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Victim of The Night
While I wouldn't say I loved it, I did enjoy it quite a bit. As far as Resnais goes, I like Hiroshima Mon Amour and Night and Fog more.
Ha! I had come in from a particularly heady night with friends when I responded the first time and had no recollection that I had. Hence the second response.



Victim of The Night
No Time to Die (2021)

I really enjoyed No Time to Die - Skyfall is still my favourite of the series, but this is a definite step up from Spectre. It's very much a close sequel though, so you might want to rewatch before you head to the cinema. I liked that it had a lot of the things that make the Bond films such reliable entertainment - the locations, the action, the cars - while at the same time moving away from some of the things that are outdated like the sexism. I think the way the character of Bond in the movie is at times feeling like he is left behind by things moving on, and at other times proving how he's still got it and is absolutely still awesome sums up how the films themselves are.

I think a lot of the complaints people have are unfounded - I've seen people complain about Bond's 'replacement' 00 just based on the trailers - but I think it was all done well; the world moves on, some things she does better, some things he does and they have a respect for each other as people in the end. Rami Malek's villain might not be a classic, but his poison garden villain lair certainly is. And no spoilers, but I thought the ending was fitting.

I like how Craig's Bond films have become a whole contained arc of their own as well as having a place in the whole Bond history. There were a few nods to earlier films (like the reuse of 'All the Time in the World') and times where everything even looks like it could be in the sixties or seventies. It's throwaway, but I really liked the bit where Bond just uses his phone to take a photo of something - no need for tiny cameras or exploding pens!

I would have liked more of Q and Moneypenny, because Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris are two of my favourite actors and I really like their characters in this series. I did like the glimpse into Q's flat and his cats (although he's apparently got over his fear of flying...).

The plot based around some kind of DNA targetting bio-weapon is utter nonsense, but seems fairly sensible in comparison to the plot nonsense we got in Black Widow. I've never bought into the romance between Bond and Madeleine Swann, she's far too young for him, so while I appreciate what they're going for it doesn't quite work for me.

Worth seeing on the big screen, anyway.

I was going to comment about the age disparity as, being a man reasonably close to Craig's age, I don't think it's usually all that good for either party when men date much younger women. And it's probably not a great message for society to keep telling men that they need to be with much younger women to still feel virile and well, frankly, like they matter. I balked significantly when I saw the trailer for this and saw that Seydoux was in it again. And I read your post and that stuck out at me, so I looked up her age and I will say that, in my personal experience, once a woman hits her late 30s, she's probably mature enough to handle a man of any age if there's attraction so it really seemed less problematic for me. So your post actually helped me to stomach something that was bothering me and I feel like I'll be able to enjoy the film more.



I definitely have had a different experience with this film, in the dozen to twenty times I've watched it, so I just wanted to say that some people think this exploration of the dynamics of friendship under the challenge of time, which is all it ever claimed to be, is an excellent film, to me. And with one of my favorite scripts.
Brilliant movie. Seen The Big Chill many times.
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So bad, it's good. The acting is specially bad, unintentional laughs are the best
I watched the trailer for this and you're spot on about the acting. The lead is going for a Norwegian Schwarzenegger vibe only without the charisma. And the baddie appears to be the equivalent of Jason Momoa. Again, without the charisma. I could probably make it through this. I remember making it through Van Damme's Cyborg which this reminds me of.



Ha! I had come in from a particularly heady night with friends when I responded the first time and had no recollection that I had. Hence the second response.
I wonder if the man from the film who played the card game with the palace's occupants is responsible for you forgetting.
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That's Entertainment, 1974

In this film, several MGM stars offer a retrospective of MGM's best performers and musical numbers. Performers like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Don O'Connor, Kimmy Stewart, and Elizabeth Taylor introduce various clips from different MGM films.

For me, this is an interesting case of separating out the central content (the film clips) from the packaging (the actor introductions).

The clips, including such legendary sequences as "New York, New York," "Singin' In the Rain," and "Make 'Em Laugh", are all good stuff. I had seen probably about 70% of them, but there were a few sequences I've never seen in whole and that was really cool.

But I was far less sold on the whole framework. Things get off to a weird start when the host announces a clip by saying that the lead performer was surrounded by "overweight chorus girls". It's such a casually cutting and strange remark, and entirely unnecessary (also dude, pot, kettle). I didn't make note of them, but there were a handful of other remarks that made me cringe a bit.

