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Candyman (1992)

Candyman is a good news bad news type of film. The good news is the film is technically fantastic...Phillip Glass's score is memorable and haunting. Anthony Richmond's cinematography is incredible this isn't his best work but for a mid-budget film it's incredible. The film's production values greatly elevate what is a silly and confusing story. The first half of this film is perfect...the idea of this urban legend that deals with urban people is great. Madsen gives an incredible performance as a woman who is going mad...the movie has a Yuppie nightmare quality to it(similar to After Hours). Tony Todd is a compelling actor and he chews scenery very well.

But the second half of this film is just and lead weight on the story. The rules and mythology of Candyman become so muddled I didn't know where the film was going or what Helen could or could not do. I liked the full array of people in the ghetto it didn't feel like the overtly sanitized stories we get today but a number of the later horror scenes could have been played for terror but instead they were just here's a hook slash dead. It was surprise not horror wasting a concept that I'm still confused about.

Was Candyman trying to seduce Helen...but he was terrorizing her. The concept just came off like Freddy Kruegar light...just didn't work for me. Still credit where credit belongs the first half of this film is fantastic...they just didn't stick the ending.

C+




Dog Day Afternoon
(Sidney Lumet 1975)

Second watch and it's still amazing! I loved every minute of it and every character too from Sonny & Sal to Leon to the city cop in charge and all the women bank tellers. Talk about some stellar acting! These people seemed real.

They just couldn't make this movie today. First off you would never get a major city like Brooklyn to close down a city block to film a movie. And you'd never get that many extras packed onto the street if they did manage to get permits to close off the street for shooting. And no way in hell would they ever allow a helicopter to hover so low over a crowd of people. None of that would be happening these days, it would be all done with CG And you couldn't tell a personal story like this because some producer or director armed with the latest meta data would want to ramp up the picture and get a thrill a minute, adrenal fueled movie and turn this into a thriller...Thank goodness for the 1970s!

The 1970s was a special time in Hollywood, the baby boomers had come to age and wanted more serious films patterned after European films. I guess they had gotten tired of Beach Blanket Bingo & Easy Rider type movies. Of course not all of the movies in the 70s were of the same caliber as Dog Day Afternoon but there were enough quality dramas that it marked the decade as one of the best for serious dramas in Hollywood.


Just for fun here's my old review.


Dog Day Afternoon (1975

I've known about this movie for years but I've never gotten around to watching it, until recently...I liked it too and was blown away by the first 30 minutes, it was like 'you are there' during a botched bank robbery. I laughed too, I don't know if anyone else found a lot of the film humorous but I did.

Al Pacino is great of course, so was Charles Durning as the Police Chief. Those two made the movie. Sal (John Cazale) the other bank robbery was interesting as we never really learn much about him, and yet I could tell he had his own back story, which we learn only a little about, which keeps him a mystery.

I didn't know anything about the actual robbery before the movie, so when we see Sonny's other wife, I did a double take! I wasn't sure at first what was suppose to be happening. The actor who played his wife Chris Sarandon was extremely good. I looked him up on IMDB and that's a link, damn! He's done a lot of movie roles where I've seen him but never knew his name.

Loved the on scene street locations, so much nicer than in a studio and it allows a huge exterior set with lots of extras! It looked great and the ending while not a surprise, happened so fast that it was shocking.

I do wish the film was 30 minutes shorter, I did find myself getting restless during the middle of the film. But overall a strong movie.



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Damn, some of you guys are flying!
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Damn, some of you guys are flying!
You don't have to worry about that with me. It seems like there will only be 9 films at least anyways, so it shouldn't be too hard a chore.



Damn, some of you guys are flying!
I'm actually holding back some so I don't finish in only a few weeks I mix it up with the HoF noms and whatever movie theme I'm working on...Currently watching Bogart's filmography and I just started on an Agathe Christie kick.



