What Movie Have You Seen Today?

COYOTE VS. ACME (2026)
Will Forte, Wile E. Coyote
Dir. Dave Green

Just a wonderful film. It’s just a fun 100 minutes or so that feels like something of a throwback, allowing me to revisit characters that I haven’t really watched on screen all that much in quite a while, while also having something to say about modern times without feeling preachy or self-important.

I think it also raises an interesting question about what actually constitutes a “performance”. What the collective team that was involved with bringing Wile E. Coyote to the screen did, in my view, is a performance. Simply relegating it to just being a work of animation I don’t think fully does the job that the animators did justice. They did create a stellar piece of animation with the character, but they went further, crafting a fully realized performance of a character entirely on their own. Typically, in animation, we would tend to lean on the voice actor as the source of the “performance”, but there is no voice actor here, yet Wile E. Coyote is, for my money, one of the best realized animated characters I’ve seen in a while, all with no dialogue. His on screen relationship with Will Forte is every bit as real as any duo we might see in your standard buddy comedy, and it’s the heart of the film. A terrific accomplishment all around.

I saw this in a decently-filled theater and it seemed like the laughter didn’t stop from the opening credits to the end. Just a terrific film and the most fun I’ve had at a theater in a while.

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This happened today:

Wile E. Coyote did an ama on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1w58qjb/hi_reddit_im_wile_e_coyote_im_taking_on_acme_ama/

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Thanks for these excellent reviews @MrKiddWint and @dalton. I had been weighing up if I’d see the movie but you both removed all doubt. I’ll be seeing it when it releases here September 17.

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Over the past year, I got in the habit of looking for movie and tv deals on the Apple TV store but did so by browsing the sales which took time. I am late to the party, but discoverred this website that tracks prices on a variety of platforms and lets you pick your own country as well. They also have an app but I have not used it. Thought I would share as I wish I would have found this a year ago as browsing can take up a lot of time!

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Introduced the kiddos to Pirates of the Caribbean. And better still, it even has a Bond connection.

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It has? A Stones connection I understand, but Bond?

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Johnathan Pryce and Naomie Harris both appear in multiple films. Javier Bardem appears in the last one.

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Ah! I made it too dificult for myself, I was thinking about characters or plot-wise. It was years that I saw one of those movies, I completely forgot Harris was in it or Javier and I thought about Price but then I realized I was probably confusing his role in the Munchausen film, but apparently he is in both.

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I had totally forgotten Bardem was in the last one (I don’t think I ever saw it). Specifically, I was referring to Jonathan Pryce as we watch The Curse of the Black Pearl. I believe Naomie Harris is in the 2nd and 3rd films.

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It’s vacation so I watch my favorite movies!

This afternoon it was time for “Ad Ogni Costo” aka “Grand Slam” (1967) an Italian, German, Spanish coproduction starring all kind of international well known faces and (faded) stars, including the likes of Janet Leigh, Klaus Kinski, Robert Hoffmann, Riccardo Cucciolla, George Rigaud, Adolfo Celi and -surprise, surpirse- Eward G. Robinson!

It is a Heist movie and one of my favorites! Is it any good? Well, it is not a masterpiece, maybe even a B-movie, but… it also very, very entertainment and has one of the best, probably thé best heist scene ever! Also it takes place in Rio during the carnaval.

I saw it for the first time on German television somewhere in the middle of the eighties during my Christmas vacation when I stayed with my father. In hindsight, I somewhat regretted not paying closer attention to the entire film, as I only really started watching intently from the heist itself—which is a fantastic scene that has often been copied but never equaled, at least in my humble opinion and ofcourse in Riffi style it is in complete silence.

In short, the film is about an elderly teacher (Robinson) who is retiring and, after forty years, seeks out an old school friend (Celi) in New York—a man he knows to be a sort of gangster.
He shows him some footage he shot himself of his classroom. The friend watches the images with mild amusement but also a hint of boredom, until his expression turns serious upon seeing a heavily guarded bank building on the other side of the classroom.
The professor tells him that diamonds worth millions are stored there for a single day twice a year; however, this year the event falls exactly during Carnival, and since everything in Rio shuts down then, the diamonds will remain in the vault for four days. What he wants from his old friend is a team of four specialists to pull off the heist; he has already worked out all the details himself and written them down on sheets of paper, which he hands to his friend.
Together, they select the four men: Kinski is the soldier who will lead the heist like a military operation, Cucciolla the technical expert, and Giraud the safe-cracker; they also need a playboy (Hoffmann), as he will have to seduce the lady who holds the key to the safe.