Then there's the whole "rah rah" tone of it all. This is of course to be expected when a studio makes a film about how great it is. But the hosts introduce clips of people in blackface without a moment of hesitation. Likewise, the film trots out a ton of content from Judy Garland, made strange by what we now know about how Garland was treated by the studio and those in charge of it---restricted and criticized and fed a range of drugs just to get the output they wanted.

It was fun seeing some actors who I've never seen out of their "prime"--people like O'Connor where I only know them as 30-40 year olds.

So the clips are great and the hosts are charming enough, but there's something a bit off about it all. Like one of those infomercials that a company creates about itself.




Victim of The Night

Mystery Street (John Sturges, 1950)
6.5/10

Complex, twisty murder mystery, set in Boston, is crammed with suspects and a strong Ricardo Montalban in the lead.

There ya go.



Victim of The Night

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1390847

Sideways - (2004)

I watched this last night and loved it. I don't know what was wrong with me when I watched it for the first time on release - where I didn't like it. Watching the natural chemistry between Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church on this road trip was pure magic. Payne's Oscar winning screenplay results in my favourite moment in the film, where Maya (Virginia Madsen) relates why she likes winery so much, and it all has a profound connection for the both of them and the way they relate to people. Haden Church's obsession with sex is so much fun as well - and leads to plenty of conflict. But it also helps his good friend, who you can see is suffering so badly after his divorce. The film as a whole is touching, funny and meaningful. It's one of Giamatti's career bests. Can it crack my top 25 films of the 00s? Will it make the top 100? Who knows.

9/10
It was marketed as "the feel-good buddy-comedy of the Summer" which it is not and that threw a lot of people off, including me.



Victim of The Night


Three Colors: Blue, 1993

Julie (Juliette Binoche) is the only survivor of a car accident that kills her husband, Patrice, and her daughter. While her instinct is to destroy almost all remnants of her previous life and live a life of solitude, she finds that being numb is not so easy to sustain. Between grappling with her husband's legacy---he was a famous composer, though there are rumors that Julie actually wrote or co-wrote much of his work--and struggling with revelations about his personal life, Julie cannot maintain distance from her feelings.

This film is a masterpiece. I'm obviously about to say a lot of nice things about it, but if you've been holding out on watching it, do yourself a favor and get it in front of your eyeballs ASAP.

It's hard to know where to begin with this film, but it feels right to start with Binoche's central performance, which is a brilliant portrayal of someone who is strong and yet vulnerable. Julie has experienced a significant trauma, and yet she manages to find a place for kindness and compassion for those around her. Julie, understandably, does not want to feel. And so when she does express emotion, you can see in Binoche's face the way that connections and feelings must push past an internal gatekeeper.

From a visual and directorial standpoint, I was completely swept away by this film. The blue of the title is very literal. The color permeates the film. What it represents---memory or emotion or grief--is hard for me to nail down at the moment, but I loved the way that it surrounds Julie, at times literally. The most concrete blue in the film is a sparkling gemstone mobile that is the only keepsake of Julie's daughter that we see. Julie takes it with her to her new apartment and several times during the film stops to gaze into it. But blue is also in the neon signs in the background, and in the unabashed tinting of several scenes, and in the large pool where she swims alone.

I also loved the stylistic choice to have certain sequences fade out and then fade back in. It somehow seems to capture the way that, when you're feeling an overwhelming emotion, it can seem to "fade" on you for a moment before you snap back to reality. I also loved how Julie and other characters move in and out of the frame. In one sequence, the young man who came on the car accident meets Julie to return a necklace to her. For several seconds, the necklace moves toward Julie, seeming to float in the air like a ghost--and for Julie that is certainly the effect of it.

Something I found very moving about the film is the way that Julie connects to other characters. The lesson of the film is not "cheer up! Other people have it just as bad!". Instead, Julie is able to find some semblance of balance through helping and supporting others. A homeless musician, or a woman from her apartment who is coping with the fact that she's spotted her father at a sex show in which she performs. It's not about Julie fixing their problems, but juts about her connecting with these people and making them feel seen. "You came, and that's the same thing," her friend tells her, when Julie gets out of bed at night to come and see her.

On a lesser note, I thought that the film had some interesting things to say about fame and legacy. Julie's husband was famous, and so people don't hesitate to badger Julie or take pictures of her still-bruised face in the wake of his death. Through the film, other people attempt to control her husband's legacy, at times in direct opposition to Julie's wishes. At one point, a news reporter remarks that he "belongs to all of us." The film doesn't seem to take a strong position one way or the other on this question, but it is interesting to watch Julie struggle with the way that others are comfortable using and/or manipulating her husband's work and life to their own ends.