Out of curiosity, which ones have you watched so far?
I'm watching Bogart's films chronologically, there were several I could not find. I'd seen most all of his well known later films but hadn't seen most of his really early stuff.
Here's my working list:

1941 High Sierra......................Have...Seen
1940 They Drive by Night
1940 Brother Orchid
1940 It All Came True......................Seen
1940 Virginia City..............................Seen
1939 Invisible Stripes..........................Seen
1939 The Return of Doctor X..............Seen
1939 The Roaring Twenties................Seen
1939 Dark Victory
1939 You Cant Get Away with Murder.....Seen
1939 The Oklahoma Kid....................Seen
1939 King of the Underworld..............Seen
1938 Angels with Dirty Faces.............Seen
1938 The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse.....Seen
1938 Racket Busters.......................Seen
1938 Men Are Such Fools..............Seen
1938 Crime School.........................Seen
1938 Swing Your Lady....................Seen
1937 Stand-In.................................Seen
1937 Dead End..............................Seen
1937 Kid Galahad..........................Seen
1937 San Quentin.........................Seen
1937 Marked Woman....................Seen
1937 The Great O'Malley...............Seen
1936 Isle of Fury............................Seen
1936 China Clipper.......................Seen
1936 Bullets or Ballots..................Seen
1936 The Petrified Forest.............Seen
1936 Two Against the World.........Seen
1934 Midnight...............................Seen
1932 Three on a Match................Seen
1932 Big City Blues......................Seen
1932 Love Affair............................Seen
1931 A Holy Terror***
1931 Bad Sister.............................Seen
1931 Body and Soul***
1930 A Devil with Women***
1930 Up the River..........................Seen

Humphrey Bogart films needed:
1930 Broadway's Like That
1930 A Devil with Women (can't find)
1931 Body and Soul (can't find)
1931 A Holy Terror (have but really poor video)



Humphrey Bogart films needed:
1930 Broadway's Like That
1930 A Devil with Women (can't find)
1931 Body and Soul (can't find)
1931 A Holy Terror (have but really poor video)
Yeah, I can't find those either sadly. With A Holy Terror, I found two versions of it (YouTube and the Russian site), but the quality for both are pretty bad, like you say.





Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

While I nominated William Friedkin I have to admit Lument is the superior auteur. Dog Day Afternoon is his masterpiece this is from a man who averaged one film a year from 1957-1999. This is basically a stage play elevated into a feature film. It's also a one man show as everything goes through Sonny (Al Pacino). Sonny is crazy but he's not stupid and the film walks the balance between his humanity and the tension he's feeling as this bank heist collapses.

This is a film that would never be made today, if this film were made today the cast would be "diverse", you would have these crazy action stunt sequences, everybody would be very smart. What makes this film work so well is that everyone in the film is human and real. Carol Kane talks to her husband on the phone about dinner, the bank manager is a diabetic but he's also a good guy and Sonny recognizes that. No modern film would take a second out of it's story to humanize the bank robber and the wealthy bank manager.

Part of what makes the film work so well is that you have one track...the slow build up to the guys getting away and the other track of entrances and exits. We see Sonny's two wives, the first his homosexual lover that he's doing this so he can pay for her operation and the other his fat housewife raising two kids. Both women love him but we also know he abuses them...it's something right underneath the surface it's a plot point that demonstrates both restraint and understanding that Sonny is not a good guy but rather a human and crazy.

The suspense of the film is based on reality, it's ugly and clunky and confusing. Lument lets us see all the people in the background reacting to the craziness but it's never over the top it's always very much grounded. And it really should be said how expertly casted the film is these feel like real new yorkers in the 70'd. James Broderick and Charles Durning play the pair of officials on the other end (another thing you wouldn't see in a modern film). Broderick is almost the creepiest person in the film an FBI agent who seems displaced from reality. Durning on the other hand plays the sergeant who isn't really that smart but he's coming to terms with everything going around him.

A



The Valley of the Dolls
This is a fun and cheesy movie from the Sixties. It has gorgeous women in it and fabulous fashions and wild hairdos. I love the production values of this movie. The music is excellent. I especially like when Neely and Tony sing in the sanitarium. Yes it is corny, but the song is beautiful and the harmony is lovely. Patty Duke tears up the scenery but she seems to be the only one who is acting in this thing. She is very effective in the scene where she visits Anne when Lyon is out of town. You really feel her vulnerability and her exhaustion. She seems to be the only one who knows she is in a melodrama. Barbara Perkins is very calm and cool. But she often looks like she is waiting for her line instead of listening to the other actors. I have always loved her look in this movie. Sharon Tate is lovely, but she is just a neophyte. But in the scene in the screening room, just sitting there with her hair up, she has a much more sophisticated look to her. She at least looks as if she is involved in the scenes unlike Barbara. The writing of the narration at the beginning of the film is awful. It must have been pulled directly from Susann's book. Yeesh! the rest of the script is passable. I loved Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson. The scene in which she and Patty Duke lock horns is so much fun. The Real Housewives of Broadway.

