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Recently viewed movie thread - Rental Edition (6 Viewers)
- Thread starter Memphis Foundry
- Start date
krista4
Footballguy
0 chance of that. That would require me to watch Jerry Maguire again.I thought it was terrific. Plus, Richie Havens songs! Actually believe this would have been a good pairing this month with Last Black Man in San Francisco. Now you'll have to pair it with Jerry Maguire sometime.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I know. I thought about these posts as I was writing up what the next ones were. I am curious to see if my reaction is similar to my memories of having to watch that movie too many times with the Gf in college.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I have only seen it the once, and don't remember a ton besides: thinking it was OK, thinking Leo is amazing as usual, and really not liking the soundtrack.
krista4
Footballguy
Last night I started watching some of the SXSW 2020 content that someone had linked in this thread, or maybe it was the "streaming" thread as I can never figure out the distinction between these two. Anyway, there are something like 35 features and shorts available on Prime to watch. The best of the lot I watched so far was "Selfie," a French film of five different overlapping stories regarding "the influence of new media on good people." So much of it was troubling because it rang so true, even if sometimes it was a bit heavy-handed in a French way. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and worth watching in any case.
If you want 16 minutes of pure joy and sweetness, which many of us might need right now, watch the documentary short "Quilt Fever."
I also watched three other shorts - "Face to Face Time," "Basic," and "Vert." None of them were outstanding, but they are all so quick they're worth the time. "Vert" is my favorite of the three. "Basic" is three minutes long!
If you want 16 minutes of pure joy and sweetness, which many of us might need right now, watch the documentary short "Quilt Fever."
I also watched three other shorts - "Face to Face Time," "Basic," and "Vert." None of them were outstanding, but they are all so quick they're worth the time. "Vert" is my favorite of the three. "Basic" is three minutes long!
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Oh good, I'll bump that up my list. I really need to see that Burning and If Beale Street Could Talk.
krista4
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
krista4
Footballguy
I'll be interested in what you think. That movie seemed tailor-made for me as it's based on a short story from my favorite author, and I actually could not even finish watching it.
Saw "If Beale Street Could Talk" in the theater and loved it at the time, but I already remember little about it. Guess it didn't resonate much after all.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Interesting. You are the first person I have heard bring up Burning who didn't love it. I wonder if reading the story threw you off. There's a few movies where I read the book first and then found the movie really lacking.
krista4
Footballguy
@Ilov80s, I think of you as our resident expert on noir. Any thoughts on this article? Want to Be an Instant Expert on Film Noir - Watch This Drama
Maybe it’s our gloomy national mood, the programming on Turner Classic Movies or the Columbia Noir series currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. But cinephiles have been chattering again about film noir, a category that is notoriously difficult to define but about which every movie lover has an opinion. Say you’ve heard the term, but you don’t know quite what it means — well, you have good company. Here’s a quick rundown.
To rehash an old, inevitably circular set of arguments: Noir can’t simply be a genre because it transcends genre. There are noir mysteries, noir melodramas, noir costume pictures, even noir-tinged westerns and science fiction. If noir is a style, its hallmarks might include terse dialogue, an interest in seamy aspects of human behavior and black-and-white cinematography. But a cataloging would have to embrace exceptions. (“Leave Her to Heaven,” the ne plus ultra of femme fatale movies, is in Technicolor.)
Noir might be a mood, but that’s a bit amorphous, like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Or perhaps noir was a temporary wave rooted in anxieties about World War II’s destabilization of American home life. According to this theory, noir-like work made later than the 1950s requires a separate category, the neo-noir. And if that’s the case, the neo period has gone on longer than the original.
When the French critics Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton tilted at an early definition in 1955, they distinguished noirs from police procedurals, which, they said, explored crime from the outside, rather than within. In the early 1970s, Paul Schrader, a critic at the time and soon to be a screenwriter and director, took a stab at a survey, arguing that noir was primarily a matter of tone. “Almost every critic has his own definition of film noir,” he wrote, “and a personal list of film titles and dates to back it up.”