Easy peasy? Ofcourse not: not everything goes as planned, for example the lady (Leigh) seems made of stone and ice, appearing completely unimpressed by Hoffmann’s attempts at seduction. That very week, the bank acquired a new vault that renders all preparatory work unnecessary and seems virtually impossible to crack. Oh! And at the end, you get a brilliant plot twist that completely blows you away—at a time when that wasn’t yet commonplace in almost every movie.

Plus a score of the great Ennio Morricone featuring a sound that was atypical for him—including sambas and even a piece of music bearing a striking resemblance to the later “Bond in Rio” from"*Moonraker".

Is it the best movie ever? Ofcourse not, but it is so much fun. If you never saw it, just try it out.
I have the blu underground dvd and later I bought the Kino Lorber blu ray, but I know it was also released in Germany on at least dvd.

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Never heard of it - sounds intriguing!

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The international title “Grand Slam” is named after the new vault called Grand Slam 70 and I think the German title is something like Top Job, but I am not completely sure, but is was released in Germany on dvd a couple of years ago, I am sure of it.

Edit: I found it on Amazon.de as “Top Job - Diamanten Raub in Rio” for only 8,99 euro.
Maybe worth a try?

The American “Grand Slam” blu ray from Kino Lorber, which is very good, is also still on Amazon.com for 15 dollar.

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As I was reading along, the Grand Slam title meant nothing to me, but I thought that I’d seen this movie. At first, I mistook it for “Action Man” with Jean Gabin. But now that you mentioned “Top Job”, I remember it. Haven’t seen it for ages, probably the last time also at that mid-80s screening. Don’t remember much of it, but I think I recall, that the heist itself was absolutely brilliant.

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Same here - think it was on ARD on one of their Saturday night adventure slots. Odd that it wasn’t shown more often - when I think what stuff was broadcast again and again back then…

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Yes, that’s right, I saw it twice on a Saterday evening on German television, the first time in my Christmas vacation, the second maybe half a year later around 1984/85.

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I received just a couple of minutes ago the 4K of Le Magnifique with Belmondo. I know what I’m going to watch this evening! :wink:

Edit: Just watched it. Great quality and fun to watch it again! I completely missed this new French release, so I have to buy it for a small fortune on Ebay, but no regrets, hee it’s my vacation! :partying_face:

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MACBETH (1971) on restored Blu-ray.

One of his more ignored films, Polanski’s take is excellent. Polanski and Kenneth Tynan do a fine job of shaping the text for the screen, and using voiceovers for the soliloquies proves powerful. Macbeth and his lady are on the young side, but it works, and they speak the verse well.

The castle and the environment gives a sense of Scotland in the 1100’s–definitely not “Lion in Winter” art direction, and the final fight between Macbeth and Macduff is quite something. I can see why it upset so many viewers at the time. I also adore Polanski’s added coda of Donalbain finding the witches’ lair, with its implications that the turmoil will continue (an addition that many subsequent productions have adopted/adapted in their own way).

Another positive (and rare) thing I can say is that I look forward to watching the film again in the near future.

Fun Chronology:

THE DEAMERON opened December 12, 1971

THE HOSPITAL opened Decembver 14, 1971

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE opened December 19, 1971

MACBETH opened December 20, 1971

DIRTY HARRY opened December 23, 1971

STRAW DOGS opened December 29, 1971

MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ opened December 22, 1971

DIAMONDS ARE FORVER opened December 30, 1971.

What a month/year for film!

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And how Christmassy, all those tough and brutal films to get one into the holiday spirit…

DAF was a welcome relief to end the year on.

As a two year old back then I missed a lot of fun.

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I rewatched Star Trek the Undiscovered Country on the weekend. I had not seen it in many years. The story definitely drew upon events of the time. The central ones being Gorbachev’s overtures to the West, the decline of the Soviet Union, the Soviet debate over Gorbachev’s internal reforms and foreign policy (e.g., criticism of the hardliners) and debates in the West on how to react to all of this. Having some knowledge of those times certainly benefits the viewer, as does an understanding of the original series and the previous Star Trek movies.

Fellow Canadian and former-Shakespearean actor Christopher Plummer is even more delightful than I recalled as the Shakespeare quoting Klingon who is the main bad guy. Two points of trivia: 1) Plummer made his stage debut in my hometown of Ottawa - something I learned from the friend who watched the movie with me. 2) William Shatner was Plummer’s understudy in Shakespeare’s Henry V at Ontario, Canada’s Stratford Festival in 1956.

I quite enjoyed Shatner’s and Nimoy’s portrayals of Kirk and Spock and especially their shared scenes. Overall, I think the movie holds up very well. It’s well written, has a decent plot and the performances are generally good. George Takei probably turns in his best performance as Sulu and the character has some very important moments in the movie.

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I remember watching this one at school becasue MacBeth was on the syllabus. My main memory was everyone being amused by the presence of a young Keith Chegwin as Fleance.

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