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The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

King of New York (1990)

2nd time watch but 1st was when this was released. Christopher Walked plays newly released gangster Frank White on a mission to reclaim his turf and perhaps give something back to the place he loves. Sparse and violent. Lawrence Fishburne excels as Jimmy Jump. Whilst a bit dated and some of the "gangsta" acting trite the story is engrossing as we get rooting for someone who is ruthless b@stard!! Walken is incredible in this, one of his, if not the, best performances.

Watched last night ....

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

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“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” ~ Rocky Balboa

Crictimme

When Pigs Fly (1993)

After watching Sleepwalk last week and really liking it, I was disappointed to learn that the director, Sara Driver, only made two feature films. I was, however, happy to learn that her other feature, When Pigs Fly was available on the Criterion Channel.

The story in When Pigs Fly is much more grounded than the one in Sleepwalk, though it's still a fantastical tale.

A loser-ish musician named Marty (Alfred Molina) rolls out of bed at noon and struggles not to fall asleep as he sits through a painful piano lesson with a child. Meanwhile, a woman named Sheila is ordered by her boss to clean out an old shed behind the bar where they work. Sheila decides to give an old rocking chair that she finds there to Marty as a gift. Marty very soon discovers that the chair is haunted by the ghosts of a little girl and a woman he knew from many years before.

The film moves in three very distinct acts: first Marty discovering the ghosts, then Marty and the ghosts learning to co-exist and drawing Sheila into it, and then finally the group confronting the harsh reality behind the death of one of the ghosts. The spirit of the film is for the most part very light, but it also doesn't shy away from some disturbing implications.

On the whole I really liked this movie. Sometimes I find myself using words to describe a film that seem like they should be an insult. When Pigs Fly is slightly meandering and, until the final act, very subdued given the content. But I enjoyed these aspects of it. There's something really enjoyable about the "hang out" vibe that goes along with many of the sequences between Marty and the ghosts. The child who plays the ghost maybe isn't the best actress, but she has great chemistry with Molina and especially with Marianne Faithfull who plays the adult ghost. These ghosts have been stuck with their chair for years and years. It makes sense that they don't have a sense of urgency, and yet it's fun to watch them advocate for their own quality of life (they can't stray far from the chair, and so they are unhappy when Marty first stores the chair in a basement with no view to the outside world).

Given the light tone of the film as a whole, I appreciated that tit didn't try to make certain elements too cutesy. There's an important subplot involving domestic abuse and Driver uses an effective, scant handful of lines of dialogue and imagery to convey the seriousness of the situation without significantly impacting the overall vibe of the movie. It's a fine line to walk, and I felt it was pulled off well.

This one's kind of a sleeper. I can see why it's not well known, and it's not the kind of film that necessarily makes you want to run out and force all of your friends to watch it. But much like Sleepwalker I think that it deserves to be better seen (a scant 180 ratings on IMDb). If you come across this one (and especially if you have the Criterion Channel) I strongly recommend it. It put a smile on my face and achieved a rare enjoyable whimsy.

Catch Me If You Can



Only served as a reminder as to why I avoid Post-1993 Spielberg.

Think I rated this bang-on with you mojofilter...the menace of this film is incredible.

I love this movie too...Walken is bone-chilling.

Sea Fever (2019)

I read a pretty promising review of this film when it first came out, but then subsequently read several very lukewarm reactions to it. I think that going into it with very tempered expectations helped, because while it definitely had flaws, I did enjoy it.

Siobhan is a marine scientist who accompanies a fishing trawler so that she can collect sea life samples. When the ship ventures into a forbidden area of water in order to chase a large catch, the crew gets exposed to a ocean parasite that threatens their survival.

The movie and the beats it tries to hit are very reminiscent of The Thing (right down to a "everyone in a room getting tested" scene), with an isolated group fighting both the parasite and the volatile emotions of the crew as they grapple with the threat facing them and the decisions they must make. I think that the first act (say about the first 30 minutes) are really strong. I hate it when films like this dither around, and I liked that they reveal the threat early on.

But once the crew knows the nature of the threat, things shift into a lower and less engaging gear. Movies like this can take two approaches: one is the "problem solving approach" where everyone scrambles to figure out how to destroy the threat. The other approach is the "interpersonal dynamics" approach, where the emphasis is on the way that the relationships clash and degrade as the threat grows. Sea Fever doesn't commit either way and suffers for it. An engaging sequence of Siobhan and another crew member trying to rig a UV light starts to get momentum, but then after an experiment or two the film goes back to the in-fighting.

I will say that, speaking from this very specific historical moment, it was crazy to watch a film where someone argues "We need to quarantine ourselves or else we could infect and kill a lot of people" and everyone on the crew just shouts her down. I was more than onboard with her frustration in that moment, and frankly it made it hard to care about the crew as much. The film does some work to establish the stakes for the crew (which mostly boils down to the fact that they all need money for one reason or another), but their constant selfishness and unwillingness to even try to figure out how to safely get back home was frustrating. How can you see the absolutely brutal (and FATAL) effects of an infestation and think it's a good idea to go home to a busy port?

This was a fine lazy Saturday film. Not as good as it could have been (because the premise and setting are great and the cast was very good as well), but by no means a waste of time. I'm giving it a 3, but it's more like a 3-.

I'm sick and spending the day on the couch. Can you tell?!



Crawl (2019)

There have already been several reviews of this movie in this thread. You told me it was gonna be dumb.

A young woman ventures into a hurricane to rescue her father and finds herself trapped in a rapidly-flooding house full of hungry alligators.

This movie was exactly what I expected it to be. There were a comical number of attacks on the main protagonist, a shoe-horned theme about her believing in herself, and a plucky dog who was easily the best character in the film.

I thought that the effects looked pretty good, and the best use of the budget is the nice-looking underwater camera work.

This isn't a deep film, and for what it was (something to watch while I also did some work) it perfectly fit the bill.

I always have to use any crocodile/alligator film to promote my favorite of that particular horror subgenre, so if you haven't seen Black Water (2007), do yourself a favor and check it out. It's got great performances and a relatively realistic portrayal of a deadly crocodile attack.

Had no clue as to what this was about - total blind watch. A soon to be nun is asked (forced) to leave the convent and pay a visit to her rich, pervy, dying uncle at his estate. She reluctantly goes and things go from bad to worse to...good? Well, eventually, maybe? This was my intro to Buñuel and WOW! what an outstanding movie. I can't think of anything I didn't like about it but I hate giving 5 stars on a first watch so...

Yeah, it's pretty solid.

A Dandy in Aspic (1968)
D: Anthony Mann

Excellently produced cold war spy drama starring Laurence Harvey, Tom Courtenay and Mia Farrow. Harvey plays a double agent working for both the Russians and the British who faces an impossible dilemma when assigned the task of assassinating his other self. The film is superbly photographed on location in London and Berlin with gritty noir like themes throughout. It was Anthony Mann's final film who died during its production, with the remaining directorial work completed by Harvey.

8/10

Attachments

 

Walken's dark menacing turn as the father is one for the books. I can't even wrap my head around how and why the Academy snubbed him and Penn for their performances in this film.

The movie is based on a true story. The events in the film actually happened. It gives me chills just thinking about that. James Foley did an incredible job bringing those events to the screen in a dark haunting way. I remember first watching this film when I was around 11 or 12. It had an impact on me. It still gives me the chills.

Victim (1961)

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