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matt72582's Avatar
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Sounds great, Matt, but for some reason it's age protected on YouTube, and I don't want to "sign in". I'll see if I can find it elsewhere.

Anything truthful is age-protected nowadays to prevent many from watching.. I paid a few bucks for it on Amazon, but it wouldn't play (old laptop), so I went and paid $4 on Vimeo to extract it. Had to leave this on for over 48 hours, couldn't use it because the add-on slowed everything down. After I uploaded this onto my channel, besides the age-protected warning despite no cursing, and the only violence is The Zapruder Film, but we praise violence in any other case.


I also found this was blocked in China, Italy, the vatican, San Marino, and Malta.



I forgot the opening line.

By Impawards.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23064077

He Got Game - (1998)

This had all the makings of a made-for-television melodrama, but thanks to Denzel Washington and the fact that he can do just about anything with any role given to him it really hits it's mark hard and left me with the impression I'd watched something great. Okay, maybe the fact that this is a Spike Lee Joint means it's script and direction helped a lot too. Rosario Dawson and Milla Jovovich also stand out. I haven't seen enough of Spike Lee's stuff by the looks of it. A great father-son relationship film - you feel that the characters are walking through minefields and at any moment everything is about to explode in their faces. The urgency added by the fact Jake Shuttlesworth (Washington) must mend fences with his son unless he wants to spend the rest of his life in prison, and just how impossible this is due to what he's done to his family, adds enough tension and pathos to fuel it's long running time. Awesome movie.

8/10

24 Realities Per Second - (2005) - Austria

Fly-on-the-wall documentary which follows Michael Haneke around as he makes films such as Time of the Wolf and Caché, and also as he answers audience questions during Q&A sessions and submits to interviews and photo sessions. Unfortunately that's all the documentary makers manage to do - shedding little light on his processes or what he's trying to convey with his films. Interminably boring. A few good moments - only when Haneke addresses the camera directly, relating his early formative cinematic experiences or his distant relationship he had with his parents.

4/10
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Return Of The Living Dead 3 (1993)

Not quite as good as “Return Of The Living Dead part 2” which in turn was not quite as good as “Return Of The Living Dead” but still FUN and a fitting end to the best silly zombie movies around.

Is missing hordes of zombie probably due to budget restraint but totally makes up for it with the inspired practical effects and story wise.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé


James Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Auric Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you DIE.

Goldfinger (1964)
+ With, what many agree, THE best Bond of them all, Sean Connery, Ian Fleming's story of sabotage, action, intrigue, sex, booze, and misogyny unfolds with all its splendor and enjoyable schlock.
I don't think I've ever actually watched this in its entirety, even as a kid on Local Night at the Movies which, (it was the seventies) would feature Roger Moore's more civil, polite Bond. So it was all kinds of fun to see the original callous, womanizing, calculating James with a penchant for trouble-making. From what I've read, it is also the debut of the subtle comedic rapport between the gadget-making Q and Bonds. Add on to that; what would become some genuinely great villains and Bond Girls, this was all kinds of mindless, popcorn-devouring fun.
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Victim of The Night
I love, LOVE this film.
Me too.
It's been about a decade, I may need to put it on the list for next month.



Victim of The Night
Racing with the moon 1987
8/10
Man, we watched this over and over when I was young.



Victim of The Night
Bottle Shock (2008)



I liked this quite a bit, but I love wine and Alan Rickman. I also enjoyed seeing Chris Pine in a non-action role.
I actually went to Chateau Montelena a few months after I saw this and bought a bottle of the famous Chardonnay (a more contemporary bottle, not the '76).



Victim of The Night


Very slow paced, almost fell asleep midway through. Story was confusing and not very interesting to be honest.
This disappoints me, I am a huge fan of the source material.







1st Re-watch...There's a whole lot going on with this movie that I really didn't catch the first time or, at least, didn't fully appreciate. The screenplay is a little one-sided in that it makes the Joe Castleman character complete slime, legitimizing Joan's feelings, making the ending a bit of a cop out, but it is still an exquisite movie viewing experience. Delicate direction and a literate, almost lyrical screenplay that often haunts the viewer. The subplot with Joe and Joan's son is beautifully realized as is the one of Christian Slater's character getting to the bottom of things. I also understand the importance of the flashbacks to the early days of Joe and Joan's marriage. But towering above everything here, of course, is the breathtaking performance by the iconic Glenn Close that makes this movie scratch at the soul. We don't understand why Joan Castleman has chosen to sacrifice her career for her husband until that absolutely stunning scene where her husband accepts the Nobel Prize. This scene is worth the price of admission alone. Most of Close's strongest work in this film is sans dialogue...watch her in that scene where she's having a drink with Christian Slater, or watching the fight between her husband and son, or during that early party scene where all the guest are gushing over Joe. I understand to a point Olivia Colman's Oscar win for her flashy and theatrical performance in The Favourite, but I still think Close was robbed. She was robbed more so for this performance than she was this year for Hillbilly Eligy. A sweet and sad movie anchored by a brilliant actress doing what she does best. I also think Close has never appeared more beautiful onscreen.



Anything truthful is age-protected nowadays to prevent many from watching.. I paid a few bucks for it on Amazon, but it wouldn't play (old laptop), so I went and paid $4 on Vimeo to extract it. Had to leave this on for over 48 hours, couldn't use it because the add-on slowed everything down. After I uploaded this onto my channel, besides the age-protected warning despite no cursing, and the only violence is The Zapruder Film, but we praise violence in any other case.

