Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

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mark f's Avatar
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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
05-04-16
Check the finale (about 1:15:15) of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) to hear a reference to Holmes' addiction.
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You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
05-04-16
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules
You read that too? I wonder how many people watched the film after that news article? Probably just me. Have you seen any other Sherlock Holmes stuff? Besides on Star Trek

I watch some of the old Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone on cable every once in a while, but offhand, I don't know which ones I've seen. I also watch the TV show "Elementary" every week.



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05-04-16
@ Mark...wholly smokes, indeed he does make a cocaine reference. Wow... I wonder how that got past the production code board?

@GBG...I've been meaning to watch the old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies. I've never seen one. The clip Mark posted was the first I've seen of it. Though I know of them.



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You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
05-05-16
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules
My parents had this old reprint of a Sears mail order catalog from the 1890s and it had for sale hypodermic needles for cocaine, which was legal at the time.

I didn't know that cocaine was ever legal.



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"Lois, I never lie."
05-05-16
Originally Posted by gbgoodies
I didn't know that cocaine was ever legal.
All drugs were legal before the 20th century.
In the U.S., laws regarding certain drugs did not exist until 1914 with the Harrison Narcotic Act.



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05-05-16
Originally Posted by Captain Steel
I never cared for Bull Durham (not that I really gave it a chance.)
I'll take Major League any day - probably my favorite baseball movie.
Why didn't you like Bull Durham Captain?



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05-05-16
People used to send drug packages to their men in the trenches during WW1.

“In London in 1916, Harrods were selling a kit described as "A Welcome Present for Friends at the Front" containing cocaine, morphine, syringes and needles.”
http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=62480

There's also another 70's film which pushes Holmes drug use to the forefront.


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"Lois, I never lie."
05-05-16
Originally Posted by Gideon58
Why didn't you like Bull Durham Captain?
I shouldn't say I didn't like it because I don't really remember it.

Not to tell a long story, but in the 80's I worked in a restaurant that was unique in that in it's bar they would show movies. Rumor has it that they showed vintage movies before I worked there, but by the time I was there they were showing more recent features. It was kind of quaint as there was always an intermission as the staff would have to change the reels for each movie (they always came on at least two reels).

Anyway, I saw bits & pieces of hundreds of movies during my 10 years there. So I'd get a sense of movies, but seeing out-of-sequence bits is obviously not the same as watching them from start to finish.

So, I remember seeing bits of Bull Durham and for some reason decided it wasn't one worth finding and watching from start to finish. Maybe now that my tastes are evolving, I'll seek it out.



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"Lois, I never lie."
05-05-16
Originally Posted by honeykid
People used to send drug packages to their men in the trenches during WW1.



http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?p=62480

There's also another 70's film which pushes Holmes drug use to the forefront.


The Seven Percent Solution
This is a very unique film in that it mixes fictional characters (Holmes & Watson) with real historical characters (Sigmund Freud). And the odd thing is the plot begins with Watson bringing Holmes to see Dr. Freud as a patient in hopes that Freud can cure Holmes of his drug addiction (it then leads into a mystery adventure team-up!)



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05-06-16

Giovanni's Island (2014 Nishikubo)
Jobanni no shima (original title)
Director: Mizuho Nishikubo
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Yukie Nakama, Yûsuke Santamaria
Genre: Anime War History Drama
Country: Japan

In the days following World War II, the small Japanese island of Shikotan becomes occupied by Russian Soviet forces. A Japanese boy and the daughter of a Russian commander becomes friends against all odds.

Giovanni's Island is very beautifully done and almost looks like an artistic water color painting. I was very impressed with the fluid movements of the camera and the beauty of the scenes. This is more cinematic than many movies.

The opening scene: Seagulls flying over sparkling water with their shadows silhouetted on the ocean...then the bow of a ship flows by and the Seagulls respond by flying away, was totally impressive in both the details and the look. The entire movie is well done like that.

The story was intricately weaved around history from the viewpoint of two Japanese boys. I also liked how the older adult versions were linked to the story by flashbacks. It's a really in-depth, multi layered story about the occupation of the island...and the story line of the shady uncle and the pretty Russian girl and what happens to the father. This is very well written.

I watched the English dubbed version which I enjoyed. There's also the original Japanese language version.

+
Last edited by Citizen Rules; 05-06-16 at 09:03 PM.



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05-06-16

So Proudly We Hail! (1943)
Director: Mark Sandrich
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake
Genre: Drama War RomanceA group of WWII army nurses returning from the war, recall their experiences in combatin thePhilippines.What makes So Proudly We Hail! unique is it was actually made during the world war II. This was released in 1943 at a time when the war in the Pacific Theater with Japan was an uphill battle for the USA who had lost many of their Pacific fleet Naval ships during the attack at Pearl Harbor.

So Proudly We Hail! is based upon true events as experienced by a nurse who served in the Philippines during one of America's darkest hours when General Mac Arthur was forced to flee and U.S. troops surrendered to the Japanese Imperial Army.

I'm impressed with the honesty of this film. It could have easily sugar coated the harsh truth of Bataan and Corregidor, but it doesn't do that. There's no supermen here who single handily defeat the Japanese Army, nor are the Americans triumph in the battle. Instead we see the story told from the viewpoint of the women nurses who staid behind at great risk to themselves. For most Americans who were state side, this was as close to being there as it got.

