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Mysterious Island - Another Jules Verne adaptation, this one from his 1874 novel. Released in 1961, it was considered a sequel to Disney's 1954 release, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

One night during a violent storm four Union prisoners and a hostage Confederate guard board an observation balloon to effect an escape from Libby Military prison in Richmond, VA. They are blown west by the winds and are astonishingly carried all the way across the country and into the Pacific Ocean. The damaged balloon eventually deposits the party on a remote, uncharted island. Whilst exploring, the party runs across a giant crab which almost kills one of them before they get the best of it and roll it in into a conveniently placed geyser. The creature effects are courtesy of the great Ray Harryhausen and it's some standout work from the creator of the Dynamation process.

The men find some fellow shipwrecked survivors and later a chest full of valuable equipment. They get to work building a boat and it's not long before some unwelcome visitors show up. The intruders are quickly routed with the invaluable assistance of a mysterious figure emerging from the sea. Herbert Lom plays Captain Nemo and even though he's only onscreen for a small part of the movie he does a fine job of conveying the gravitas and intellect of Verne's fictional creation.

It has a runtime of an hour and 41 minutes and it is a busy story, managing to cram the Civil War, giant creatures, Captain Nemo and his submarine the Nautilus, pirates and erupting volcanoes into that narrative. But it's also sure-footed and one of the better Verne adaptations.

80/100





The Illusionist, 2010

A magician (Jean-Claude Donda) is living a marginal personal and professional existence, shuttling himself and his ill-tempered rabbit from low-turnout gig to low-turnout gig. When he works a job in a small town, he captures the attention of Alice (Eilidh Rankin), a young woman who believes he really is magical. The two move together to the city where the magician finds inspiration in providing for Alice, despite the fact that he cannot maintain his job and pay for their lifestyle.

I am SO GLAD that in checking out a little about the film about 30 minutes in, I came across the trivia that this movie is based on an unproduced screenplay from Jacques Tati, and that the main character is styled after Tati. Maybe this would have been obvious to other viewers, and even I probably would have gotten the hint when the main character stumbles into a movie theater that is playing Mon Oncle. But knowing it early on adds a layer of poignancy to what happens in the film.

Trying to talk about the movie would make it sound almost unbearably bleak. And while there is a melancholy baked into it, there are moments of joy and optimism that keep it from feeling punishing.

The fate of the illusionist seems sealed from the beginning. This isn't the kind of movie where the old-school magician suddenly becomes as popular as the sexy new rock-and-roll stars. His magic does enchant many characters in the movie, but clearly not to the extent that it can be a livelihood. But it's more a study of how he chooses to enter this moment of decline, finding a kind of peace in opening himself up to the life of another person.

Visually, the film looks great. The animation style--this is the same filmmaker who made The Triplets of Belleville---perfectly suits a story about man who is slightly out of phase with the world around him. I don't know much about Tati's personal life, but I'll admit that this film made me curious about the circumstances that inspired it.

A lovely, bittersweet film.






The Way Back, 2020

Jack (Ben Affleck) was a hot-shot high school basketball player who walked away from a free ride at a good school and now lives a life of barely-functional alcoholism. When his alma mater asks if he would like to step in to coach their boys' basketball team, Jack accepts the job and finally gets some spark back into his life. But the demons that drove Jack to despair in the first place rear their heads again, and Jack's newfound sense of purpose is threatened.

I had a co-worker who was a lovely woman with a hard life who died of alcoholism, and this portrait of someone drinking to numb emotional pain felt eerily accurate. As the movie goes on, we understand the source of Jack's pain better and we even come to see why it is that the people who love him allow his self-destructive behavior to continue. At first the film threatens to be one of those stories where simple discovering a passion allows a person to do a total 180. I'm not saying that can't be true for some people, but it usually doesn't work that way and I appreciated that the film acknowledged that.

There are a lot of layers to what is happening with Jack, and while the film can't avoid a few "underdog team coached by curmudgeon" tropes, I appreciated the way that the film portrayed Jack's at times desperate desire for the young players not to repeat his own mistakes. He's caught in an uncomfortable place between assuming the position of a father figure to them and also seeing himself constantly reflected in them and their potential. There's a running joke about Jack's use of profanity and the team's chaplain being exasperated about it. It's a bit goofy. But I liked how as the film goes on, Jack's profanity stops being directed at the players. His first big speech to them is just a useless "do you have a pair or are you actually girls?" demeaning type lecture that does nothing to actually help them play better. The shift in Jack's language is a neat metric of how he comes to have higher expectations for the players and for himself.

