Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

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No, but I'll watch nearly anything I haven't heard of on this. Only one or two mystery films have let me down so far.
I thought it was genuinely very solid. One of those films that feels at once claustrophobic and agoraphobic at the same time.



I got sidetracked, but I intended to make a pitch for this one when we were discussing Hammer the other day. Glad to see you watched it anyway. It's one of the good ones. Reed really pulls off the "guy tortured by his lycanthropy" thing in a way Chaney Jr could never. The
 
is legitimately disturbing even though it's mostly offscreen.
And in my opinion this is the one Hammer monster makeup that is the equal to the Jack Pierce classics.

I was initially distracted by how long it was spending on back story. With a pretty short running time, the clearer it became that Oliver Reed's on screen time was going to be pretty limited as at least half of the movie is spent on his mother's backtory, and then his childhood, I thought it was probably going to be a deadly decision. But, even though I think the movie probably should have been longer to give us some more grown werewolf time, there is something to be said for leaving Reed's appearance for little more than a blood soaked conclusion. It seems to make us view him as being trapped inside of his curse in a more profound way, and because we know everything that came before the carnage that ends the film, it gives it so much more emotional weight.


I think it mght be my favorite of all the traditional monster movie reboots Hammer did. Either it or Frankenstein.



I was taken by some of the imagery (the women hovering behind the glass), and also by some of the really disturbing implications, ie
WARNING: spoilers below
a guy raising the daughter of the woman he loved so that he can have sex with her
.

I think all of this would have resonated more if I had either been 1) giving it a little more of my concentration 2) understood what a weird slow burn of a movie it is. It is, after all, kind of the non-traditional horror movie I generally approve of. That both embraces and skirts all of the general trappings we expect from the genre.



I think it can only improve on rewatch.



I think all of this would have resonated more if I had either been 1) giving it a little more of my concentration 2) understood what a weird slow burn of a movie it is. It is, after all, kind of the non-traditional horror movie I generally approve of. That both embraces and skirts all of the general trappings we expect from the genre.

I think it can only improve on rewatch.
I think you'll enjoy it a lot more with a more attentive second viewing. I sometimes half-watch films, waiting for something interesting to happen to grab my attention and make me tune in.

But for all the things you could say about the film that sound over-the-top or campy or attention-grabbing, the majority of it is pretty subdued.





If I was just going on atmosphere, this has a lot going for it. I still wouldn't rank it as an overlooked classic of the genre, but its gothic trappings are well studied, and there is an ever present eerieness to the whole thing. Unfortunatley, so much of the film is spent gazingly limpidly at a love triangle between three terribly uninteresting specimens, the film feels like a bit of a slog for a lot of its run time.


Recommended to those like Captain Terror, who can subsist exclusively on spooky interiors, but will likely fall flat for anyone looking for any kind of dramatic tension, or a film that has anything to say beyond a bit of a shrugged off 'boo'. Even as a purely cinematic exercise, while scenes roaming through dimly lit corridors are really good, so much of the rest of the movie just falls painfully flat. Maybe the closest example of this kind of this would be Brownings original Dracula. Except this doesn't have anything resembling a Lugosi.


I finally got around to this back in October, and I agree on all counts. I was expecting a dull story, but even the visual element was less than thrilling. Turns out the tantalizing stills I'd seen only accounted for a few minutes of screen time.
Always interesting to see how other countries approached horror in the early days, but this is more of historical interest than it is entertaining.
One thing I'll say is that the camera was much more dynamic than in the Universal films. Lots of moving around, sometimes not very smoothly, but it added a bit of visual interest at least. Reminded me very much of Melford's Dracula in that way.