Again: masterpiece. I'm so pleased I watched it and sorry it took me this long. I imagine a rewatch will be incredibly rewarding.

One of my favorite movies of all time, it was a wake-up call for me for what I should expect of greatness in film.



Victim of The Night
I wonder if the man from the film who played the card game with the palace's occupants is responsible for you forgetting.
Well, he did beat me with the matchsticks.



It was marketed as "the feel-good buddy-comedy of the Summer" which it is not and that threw a lot of people off, including me.
I really liked Sideways.



I've seen Dirk in The Servant (1963) and can imagine him doing a very good job in the role and would be curious to see how he does, having enjoyed him as much as I did in The Servant.
I think you'd enjoy him just as much, a very consistent performer with a surprising number of good films to his credit.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
I think you'd enjoy him just as much, a very consistent performer with a surprising number of good films to his credit.
He does have quite a long list to his name so I definitely will be trying to. Thanks!
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Tonight's was The Last Duel. It's been a while since my last medieval movie and this one is a Ridley Scott extravaganza in the same scale as Gladiator, but 1200 years later. A triad of characters are the focus of the story, supposedly a somewhat true rendering of the last royally sanctioned duel in France, way back in the mid-1300's.

To be brief (it's a complicated plot line), Margaritte claims to have been raped by her husband's friend Jaques. After some legal wranglings involving lots of clerics with dark robes and hats, her husband challenges Jaques to a duel. All of them being high ranked people with castles, the King makes a ruling that there will be a duel, carried out with a castle full of spectators.

The peculiar thing about this flick is that you see the story 3 times, supposedly from different perspectives. For me, however, the perspectives were not all that different. It was nearly the same story 3 times, ending, as you guessed, in a big battle with lots of armor.

It's definitely the most gritty medieval movie I've seen for a while, worthy of its Gladiator grittiness. It's also dark, not just spiritually dark (it's that too), but dark dark, mostly shot as though it's always snowing and never sunny in France. It's a perpetual gray twilight all the time. Being starved for a medieval movie, however, it worked. Combat scenes are quite good, as are the medieval sets.

Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer star with occasional appearances by Ben Affleck as a minor count.




I forgot the opening line.

By The cover art can or could be obtained from IMP Awards or Sony Pictures Classics., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31219010

Midnight in Paris - (2011)

Saw this when it came out, and thought it was quite good - despite me turning sour on a lot of the films a certain ex-girlfriend of mine used to love. This one still holds up. Owen Wilson is the Woody surrogate this time around, as he finds himself transported back in time to 1920s Paris - a Parisian era he most closely identifies with. Here he meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard,) who prefers 19th Century Paris - along the way he also meets every famous writer, artist and filmmaker who happened to be around at the time, gaining insight into love and life. Expect the usual Woody neurosis, except this time with beautiful Paris filling up the screen at regular intervals. Really captures Paris wonderfully well.

8/10


By IMP Awards: 1955 U.S. one sheet poster, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1909671

The Seven Year Itch - (1955)

I found this funny for the most part - but fell asleep watching it last night. Decided to catch it again in the morning but started falling asleep at around the same point, almost as if on cue. I didn't think it was really boring, so I can't explain the narcolepsy this film is tending to bring out in me. Maybe it's Marilyn's husky sweet talking. I enjoyed Ewell's imaginative daydreaming about how irresistible he is to women. Don't watch this while you're operating heavy machinery.

6/10
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The Dawn Patrol (1938)
Directed by Edmund Goulding

"You know what this place is? It's a slaughterhouse, and I'm the butcher!" - Major Brand

Terrific casting brings Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven together in this First World War aviation drama. Tightly centred around the lives and operations of a frontline Royal Flying Corps fighter unit in 1915, consistently portraying the war as relentless and destructive.

Squadron Commander Major Brand (Rathbone) is at the end of his tether with the endless cycle of planning missions and sending out pilots, who have neither the experience nor the machinery to adequately fight and survive in their encounters - his pleas to headquarters continually falling on deaf ears. Aside from a couple of old hands in Captain Courtney (Flynn) and Lieutenant Scott (Niven), all he can do is wait nervously in his office, until the returning sound of the engines tells him how many have failed to return. Then the replacements arrive and the cycle continues.