Affleck's lead performance is appropriately world-weary, with a simmering anger that's barely kept tamped down by the waves upon waves of alcohol he pours into his body. The supporting cast also does a good job, especially Al Madrigal as Dan, Jack's assistant coach.

Not necessarily breaking new ground, but solid stuff.




The Way Back, 2020
I liked it as well. It was just another example of why I end up liking so many of Affleck's movies. I thought he made for a great Batman and The Accountant is one of my recent favorites. And as far as his directorial efforts go I thought that Live By Night was overlooked and The Town and Gone Baby Gone were good to great films.





Ten Canoes, 2006

In a remote section of Australian wilderness, a party of gatherers makes their way on canoes through the marshes. A younger man, Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil, yes, son of David Gulpilil) has designs on one of his brother's wives. The brother then tells him a tale from their ancestors, where a young man named Yeeralparil (also played by Gulpilil) lusted after his brother's wife, with disastrous results.

This is the kind of dreamy, slightly off-kilter storytelling that I really enjoy.

I'm a fan of when movies use simple techniques to make an impression, and one of the things I liked most about Ten Canoes was its subversion of the use of color and black-and-white. Here, the "present day" content is in black-and-white, while the flashbacks are in sumptuous color. But within the flashbacks, the imaginings of characters are in black-and-white. It all adds to the sense of how the story is cyclical, and the past and the present spill over into one another.

Jamie Gulpilil is an engaging lead, though he definitely has to deal with comparisons to his charismatic father, who also narrates the film. Really, though, the star of the film is the rich atmosphere and the mix of humor and a sense of foreboding as the plot progresses. There's a real standout sequence in the final act of a death rite with some excellent imagery and use of color.

The movie is also noteworthy for being shot entirely in the Aboriginal language, albeit with an English voice-over narration from the elder Gulpilil.

I'm sure that the relaxed pace and overlapping narratives won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I was thoroughly charmed by it.




I forgot the opening line.

By source:www.oscar.com, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6697521

In the Heat of the Night - (1967)

There's a scene near the beginning of In the Heat of the Night that ranks among my favourite cinematic moments - it's when Sidney Poitier's Det. Virgil Tibbs, who has just been arrested on suspicion of murder in Sparta, Mississippi, because he's black and has money in his wallet, reveals to Police Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) that he's a homicide detective. Up until that point he's been insulted, threatened, pushed around and mocked without protesting - so it's a sweet moment, and Steiger's reaction is priceless and so well acted, because it's understated. He's not used to African Americans humiliating him, so he seethes - but at the same time he's flustered and embarrassed. Race is of course the central topic here, even though on the surface this is a murder mystery. Ever-present is the threat nearly every white person poses to Tibbs, and you often think he's about to get killed over something that has nothing to do with the police work he's been tasked with. He's just visiting from Pennsylvania, and not used to this - so he often has to think quick, and at times quiet his own rage. Hal Ashby did the editing, and for that he won his only Oscar - and of course the film went on to win Best Picture, with Steiger winning for Best Actor. I hadn't seen this for ages, so really loved catching up with it.

8/10


By ITV, Left Bank Pictures - https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10228230/mediaviewer/rm2343419137, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63672441

Quiz - (2020)

Not strictly a movie, but just the same - a 147 minute drama/true story about Charles Ingram, who with the help of his wife and another conspirator managed to cheat his way to £1,000,000 on Who Wants to be a Millionaire - only to be discovered when suspicious producers of the show watched the tape and noticed the strange way Ingram would slowly bring up every answer - which was always answered with a direct cough from the audience after he'd said the correct one out loud. This bit of fraud has always fascinated me - so I just couldn't help watching the tele-movie/mini-series to know a bit more about it. Like many of these made-for-TV true stories it's interesting without being overly compelling - but Michael Sheen has a great turn as quizmaster Chris Tarrant.

6/10
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Titane (2021)

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I only first heard of this a couple of days ago while I was looking up a different movie. It wasn't until I posted the poster in the other thread that I realized it was a Cannes winner. Same director as Raw, which was pretty good. She must be a Cronenberg fan, but then why did she have to go and make him look like a bitch. It's not the norm to have a movie this f**ked up while having quality filmmaking and acting. It is wild and full of life. It had me nauseated and enthralled, yet there was something sweet about it in the end. Some of you should watch it asap and some of you should stay far far away. You know who you are.