I’m in favor of a big tent: If you can explain why it’s a noir, it’s a noir. But don’t you dare name any movie with insufficient subtext, psychological complexity or an atmosphere that doesn’t chill the soul.
There are many places you might start. The gimmes include Billy Wilder’s much-imitated “Double Indemnity” — with Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman who plots with Barbara Stanwyck to kill her husband — and Edgar G. Ulmer’s B-movie “Detour,” with Tom Neal as a pianist who, while hitchhiking, ends up in a car with a dead man and then beholden to a merciless blackmailer (Ann Savage). The film epitomizes noir’s grim sense of fate, and the cheap production values only add to the sordid ambience.
But there may be no better place for getting a handle on what noir is and isn’t than Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place,” conveniently screening in Criterion’s Columbia Noir series. If you enjoy it, less-revived gems (like “Pushover,” with a post-“Indemnity” MacMurray embroiled in another lust-struck scheme) are nearby for the watching.
Even trying to categorize “In a Lonely Place” is tricky: It has elements of murder mystery, melodrama and Hollywood insider scoop. Yet it is certainly one of the most forthright films to deal with domestic abuse ever to come from a major production company, let alone in the early 1950s. Here is a movie so rough-minded, so willing to be unsympathetic that it opens with its protagonist, a screenwriter named Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), threatening to get into a brawl with a stranger.
Dix takes home a hat-check woman from a movie-industry haunt, on the pretense that she can tell him about a novel that he is supposed to read and potentially adapt. Ray seals our identification with the antiheroic Dix by filming the woman, Mildred (Martha Stewart), staring straight at him — and the camera — as she regales him with the narrative. The Bogart who had already given moviegoers Sam Spade of “The Maltese Falcon,” Rick of “Casablanca” and Philip Marlowe of “The Big Sleep” still has a charm, but also a sneer and a temper.
Sometime after leaving Dix’s, Mildred turns up dead in the early-morning hours. Laurel Gray — even the name suggests shades of uncertainty — a new neighbor who saw Dix from her balcony that night, gives the police information that helps with his alibi. Then Laurel (played by Gloria Grahame) falls in love with Dix, knowing there’s a chance he may be a murderer.
Part of what makes “In a Lonely Place” a great example of noir is that it only sounds like a whodunit; the sleuthing, which occurs mainly offscreen, is tangential to the movie’s true subject.
Regardless of whether Dix is the wrong man for the murder, he is a wrong man in every other sense. The police have records of fights. An actress charged that he beat her up — then changed her story and said she broke her nose running into a door. Under interrogation about Mildred’s death, he engages in bizarre self-sabotage, responding flippantly to questions. His death wish extends to a capacity for road rage.
His success as an artist is far behind him: We hear that he hasn’t written a hit since before the war (although Laurel’s presence in his life jump-starts his productivity). He seems fascinated by violence, even for a dramatist. At a dinner, he uses a detective, who served under him during the war, and his wife as players in a re-enactment of the crime, imagining it in more detail than the investigators, and with such vividness that, for a moment, it almost becomes real.
And as he tightens his psychological grip on Laurel, who runs the emotional gamut of infatuation, defensiveness and terror, “In a Lonely Place” builds to a devastating finale. There is even an acknowledgment that tidy answers can’t bring peace to the relationship: “Yesterday, this would’ve meant so much to us,” Laurel says. “Now it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.” (There may be some subtext here: Those eager to learn more about Grahame’s marriages to Ray and eventually to Ray’s son — apparently a teenager when the two began their affair — should listen to the “You Must Remember This” podcast on the actress.)
Any noir recommendation right now is going to be subject to the vagaries of streaming. To Schrader, “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955), which came late enough in the noir period to show self-consciousness and is suffused with atomic paranoia, was the masterpiece of the form. But it’s only on DVD. So is “Nightmare Alley” (1947), with Tyrone Power as a carnival worker who tries to make it as a mentalist and is brought low by aiming too high. It’s being remade by Guillermo del Toro. Who said noir is over?
