RA Movie Thread (Read 5918 times)

I should have known when watching the trailers that this had the potential to be a stinker.  All of the trailers seemed like they were "C" or "D" grade movies.  Sometimes you catch a hidden gem but more often than not there is a reason they are "C" or "D" grade.

Back in 1977, William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist, The French Connection, etc.) released Sorcerer, a remake of a 1953 French film, The Wages of Fear, about four desperate men tasked with driving two truckloads of nitroglycerin across a South American jungle landscape.  Sorcerer opens with  the prologues of the four main characters: a European assassin, an Arab terrorist bomber, a French investor accused of fraud, and a New Jersey gangster (Roy Scheider from Jaws).  These outcasts have all separately taken refuge from their respective crimes in a remote South American village where they struggle from day to day to scrounge money to leave this harsh location.  When an oil well fire over 200 miles away from the village goes out of control, the men are promised a huge amount of money for transporting the nitroglycerin to the site to blow up the oil well.  This is easier said than done, since the nitroglycerin is unstable to the point where it may explode if one of the trucks hits a bump in the road, and since the route to the oil well through the jungle follows a precarious mountain ledge road, a terrifying decayed wooden bridge, and even an area full of murderous bandits.  

Sorcerer promised to be a massive blockbuster movie that would elevate William Friedkin's career even higher after his earlier successes.

Unfortunately, this movie was quickly forgotten after it opened in theaters around the same time that Star Wars was released, and was almost entirely shut out of most theaters by that immensely successful George Lucas film.

Over the years, Sorcerer has earned a favorable reputation as a long lost classic, because it has only been available for viewing by way of inferior home video releases in horribly deteriorated form and only in fullscreen format due to legal issues and such.  Friedkin recently gave the film a thorough restoration after winning a court case, however, and this movie is now available as it was meant to be seen.

I think that Sorcerer is an incredible film, and I'm glad that I was finally able to see it after hearing about it for years.  It's one of the most riveting action movies that you'll ever see, and the electronic Tangerine Dream music score is incredibly intense.  I still prefer the original French film, The Wages of Fear, by a small margin, but Sorcerer is one of the greatest remakes that I have ever seen.  This is one truly gritty movie, and you can really sense the sweat and dirt of the South American jungle setting.

Highly recommended!

Just for grins, I'm streaming The Running Man.

 

I figured watching it as an adult would reveal it to be a cheesy 80's action flick, filled with masculine tropes that its Orwellian pretense does nothing to hide.

 

So far, I haven't been surprised.

 

What I have been surprised by is Richard Dawson.  I mean, he doesn't need a posthumous lifetime achievement award or anything, but IMO, he's out-acting anyone else in this thing.

 

RIchard DAWESOME.

Loved him in Hogan's Heroes. Loved him on Family Feud. And he kicks butt in that movie.

The audacity of a game show host where he kisses all the women on the lips. Funny.

Watched two over the weekend:

Back To School  - Another one I hadn't seen since my youth, so I was curious as to what my adult mind would think of it.  Boy...stereotypical cheesy 80's plotline/structure right down the line, the only slight twist being that the misfit is the parent and the "I-Care-About-You-So-Straighten-Up-And-Fly-Right" character is the son.  Enjoyed watching it, though, because of what I would call the "ornaments":  Harold Ramis' name in the credits, the all-too-brief cameo by Sam Kinison, Robert Downey Jr. doing a surprisingly good job of channeling (pre-channeling?) Tony Stark in spite of a bloodstream that was probably 60% cocaine, and of course, the whole point of the movie, the steady drip of Rodney Dangerfield one-liners.  Many of them seemed to be very much shoehorned into the dialogue, but y'know...that's fine by me.

MTA: almost forgot a biggie...a great early Danny Elfman score, which is odd to hear over a screwball comedy, and Oingo Boingo even performs (well, lip-synchs) in one scene!

