What Movie Have You Seen Today?

General General Movie Discussion
3005

BLOWUP (1966) Blu-ray

First watched as a teenager on a black-and-white television set (yes, I was an Antonioni-obsessed youth), the movie has always been a part of my cinematic consciousness. I knew the plot before I saw the movie.

The film now seems a swansong for Modernism. An elegy for an artistic practice that got out of hand, and merged with commercial imperatives to the point where beauty became unshackled from meaning. Modernism tried so hard to avoid didacticism, that it ended up signifying nothing.

Antonioni returns to his neorealist roots first with ZABRISKIE POINT, then CHUNG KUO, CINA, and completely with THE PASSENGER, his 1975 masterwork.

If 81/2 is the most aggressively black-and-white movie ever made, then BLOWUP must be its color counterpart. Both posit the death of the artist, but Antonioni was able to envision a rebirth.

2 Likes
3006

Perhaps this is something that they could play into for a sixth, and presumably final, Toy Story film. Maybe either Woody or Buzz, or both, are physically worn down and on the verge of being broken beyond repair. Maybe Woody’s voice pull-string or Buzz’s voice box are wearing down, which would cause a distortion in their sound, which could lend itself to the voices of their respective actors sounding different due to age.

4 Likes
3007

Pixar hasn’t had much success with spinning off characters, just look at 2022’s Lightyear. Or Cars 2. It was so different that it turned people away. No multiple planets exploring, and a plot twist that destroys a unique villain, that didn’t work. Ironically, there was a Buzz Lightyear (of Star Command) cartoon in 2000. While 2d animated, it felt more true to Toy Story than Lightyear truly did. Meanwhile Disney and Pixar keep trying to hide it from new generations, it’s not on Disney+. Supposedly, because John Lasseter hated it, (what comes around goes around, that pervent). So, Disney and Pixar will milk Toy Story as much as they can.

3 Likes
3008

What a great sentence.

2 Likes
3009

That Man From Rio

Philippe de Broca‘s sprawling adventure about a French soldier on vacation trying to rescue his girlfriend who is kidnapped and brought to Rio in order to find an archeologist who knows the key to a relic‘s secret was a staple of German tv during my childhood, and while I remembered it as fun I had not seen this film in ages.

And it is even more fun to me now that I can appreciate its virtuoso filmmaking, its neckbreaking speed, its tons of thrills a minute-entertainment, with perfect cinematography showing absolutely fantastic locations in such abundance one wonders how they could afford to film all of these, most of the time as visually breathtaking backdrops for even more breathtaking stunts performed by lead actor Jean-Paul Belmondo himself!

This absolutely magnificent film already would give the Bond films a run for their money (released in 1964!) and become a blueprint for Indiana Jones.

If you’re looking for the perfect summer movie - this is it!

AV1 Image File Format (AIFF)
AV1 Image File Format (AIFF)853×480 32.3 KB

6 Likes
3010

Every year I watched this movie the weekend before 5 december aka Sinterklaas while I was wrapping the presents as a kind of self invented tradition.

Ofcourse the original French version L’ Homme de Rio. The best Tintin movie which isn’t a Tintin movie. De Brocca and Belmondo wanted to do a kind of Tintin movie, but didn’t have the rights, but it is a fantastic adventure movie. A year or so later they tried to do it again, with Les Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine, but that one wasn’t as good as the first one.

PS: The German 4k is fantastic!

5 Likes
3011

Thank you for the lovely compliment, SAF. It is much appreciated.

2 Likes
3012

Seen That Man from Rio many times in my childhood, too – until it suddenly disappeared from German TV for a long time. Must have been a year or two ago that I finally saw it again, and it hadn’t lost a single bit of what fascinated me as a young lad. Fun fact: I’ve definitely seen it before I first saw TB, because I remember myself thinking at my first Time watching TB “Oh, look there’s the bad guy from That Man from Rio” :grin:

Les Tribulations… is much more slapstick with a tendency to go slightly overboard and become a chaotic mess, but still great fun and it has Ursula Andress as the wonderful Alexandrine Pinardel :wink:

4 Likes
3013

I received and watched this evening “Charade” (USA-1963) van Stanley Donen with Cary Grant and Audrey Heburn.
Well kind of… if I am honest I fel asleep the last half of the movie, so I will watch it again in the coming weekend.
I love this movie, I love it since I first saw it on the television somewhere in the eighties when it was aired on Dutch televion as the night movie on Friday or Saterday.
It is a fun mix of suspense, comedy and crime movie where in a young woman finds out when coming home that her husband is murdered and all of their belongings are sold, but where is the money gone? Three men (or are there more?) are after her and the supposed missing money, including James Coburn, George Kennedy and Walter Matthau. But she also met Cary Grant, a helpfull, but also a little mysterious character, but can she trust him, realy trust him or does he belong also to the gang of men who are willing to do anything to get their hands on the money?
It still is a fun movie to watch with also a great score of Henry Mancini.
The 4K is good, but not breath taking.

6 Likes
3014

If you love CHARADE, you should give Donen’s ARABESQUE a whirl. The screenplay is a mess, but it forced Donen to be more creative than he had ever been visually, and he succeeds. He is also working for the first time with Christopher Challis (BAFTA winner for his work here), and they went on to collaborate a few more times.