A semi-documentary detailing two unrelated cases of murder, made eerie by how detached the filmmaking process is from directly accessing the emotions of the case. The film is filled almost exclusively with extended tableaus of the victims in moments where they don't believe they are being watched,re-enactments of interviews with the murderers performed by actors who explain the confusion they have over their crimes with a bloodless deadpan, and extended shots of the landscapes which fill the towns affected by these murders. I was having trouble articulating exactly what the whole purpose of the movie was, so will instead just crib an excerpt from Dave Kehr (a critic I generally don't like, but I feel hits the nail right on the head here)


"It's part of Benning's project in Landscape Suicide to reclaim these deaths from the realm of popular fiction and place them again in a real world. His method is, alternatively, both to refuse to look (the killings, made familiar and even banal by their endless cinematic representation, are not depicted) and to look harder than anyone else. ... The prosperous California suburb is linked to the depresses Midwestern farm town through a shared sense of isolation, desolation and quiet despair. We finally come to understand that both of these towns are located in the same place, somewhere in the dark recesses of the American Dream"


Engrossing, yet impenetrable. Which is maybe understandable, considering the subject matter, and how much grotesque drooling usually goes into making these kinds of films.





I only just realized on the last rewatch that the official soundtrack uses a different singer than in the film.





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Victim of The Night
Crumbs, if you're around I need some advice real quick:

Looking to watch Chaplin's The Gold Rush for the first time and there are TWO versions on TCM Hub.
One is 1h 12m and the other is 1h 28m. I don't know which is the preferred version (longer is not always better and of course, I could apply the extra 16 minutes to watching a second movie), but I would like to watch the "definitive" version as much as that's a thing.
Any thoughts?
I'm trying to watch it right now.



Crumbs, if you're around I need some advice real quick:

Looking to watch Chaplin's The Gold Rush for the first time and there are TWO versions on TCM Hub.
One is 1h 12m and the other is 1h 28m. I don't know which is the preferred version (longer is not always better and of course, I could apply the extra 16 minutes to watching a second movie), but I would like to watch the "definitive" version as much as that's a thing.
Any thoughts?
I'm trying to watch it right now.
1:28 is the original 1925 version.
1:12 is the re-tooled (by Chaplin) 1942 version

In 1942, Chaplin released a new version of The Gold Rush, modifying the original silent 1925 film by adding a recorded musical score, adding a narration which he recorded himself, and tightening the editing, which reduced the film's running time by several minutes. The film was further shortened by being run at the 24 frames per second rate of sound films. Like most silent movies it was originally shot and exhibited at a slower speed. Chaplin also changed some plot points.
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Victim of The Night
1:28 is the original 1925 version.
1:12 is the re-tooled (by Chaplin) 1942 version

In 1942, Chaplin released a new version of The Gold Rush, modifying the original silent 1925 film by adding a recorded musical score, adding a narration which he recorded himself, and tightening the editing, which reduced the film's running time by several minutes. The film was further shortened by being run at the 24 frames per second rate of sound films. Like most silent movies it was originally shot and exhibited at a slower speed. Chaplin also changed some plot points.
Ah! Ok, well that answers my question, I will definitely watch the 1925 version. Started City Lights while I wait and this is really great.
(The only Chaplin I've ever seen all the way through is The Great Dictator.)



I'd seen very little Chaplin until this year when I decided to close off a bunch of blind spots. Breaking news: he's great!


I would definitely make Modern Times a priority. That one is staggering in its comic invention.



Victim of The Night
I'd seen very little Chaplin until this year when I decided to close off a bunch of blind spots. Breaking news: he's great!


I would definitely make Modern Times a priority. That one is staggering in its comic invention.
Will do because City Lights is great. Better than my most optimistic expectation.



A tentative ranking of Chaplin's feature films:

Modern Times
City Lights
Limelight
The Great Dictator
Monsieur Verdoux
The Circus
The Gold Rush
The Kid
A Countess of Hong Kong
A King in New York
A Woman of Paris

Limelight could've been the greatest swan song for a director but he continued with AKINY and ACOHK, and while I still quite like the latter, they're demonstrably weaker than all his previous comedy works. A Woman of Paris was his turn at melodrama but without his endearing comedy to foster attachment to the characters, the drama doesn't even hit nearly as hard as numerous comedies.

I love everything else. He's one of the greatest to ever do it and his ability to weave social commentary, affecting drama, and heartwarming romance into brilliant slapstick makes him stand above his contemporaries, as much as I adore Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.