What Movie Have You Seen Today?

General General Movie Discussion
2705

The Bicycle Thief

I have to admit that I have not seen some cinema classics of the European cinema. Vittorio de Sica‘s celebrated neo-realist drama belongs to those. Yes, Woody Allen always mentions it as one of his favourite movies, and I always did want to see it.

But somehow I thought: this is depressing, difficult and mainly work to get through.

When I started it, I thought I would just watch a few minutes to get a feel of it. Instead, I immediately got captivated by it.

Now, it’s one of my favourite films of all time.

It actually is a chase picture, with a clearly delineated plot, easy characters to identify with, perfect cinematography that does not call attention to itself but evokes the atmosphere of Rome after the war with palpable realism.

I am glad that it has not been remade by a US studio, but the story would lend itself to it because it is so simple yet powerful: a father finally gets a job to feed his family - but he needs a bicycle to get around in order to do it. When that bicycle gets stolen he desperately tries to find it and the thief, taking his little son with him.

De Sica creates such a hauntingly moving film that I cannot remember watching a modern film in ages which can equal that power and elegance.

If you haven’t seen „The Bicycle Thief“ yet, do yourself a favour and seek it out.

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2706

EYE OF THE NEEDLE (Richard Marquand, 1981)

I quite liked Ken Follett‘s book, a traditional WW2 spy thriller as Follett used to write them before he drifted into historical epic fiction. It’s not the best of that genre but it’s a solid and compelling, even realistic entry following the chase to catch a German spy in Britain over a number of years and with a more or less random task force of recruited amateurs. Much of it reads almost like a documentary where ‘confused lessons on confused actions rule‘ events.

The German spy Faber finds out about the Allied deception to stage the invasion in Calais and must personally relay this information with photographic proof to his masters in Berlin. The history professor/spy catcher Godliman has to catch him first. A sequence of increasingly bloody events takes place across England and the Scottish coast until Faber is washed ashore on Storm Island.

The book has the one problem that Faber‘s adversary Godliman and his team are for a long time the driving force behind flushing him out - but play next to no role in actually catching him once events move to Storm Island. Marquand‘s film consequently tries to put more emphasis on the situation with the Rose couple on the island while the MI5 team is somewhat underdeveloped.

Donald Sutherland is at first a bit hard to imagine as the German spy. In nearly every outfit they put on him he’s looking far more distinctive and noticeable than would be wise for a spy. Strangely, in THE EAGLE HAS LANDED I‘m willing to buy him as Liam Devlin (a full head shorter than Sutherland and an Irish poet and gunman) while here I struggle.

But maybe that’s really a result of the costume/make-up department? I have trouble with many of the characters, most of all Lucy‘s husband and his RAF comrades who all seem to look like that year’s Sloan Ranger advert in the middle of what’s supposed to be a country at war and rationed to the hilt. Yet, transport seems largely going fine, cars and motorcycles readily available, boats entering restricted areas without much trouble, trains full but going punctually to their destinations. Even helicopters seem to be no problem at all - in 1944‘s Britain…

This kind of stuff usually takes me out of a film fairly fast, especially when such sloppiness doesn’t gel with the otherwise realistic tone. I can forgive a Bell 47 used by the Wehrmacht in WHERE EAGLES DARE since that is already a fantasy spy/penetration caper no more realistic than a Captain America flick. But seeing a number of anachronisms in this down-to-earth melodrama doesn’t help the film even if I‘m willing to grant it some leeway.

That said, EYE OF THE NEEDLE isn’t a bad film, it just left me unsatisfied and its dramatic end should have come with a rush of adrenaline instead of a shrug.

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2707

With Burton and Eastwood being even cooler than Captain America and Tony Stark :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :grin:

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2708

TRON: Ares

The third film in the, well, franchise that never was a real franchise, not as much as Disney wanted, was met with bad reviews and disappointing box office.

I do not understand why.

It is absolutely terrific entertainment with a strong topic developing faithfully from what came before and being actually important in these times: what if AI would be used to create super soldiers who never tire and can be recreated instantly?

Jared Leto, who might be difficult in real life according to those pesky internet rumours but who always delivers interesting performances, stars as Tron supersoldier Ares who is supposed to become the incarnation of the Master Control program but develops a mind of his own. Greta Lee is wonderful as the scientist of the Flynn corporation who has created a program which solves the problem of „permanence“ which the AI soldiers still have (they disintegrate after 30 minutes).

Yes, it is basically about programs trying to live forever in a world in which billionaires try to make more money by selling dangerous technical „solutions“ instead of using AI for good.

But the great thing about „Tron: Ares“ is that in contrast to other mainstream action sci-fi this has not an overcomplicated plot and no never ending action sequences. It is concise, visually magnificent storytelling, a spectacle with interesting ideas. And for me one of the best third films in a trilogy.