5 Likes
3015

Raiders of the Lost Ark on 35mm.

Incredible experience. The print was in excellent shape, but what made the night so special was the audience. Having loved Indy for my entire life, mostly in isolation, experiencing this film for the first time in a room full of people who clearly love it all as much as I do was comforting in a way I can barely put into words. Joining in the very specific acknowledgement and laugh that comes from the line “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage,” coupled with the collective sense of “ain’t that the truth” that washed across the room in that moment, is something I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.

Finally, sometimes living in troubling times can offer moments of unexpected catharsis, which is exactly what happened when that shot of the reflecting pool at the end brought the house down. We all needed that laugh. It was spontaneous and incredible. What a moment, what a film, what a night.

This is the movies.

10 Likes
3016

I absolutely adore CHARADE. Grant and Hepburn are perfection, the mix of comedy and suspense is unsurpassed.

Can you imagine any leading man today pulling off the orange dance like Grant did? Okay, maybe Clooney.

4 Likes
3017

ARABESQUE clearly suffers from every other aspect except the cinematography and the score. Peck and Loren are fine but never as magnificent as Grant and Hepburn.

2 Likes
3018

I have a t-shirt with this! Quote it at least once a week, more often as I approach 60.

6 Likes
3019

I have Arabesque on blu ray (also a German release) but that one is not as magnificent as Charade, it is a very strange movie with a plot/screenplay which doesn’t go as smoothly as the latter one. I saw it a couple of times but I can’t realy remember clearly what it is about.
What I remember the most is all kind of very strange camera angles.

3 Likes
3020

For me, that is part of the charm. They are stars of a different wattage, so Donen provides a different mise-en-scene.

Neither can I. Each time I watch the film, it is a new experience plot-wise.

Very strange. Donen choreographs for the camera. What he accomplishes here, leads to the subsequent success of TWO FOR THE ROAD and BEDAZZLED.

4 Likes
3021

Now I have to watch the film again!

3 Likes
3022

Last evening I watched my old dvd from “The Boys From Brasil” from director Franklin J. Schaffner and based on the novel by Ira Levin. It is a very good thriller, set in the 1970s, about Dr. Mengele, who is still alive in South- America, where he has spent the past twenty years devising a diabolical plan.
He intends to resurrect Hitler through a cloning program by having young boys raised around the world (using Hitler’s DNA) growing up under the same kinds of conditions, including a dominant father who dies at the age of 65 when the boys are 14.
Gregory Peck plays Mengele and hams it up with gusto; opposite him is Sir Laurence Olivier, playing a Jewish Nazi hunter clearly inspired by Simon Wiesenthal. The climax involving Dobermans is nail-bitingly tense. To be honest, the book is far superior, as the story feels much more credible on the page than it does when actually seen on screen. The entire plot comes across as somewhat implausible; nevertheless, this is a 1970s thriller that still manages to captivate, even if the viewer figures out what is going on much sooner than the main character played by Olivier.

4 Likes
3023

Same here, I read the book before I picked up the film. The adaptation comes across as a bit naff, like a misfire Frankenstein variation ( reminiscent of that New Avengers episode about Hitler’s brain).

3 Likes
3024

I just watched the old blu ray of “The Day of the Jackal” (1973) from director Fred Zinnemann.
Ii is a superb thriller, very unusually, almost like a documentary without any music, except for the beginning and the end, and the odd snippet here and there throughout the film.
The cat and mouse game throughout the movie between the Jackal and all the security services, police, and customs of various countries is realy thrilling.

It is one man against society or the goverment. Who is he? What’s he looks like? Where is he? When will he strike? Nobody knows. He’s always one step ahead of them.
But… there’s one men, one French inspector who slowly is identify him, Lebel, played by the great Michael Lonsdale, yes our own Hugo Drax!

What makes the film impressive is that you already know the outcome, since it is common knowledge that De Gaulle was never assassinated, despite several attempts. Yet you remain on the edge of your seat throughout, especially during the nail-biting finale.
De Gaulle was a proud man who refused to yield to terrorists and therefore insisted on proceeding with his appearance at the Veterans Day event, despite all warnings.
The finale is so brilliantly filmed and edited. You watch as an empty square and empty streets gradually transform: security presence intensifies, and the streets fill with crowds. The police—Lebel included—scan the area. Where is he? Where has he hidden? When will he strike? How on earth is he going to pull it off? Where is the Jackal?

Just like Lebel and the police, you—the viewer—spend the whole time wondering: when is the Jackal going to show up? Where is he? Zinnemann takes his time with it. It feels like an eternity, and you are kept in genuine suspense. And… then… you slowly see an elderly, crippled war veteran come hobbling along, leaning on crutches on either side. And then, it’s about to happen!

Based on the bestseller from Frederick Forsyth, the book is even slightly better with even more details, but this is one of the best book adaptations I know.

The Arrow blu ray is excellent and the interview with the biographer of Zinnemann is realy great and very, very interesting, it made me like this movie even better.

6 Likes