Titane (2021)

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I only first heard of this a couple of days ago while I was looking up a different movie. It wasn't until I posted the poster in the other thread that I realized it was a Cannes winner. Same director as Raw, which was pretty good. She must be a Cronenberg fan, but then why did she have to go and make him look like a bitch. It's not the norm to have a movie this f**ked up while having quality filmmaking and acting. It is wild and full of life. It had me nauseated and enthralled, yet there was something sweet about it in the end. Some of you should watch it asap and some of you should stay far far away. You know who you are.
Glad you really liked it!
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SF = Z


[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it



Hollywood Chinese (2007) A documentary about the history of Chinese representation in Hollywood films featuring interviews with actors, directors, and film historians. This was entertaining and informative. It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. Highly recommended. My rating is
.



“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
Titane (2021)

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I only first heard of this a couple of days ago while I was looking up a different movie. It wasn't until I posted the poster in the other thread that I realized it was a Cannes winner. Same director as Raw, which was pretty good. She must be a Cronenberg fan, but then why did she have to go and make him look like a bitch. It's not the norm to have a movie this f**ked up while having quality filmmaking and acting. It is wild and full of life. It had me nauseated and enthralled, yet there was something sweet about it in the end. Some of you should watch it asap and some of you should stay far far away. You know who you are.
Managed to go to a private showing when this came out. All the buzz it was getting, the Palme d’Or, seemed like a no-brainer.

After seeing it, the only thing that impressed me was the Mike Lavallee paint job on the deadbeat dad.





Yeah... kinda bad. Almost fell asleep midway through.
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LIGHTYEAR
(2022, MacLane)



"Respect the suit. This suit means something. It's not just protecting your body; it's protecting the universe. This suit is a promise to the world that you, and you alone, will do one thing above all. Finish the mission, no matter the cost. You will never quit, whatever the galaxy may throw your way!"

Saw this on my birthday weekend with the kids and I'm still not sure what to think. The whole premise behind its conception and production seems too convoluted, and to me, this doesn't feel like the film that "Andy" would react to the way he reacts in Toy Story. It feels like what it is: a film made for people that grew up watching Toy Story, and not for actual kids.

But putting that aside, the film does manage to hold its own. The animation is great and the characters are enjoyable. Obviously there are tons of nods to the Toy Story franchise, some of them feel forced, some of them stick their landing. The bit where Zurg reveals his true identity got a huge chuckle out of me, especially because one of my kids said something like "it's his father!", remembering the original joke, and then, well

Grade:



Full review on my Movie Loot
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Sex and the Law, 1968

In this mockumentary/documentary by Gabriel Axel--the director who made Babbette's Feast--a woman who has gotten in trouble with the law for being a pornographic model explores the world of pornography and the hypocrisy around how sex and nudity are portrayed in different corners of contemporary culture.

Take this review for what it is because I realized most of the way through what I watched that the version I was watching (on Tubi) seems to be a full 30 minutes short of the film's actual runtime. Why? I don't know. Maybe sequences that were more explicit were excised from this particular print? Anyway, it feels a bit goofy reviewing a movie when I've only seen 2/3 of the film, but I got enough of the gist that I wanted to write it up.

I added this film to my watchlist because the (deceptive, IMO!) description said that it was an exploration of how film changed after censorship laws were changed.

That is emphatically NOT what this film is about.

This film is basically a pro-pornography, cutesy little sexy comedy about the role of pornography in contemporary society. Birgit Brüel hosts the film, playing a woman who has recently been sentenced for being a pornographic model. Incensed by this injustice, she walks us through the benefits of pornography and during several stretches questions why it is that certain material is not considered obscene when it is pornographic, but is considered fine when classified as "art".

The discussion about what makes something "obscene" was interesting, and I appreciated the humor with which the film approaches this question. For example, it starts by noting that it is considered obscene for a publication to show an erect penis, then transitions to footage of a giant erect penis statue being, um, handled in a museum display. It also points out that certain themes and images have existed in etching/painting/statue form for ages and ages. There's also the question of what poses count as obscenity, pointing out that a woman laid supine on a bed is fine, but as soon as she crooks her leg out, it's obscene.

