Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

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Yup I agree with you. I love B&W films, old one and news one too. The lack of color places the focus on both the drama, on the lighting and shadows...and on the forms of 3 dimensional objects. Like you said it's great for creating atmosphere or mood.



Yup I agree with you. I love B&W films, old one and news one too. The lack of color places the focus on both the drama, on the lighting and shadows...and on the forms of 3 dimensional objects. Like you said it's great for creating atmosphere or mood.
I think the best modern film to use it so far has to be The Artist. There needs to be more films like that one.




Emperor of the North (1973)
Director: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine
Genre: Period Piece, Action Drama
Length:1hour 58minutes

Mini Synopsis (spoiler free): During the height of the Depression era (1933), Shack (Ernest Borgnine) a sadistic train conductor who keeps hobos from riding on his train by smashing them in the head with a hammer! Along comes a well weathered and wiley hobo, nick named 'A No 1' (Lee Marvin) who decides to ride on train #19, Shack's train...He's accompanied by a young greenhorn hobo, Cigaret (Keith Carridine) who's more trouble than he's worth.

I seen this film on TV when I was a kid back in the 70s. Ernest Borgnine scared the hell out of me! Especially the scene of him striking a helpless hobo in the head with a hand held sledge hammer! For years I thought of Ernest Borgnine as the 'evil guy'. So image my surprise when as an adult I watched the film Marty (1955), a film where he played a gentle and quiet, shy man. That's when I realized that Ernest Borgnine is an amazing, versatile actor.



Lee Marvin...is the other big name in this film and his intensity and skill as an actor is legendary. He just plum looks ornery! He makes the ultimate hobo and that's what makes this film work, the look inside of the hobo's life style. We see hobo camps. We see how they look out for each other...and...we see how ultimately no hobo can trust another. They're individualist and their story is true. 1000's of men road the rails in the 1930's looking for work or even a meal. Life on the rails was tough.



Many a teenage male decided the hobo life style was the life for them and they left their homes to ride the rails. The pre code film Wild Boys of the Road (1933) chronicled their plight. In Emperor of the North it's Keith Carradine who plays the young youth, full of himself, but still wet behind the ears. It's those three main actors that make this film worth watching.



The other thing that impressed me was the actors did a lot of the own stunts. You actually see all three of them fighting it out on top of a moving train! The rural countryside, the train yard, the hobo town..all looks authentic. There's a lot to like here, and oh yeah, this has some adrenaline pumping action scenes too.

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Twenty Four Eyes (1954)
Director:
Keisuke Kinoshiita
Cast: Hideki Gôko, Itsuo Watanabe, Makoto Miyagawa
Genre: Drama
Length: 156 minutes
Country: Japan

Twenty Four Eyes is based on the novel by Sakae Tsuboi.
It won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.


Mini Synopsis (Spoiler free): Hisako Oishi is a young woman school teacher, who's come to teach the children of a small, remote Japanese fishing village in the 1930s. She's a gentle person but more modern, than the poor people of the fishing village. This difference sometimes places her at odds with the towns folk. She forms a strong and caring bond with her students and teaches them valuable life lessons as they grow up.


At Tonosho Port, Shodoshima, visitors are greeted by the sculpture
'People For Peace' depicting the teacher and children from the movie and novel Twenty-four Eyes


Review: This film surprised me...I really liked it. I would have liked it to be 30 minutes shorter, but the film was made for a 1950s Japanese audience and so I can't complain too much about the length, as the story itself was heart felt and compelling.

I instantly liked the teacher and I even liked listening to her voice. I liked the kids too, each had it's own story and those stories go to tell a much larger story of life in a poor rural fishing village.

I usually love black & white films, but here I would have loved to see all the beautiful scenery in color. And yet, I did 'see' beautifully colored Kimono's and delicate pink cherry blossoms. This film was beautiful shot with stunning cinematography.



Twenty Four Eyes
, gives us an insight into a lost world of pre WWII rural Japan. It follows the children from the 1930s, through the first stirrings of war, through the war and after when the children have become young adults. But this is not a war film. It's a charming, endearing saga.

