What Movie Have You Seen Today?

General General Movie Discussion
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Eyes Without a Face (1960 French film): I think TCM may have aired it in October, but we missed it then, so we searched it out and found it on Plex. Even with the commercial breaks, it was astonishingly good … especially considering the time in which it was made.

I’d read a bit about it, because it’s part of the Criterion Collection (always a good sign). So I knew in advance that there was an especially gruesome scene. But I was shocked at how disturbing it was. The film’s essential plot is about a plastic surgeon who is obsessed with replacing his disfigured daughter’s face. And his means of going about it are quite sinister.

There’s very little that makes my cringe or look away, because violence is so commonplace in films these days. But, like Night of the Living Dead, this fantastic (in every sense of the word) horror film still packs a punch thanks to the lyrical humanity flowing through so many of its scenes.

And yes, this was the inspiration for the Billy Idol song.

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2806

Dr Strangelove (1964).

As some of the crazy political and possible war threats continue on in this world, this only seemed right. What can I say that hasn’t been said before? A great late night movie with my dad. My favorite Stanley Kubrick movie. It’s truly the definition of how to portray dark humor in film.

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2807

My reviews for films with this actor are coming up, so I thought I should better give a fair warning.

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2808

The Running Man

Not sure what happened here, but definitely a bit of a let down. That last ten minutes is pretty brutal.

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2809

Vengeance (2022 film written and directed by B. J. Novak, who also has the starring role): There’s a lot of dark humor in this film about a New York journalist who finds himself in West Texas, attending the funeral of a girl he hooked up with, then decides to take advantage of the situation by writing and filming a podcast exploring the possible murder angle for her OD death.

It could have been the usual “fish out of water” satire, and that humor is threaded throughout the plot. But it’s also a dark, sometimes moving examination of the cultural divide that exists in America, and how people who really listen to one another can rise above it. Novak also takes some well-aimed shots at his own profession, skewering writers who witness only to record, but don’t truly live in relationship with other people.

I’m sure Novak has done other work besides The Office, but that’s really all I knew him for before seeing this film. I was pleasantly surprised by its subtle power. I confess that I did not see the ending coming … even though, in retrospect, the signs were there. Vengeance got me thinking, and it’s still on my mind.

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2810

I watched the 4K of “The Wild Geese” this evening, actually I just finished it, I like this movie a lot, despite all its faults, which are definitely there. I like Burton very much in his part, only hearing that great voice of his, that alone makes it worth it for me. Moore is good too, but like all his parts in movies with big stars from the seventies his own part is a little small (Escape to Athena, The Seawolves).

Because I didn’t get the discs out of the boxset, I also bought the regular version and that is the one I watched today.

Yesterday I received and watched in the late afternoon the 4K of the Rolling Stones concert movie “Let’s spend the night together” from the Tattoo You American ‘81 Tour. Great version. Love The Stones!

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2811

The Good German

The first time I saw this Soderbergh film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett I was influenced by the many bad and derisive reviews, concentrating on the experiment of filming a post war thriller in black and white with cameras and boom microphones like it was in the 40‘s. It all seemed to be an exercise in style, trying to cram in everything the Hays code did not allow back then.

Now, I concentrated on the story and finally saw the brilliance of it all. And the relevance for our times as well. Nobody is innocent in „The Good German“, everybody tries to gain something, morality is sneered at, something for the losers. And the good guys are just angling for more power, no matter what.

For me, it’s one of the best films Soderbergh has ever made, and one of the most shamefully underappreciated masterpieces.

See also here: Steven Soderbergh's 'The Good German' Deserves a Better Reputation

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2812

One Battle After Another.

Hmm. Very well acted I think but didn’t warm to it. Never thought much of that Mr DiCaprio but he is jolly good here, although seems to be channelling Jack Nicholson so that’s probably why I liked what he was doing.

Dirty Harry.

Exquisite. I cannot find a fault here, not that I have been looking for one. Theatre of Blood aside, patently the best English language film of the early 1970s.

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2813

MI: DEAD RECKONING/FINAL RECKONING (Christopher McQuarrie 2023/2025)

I went back to rewatch the penultimate film to jog my memory of its story - normally not a good sign for a film I’d only seen a few years ago. Actually I think I liked it better than the first time when it just dropped off a bit in comparison with FALLOUT. DEAD RECKONING still doesn’t reach that one in quality. But this time I appreciated the atmosphere of it, a kind of melancholy twilight where we all know we’re heading towards the end. Also, it’s as if the series pulls all the stops to show extended fights, a nod to FOR YOUR EYES ONLY and SPECTRE in a comedy sendup, even a bit of creepy DON’T LOOK NOW Venice. Little homages showing how much Cruise and McQuarrie love filmmaking (and how they got this production off the ground amid the pandemic is a feat in itself, respect).

