIE- a beautiful little place overlooking the sea which has a METICULOUS COLLECTION OF CANNA LILLIES AND ORCHIDS IN THE GARDEN- it just comes off as disjointing.

I guess KUROSAWA is saying the two heroin addicts were the only characters in the film who were living in anything that resembled heaven.

I don;t know why the HELL they didn't call the movie HEAVEN AND HELL.

TOSHIRO MIFUNE disappears almost entirely in the second half of this movie; the actor playing the kidnapper is excellent and is allowed to dominate the second half and he does a good job.

as aforementioned, it rallies at the end, but the twist is that there is no twist- had the film BEEN AN HOUR SHORTER it would have been more effective.

this movie needed to be an hour and a half long...said the person writing the three part review on it.

[Lorna]

TWO HOURS AFTER POSTING THE ABOVE REVIEW...

and it occurs to me that I just dogged on one of the best reviewed films of all time (#85 out of imdb's top 100) in large part because of bad interior design and my passionate hatred for kitten heels.

what can I say? I'm very gay and I'm not apologizing for it.

[Allhallowsday]

DRESSED TO KILL (1980) Sleazier than I remembered.

[HoldenIsHere]

I enjoyed re-watching CRY BABY (1990) for the first time in many years.
This was John Waters's first "Hollywood" movie. It's funnier now than when I first saw it.

I always love the part where Cry Baby Walker (Johnny Depp) teaches Allison how to French kiss:
"Watch. It’s easy. You just open your mouth. And I open mine. And we wiggle our tongues together. And it feels real sexy."

Then we cut to other characters French kissing including Cry Baby's grandmother Ramona, wonderfully played by Susan Tyrrell, and her boyfriend (or is it husband?) Belvedere, played by Iggy Pop. The two kids have their own version by exchanging lollipops.

Could Johnny Depp have been any cuter?

[Allhallowsday]

...
Could Johnny Depp have been any cuter?

...
CRY BABY (what was interesting 33 years ago remains interesting. JOHNNY DEPP inexplicably loses his pants).
...

[Feinberg]

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) - Dumb movie.

YEAH....but GREAT detail in Harryhausen's Octopus!!

With six tentacles...?

Yes, I was buying the entire premise up until that detail.

[Lorna]

Two days later and I’m still mad about those kitten heels.

[Lorna]

Also hungry for calamari now….

[Cinemaspeak59]

After Hours (1985) Shows what happens when Midtown Manhattan meets SoHo, when Soho had that now-vanished counterculture elan. Things quickly unravel for Griffin Dunne, playing smug but likable office worker Paul Hackett, who ventures to SoHo to meet Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette), whom he met at a coffee shop, their introduction courtesy of Tropic of Cancer, a book Paul was reading. Beautifully shot by Michael Ballhaus, I found After Hours an interesting nostalgia trip, that, with a few tweaks to Joseph Minion’s screenplay, could have been a charming romantic comedy. Even with its low-stakes, it’s the kind of movie I wouldn’t mind seeing Martin Scorsese try again.

[CinemaInternational]

Late to the party, but I am so happy that I have to write in all capital letters: WELCOME BACK, LORNA! I am so happy to see that you finally made it through. You were so greatly missed in the past year, and its a joy to see you and your wonderful posts again.

[CinemaInternational]

Recent viewings:

Born to Win (1971) is another in the long line of drug addiction films of the early 70s. The print was very grungy and looked just about as seedy as the story. George Segel was good as the addict, ditto Karen Black as his call-girl lady love, but it is impossible to really connect on an emotional level, and the film shows severe signs of editing (Paula Prentiss is billed above the title but is only in the film for three minutes)

Four's a Crowd (1938) might just be inconsequential fluff, but it is delightful fluff, with energy and charm to spare. Nice to see Errol Flynn doing comedy, and Olivia De Havilland and Rosalind Russell are great foils for him.

I have also been watching a lot of episodes of the 80s series Cagney and Lacey recently, given that the whole series is up on MGM+.

[CinemaInternational]

It’s not easy explaining SHELLEY WINTERS to the kids today.

(of course, now that I think about it, it was pretty hard to explain her during her prime too.)

The closest thing to a Shelley Winters these days might be Kathy Bates. Indeed, Kathy appeared in one film earlier this year (Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, which frankly is one of the most satisfying movies to come out of modern day mainstream Hollywood for some time), and it was clear doing a Shelley Winters impersonation as the grandmother in it.....

[CinemaInternational]

One more thing in re THE DEATH KISS: you would absolutely be forgiven if you had to stop and rewind the scene where the killer is revealed because they show his face for like a nanosecond. I guarantee you a handful of people watched this in the theater in 1932 and absolutely did not catch who the killer was.

I saw The Death Kiss earlier this year, but really cannot remember anything about it (movie overload this year, I've seen over 1600 titles this year, and I am left wondering what films are possibly left), but your point about the killer reminded me that there were some baffled audience members leaving Jagged Edge in 1985, because the camera was not held on the killer's face for long (although frankly, it was easy to tell who the killer was in the film, since there was only one person it could be)