Rating
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Black Sea (2014)
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Stars: Jude Law, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn
Genre: Adventure, Thriller
Rating: R
Length: 1h 54min


Synopsis (Spoiler Free): A greedy corporation that has just fired Robinson (Jude Law), finds out about millions of dollars worth of gold laying in a ship wreck, on the bottom of the Black Sea. They want to recover the gold but need to do this covertly so they get an old Russian submarine and need a man for the dangerous job...So they rehire Jude Law (who was just told that his services were no longer needed). Back on the job, he has an attitude and an itching for gold. To man the Russian sub, the evil corporation hires two teams, one English speaking and one Russian. To make things worse, the men don't trust each other and things get intense in the the confines of the old sub.


The Submarine used for filming is called the Black Widow. It's an old Soviet sub moored in the River Medway at Strood, Kent.

Review: I love submarine movies. I guess it's the encapsulated feeling of seclusion. There's a fatalistic beauty to being deep under the water. Submarines impart a feeling of isolation and finality. They're a world unto themselves. There has been a lot of fine films made about submarines and their crews, but Black Sea ain't one of them!

This was one of the most boring films I've seen. Every single shot is a close up, I could hardly tell what was going on. I mean, yes I know it's a sub and it has confined space...but the director/cinematographer who decided to use a plethora of extreme close ups in attempt to give a felling of confinement...should go back to film school.

The accents were so strong that I had to use sub titles, even for the English speaking roles. I mean come pro-nounce those words! The plot was paper thin and filled with cliche character trope types. I mean who would start a mission with a group of misfit psychos? Lazy writing, that tries to make excitement turns this into a B popcorn movie, only it's not entertaining. A pretty weak film all around.





The accents were so strong that I had to use sub titles, even for the English speaking roles. I mean come pro-nounce those words! ]
Actors in modern films have this problem. They need to sound 'authentic' and, as we all know, whispering is the height of acting. Whispering in an accent which sounds accurate? You're a really wonderful actor.

I'm told Jude Law was/is trying to do an Aberdeen accent in the film. Trying walking about that city and see how many conversations you understand clearly. For once, I'm not just picking on the Scots here, either . With the speed at which people often speak in casual conversation (and especially in regions with heavy accents) it's hard to catch every word. I remember watching Brokeback Mountain and missing about half of what Heath Ledger said.
__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.



Yup to that, I've used subtitles on English language films many times. If Russell Crowe is on screen, well then, just consider his part a pantomime. I never understand a word that guy says.



lol... My description of his Oscar winning performance as "a scowl and growl performance" has annoyed MV ever since she joined. I stand by it, though. That's exactly what he does. The lighting man deserves an Oscar for the performances in that film and that's about it.




Ace In The Hole (1951)

Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur
Genre: Film Noir

Synopsis(spoiler free): An aggressive, self promoting journalist, fresh from being fired from the big city paper he worked at, finds himself looking for employment in a hole-in-the-wall news paper in a small south western town. With nothing to do but drink, he finally finds a story about a man trapped in a cave, which he exploits and manipulates into a nation wide media circus.


Films Background
: Ace In The Hole is based on two true life incidents. The stories are heart breaking:

From Wikipedia:
The film's plot was inspired by two real-life events. The first involved W. Floyd Collins, who in 1925 was trapped inside Sand Cave, Kentucky, following a landslide. A Louisville newspaper, the Courier-Journal, jumped on the story by dispatching reporter William Burke Miller to the scene. Miller's enterprising coverage turned the tragic episode into a national event and earned the writer a Pulitzer Prize. Collins's name is cited in the film as an example of a cave-in victim who becomes a media sensation.

The second event took place in April 1949. Three-year-old Kathy Fiscus of San Marino, California, fell into an abandoned well and, during a rescue operation that lasted several days, thousands of people arrived to watch the action unfold. In both cases, the victims died before they were rescued.


Review:
Some might say this movie is over the top. I mean Kirk Douglas' character was completely out of control...and the idea of a carnival gathered outside of the cave, seemed outlandish.

But...this movie is about ballyhoo!

The director, Billy Wilder, not only made a film about ballyhoo, he made the film in the ballyhoo style. Now that's when I realized this film is amazing. Nobody is better at being intense than Kirk Douglas he works the character for every ounce of scandalous, self serving moxie he can muster. He uses people, he lies, he manipulates...all to promote his own career as a newspaper man. Even the poor man who's trapped in the cave becomes fodder for Douglas' self indulgent scheme.

You know what?
Nothing has changed. Today's news media is ready to hype and distort facts to get ratings, just like Kirk Douglas did. Ace in the Hole is a brilliant film by Billy Wilder, it's just as relevant today as it was back in the 50s.

Rating




Caged (1950)

Caged, is a Film Noir from 1950, a gritty expose that was part of the 50's socially aware movement in films.

