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IMO, this film only gets better and better with each viewing. Once you get past the surprises of the story, there's sooo much to appreciate in terms of set design, cinematography, and the subtlety of performances. It's a masterpiece.
Agreed.

I also am constantly impressed with
WARNING: spoilers below
how sympathetic I find Norman Bates each time. Every note that is creepy is tinged with something equally sad and isolated.



Hi I'm new here but here's my most recent view called:
Proximity and gave it a 7/10

Cheers Hitman



Hi I'm new here but here's my most recent view called:
Proximity and gave it a 7/10

Cheers Hitman
I hadn't heard of that one until you just posted about it, then I looked it up. Sounds like an interesting sci-fi and I do love sci-fi



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
Arsenic and Old Lace[/i] (1944)



"Insanity runs in my family ... it practically gallops."

When I was a kid, we used to check out movies on VHS from the library down the street from us. This was still a novelty at the time, and the selection was pretty limited (I think they supposedly had Star Wars but it was always checked out). But, you know, beggars and choosers and so forth, so there were two movies we ended up checking out over and over: Young Frankenstein and this one.

There is nothing I don't love about this movie. Certainly it is tinged with nostalgia for me--watching it is as close to going home as I can manage these days. But that aside it all works: The lowbrow jokes, the slapstick screwball capery (Cary Grant at his frenetic screwballiest), the mumbley dialogue, the running gags (I imagine that taxi driver still out there somewhere, haunting the streets of Brooklyn), Raymond Massey doing Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre doing Peter Lorre, Jean Adair and Josephine Hull absolutely nailing it as sociopathic spinsters who will murder 12 old men but would never "stoop to telling a fib!" It's hard to imagine another film out there about serial murderers that is as thoroughly charming.

And this year I got to do that thing that all dopey dads love to do: share my childhood joys with my own kid. Now, of course, this doesn't always pay off, but when it does, it's golden.

10/10

I agree with you 100% about Arsenic and Old Lace. It's one of my all-time favorite movies.
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Once Upon A Time In Mexico 10/10 loved it soo much. been huge fan of johnny depp for long time, love his movies amazing casting especially Antonio Banderas,Salma Hayek,Eva Mendes,Enrique Iglesias,Willem Dafoe and amazing music



Bad Boys For Life 8/10



Agreed.

I also am constantly impressed with
WARNING: spoilers below
how sympathetic I find Norman Bates each time. Every note that is creepy is tinged with something equally sad and isolated.
Perkins' performance is one of those things that just gets better every time. There's so much subtlety and nuance in pretty much every gesture and posture. I love it.
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The Other Lamb (2019)

Very familiar feeling story of a young girl born into a secretive and reclusive cult (is there any other kind?? ). The cult is all female except the leader...the mysterious and charismatic "Shepherd" who rules them in a very uncompromising way. Whilst Shephard is using the 2 factions of the group ("Wives and "Daughters") for his own nefarious ends, the central character - Selah - starts to question the whole shooting match.

Well shot with good performances but I just kept thinking I've seen similar before.




THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME (2020)



The film follows Arvin (Tom Holland), a young man that's living a tough life in Mideast USA, as he tries to protect himself and his family from various threats and dangers. This was a competent drama/thriller, mostly elevated by its performances. But beyond that, I found most of its musings to be either superficial or empty. The plot is a bit meandering and not all the pieces fit that well together into the story, particularly the one chosen for the last act (the sheriff). I also don't think that the constant back-and-forth in time was necessary some times. I had some slight issues with the narration, but I respect that it was the novel's author the one that provided it. Anyway, despite all these criticisms, it's very well made in terms of performance, overall direction, cinematography, and the film is entertaining, but narratively, there's not much to bite at.

Grade:



Can't even see where the knob is
2067 - 6/10



Nice music and Impressive visuals, for a low budget Aussie flick, but contains far more grand ideas than it can handle. Everything just feels underdeveloped. Still, not a horrible watch.....If you can muster up the patience to deal with Kodi Smit-McPhee's extraordinarily whiny character.





Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)


Jarmusch's debut is made up of three short segments, the first being a short film originally of the same title. It's very minimal in its set-up and execution, taking place almost entirely inside a small apartment after Willie's cousin Eva arrives in the US from Hungary. Through repetition Jarmusch begins to add more and more in each scene, more dialogue, more action, even if it's just sprinkles of it. Between cuts are brief moments of nothingness, which vary as the film changes pace. There's not a lot going on at all, it's pretty much the opposite of every "coming to America" film you've ever seen, yet as the film goes on you begin to get a real sense of rhythm being built through Jarmusch's decisions.

The second part moves to Cleveland, we get more characters, more locations, and a lot more laughter. I've mentioned how I really dig Jarmusch's humour and I really find the cinema scene to be a brilliant example of how he builds hilarious situations with just a few simple ingredients. Cleveland, like New York before it is unglamorous and unspectacular, Jarmusch's America is a place that explores the lives and the environments that cinema often shies away from. We then move on to Florida, more of the same. This repetition and lack of plot allows for even more humour and fun.

Whilst I don't think this is Jarmusch at his very best, I was very impressed by how much I enjoyed this debut (kind of) feature. Working on limited resources, Jarmusch turns minimalism into one of the film's strengths which is a strong testament to his talent as a writer and director.



Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch, 1999)


Another thing I love about Jarmusch is how throughout his filmography he tackles various different genres, taking the conventional and turning things on their head with his own unique characters and worlds.

This time it's the gangster genre and in the middle of it, he chucks Forest Whitaker as a Samurai-inspired assassin who lives by a code that is shared with the viewers through on-screen messages and actions. With Jarmusch we get heroes that we don't normally get with cinema, minor characters and voices are elevated and his America seems much more realistic in its variety of cultures.

Jarmusch incorporates cinematic influences, literature, poetry and music to tell a story that's both entertaining and emotionally moving.
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Totally Under Control (2020)




Documentary about the American government's handling of the coronavirus crisis that turns out to be liberal propaganda. After watching I did a quick checkup on the filmmakers and as my expectation the 3 co-director's are very liberal and anti-Trump. The lead director and writer has even said that a lot of people told him to collect evidence and wait a year or so to release the movie, but he wanted to get it out before the election to influence voters. I noticed blatant dishonesty early on and watched the rest skeptically. There's plenty of truth here, but there's also stuff left out in order to paint things a certain way. It was interesting at a couple points how they said Obama would have been equally unprepared and mishandled the swine flu epidemic. I wonder if they did this to appear unbiased. One thing I discovered that I found very interesting, the movie features a "whistleblower" who supposedly was one of several twenty somethings who worked as an unpaid volunteer under Jared Kushner. The task for these volunteers was to try and secure PPE from Chinese factories. This specific volunteer featured in the movie makes a claim that Jared Kushner told him something about a little deal between Trump and California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom has denied this claim, that would make Trump look bad, and Newsom is a Democrat. Anyway, it turns out that this "whistleblower" from the movie, and it's not mentioned in the movie, is the grandson of none other than Robert F. Kennedy. So we are expected to believe that Kushner told a friggin Kennedy a secret that would make Trump look bad. I don't know about that. Totally Under Control is a very well made, relevant, and interesting documentary, but one that I would take with a grain of salt.