To rehash an old, inevitably circular set of arguments: Noir can’t simply be a genre because it transcends genre. There are noir mysteries, noir melodramas, noir costume pictures, even noir-tinged westerns and science fiction. If noir is a style, its hallmarks might include terse dialogue, an interest in seamy aspects of human behavior and black-and-white cinematography. But a cataloging would have to embrace exceptions. (“Leave Her to Heaven,” the ne plus ultra of femme fatale movies, is in Technicolor.)
Noir might be a mood, but that’s a bit amorphous, like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Or perhaps noir was a temporary wave rooted in anxieties about World War II’s destabilization of American home life. According to this theory, noir-like work made later than the 1950s requires a separate category, the neo-noir. And if that’s the case, the neo period has gone on longer than the original.
When the French critics Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton tilted at an early definition in 1955, they distinguished noirs from police procedurals, which, they said, explored crime from the outside, rather than within. In the early 1970s, Paul Schrader, a critic at the time and soon to be a screenwriter and director, took a stab at a survey, arguing that noir was primarily a matter of tone. “Almost every critic has his own definition of film noir,” he wrote, “and a personal list of film titles and dates to back it up.”
I’m in favor of a big tent: If you can explain why it’s a noir, it’s a noir. But don’t you dare name any movie with insufficient subtext, psychological complexity or an atmosphere that doesn’t chill the soul.
There are many places you might start. The gimmes include Billy Wilder’s much-imitated “Double Indemnity” — with Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman who plots with Barbara Stanwyck to kill her husband — and Edgar G. Ulmer’s B-movie “Detour,” with Tom Neal as a pianist who, while hitchhiking, ends up in a car with a dead man and then beholden to a merciless blackmailer (Ann Savage). The film epitomizes noir’s grim sense of fate, and the cheap production values only add to the sordid ambience.
But there may be no better place for getting a handle on what noir is and isn’t than Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place,” conveniently screening in Criterion’s Columbia Noir series. If you enjoy it, less-revived gems (like “Pushover,” with a post-“Indemnity” MacMurray embroiled in another lust-struck scheme) are nearby for the watching.
Even trying to categorize “In a Lonely Place” is tricky: It has elements of murder mystery, melodrama and Hollywood insider scoop. Yet it is certainly one of the most forthright films to deal with domestic abuse ever to come from a major production company, let alone in the early 1950s. Here is a movie so rough-minded, so willing to be unsympathetic that it opens with its protagonist, a screenwriter named Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), threatening to get into a brawl with a stranger.
Dix takes home a hat-check woman from a movie-industry haunt, on the pretense that she can tell him about a novel that he is supposed to read and potentially adapt. Ray seals our identification with the antiheroic Dix by filming the woman, Mildred (Martha Stewart), staring straight at him — and the camera — as she regales him with the narrative. The Bogart who had already given moviegoers Sam Spade of “The Maltese Falcon,” Rick of “Casablanca” and Philip Marlowe of “The Big Sleep” still has a charm, but also a sneer and a temper.
Sometime after leaving Dix’s, Mildred turns up dead in the early-morning hours. Laurel Gray — even the name suggests shades of uncertainty — a new neighbor who saw Dix from her balcony that night, gives the police information that helps with his alibi. Then Laurel (played by Gloria Grahame) falls in love with Dix, knowing there’s a chance he may be a murderer.
Part of what makes “In a Lonely Place” a great example of noir is that it only sounds like a whodunit; the sleuthing, which occurs mainly offscreen, is tangential to the movie’s true subject.
Regardless of whether Dix is the wrong man for the murder, he is a wrong man in every other sense. The police have records of fights. An actress charged that he beat her up — then changed her story and said she broke her nose running into a door. Under interrogation about Mildred’s death, he engages in bizarre self-sabotage, responding flippantly to questions. His death wish extends to a capacity for road rage.
His success as an artist is far behind him: We hear that he hasn’t written a hit since before the war (although Laurel’s presence in his life jump-starts his productivity). He seems fascinated by violence, even for a dramatist. At a dinner, he uses a detective, who served under him during the war, and his wife as players in a re-enactment of the crime, imagining it in more detail than the investigators, and with such vividness that, for a moment, it almost becomes real.