Screen writer, Former LA Times reporter Virginia Kellogg actually had her self locked up to experience prison life first hand. She then wrote a book about her time in prison called, Women without Men. Warner Brothers then hired her to write the script for Caged. The movie plays like her personal diary of the corruption and abuse of a women's prison. She was nominated for an Academy Award for best Screen Play.

Elanor Parker I find her to be excellent in most all of her movies. Here she plays a frightened 19 year old girl who's sent to prison for being an accessory to a robbery that her husband committed. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actresses.

The film could have went with the tired cliche of an innocent girl locked away for a crime she didn't commit...But the film intelligently decides not to say she's innocent, instead if focuses on how the prison system hardens a first time offender.

Each of the women prisoners have their own backstory as to why she was stuck in the jail system. Prisons might not be like this today, but a half century ago they were ripe with corruption and abuse. In a small way, films like Caged help to bring about prison reforms.



This is a little known film that deserves more attention.

Rating




High Noon (1952)
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Writers: Carl Foreman(screenplay)
Cast: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell
Genre: Western
Length: 85 minutes

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than that picture says it all....One man alone, facing his destiny. He could have left town and been safely miles away, but out of a sense of duty he stays. The town's people won't help him, even friends find a way to shun him.

This is an idea film, it's not character driven, not dialogue driven....it's scene driven. And damn this has some fine, tight editing. There's nothing wasted, all fat is trimmed off the film. We don't know much about the characters and we don't need to.

It's the real time pacing that takes us from scene to scene as the Marshall tries to find help in a town that has forsaken him. This is brilliant film making, done succinct.

Gary Cooper is the ultimate minimalist actor. He says little and what he does say is emotionally controlled...but look at his eyes and you can see he's in the moment, he's a good actor.

Grace Kelley...a lot of people are enamored with Grace, I'm not a big fan of hers. Here she's cast perfectly as the young principled wife...a Quaker who abhors violence. Like the town's folk, she's not willing to stand by her husband, but instead gives him an ultimatum. In a way she's cast as a secondary antagonist. This look on her face says it all:



The town of Hadleyville looks great and very realistic. Hadleyville...is exist! only it's a real ghost town called Columbia in Northern California.

High Noon
has been described as a western for people who don't like westerns. I don't know about that but, it's certainly a one of a kind, classic film. I really enjoyed it.

Rating



Captain, some interesting trivia about High Noon:

The movie is often described as a western for people who don't like westerns.
This film was intended as an allegory in Hollywood for the failure of Hollywood people to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Sen. Joseph McCarthy Red-baiting era.
Screen Writer Carl Foreman was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee shortly after the film came out. In fact, he had fled to England by the time the film was finished.
John Wayne strongly disliked this movie because he knew it was an allegory for blacklisting, which he and his friend Ward Bond had strongly and actively supported. Twenty years later he was still criticizing it in his controversial May 1971 interview with Playboy magazine. Inventing a scene that was never in the movie, he claimed Gary Cooper had thrown his marshal's badge to the ground and stepped on it. He also stated he would never regret having driven blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman out of Hollywood.
and finally:

President Bill Clinton's all-time favorite film. He watched it 17 times during his two terms as President of the United States.



Wow, that's a pretty impressive list. I liked Bewitched too. I really like Julie & Julia. The other ones have been years since I seen.

I got my Sony BluRay player for Christmas, but damn! I hooked it up and then it stopped working.
Nora Ephron received an Oscar nomination for her screenplay for When Harry Met Sally.



I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but I recently saw a couple of his movies that I liked.

I saw Bullets Over Broadway for one of the movie tournaments here, and I liked it a lot. I thought maybe the reason I liked it more than some of his other movies was because he wasn't in it, so I tested that theory by watching Annie Hall.

I didn't love Annie Hall as much as most people do, but I thought it was a good movie, and I actually regretted waiting so long to see it.

I think I saw Midnight In Paris when it came out on DVD, and as I recall, it was a pretty good movie. I don't remember a lot about the movie, but I vaguely recall thinking that it was the first Woody Allen movie that I really enjoyed since Sleeper.
Totally agree with you regarding Annie Hall...Woody's made at least half a dozen movies that are better.



Woody Allen is a pedophille
Ace in the Hole is fantastic, I wrote a review of the film myself when i watched it for the 50s HoF. I wasn't a big fan of Caged, but your review was still very well written, great reviews!