The Official Movie Thread

[Vegard Pompey]

I kinda wanna do this now. Fuck I guess I am autistic.

What's the starting year for the yearly poll threads? Will be interesting to look at those when I get to applicable years.

Anyway, the journey continues with...



Minor Kurosawa by all accounts, including the director's own. The story is a bagatelle; two celebrities sue a newspaper over the publishing of a photo that implies romantic involvement. Midway through the movie we meet a down-on-his-luck lawyer and his tubercular daughter and the movie loses the thread completely and becomes an incredibly cozy slice-of-life thing in a slowly modernizing postwar Japan. At one point Toshiro Mifune straps a pine tree to his motorcycle and the movie briefly becomes the best Christmas movie. This is the most unfocused I've ever seen Kurosawa at and I... kinda loved it? Watching it felt like briefly inhabiting a lost time and place. The Plot makes an unfortunate third act return in the form of a terrible courtroom drama but it's not enough to stop me from calling this my favorite Kurosawa movie to come out in 1950.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i thought that was a joke then remembered rashomon was 1950 lol

we haven't really done 50s threads, understandable but also a shame 'cause it's definitely a candidate for the greatest decade (although i'd probably pick the 70s if pushed)

 

[CiG]

I don't think we've even done a 60's thread have we?

I'm severely lacking in the 50's, which is why I didn't participate in the RYM poll for that decade.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i'm sure we did a late 60s, 1968 maybe?

 

[CiG]

Yeah you're right, I remember 2001 and Once Upon a Time in the West going head to head in the tallying.

Edit: I only have 1 film rated from 1950.

 

[no country for old wainds]

my top 10 for 1950 fwiw:
1) in a lonely place (ray/bogart noir; romantic, hopeless, perverse)
2) wagon master (ford western/languid outcast hangout movie, nothing else quite like it)
3) night and the city (dassin/widmark noir; sweaty and desperate and unhinged, some of the most oppressive location shooting ever, american version is preferable)
4) gun crazy (incredibly influential lovers/serial killers on the run movie from j h lewis, even spring breakers stole from it)
5) the gunfighter (boetticher western with a real-time gimmick; the better version of high noon)
6) woman on the run (unusual foster noir; female protagonist, interesting perspective on identity)
7) sunset blvd (wilder noir obvs, seen it at least 6 times and opinion changes every time)
8) stars in my crown (tourneur western; one of the most powerful american christian films, ford by way of dreyer)
9) the breaking point (curtiz working class noir, mature and high-stakes with a brutal portrayal of marriage)
10) winchester 73 (mann/stewart western with a gun as the main character)

the big name hollywood movie i haven't seen is all about eve, along with a bunch of high profile french and italian shit. need to rewatch ordet too sometime.

 

[RadicalThrasher]

gave this a watch recently....

Spoiler

Hadn't seen it in a long time. Pretty good flick from Schrader, not as good as Blue Collar imo, but still pretty damn good

 

[CiG]

Watched that new TMNT movie last night.
April O'Neil is built like Raphael. At times it looks like she has a dick bulge lmao.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

1950 project continues...



I didn't think this was very good. Felt like a very sanitized take on showbiz where everyone is mostly good and honest except for outsiders using their feminine wiles to try and make a career for themselves. Bette Davis' character is ridiculed for believing that the industry & her husband would callously discard her for a younger version when she hits middle age, which strikes me as a grounded fear that the better version of this film would confirm absolutely. It's also 2½ hours long and very flatly directed and boring to look at. Great performances (Bette Davis especially) and memorably incisive dialogue to go with them but overall this was a miss.



I haven't seen a lot of westerns that aren't revisionist westerns in some capacity, so it's a nice change of pace to see one where villains wear black hats, poker players draw dead man's hands, gunslingers shoot holes dead center in tossed coins and Indians are played by Americans in redface. The gimmick of the whole story revolving around a rifle is fun, and the film commits to it fully. Overall I liked it but I dunno if it was anything special.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i agree with the latter (tis good but my least favourite of all the mann-stewart westerns) and the former is kinda what i suspected and why i still haven't seen it.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Idle thought: What's the earliest (good) movie featuring an actor who remains active to this day? I know Clint has a few 50s appearances, but it doesn't sound like any of them are good.

 

[CiG]

Does Nicholson count just for still being alive? He was awesome in The Cry Baby Killer (1958) but he doesn't act anymore afaik.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

That's a good suggestion, I'll check out that movie if it's not hard to find.

Other answers to my own question I found were:
Christopher Plummer, if we include the recently deceased - appeared in the Nic Ray film Wind Across the Everglades in '58
Lois Smith appears in East of Eden ('55) and is still active today
Michael Caine has some minor roles in the 50s but probably nothing notable until Zulu ('64)

 

[no country for old wainds]

Idle thought: What's the earliest (good) movie featuring an actor who remains active to this day? I know Clint has a few 50s appearances, but it doesn't sound like any of them are good.

rita moreno was in singin' in the rain in 1952 and has multiple 2023 acting credits.

sophia loren was in a bunch of solid stuff as early as 1954 and was still active in 2020, nothing since except a doc about herself though.

lois smith was in the classic east of eden back in 1955, and is still going (she was in the french dispatch, and something else in 2022).

bruce dern was in the great wild river in 1960, albeit uncredited.

robert duvall was in to kill a mockingbird back in 1962, he's still appearing in stuff. robert redford was in the fairly acclaimed war hunt in the same year.

james earl jones was in dr strangelove in 1964, which matches the year of eastwood's first 'major' film. ditto michael caine in zulu (he was in stuff all the way back to 1950 but not sure any of it was good), and maggie smith in the pumpkin eater. julie andrews was in mary poppins in 1964 but she's only active as a voice actor now. morgan freeman was an uncredited nobody in 1964's the pawnbroker. jane fonda was also in solid stuff around the same time.

forgive me if i missed that any of these died recently lmao.

edit: you beat me to a couple of these.

 

[CiG]

That's a good suggestion, I'll check out that movie if it's not hard to find.

It's free on Plex, if you have access to that in whichever icy tundra you live at.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Couldn't sleep, so I stayed up and watched the best movie ever. May have more to say on it later but for now, holy fuck.

 

[no country for old wainds]

recommending that to you first was a no brainer haha, felt like some pompey catnip.

widmark might be my favourite actor tbh, he's perfect in absolutely everything.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

I've never seen him in anything before and this was an instant all-timer performance.

 

[no country for old wainds]

he only made his debut in '47 and he was already fully fledged by '49 in road house, probably the most widmarkian performance to my mind that i've seen. make sure pickup on south street is on your '53 watchlist, he's great there too. and he plays a quieter straight man role really well in warlock (1959), which also stars another of my favourite actors anthony quinn.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Visited a friend and accidentally watched a movie from the future. I don't know how my friend, who is by no means a cinephile, picked this particular deep cut, which very much felt like a second-tier New Hollywood classic but is apparently not all that well-known.

A wealthy heiress (Kim Darby, utterly radiant covered in bruises, tears and snot) is kidnapped by a family of rednecks. This gang has no intentions of letting the girl live once the ransom has been paid, but unfortunately for just about everyone involved, the family's retarded son (played by a young Scott Wilson) falls in love with her and refuses to let the family kill her.

This is uncomfortable, depraved stuff that locks you inside the viewpoint of its female lead as she's surrounded by predators that either want to kill her or fuck her, if not one and then the other. It's violent to the point of incredulity, and crudely plays into negative stereotypes of the American south, but I suspect a more polite version of this that avoided both those traps wouldn't have the same feverish effect. Unhinged and disgusting film, 4/5.