Citizen Rules...Cinemaesque Chat-n-Review

Oh my god:

Sorry for hijacking your thread, Citizen. That's enough reading about gross behaviour for today haha.

Yeah. I was a bit sickened when I first saw it... and then watched it AGAIN!
Hope this isn't a spoiler - but it was really interesting how the film starts out so upbeat and colorful: the music, the scenery, life in the 60's, an up and coming young actor, DJ, drummer, comedian with a great family making his way up the Hollywood ladder! And then it just gradually gets darker and darker. It's almost like the film you started watching is not the film you finish watching.

One of Willem DaFoe's best creepy performances.

I seen Auto Focus, all I remember is Bob Crane was a weird dude.

No worries!

Dang, that's saying something! Dude is always creepy.

I like him for the record but he does always come across creepy.

That's why Auto Focus was perfect for him (or, him for it). He really raised the creep factor!
Funny, when I first started watching that movie I thought DaFoe's character, John Carpenter, was supposed to be the famous film director! (He's not - just has the same name.)

Director: Raoul Walsh
Writers: Jerry Wald & Richard Macaulay (screen play), Mark Hellinger (story)
Cast: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane, Gladys George, Jeffery Lynn, Frank McHugh
Genre: Drama

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This is interesting because I didn't know of any movies these two big name (Cagney & Bogart) were in together.

They were in three movies together, I seen that last night on a DVD extra. Now don't ask me what they were? I forgot already.

I figured it out, these are the other two with both Cagney and Bogart.

Angels with Dirty Faces 1938

The Oklahoma Kid 1939

It's funny - Angels With Dirty Faces came to mind, but then I remembered Pat O'Brien (and the Bowery Boys of course) - I didn't know Bogey was in that! Haven't seen it since I was a kid.

Have Angels With Dirty Faces coming up: https://www.movieforums.com/communit...26#post1736426

Since Rules is one of the few people covering old movies - just found this on YouTube.
I never saw this one before. It's even a little too old for me to know who everybody is (but there is a scene with Cagney & Bogey together).

I watched this when it was on TV earlier this year. I was really looking forward to it, but I was kind of just bored by it. I watched the whole thing, but it seemed to really lack something. Like you said, the script wasn't that engaging. There was just something - and I can't quite figure out what it is - that I just didn't care too much for with it. I do agree that the whole look of the film was very good. Awhile ago - out of sheer boredom - I used Google maps and took a "trip" around the actual Haworth. It is kind of interesting to see the parts that you picture to be the what inspired the novels. And then you see the parts with apartment buildings named after Thornfield Hall - or whichever one it is. The place is so obviously touristy.

I never really know why people have this impression that people were more subdued in the Victorian era. Maybe because they are British, perhaps? They definitely weren't that way in America. I don't really think they were too much like that in England either. I think the Brontes were much more subdued than a lot of other people, to be honest. I actually think the way the characters are developed is all you are really going to get when it comes to that family. By far, the only really interesting person, in my opinion, is Branwell. But I think his "troubles" help him out with that. What I thought was odd was how they introduced Arthur Bell Nicholls, but they didn't do much else with him (after all, Charlotte ended up marrying the man!). This story could've done with a much longer presentation. I was hoping for a two-night thing. Not what came across as something rushed and abridged.

They've said that for years. They have even said there were parts of Mr. Rochester that was inspired by Branwell, but I think you see it a lot more in Heathcliff.


I have to ask this because I really am curious. Do people think films set in the Civil War era are automatically westerns? I don't understand why they would.


Good to see that someone else has more little figures and stuff on their desk than I do!



You never saw this before? They used to show this on TV all the time when I was a kid. I don't even have to watch it now to know that Clark Gable is the best thing about this cartoon.

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Director: Ewan McGregor
Writers: Philip Roth (novel), John Romano (screenplay)
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, Hannah Nordberg, Valorie Curry
Genre: Crime Drama

I've never seen another movie with a similar subject matter. American Pastoral is a about a middle class family in the late 1960s who's only daughter has grown into a teen age militant Vietnam war protester. She's a wild child and someone in their small town has just blown up the post office, killing a man.