Claudette Colbert is one of my favorite actresses. She's always good and here she does a terrific job at being real...and that helps make the movie. I like Paullete Goodard too, but it's Veronica Lake's performance that stands out. She's furious at the enemy and wants to kill a wounded Japanese which makes for one of the best scenes in the film. To the film's credit it shows restraint in not demonizing the enemy, which for war time is rare. Instead we see there's a job to do and when it's done the nurse just want to go home.

Some will say there should be more battle scenes....nah, there's plenty of films like that around. For me it's the very personal stories of the nurses that make this special.




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05-06-16

The Big Red One: The Reconstruction
Director: Samuel Fuller
Writer: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine

Based on director/writer Samuel Fuller's personal experiences during the European campaign in WWII.

I watched the 'Reconstruction' version which was remastered in 2004 and has some deleted scenes restored. It's a 'directors cut' but only the director, Samuel Fuller passed on in 1997 so it can't be called that. The original 1980 theatrical release was 113 minutes and this 2004 version is 162 minutes.

What makes The Big Red One interesting is that the director/writer Samuel Fuller actually lived this movie. This is a fictionalized, semi auto biographical movie based on his time in the Army's 1st Infantry Division. His story starts off in North Africa battling Rommel's Afrika Korps, then he goes on to invade Sicily and Italy....fighting his way through France, Belgium and into Germany, then finally into Czechoslovakia where he helps liberate a concentration camp. Now that's one helluva adventure! and it's true, he lived it.

What I liked about this film is Sam Fuller gives us insight into the everyday lives of WWII infantry men. We learn all sorts of little things that other movies leave out.

Lee Marvin like always is a force on the screen. He's the savy and tough Sergeant. In fact his characters name is just 'The Sergeant'. Robert Carradine is also good in this film.

"By now we'd come to look at all replacements as dead men who temporarily had the use of the arms and legs. The came and went so fast and so regularly that sometimes we didn't even learn their names." Pvt. Zab
Last edited by Citizen Rules; 05-06-16 at 09:45 PM.



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05-07-16

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Director: David Lean
Writers: Pierre Boulle (novel), Carl Foreman (screenplay)
Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins
Genre: Adventure, Drama, War
Length: 2h 41min

A group of British soldiers in WWII are taken prisoner by the Japanese and sent to a POW work camp. After first resisting the idea of officers doing labor, the British Colonel does a face about and decides to build the best bridge he can for the Japanese. The American forces have a plan to destroy the bridge.

This is a long movie but time flies while watching it. What's totally cool is this was filmed in the tropics, Sri Lanka...which to me looks like Thailand. The women porters sure looked Thai to me, I wonder why they had attractive women hauling the gear and not men?

Anyway this film looks real! They built a real bridge! and that's a real train we see too! It's all very impressive, but without a story and characters that are interesting it won't work...

But this does work. Thanks to an interesting look inside prison camp life and the William Holden/Commandos story line.

Alec Guinness character, Colonel Nicholson has a wacky obsession of building a bridge to perfection and on schedule too, JUST as the Japanese army wants him to do, and this is where the satire and irony come from. I do think the director intended to have a bit of fun with the overly pompous Col. Nicholson.

All the brand name actors are amazing. The film is amazing.




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05-07-16

Come and See (1985)
Idi i smotri (original title)
Director: Elem Klimov
Cast: Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Russia

During WWII, A young boy finds an old rifle buried in the sand he joins the Soviet resistances. He is forced to endure many horrors at the hands of the Nazi forces.

Come and See...is a heavy handed Soviet propaganda film about as subtle as a bottle of Smirnoff served in a dirty glass.

I tried watching this movie years ago but couldn't get past the opening scene of an old man yelling at a boy digging in the sand. The boy sounds like a half-crazed, possessed demon. Talk about grating on the nerves.

But this time I did watch the entire film...and after the opening scene the movie actually got much better. The scenes from where the boy is at his families cabin...then joins the partisan fighters where he's put onto guard duty and then left behind in camp...when all of a sudden the woods around him begin to explode...was some of the best film making I've seen! My gaze was fixed on the screen and I scantly breathed, that's how engrossed in the film I was. At that point I really though Come and See would be at favorite.

Then the film tries to get artsy. We get elements randomly included that's suppose to make the un-skeptical convinced that this is high art. Sorry folks, but tying a stork to a tree in the middle of the woods or placing a cute lemur on the shoulder of a soldier is not art. Neither is the often repeated shot of the plane in the sky. This is where the film started to lose me with it's forced creativity and scenes that were slow as molasses.

But what sank this film is the final act, when German soldiers surround a small country village, rounding up the people into a wooden barn, then with as much joy and demonic pleasure as the film makers can show, burn the people alive. All the German soldiers are character parodies, looking like they're fresh out of a Monty Python skit. It's a ridiculously staged scene for what should be a somber event.

That scene is where the iron arm of the Soviet Union runs rickshaw over the story line. German soldiers are shown tutoring the Russian peasants. The solders jump around with clown like joy as the building burns with the people inside. Then just to make sure we know the German soldiers are the bad guys, they also machine gun the building and also through hand grenades into it...and like that wasn't enough, then they use a flame thrower on a building that is already engulfed in flames.

A few scenes latter and the triumph Russians partisans have some how managed to conquer and capture the Germans. The film makers then have a SS man give his hate spew on how all Russians and all inferior nations must be exterminated like vermin...

The German soldiers in the film are full of race hatred...and that's when it occurred to me, that the very thing this film seeks to show, is itself guilty of!

Not one of the German soldiers are shown to be human, not one of them is shown to be reluctant to follow orders to burn alive men women and children.

I've never seen a film that was more one sided and propagandist.
Last edited by Citizen Rules; 04-06-20 at 12:54 PM.

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