I also found this was blocked in China, Italy, the vatican, San Marino, and Malta.
I guess I'm not surprised. Censorship of anything but the approved party line is fairly ubiquitous these days. And you can bet your bottom dollar that all of the JFK files will never, ever be released, and certainly some have been deleted. There is likely evidence of Deep State culpability, so that connection will never be allowed to surface. They did release the Assassination Records Review Board's files, which I believe was the governmental committee that stated that there was likely more than one shooter. If there was more than one-- bingo. Conspiracy.

IMO there were 3, none of which were Oswald.

Anyway I'll keep trying. I have one other source to check...



The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

A pretty standard Giallo. I'm not sure why some reviews bring up the Gothic tones or have high praise for the cinematography (one location being a castle doesn't make a Gothic, and while the film is proficiently shot, it's nothing special IMO). I'd recommend this only for the Giallo fans.

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Howl from Beyond the Fog (2019)

An amateurish puppet animation kaiju. I'd be more prone to forgive the technical issues if the writing had been good, but even that's awful. It's shot with some terrible cheap lenses that distort the image near the edges. The puppets are lifeless, and it's painfully clear that we're watching zoomed-in miniatures.
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Ripley's Game, 2002

Tom Ripley (John Malkovich), Patricia Highsmith's sociopathic creation, is living in a gorgeous house with a beautiful girlfriend and dealing in the world of art. When he's insulted by a local art framer named Jonathan (Dougray Scott), Ripley finagles a way to get a local mobster (Ray Winstone) to enlist Jonathan to assassinate a rival mobster. Jonathan, who is dying of leukemia, agrees to take the job because he wants to earn money for his family before he passes.

I have to wonder how I would have felt about this film if it weren't for the fact that I just recently watched The American Friend, a 1977 adaptation of the same source novel as Ripley's Game. The 70s version, directed by Wim Wenders and starring Dennis Hopper in the strangest incarnation of Ripley I've seen, has an appealingly off-kilter approach to the story.

By comparison, this version feels a lot more by-the-numbers. For me, of course, the 70s version had the benefit of novelty. This time around I knew the trajectory of the plot. And, further, many of the moments that really stood out to me in the 70s version (such as Jonathan talking to his son in the bathtub, or an action sequence on a train), felt overly familiar here. Even Malkovich's approach to the character feels a bit "classic sociopath." I've not read this Ripley novel (I have read three of them), but there were several moments of dialogue that felt a bit too "writerly".

On the plus side, the film is technically strong. The direction and the acting are all really solid. And I liked the way that we watch Scott's Jonathan evolve---not necessarily in a positive direction--as he gets deeper and deeper into the world of hired killing. The film seems to be aiming for a sort of see-saw dynamic, where Ripley makes Jonathan a bit colder and harder, and Jonathan makes Ripley a bit more sentimental.

That last point was something I felt unsure about. Ripley being protective of Jonathan because he likes him just doesn't totally compute for me. I more like the idea that Ripley sees Jonathan as his creature to torment, and resents the idea that someone else might step in and take over.

There were several strong sequences in this film, and overall I enjoyed it. Something I didn't vibe with were the scenes between Ripley and his girlfriend. They weren't badly written or acted, per se, they just didn't feel relevant or connected to the larger plot. I'm sure there was maybe something thematic that I just missed, but every time the film landed on Ripley and his girlfriend I was like "Ugh . . . no."

This was a good movie---and it's one of Ebert's Great Films!--but it didn't have the magic that I felt with the 70s adaptation. Worth watching, certainly, just pales a bit in comparison to The American Friend.






T-Men, 1947

Two agents from the Treasury Department (Dennis O'Keefe and Alfred Ryder) go undercover in an attempt to bust up a counterfeiting ring.

This film, directed by Anthony Mann, takes a strong stylistic approach in terms of filming almost as if it is a documentary. The film begins with a message from the head of the Treasury Department, who reads his statement from behind is desk.

This one was kind of a challenge for me, if I'm honest. There would be these little moments that would really pop out--such as a sequence in which one of the agents is menaced by the local counterfeiting gang who haven't totally bought into his story, or a sequence where one of the agents coolly negotiates with a counterfeiting expert all while eating an ice cream cone--but I repeatedly found my attention wandering. By the last act, I was struggling to keep track of who was doing what, and I realized that I'd sort of stopped caring a bit.

The film looks good, full of effective compositions and figures looming out of shadows. This is one of those movies where there is nothing wrong with what's on screen---it just failed to grip me and hold my attention through the whole story. Maybe I'll give it another spin sometime and see if my opinion improves.






Renner and Olsen are pretty solid. Unfortunately, her character doesn't really have an arc which makes her feel not fully realized.


Full review on my Movie Loot
I must push back a bit here. I think her character doesn't really need an arc. I think her character is used as a Shepard for the naive audience. They discover the brutality and reality of living in Wind River through her. I'm glad there wasn't some love story between Renner and Olsen. Or showing Olsen gaining respect, she was an FBI agent, comes with it. I feel like her character severed it's purpose as a vehicle of discovery. Just my 2 cents because I think it's one of the better movies to come out the last 5 years. (Few and far between)
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