The regular pilots, unburdened with the responsibility of command, are able to escape during their moments when off duty in celebrations of drink-filled merriment, gallantly toasting "the next man who dies". Then in an ironic twist of fate, following an attack on an enemy airfield against orders, Major Brand is promoted for the action and can finally be free of his own private hell. Courtney is unexpectedly placed in command and must learn to adapt, testing himself and friendships along the way. Many clichés are naturally presented throughout with only slight direct historical accuracy, but it's the fine acting and experience of the overall themes that give this movie its greatest appeal. The flying, combat and ground handling scenes all convey a reasonably authentic depiction of the subject, and in the end the film's message is crystal clear. The seriousness is always balanced by an endearing humour and I don't think I've ever seen a movie involving heavier drinking.

This film is a remake of the same title from 1930, and uses some of the earlier footage during many of the flying scenes. Despite this, it rarely looks out of place and in fact the film has a distinct look about it which gives the impression of being much older. The best of the WW1 aviation genre for me and a treat to have these three great stars.

9/10




Tonight's was The Last Duel. It's been a while since my last medieval movie and this one is a Ridley Scott extravaganza in the same scale as Gladiator, but 1200 years later. A triad of characters are the focus of the story, supposedly a somewhat true rendering of the last royally sanctioned duel in France, way back in the mid-1300's.

To be brief (it's a complicated plot line), Margaritte claims to have been raped by her husband's friend Jaques. After some legal wranglings involving lots of clerics with dark robes and hats, her husband challenges Jaques to a duel. All of them being high ranked people with castles, the King makes a ruling that there will be a duel, carried out with a castle full of spectators.

The peculiar thing about this flick is that you see the story 3 times, supposedly from different perspectives. For me, however, the perspectives were not all that different. It was nearly the same story 3 times, ending, as you guessed, in a big battle with lots of armor.

It's definitely the most gritty medieval movie I've seen for a while, worthy of its Gladiator grittiness. It's also dark, not just spiritually dark (it's that too), but dark dark, mostly shot as though it's always snowing and never sunny in France. It's a perpetual gray twilight all the time. Being starved for a medieval movie, however, it worked. Combat scenes are quite good, as are the medieval sets.

Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer star with occasional appearances by Ben Affleck as a minor count.

when i saw the movie trailer of this movie and the movie free guy i was thinking to watch killing eve a tv series that jodie comer started in,



Psychomania AKA The Death Wheelers

Synopsis. An amiable, psychopathic leader of a violent teen motorcycle gang is spurred by his mother, a Satan-worshipping spiritual medium, into committing suicide and returning to life as an “undead”

Yet another mean spirited odd 70’s horror movie that is bizarrely odd to say the least and can’t decide on a title 🙄

By the way his mother doesn’t really “spur him on” she’s actually more hesitant 🙄

When the biker gang kill a guy on the road, the leader tells his mother “we blew a guys mind, you should have seen it, he came right through the windshield!” she has no discernible reaction.

Blowing someone’s mind is their code for murder.

When the leader commits suicide the gang hold their own ceremony for him.. an odd part of an even odder film where the bikers suddenly more resemble peace-loving hippies and one of them sings a song.. a flowers in their hair kind of song.. and it’s pretty much a musical interlude, we get an entire song... oooookay

At one point they all go into town on their bikes causing mayhem, knocking people other and chasing women with baby’s in prams, nobody gets seriously hurt, even when one guy gets knocked off a ladder, their happens to be a pile of boxes to soften his fall... 🙄

Theirs nothing actually very horrible to see and certainly no zombies.. just evil indifferent people with English manners and no discernible motives

And a frog demon

70’s ahhh

I didn’t like it.



Shame you didn't enjoy it, FB. I love Psychomania. I love the mix of British 70's vibe (and mean as you say) with the campy PG violence and horror. I really like the bitterness to it, too. The mother tries to protect her son and he just uses and abuses it, wrecking everything for them both. Much as I feel that generation felt their kids were doing to the country and freedom they fought for.
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By The cover art can or could be obtained from IMP Awards or Sony Pictures Classics., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31219010

Midnight in Paris - (2011)

Saw this when it came out, and thought it was quite good - despite me turning sour on a lot of the films a certain ex-girlfriend of mine used to love. This one still holds up. Owen Wilson is the Woody surrogate this time around, as he finds himself transported back in time to 1920s Paris - a Parisian era he most closely identifies with. Here he meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard,) who prefers 19th Century Paris - along the way he also meets every famous writer, artist and filmmaker who happened to be around at the time, gaining insight into love and life. Expect the usual Woody neurosis, except this time with beautiful Paris filling up the screen at regular intervals. Really captures Paris wonderfully well.

8/10
This one surprised me. On paper it didn't seem like the kind of movie I'd get into but it ended up charming me. Kind of like Paris did to Gil. It didn't hurt that he was such a likable character. A great example of what an ideal audience surrogate should be.