C+



Beelzebubble (can I still call you Bubbles?) it's less typing...Was that your first watch of Valley of the Dolls? You might know this buy Judy Garland was originally cast as Helen Lawson but had a problem.
From wiki
Before filming on Valley of the Dolls started in early 1967, there was much publicity surrounding the casting of Judy Garland as Helen Lawson. Garland had not made a motion picture in five years. Her last film, I Could Go On Singing, was filmed in 1962 and released in March 1963. Despite decent reviews, it was a box-office failure. Shortly thereafter, Garland embarked on a weekly CBS television variety series, The Judy Garland Show, in the fall of 1963. Although it was favorably reviewed by the press, the ratings were low and was canceled in the spring of 1964. By 1967, Garland was thin, frail, in dire financial straits, and desperate for work. 20th Century Fox then signed her to appear as Helen Lawson in the film version of Valley of the Dolls. According to Gerold Frank, the author of the biography Judy, Garland was to receive $75,000 for eight weeks of work, then $25,000 a week if she was needed longer. This would also include her singing one song in the film. In March 1967, Garland flew to New York to attend the wedding of her daughter singer-dancer Liza Minnelli to Australian performer Peter Allen and to meet with the author of Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann, at a press conference to promote the upcoming film. In addition, both Garland and Susann appeared as the mystery guests on the CBS-TV game show What's My Line on Sunday, March 5 the same year, to further plug and publicize the film. Garland then returned to Hollywood to start work on the film.

At first, all went well. Garland filmed some costume tests for the role and successfully pre-recorded the song "I'll Plant My Own Tree". However, after a week's shooting, she was unable to function and was heavily dependent not only on alcohol but also Demerol. Susann, who was cast in a bit part in the film and was sharing Garland's dressing room at the time, found the drug on the floor in her closet. As a result, with no footage deemed usable, Garland was fired by Fox. She begged them to give her another chance, but the studio refused. They did, however, agree to pay her half of her promised fee—$37,500—for her time. Garland was also given the copper-colored sequined pant suit designed by Travilla for the film which she wore during her final New York Palace Theatre engagement in August 1967.[5]

Patty Duke told an audience at a screening of the film at the Castro Theater on July 20, 2009 that director Mark Robson made Garland wait from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm before filming her scenes for the day, knowing that she would be upset and drunk by that time. In her 1987 autobiography Call Me Anna, Duke felt that Garland had been deliberately exploited by the studio. She wrote: "The producers may have felt justified in hiring her in the first place ... They had gotten their PR mileage out of the situation, the 'Judy comeback' stories had created extraordinary publicity for the film and now she was expendable".[6] Academy Award winner Susan Hayward replaced Garland in the role. Hayward reportedly had a difficult relationship with the cast and crew, and her clashes with Duke became part of the dramatic tension between their characters.



Beelzebubble (can I still call you Bubbles?) it's less typing...Was that your first watch of Valley of the Dolls? You might know this buy Judy Garland was originally cast as Helen Lawson but had a problem.
From wiki
You can call me Bubbles if you want. This is the first time I have seen VofTD from beginning to end. I caught it towards the end a couple times.
Poor Judy! I wonder if the studio encouraged Robson to treat her like that.



That is just unbelievably sad Garland didn't have an easy life.
According to Judy herself, when she was a teen actress MGM studio under Louie B. Mayer gave her amphetamines so she could have more energy and work longer...Which eventually got her hooked on a downward spiral of uppers and downers and booze too. I watched some of her last TV specials and she was clinging to every guest as if she just wanted someone to hug her back. Judy also said Louie B. Mayer referred to her as his 'ugly duckling', which crushed her as she was very self conscious about her looks.

You can call me Bubbles if you want. This is the first time I have seen VofTD from beginning to end. I caught it towards the end a couple times.
Poor Judy! I wonder if the studio encouraged Robson to treat her like that.
I don't know if any of that was true or just speculation, though it might be true as Judy Garland could have tanked on the movie thus ruining production. She'd did that on Annie Get Your Gun and was replaced after shooting had begun with Betty Hutton.