While the usual MI recipe is still present - a flimsy story told with panache along several set pieces - the tone is slightly different in this one. And time and again it’s mentioned in the dialogue itself how it all happens after a pattern. Taking a razor to the fourth wall and whispering through a tiny slash how bizarre it all is. I liked that even if the film itself feels unfinished, the end arbitrary.

FINAL RECKONING had to take an unplanned gap and had to deal with Ilsa Faust’s absence and replacement by Grace. I initially liked this character quite some in Part 1, but the way she more or less morphs into Ilsa Faust 2.0 here feels off and once again cheapens the relationship Hunt had with the MI6 rogue. I’m not sure how this came about but I’d have much preferred Ilsa staying for this final chapter.

Once again, FINAL RECKONING shifts the atmosphere from the extremely topical headline/fake news paranoia of DEAD RECKONING towards a doomsday scenario in which The Entity, a godlike über-AI, takes control of the nuclear arsenals of the world and intends to annihilate humanity. It’s closer to a science fiction plot, and indeed at times the tone gets quasi-religious.

An extended sequence shows Hunt exiting a submarine (big as a block of flats), barely avoiding its screw propeller, diving several hundred feet towards the decade old wreck of a Russian sub and then searching the hull filled with preserved corpses and helter skelter torpedoes for the device housing the Entity source code. It’s a claustrophobic 20 minutes without dialogue and bordering on a horror film. Very competently executed and convincingly acted by Cruise, a sequence that rivals the CIA HQ infiltration from the first MI entry in intensity and suspense.

That said, FINAL RECKONING is long, so looong. They tie all the films together with some retconning/deus-ex device, and it actually has some heft to it since Cruise’s Hunt has indeed been around for 30 years. But was it necessary to give this franchise the it’s-all-connected treatment? No. And drawing Hunt as ersatz-messiah in this end-of-days story also doesn’t sit well.

The final extended stunt sequence is a close copy of the FALLOUT one, massively impressive - but if you have seen FALLOUT it just fails to have the same intensity. I confess I wasn’t sure weather Hunt would survive this. The Luther monologue that follows is another example of pathos laid on thick. That said, I liked the final frames in London without any dialogue.

Farewell, Ethan Hunt.

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2814

I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Ethan Hunt. Similar to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, despite the title having “final” in it, Tom Cruise will want to come back someday. He even mentioned Harrison Ford and Indy at one point during promotion for the movies.

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If there’s a dollar to be made, Ethan Hunt will return.

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Same goes for James Bond :smirking_face:

But there’s a difference: “James Bond Will Return” is a fact (science fact!), whereas Ethan Hunt will return if there’s a dollar to be made. That is because James Bond is one of the franchises that has a legacy and is not one that is a mere vehicle for one man’s ego. MI is going to die with Tom Cruise, James Bond lives forever.
Yes, I know, MI has a legacy, but Cruise totally erased that with making the previous history’s hero the villain, grabbing the very first opportunity he got and made the whole thing his own. And no one ever is going to dare touch that material any more.
And while MI totally depends on Cruise, the Bond franchise is more like a sandbox, in which many things may happen with different actors or – dare I say it – story arcs. Compare it to Sherlock Holmes. We’re now 70 years away from the origins, that’s where Holmes was in the mid 1960s, late 70s. I’m certain that with Bond, there’s still lots of interesting things to come.
Should MI return one day, it’s certainly going to be with an actor with the one aim: if you can’t be Bond (for whatever reason, say 5’ 7”), try to outdo him.

:squinting_face_with_tongue:

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2817

Perhaps. Been waiting since 2012.

It won’t. M:I was an IP before the franchise. It’s what attracted Cruise to the project in the first place, an existing IP he could resurrect that could put him up against Bond in that genre. It may not be as wildly successful post-Cruise as it has been, but there will be more things out there under the M:I banner. If they’re bringing back some of these extremely fringe IPs in order to make a quick buck, M:I will surely make a comeback at some point.

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You may have a point there. I might have underestimated money as the driving force. Still a fanboy at 56 :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Not sure that’s really fair to Cruise. The MI legacy, looked at in the harsh light of day, has been the Lalo Schifrin theme and very little else. Yes, people like us have watched the original on the telly as kids. But that was wholly a toolbox show with all of its protagonists interchangeable. They gave them a veneer of interesting names and supposedly exotic civilian occupations. But during the by-the-numbers cookie cutter scripts none of that played a great role and there’s next to no social interaction between the team members.