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) - could have done with a tad more emotion from Ben Stiller (though I realize that was an element of the character), but I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  Kind of interesting how the instances of product placement weren't just prominent, they reflect major plot points.  His job - which crumbles and re-forms around him, is at LIFE.  During one of the initial scenes in which he is on the verge of letting the love interest slip away, behind him is the CHASE building.  There's a minor detail in his backstory involving Papa John's which is also on-the-nose (that one they actually point out in the script).

The daydream sequences were definitely fun, and it looks gorgeous (though the CGI isn't going to be quite up to RunJasonRun's standards ).  The overall message is a sugar-spike driven in with a peppermint hammer, but it's worth the ride.

...and of course, its one and only connection with the short story is "boring guy daydreams of greatness," but if you expected more from a movie based on a - what, a three-page-long short story? - you deserve the disappointment.

After Dark (2013) - A class of philosophy students are forced to decide who lives and dies when only half of them can fit into a nuclear bunker.  This film is all sorts of confusing of the not-so-good sort.  Mostly the question is why the philosophy teacher is so emotionally immature.  His teaching techniques are questionable at best.  I mean, I understand the philosophical problem and the ruthless pragmatism he is driving them towards, but punishing them for blind decisions doesn't make sense.

It was enjoyable mostly for not making a lot of pedagogical sense. (2/5)

Gone with the Wind

Scarlett O'Hara is a quintessential antihero character, and Vivien Leigh is perfect in the role.   Gone with the Wind is almost four hours long, but quickly paced thanks to snappy dialogue and some fascinating Technicolor visuals.

The Blu-ray of Gone with the Wind is spectacular, even by the standards of contemporary movies released on Blu-ray.  This movie comes across so much better when the deep black levels of a 1080p transfer can bring out the best in the dark and shadowy indoor scenes.  For me, the high definition presentation of this movie actually elevated it in my eyes from a "classic movie that everyone should see once" to an "awesome movie that goes by so fast."   One of the first things that I noticed when I bought a Blu-ray player was that old movies do not look like "old movies" in the format.  Gone with the Wind is a key example, because it looks as though the characters are in the same room with me.

Desolation of Smaug (2013) - wow, that's long.  There's tons of filler.  I mean, it's nice, but the wife and I started at 7pm and by 9:30, when the Dragon stuff was going on, we had toothpicks in our eyelids to keep them open.  Odd.  It wasn't boring -- or maybe it was.  If I were to see it again, I'd break it into two after the Barrel Escape. (3/5)

Very pretty, though.

 

I moved to Atlanta about 5 years ago.

 

On Sunday, my wife and I went down to midtown Atlanta to walk around. We passed Margaret Mitchell's house on Peachtree St, where she wrote the book. I touched the fence hoping to get some inspiration (for some odd reason, since then, all I can think about are fences). On another occasion we visited the famous Oakland cemetery in Atlanta and stumbled into her grave. (edit: UPON her grave)

 

I had seen Gone With The WInd when I was a kid, and didn't remember it. I watched it last year again, and was blown away. What a great movie! Scarlett O'Hara is an awesome character. Almost a psychopath. Vivian Leigh--kick ass. The movie was pretty racy and explicit for its time. That whole "you need a LOT of kissing" bit by Clark Gable was not about "kissing."  I fell in love with Olivia De Havilland. One of the great epics.  In Atlanta, you don't see many historic old buildings like you do in Savannah or Providence, RI---it was all burned in that movie (oops, I mean the actual war).

 

I didn't know that you live in Atlanta.  I live in Smyrna.  I used to work right up the street from Margaret Mitchell's house when I went to Georgia Tech during the early 1990s, and they've restored it even more since then.  There's a Gone with the Wind Museum in Marietta, and, although I've always wanted to go, I have not yet been.

I will, however, be going to see Gone with the Wind on the big screen at Fox Theatre this summer, because it was just announced as a part of their Summer Film Festival.   The movie that I'm most excited about seeing at that festival, though, is Double Indemnity.  I've always wanted to see a classic black-and-white film noir on the big screen.