For me, it’s

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2709

Jay Kelly

George Clooney and Adam Sandler are sensational in this film about a movie star trying to connect with his former self. Billy Crudup also is absolutely magnificent in his two scenes.

But despite many touching moments, I thought the lead character was ill conceived. He really comes across as a nice guy, and his regret for choosing his career over his family seems honest. That leaves the story rather empty. If only he had spent more time with the people he loved, and if only they had been willing to forgive him - that is much too little for two and a half hours.

Jay Kelly should have started the film as an egomaniac who has to find out what he really wanted will leave him with nothing. But Noah Baumbach shows him as a good and charming man who wants to make amends but is not allowed to. So in the end, we feel for him the same way as at the start: we love him.

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2710

In honor of its 50th anniversary last month, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

Jack Nicholson has never been better. The acting is top notch all around.

Louise Fletcher gives us one of cinema’s greatest villains. What makes her acting great (for me, at least) is how lifeless her eyes look more often than not. It shows us how much she takes advantage of her power: her eyes have a hard look. I know that Louise Fletcher wasn’t a mean lady in real life, but her eyes in this movie have a cold hard stare that not many can pull off so well.

Brad Dourif gets his career off to a great start, and shows range that he wouldn’t as well known for later on. Lots of great character actors get an early start in their careers here (Danny Devito, Christopher Lloyd, in his first movie role, and our own man Vincent Schiavelli, who probably has more screen time, yet less lines than in TND, just to name a few).

For a movie that could easily seem boring, it’s not. The acting truly helps the movie move forward at a fair pace. The screenplay and direction mix well in this regard, making the movie feel flawless. The plot twist with a certain character may have upset the author, and I understand his feelings. However, it worked for the movie.

It was a nice father-son movie for my dad and me. He got to watch it in a college psychological class, and he and his classmates laughed more than once. In the present, we laughed at certain moments as well. While mainly a drama, there is some dark humor spread around. That’s one of the things that makes this so great. If Michael Douglas hadn’t become a great actor, he truly could have been a great producer as well, and this proves it. The Oscars were right with this one that year, and it was a tough year for all (Jaws, Dog Day Afternoon, Barry Lyndon, just to name a few) but I’m glad that this came ahead of them all with the Oscar wins. So all in all, if you haven’t watched One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 5 years or more, I’d recommend a re-watch. It proves with a bit of encouragement from others, you can find potential in yourself that you never knew you had.

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2711

My parents went to see it after it won those Oscars. But since it was an R-rated film, they told us children that they were going to play bingo, since they did not want us to think going to R-rated movies was okay.

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2712

THE PIGEON TUNNEL (Errol Morris, 2023)

Not a film so much as the interview/interrogation of le Carré‘s memoir The Pigeon Tunnel using a collage of various film and documentary clips and scenes from the book‘s episodes. Not a ‘filmed version‘ but a companion piece to the book that also works if you haven’t read it.

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2713

There was a TV biopic about Karen Carpenter in 1989, in which Louise Fletcher played Karen and Richard’s mother, Agnes. Apparently Richard kept revising the script to deflect any negativity directed at the family, and Agnes, in particular. So, in the end, the script was a complete whitewash, according to Cynthia Gibb, who played Karen. The only reason the movie holds together at all is because of the performances, which are remarkable considering the tight shooting schedule complicated by the daily script revisions that were coming in.

Louise Fletcher used those cold eyes to great effect here. Probably on paper, the final script read the way the surviving family members thought it should. But her performance infused meaning that was not written on the page.

At the 15:45 point in this video, Barry Morrow, the scriptwriter stuck in the middle of this battle of wills, describes the casting of Louise Fletcher to play Agnes. As he says, “She could say, ‘Karen dear,’ in a way that was just dripping with the very thing Richard wanted me to get rid of. So, through this sort of weird alchemy, what was taken out was put back in through the sheer force of the talent of acting.”

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2714

Nurse Ratched in space:

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2715

I also watched Jay Kelly and found it to be a bit of a let down. Clooney seems to be tasked with portraying a character so detached from his true self that even his sincere attempts at connection come across as somehow insincere and movie-like. The idea of trying to surprise his daughter on a European trip she’s taking is exactly the sort of thing you’d see in a tacky film, which is why there is a degree of satisfaction that the whole thing doesn’t go according to plan. Everything he does, from how he looks to how he interacts, is telegraphing that this guy became a brand rather than a person a long time ago. It’s a tough line to walk and I’m not sure the movie succeeds in its intentions here, which is a problem since the whole film sort of hinges on that specific thing working. Maybe I’m wrong and the whole thing just doesn’t work, but I think I see the intention. A shame.