That some ‘Jim Phelps’ ended up as longtime head of the action happened largely circumstantial. Had Paramount been concerned about exploiting the MI legacy they’d probably have ramped up a film adaptation much sooner, at least since the Trek films took off. But the fairly disappointing reboot in the late 80s cured them of greater aspirations. And really, who was waiting for a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE film back in the 90s? Without Cruise people today would probably just know the fantastic theme from a show nobody has watched in decades.

Of course it was Cruise’s vanity project. But since it’s entirely something different from the tv show I don’t know how I would feel had Cruise just been called ‘Jim Phelps’. As is, it doesn’t bother me the film Phelps is the villain, or that his son was after Hunt but then forgave him. Or that they supposedly are now all former criminals recruited from the prisons, records cleared to ‘live and die in the shadows’. If that’s the case, why is anybody surprised they have discipline issues and never follow orders?

None of it bears deeper scrutiny. It’s just a very good action spectacle without greater meaning or import. Maybe that’s why some of the pseudo religious salvation/deliverance undertones don’t mix well with these last two entries.

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2820

I find it interesting to ask how much did Cruise respond to the Bond films.

He definitely sensed a spy action vacuum during the 1989-1995 hiatus. The problem was setting it up took longer than expected, so GE came out first. Was that one of the reasons that it took so long for M:I 2 to come out, despite the first one being pretty successful? Was the Brosnan era stealing its thunder?

Another six years until III was released - in the summer before CR debuted and again stole the attention.

Then 2011, 2015 and 2018 - the films came faster now and seemed to sit comfortably beside the more rarely appearing Craig Bonds, with FALLOUT in 2018 actually having the spy action market for itself and the next Craig Bond film being only planned for a later release.

This is where Cruise and McQuarrie could have stopped, setting the best film as an emotional end point. But they needed to go on (money, Paramount etc.).

The fact that the planned yearly appearing last films took much longer was not their fault and the result of the pandemic wreaking havoc on film production. Having DR not perform as well threw everything off again. So FR had been partly shot but got additional shooting and reshoots, limping over the finish line - everything while Bond was wrapped up. Still, the shadow of Bond loomed large, with action sequences becoming influenced/homages/stolen, ending up in two movies which did not impress as intended, leaving that franchise also in a position it needs to lay dormant or be completely rebooted.

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Whiplash (2014 film starring Miles Teller and J. K. Simmons): Deeply unsettling film about the lengths to which an abusive teacher (in this case, a jazz band director at an acclaimed music conservatory) will go to achieve perfection, and how far students will allow themselves to be abused in order to please a sociopath.

Was Neiman really not keeping tempo when Fletcher harangued him? Or was Fletcher just toying with a vulnerable student? My rhythmic ear isn’t keen enough to tell the difference.

I see why J.K. Simmons won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Brilliant performances by him as the director, and Teller as the gifted student drummer he torments.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. Who (if anyone) really “won”? Did Neiman achieve his dream of emulating Buddy Rich? Or was the success Fletcher’s in turning him into a Charlie Parker?

*****

Breach (2007 film starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe and Laura Linney): The story is based on the case of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who was convicted of spying for Soviet and Russian intelligence services, against the United States, from 1979 to 2001.

Cooper delivers a convincing performance as the eccentric, enigmatic Hanssen. His character is largely unlikable, yet I found myself drawn in anyway … as was Eric O’Neill, the young FBI agent (played by Phillippe) assigned to work undercover and gather evidence on Hanssen. Linney is understated, yet strong, as O’Neill’s FBI handler, the anchor who manages to hold things in place.

The revelations in this case were shocking at the time. How strangely quaint it all seems now.

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I always thought that Mission: Impossible was a response to The Fugitive’s success, and remaking a classic 1960s TV series for the big screen became a major cinematic trend for action films. See also, The Sait, Wild Wild West, Lost In Space or Maverick.

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Whiplash is a tough sit, but it’s pretty great. Not one I’ll ever watch again, though.

Funny, I thought about Breach recently. I saw it in theaters when it first came out (as a teenager at the time I remember never having seen a quiet, more serious kind of spy film before, certainly not at the movies). I liked it, but I don’t remember anything about it. I’ll need to give it a rewatch.

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Same here. I’d be interested in a professional drummer’s analysis of the drumming (especially in the sections that, according to Fletcher, were off tempo). But that’s as far as I’d want to go. The music was amazing!

This was the second time we’d watched Breach, but our first viewing was years ago. I recognized the main actors in many of their scenes, and had a sense of having seen this before, but I didn’t have a clear memory of how it turned out. I’m glad we watched it again.

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