And as he tightens his psychological grip on Laurel, who runs the emotional gamut of infatuation, defensiveness and terror, “In a Lonely Place” builds to a devastating finale. There is even an acknowledgment that tidy answers can’t bring peace to the relationship: “Yesterday, this would’ve meant so much to us,” Laurel says. “Now it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.” (There may be some subtext here: Those eager to learn more about Grahame’s marriages to Ray and eventually to Ray’s son — apparently a teenager when the two began their affair — should listen to the “You Must Remember This” podcast on the actress.)
Any noir recommendation right now is going to be subject to the vagaries of streaming. To Schrader, “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955), which came late enough in the noir period to show self-consciousness and is suffused with atomic paranoia, was the masterpiece of the form. But it’s only on DVD. So is “Nightmare Alley” (1947), with Tyrone Power as a carnival worker who tries to make it as a mentalist and is brought low by aiming too high. It’s being remade by Guillermo del Toro. Who said noir is over?
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Thanks for the title and the thought. Nice article that tries to explain something that it admits can't fully be explained. I am not sure how familiar you are with film noir bur Double Indemnity, Detour and In a Lonely Place (I think Eddie Mueller, the world's resident expert on noir has this as his top ranked movie) are great places to start for anyone looking to investigate or re-investigate it. I think it's a "genre" of films that hold up really well from the classic Hollywood period. Because they are darker and often meaner, they hold up to modern times. Because they rarely won many awards, they also tend to be a bit off the radar at times. If I ever did one of those threads where people rank stuff (what idiot started that trend anyway
, I think it would be crime movies/noir movies.
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krista4
Footballguy
If you ever go to the dark side (ranking things), I think that would be an interesting thread. I have not seen In a Lonely Place but saw the other two you mentioned. I definitely need to watch this movie.Thanks for the title and the thought. Nice article that tries to explain something that it admits can't fully be explained. I am not sure how familiar you are with film noir bur Double Indemnity, Detour and In a Lonely Place (I think Eddie Mueller, the world's resident expert on noir has this as his top ranked movie) are great places to start for anyone looking to investigate or re-investigate it. I think it's a "genre" of films that hold up really well from the classic Hollywood period. Because they are darker and often meaner, they hold up to modern times. Because they rarely won many awards, they also tend to be a bit off the radar at times. If I ever did one of those threads where people rank stuff (what idiot started that trend anyway
Don Quixote
Footballguy
That would be a good one. I think you also once mentioned re-doing all of the Oscar winners — that would be a fun one to follow too.Thanks for the title and the thought. Nice article that tries to explain something that it admits can't fully be explained. I am not sure how familiar you are with film noir bur Double Indemnity, Detour and In a Lonely Place (I think Eddie Mueller, the world's resident expert on noir has this as his top ranked movie) are great places to start for anyone looking to investigate or re-investigate it. I think it's a "genre" of films that hold up really well from the classic Hollywood period. Because they are darker and often meaner, they hold up to modern times. Because they rarely won many awards, they also tend to be a bit off the radar at times. If I ever did one of those threads where people rank stuff (what idiot started that trend anyway
Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
In A Lonely Place is awesome. I think it's Bogart's best.
And Gloria Grahame...yowza.
And Gloria Grahame...yowza.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
She really really does it for me. She’s even better in the great noir The Big Heat.
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Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Splurged again, and signed up for the Criterion Channel. Excited to start digging through- love the way they have stuff set up: double features, series of movies with themes or same actor/directo, interviews, shorts, etc...
El Floppo
Footballguy
Watched the Last Airbender with the kids.
Even though the child casting seemed to lean far to the martial arts capable over acting capable, and the writing and direction of said kids was a disaster, we were all kind of enjoying it.
But then it just ended. Like right smack dab in the middle of the story. Looked up to see where part 2 was...no part 2. Not only that, this was an M Night Shamalamadingdong movie- which explained a lot of both the good and bad. But really could've used child Haley Joel Osmet here.
Even though the child casting seemed to lean far to the martial arts capable over acting capable, and the writing and direction of said kids was a disaster, we were all kind of enjoying it.