On one of the DVD extras, Barbara Perkins was talking about her time on the set and said Mark Robson deliberately antagonized Patty Duke to get more emotion out of her performance. And he belittled Sharon Tate to put her in the mindset of someone who had been beaten down by life. And lucky Barbara Perkins the director treated her like royalty so she would have this regal air about herself in the movie....Lots of interesting stuff about Valley of the Dolls on those DVD extras.




Dead Man's Letters (1986)

This was depressing. It was utterly bleak, like one long funeral dirge. The lack of hope rose from the monochromatic film stock like urine soaked clothing. I liked it!

This was a great nom and a solid movie. I like post nuclear war apocalyptic films and this rates up there with the best. Each image from the movie is a powerhouse in and of itself. The set designs and cinematography are a sensation treat and propel the film's down trodden vibe to the pits of despair...Loved that multi-latching door that they passed through and the outside scenes with those HUGE piles of debris and burnt out cars, damn that was impressive.

The film makes a striking example of what living in a near-dead world destroyed by nuclear war would be like. Oh, I got say I loved the flickering light bulbs that hung from the ceiling of the museum basement. Equally I loved the humming sound they made, so effective especially with the shots of the peddle operated generators. I wonder if Terry Gilliam every watch Dead Man's Letters, I think he'd be impressed.



Through out Dead Man's Letters there's this palatable feeling of humanity on the brink of extinction which is relayed to the viewer on a purely visual level. One example would be the older woman who went topless so she could get use to the cold. It suggested that societal norms had broken down and no one cared if she was topless or not...it was never titillating and no one cared or even noticed her...and that said a lot.

The most powerful scene was when the old man left to look for his son and entered the children's hospital ward and we hear all those children screaming in painful agony and we look at his horrified face but can't see the burnt and dying kids, but we can hear their suffering.





Dead Man's Letters (1986)

This was depressing. It was utterly bleak, like one long funeral dirge. The lack of hope rose from the monochromatic film stock like urine soaked clothing. I liked it!

This was a great nom and a solid movie. I like post nuclear war apocalyptic films and this rates up there with the best. Each image from the movie is a powerhouse in and of itself. The set designs and cinematography are a sensation treat and propel the film's down trodden vibe to the pits of despair...Loved that multi-latching door that they passed through and the outside scenes with those HUGE piles of debris and burnt out cars, damn that was impressive.

The film makes a striking example of what living in a near-dead world destroyed by nuclear war would be like. Oh, I got say I loved the flickering light bulbs that hung from the ceiling of the museum basement. Equally I loved the humming sound they made, so effective especially with the shots of the peddle operated generators. I wonder if Terry Gilliam every watch Dead Man's Letters, I think he'd be impressed.



Through out Dead Man's Letters there's this palatable feeling of humanity on the brink of extinction which is relayed to the viewer on a purely visual level. One example would be the older woman who went topless so she could get use to the cold. It suggested that societal norms had broken down and no one cared if she was topless or not...it was never titillating and no one cared or even noticed her...and that said a lot.

The most powerful scene was when the old man left to look for his son and entered the children's hospital ward and we hear all those children screaming in painful agony and we look at his horrified face but can't see the burnt and dying kids, but we can hear their suffering.

Glad you enjoyed it! Out of curiosity, what's your take on the film's ending?



Glad you enjoyed it! Out of curiosity, what's your take on the film's ending?
WARNING: "ending" spoilers below
I'd say that the ending is necessary as the film states something to the effect of: the Soviet science community wishes humans to wake up and not destroy the world. So no complaints about the end, but if I had my dithers I would've ended it on an even bleaker note than the film started on.
Oh, regarding Dead Man's Letters being reminiscent of Stalker, I didn't see it myself...other than the use of monochromatic film in the beginning of Stalker, at least for me the emotions both film's produced were completely different.

But you know what film this really did remind me of? Visitor of a Museum (1989) and not because of the museum tie-in but because of the whole dismal post apocalyptic world that is explored. Not surprising both movies are directed by the same director. Visitor of a Museum was made a few years later and plays like an epilogue or a sequel. Worth watching.