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2716

Fully agreed!

The problem for me is that this premise is not realized as it should have been. Kelly remains someone we are asked to feel sorry for when the discrepancy between his former self and his brand offers so much not to like.

The scene with the Billy Crudup character, in my mind, shows the miscalculation. Crudup should be the one we feel for. Instead Baumbach makes us fear for what he will do to Kelly.

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2717

High and Low (1963 Akira Kurosawa film starring Toshiro Mifune): We watched this on TCM’s Noir Alley program. I have a feeling Eddie Muller decided to show High and Low to time it with Spike Lee’s 2025 version, Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington (which I’ve not seen).

Eddie noted that, with a running time of two hours and 23 minutes, High and Low is the longest film he’s shown on Noir Alley. Yet neither my husband nor I felt it ever dragged. The film flew by, especially in the first half.

High and Low has an interesting structure. The first half felt very much like a play, with long scenes that were almost all interiors. The second half focuses on the police procedural, with more tightly edited scenes. The dramatically abrupt ending (featuring the only dialogue spoken by Tsutomu Yamazaki) came as a surprise. As Eddie explained in his outro, Kurosawa had filmed a whole closing scene featuring Mifune at the police station, trying to process what had happened (similar to the psychiatrist scene with Anthony Perkins at the end of Psycho). But Kurosawa was so taken with the power of Yamazaki’s acting that he decided that is what audiences should be left with. It perfectly embodies the “show, don’t tell” mantra.

For those who haven’t seen it, I don’t want to give away too much. The plot is loosely based on Evan Hunter’s 1959 novel, King’s Ransom. Mifune’s Kingo Gondō is trying to gain financial control of his employer, National Shoes. That part is riveting enough. But then, in a plot meant to kidnap Gondō’s son, his playmate and the son of Gondō’s chauffeur is mistakenly kidnapped instead. What then plays out in the first half is a remarkable series of performances showing the intense pressure on Gondō to pay the ransom anyway, and the societal and familial stresses playing out in the Gondō household.

The second half is the police procedural to track down the kidnapper and his two accomplices. It moves at a very different pace from the first half, yet is no less riveting because not only do we want to know how it ends, we want to know why. What motive did the kidnapper have? I found High and Low to be a brilliant film, one that made me think and feel while watching it, and long afterward.

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2718

Kurosawa agrees with you. He said in interviews it was the first film where he felt that everything came together for him as a filmmaker (quite a statement).

I love his work in widescreen–I think it is his best aspect ratio. Spike Lee’s film is a wondrous riff on the Kurosawa original. Since Denzel is the star, he cannot take a back seat in the second half the way Mifune does, but Lee’s reimaginings of certain sequences are wondrous.

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2719

Thanks for that recommendation. I wasn’t feeling too keen on seeing Spike Lee’s film, but now you’ve made me curious.

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2720

I hope you enjoy it. It is one of his finest films in recent years.

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2721

A Christmas Story Christmas (2022). A decent legacy sequel to one of my favorite movies. It was a play by play sequel (in particular with referencing the first movie’s iconic gags), but it was worth it. It did deserve a chance in theaters. I’m surprised that it took me this long to see it, as the original is one of my favorite movies. It was also great to see legacy characters, there are no missteps with where their characters end up. Enjoyable, but still not much compared to its iconic predecessor. So, not a true new Christmas classic, but worth it if you are bored. I do recommend the original novel by Jean Shepherd: In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. A quick, humorous read. As for A Christmas Story Christmas, it doesn’t feel commercialized. A nice early movie present for me, but give me the timeless classic original Christmas Story, anytime.

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2722

F1

Wait, I have only seen the first 15 minutes of this Brad Pitt vehicle (see what I did there?) - but that was enough for me. Yes, technically marvelous, shot and edited so snazzily. But the story, the characters and the dialogue… it´s just shorthand for "you have seen this a thousand times before, so just sit back and endure this - doesn’t this all look so attractive? And hey, here’s Brad! And here’s Javier! Oh, so cool, bro. Yeah, that’s what movies should be all about. Surfaces. Don’t threaten us with originality! Just give us McCinema.

Boring.

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2723

That’s what kept me from even giving it a try, the subgenre of racing film is so limited in its storytelling: there’s an old dog and a young one and a woman - and that’s already it. You can expand the range visually with photography and direction like in LE MANS. But if you‘ve seen GRAND PRIX, LE MANS and DAYS OF THUNDER you‘ve effectively seen it all already. And new entries will only attract the hardcore petrolhead racing fanbase.

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2724

You forgot two very good ones: Rush and Le Mans 66, and they were both a little different in the storytelling

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