But then it just ended. Like right smack dab in the middle of the story. Looked up to see where part 2 was...no part 2. Not only that, this was an M Night Shamalamadingdong movie- which explained a lot of both the good and bad. But really could've used child Haley Joel Osmet here.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
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The Man With No Name
Footballguy
I tried it when it first started but couldn't use it, which sucked. Think they said my internet speed wasn't fast enough. Hmm. Maybe I'll try again and see about it now.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
ComfortablyNumb
Footballguy
I just watched Angel has Fallen on Netflix and found it pretty entertaining. If you can suspend disbelief for a couple of hours and don't have any expectations of a deep or twisting plot, you find a pretty good action flick. Nick Nolte's character was a pleasant surprise, and the scene using drones was pretty cool. I wonder if DARPA took notice of that.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Great lineup. The lesser known one there I would recommend is The Harder They Fall- Bogey’s last movie.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I will keep that in mind. I was going to start on something today, but not sure what. I just added a smattering of stuff from all the options - series, double features, etc.. The one I am petrified of is the doc about what looks to be cannibalism by the directors who made the doc Leviathan.
El Floppo
Footballguy
The Man With No Name
Footballguy
Eye of the Needle (1981)
from wikipedia :
The film is about a German spy in England during World War II who discovers vital information about the upcoming D-Day invasion and his attempt to return to Germany while he is stranded with a family on the isolated (fictional) Storm Island, off the coast of Scotland.
Plot summary
A man calling himself Henry Faber (Donald Sutherland) is actually a German spy nicknamed "the Needle" because of his preferred method of assassination, the stiletto. Cold and calculating, he is emotionlessly focused on the task at hand, whether the task is to signal a U-boat or to kill anyone who poses a threat to his mission.
In England, he obtains critical information on the Allies' plans for the Invasion of Normandy but is unable to transmit the information. After narrowly escaping British intelligence in London, Faber tries to make his way to Nazi Germany, but he is stranded by fierce weather on Storm Island, which is occupied by only a woman, Lucy (Kate Nelligan); her disabled husband, David (Christopher Cazenove); their son; and a shepherd, Tom (Alex McCrindle).
on Prime. Liked it 7/10
from wikipedia :
The film is about a German spy in England during World War II who discovers vital information about the upcoming D-Day invasion and his attempt to return to Germany while he is stranded with a family on the isolated (fictional) Storm Island, off the coast of Scotland.
Plot summary
A man calling himself Henry Faber (Donald Sutherland) is actually a German spy nicknamed "the Needle" because of his preferred method of assassination, the stiletto. Cold and calculating, he is emotionlessly focused on the task at hand, whether the task is to signal a U-boat or to kill anyone who poses a threat to his mission.
In England, he obtains critical information on the Allies' plans for the Invasion of Normandy but is unable to transmit the information. After narrowly escaping British intelligence in London, Faber tries to make his way to Nazi Germany, but he is stranded by fierce weather on Storm Island, which is occupied by only a woman, Lucy (Kate Nelligan); her disabled husband, David (Christopher Cazenove); their son; and a shepherd, Tom (Alex McCrindle).
on Prime. Liked it 7/10
El Floppo
Footballguy
whoa... saw this in the theaters as a kid and remember liking it then. but had completely forgotten about it until your post.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
@The Man With No Name - I would look into it. I have notoriously bad internet where I am, and I was able to stream a Criterion movie last night while my son was gaming.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I liked it a lot. It's not the best singing or dancing (not even close) but it's kind of a vibe and vision that is so rare. Damien Chazelle is a genius.
Capella
Footballguy
Really got into that vibe of a classic musical and classic LA look. Every set was gorgeous. How they captured the lighting in LA at sunset was great. Just love it.
Krista - I am not sure but I am sure you will like it.
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I really liked La La too, and I generally dislike musicals.
I guess my Gosling love knows no bounds.
I guess my Gosling love knows no bounds.
El Floppo
Footballguy
JoeSteeler
Footballguy
This can be found on Hulu. I almost watched it a few days ago but wasn't sure so skipped it. Will definitely give it a watch now.