In many ways, my favorite thing about this film is the different ways in which it shows some interesting filmmaking. My absolute favorite thing about the film was showing Bruel's character as basically a working mother. She has two kids and a husband. We see her eating dinner with them and having banal conversations. Yet in the same film there are highly stylized sequences that are really nicely shot, like a series of tableaus showing different sex positions (man on top, woman on top, "I'm the king of the world", and so on) that for me landed just on the right side of sweet not stupid. Then there's a late scene that shows a lonely man and woman fantasizing about each other, then ending up in bed together. This scene has a different energy from a lot of the sexual content that comes before it and it was the thing in the film I found the most legitimately sexy.

When it comes to the way that the movie advocates for the value of porn, I had a mixed reaction. I agreed with a lot of the points made by the film--that people should be able to look at what they want; that exposure to sexual content can help people be less inhibited--but it certainly revealed a very entrenched point of view, namely that of a straight man. This is a universe where gay men (and gay porn) do not exist. At all. There are a few shots of two women together, but in a purely performative or leading up to a threesome way.

This is definitely a world where porn is made by straight men and for straight men. A scene where we watch Bruel participate in a porn shoot has some weird, creepy vibes to it. Four men crowd around her, giving her directions. It's meant to seem fun, but even the music is a bit off (and the Tubi subtitles seemed to agree, I can't remember the exact word used, but it was like "unsettling music"). The movie frames porn as something that women experience, but only ever by being on a date and having a man pull a magazine out of nowhere. Oh, and if the woman you're with doesn't like what you're doing and tells you to stop, don't worry: "I don't know what it is that [women] say no when we really mean yes!". We also see very little content that suggests what would be helping women enjoy themselves more, as most of what we see is nude women staged different ways. (I do give the film credit for including some male nudity, including outside of just scenes involving intercourse, and for matching the age and attractiveness of the male performers with the female performers).

It might sounds like I'm taking this sex comedy fake documentary too seriously, but I think that even in this type of movie it's worth noting whose perspective is being taken and who is being excluded. On the surface this movie is very sex positive, but only around certain types of bodies and preferences.

A fun little film. Maybe someday I'll catch those missing 30 minutes.








SF = Z






[Snooze Factor Ratings]:
Z = didn't nod off at all
Zz = nearly nodded off but managed to stay alert
Zzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed
Zzzz = nodded off and missed some of the film but went back to watch what I missed but nodded off again at the same point and therefore needed to go back a number of times before I got through it...
Zzzzz = nodded off and missed some or the rest of the film but was not interested enough to go back over it



I forgot the opening line.

By Roger Ebert, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57044561

Paris, Texas - (1984)

Paris, Texas is hard to just briefly summarize - another one from Wim Wenders (king of the road movies) and another look at the United States from a European filmmaker who had yet to assimilate culturally. It's very metaphorically rich, with Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) emerging from the desert, near death - a very literal way of looking at how this character has fallen, only to reemerge and slowly pick up the pieces of a life that spectacularly fell apart 4 years previously. He slowly transforms from being catatonic with no memories to reengaging with his brother and son - which leads to a quest to find his wife, and an emotional revelation for us in a great scene that Stanton and Nastassja Kinski share. I think quite a few of us have periods in our lives where we find ourselves in that desert, until we reemerge and pick up the pieces again, one by one. It's what makes this film so easy to engage with, and Travis so easy to empathize with to a certain extent. A classic that a lot of people still love today.

8.5/10


By IMP Awards, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16905881

The Virgin Suicides - (1999)

A gut-wrenching look at middle-class suburban and soulless hell, where a family with 5 daughters are observed from the outside, slowly descending into a meaningless existence leading them all to commit suicide. Kathleen Turner is great as the girls' overbearing and strict mother - and James Woods playing opposite her as the passive father. The only Sofia Coppola film I've seen post-Lost in Translation is The Beguiled, which I really liked. Perhaps I'll have to dig up the others - considering just how good The Virgin Suicides is. That the boys looking back at all the events have no idea why the girls did what they did says as much as anything else in the film, with it's melancholy feel and humorous moments combining to produce a dream-like, hazy remembrance we participate in. Great debut.

8/10


By United Artists - Heritage Auctions. Cropped from the original, lightly retouched. Unedited original can be seen in upload history., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...curid=85407881

The Great Dictator - (1940)

Even in this, Chaplin's first real talking picture, he crams so much into each second that I couldn't afford to look away - and I still likely missed a lot. It's probably because he's such a visual comedian as well, and he still carried that over into the sound era. I loved the first segment of this film, on the front lines of World War I, and most of the film really. It goes into that same set of films of his which I'm dying to watch again, to get a good handle on every little nuance and pratfall - for I find the pace of his films outrun what I can take in on my first viewing.

7.5