This movie has a lot of interesting premises and back stories, but director and lead actor Ewan McGregor just doesn't know how to wrap it up in any type of coherent story. I mean there's so many false starts that seem interesting, but yet go no where. The film is populated with colorful characters like Swede (Ewan McGregor) the All American college football hero who happens to be Jewish and marries a beauty queen Dawn, who's Catholic (Jennifer Connelly). There's a seen where Dawn must convince Swede's father to let them marry...they argue about how the children (who haven't even been born will be raised, Jewish or Catholic. A big deal is made out of all this religious conflict and yet nothing comes from it. And that's how the entire film rolls.


The 12 year old daughter Merry in flash backs in played by
Hannah Nordberg who stutters. Much is made of the cause of her stuttering but once again it's an empty path.

The best part of the film is when Merry has grown up and it's the late 60's, that's where Dakota Fanning comes in and becomes one foul mouth hippie who hates everything including her parents. And this is where I felt let down, I wanted to see the film explore the militant counter culture that arose during the turbulent 60s, but everything Merry does is off screen. We don't get to learn much of anything.

American Pastoral is full of promise in the first half of the film, and full of let downs in the second half.

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Have you seen Devotion (1946) ?
It's also about the lives of the Bronte's. It has an impressive cast:

Ida Lupino - Emily Brontė
Olivia de Havilland - Charlotte Brontė
Nancy Coleman - Anne Brontė
Arthur Kennedy - Branwell Brontė
Paul Henreid - Rev. Arthur Nicholls

I thought Arthur Kennedy as Branwell was a good choice. There's something weird about the movie though. Maybe I imaged this, but it seemed to be suggesting that Emily had a relationship with Branwell, that went beyond sisterly love. Or maybe the movie was just trying to say that Branwell was Heathcliff? It's a decent movie BTW.


Not me if it was set in the south it would be a 'southerns' (is that even a word?)...I think people just think Clint Eastwood, Civil War and expect it to be like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

I just finished watching Mystery Street. I agree that it didn't really feel like a noir. It felt more like a mystery. I thought they would have done a bit more with the forensics, but I don't know how much they actually knew about forensics back then. I liked Ricardo Montalban as the detective, and I thought it was a very interesting movie.

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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

I saw it for the first time - finally - 2 years ago, I think. I thought that was a pretty impressive cast, too. I don't really recall how they portrayed Emily and Branwell's relationship, but I know they were pretty close. All of them were, actually (although I sometimes think that Charlotte and Emily weren't the best of friends). One thing I remember from the film, that I wish hadn't been put in there (but this is Hollywood of course!) was the way they had Emily act over Arthur Nicholls. That never happened (unless Hollywood knows the truth ), and they made his relationship a little too passionate with Charlotte. Otherwise, I thought it was a pretty good film, actually.


I got it. I don't think "southerns" is a word, but I think I am going to use it from now. I have a habit of doing that. For example, when my voice teacher told me that her mother-in-law had sinus problems, the mother-in-law would tell people that she had "the sinus". So whenever mine are acting up, or I have an infection, I just say "I'm OK, but I have the sinus right now", or "I am suffering so from the sinus".

I'm glad you liked it GBG. I thought Ricardo Montalban was very good in it too.

I'm not surprised you've seen it, you seem to be really well watched especially about the Bronte's work. I have two more movies regarding the Bronte's to watch. Hopefully I can review them. Maybe you haven't seen them yet? We'll see.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writers: Kathleen Rowell(screenplay), S.E. Hinton (novel)
Cast: C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio
Genre: Drama

The Outsiders is a novel that every high school kid use to have to read as part of English/Literature class. I don't know about today, but in past years every teenager had read this novel. The novel itself was written by a high school girl, Susan Hinton who published her smash hit book under the name of S.E. Hinton.

The Outsiders, the movie is about a rivalry between two social status gangs. The poor kids are the Greasers, and the rich kids are the Socs (socialites). For the most part they insult one another and that's it. But after a group of Socs go after two young Greasers and one of the Socs gets killed in a fight, things get intense...and the two greasers must skip out of town.


Francis Ford Coppola, directed this heartfelt film and shot on location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the same time he was shooting The Outsiders he also shot Rumble Fish, another film based on a S.E. Hinton novel.

The Outsiders is the more accessible of the two films and that's thanks to a strong and personable cast of young upcoming actors that included: C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane.


The strong part of the film is the story of the two youngest Greasers who go on the run after one of them kills a Soc in self defense. Their scenes in the old abandoned church along with Matt Dillion's wiser/older guidance, was very touching. Even more touching was the hospital scene that focuses on the one boy who gets badly burned.

They don't make them like this anymore.

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