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2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 6

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Film Noir (Crime)

So once again there is some chicanery going on here.  Because of my previous list I have to leave out all of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies that should be in this category.  “Strangers on a Train,” “Dial M for Murder,” “Rope” and whole bunch of his stuff is right near the top of this genre.  But consistency was never my strength.  Laziness is.

I have emboldened the movies I particularly like.  Take that as personal preference.

I’ve reviewed some of these movies separately if you want my detailed opinion on them search the site.  So here’s a list of what I think is some pretty good noir.

  1. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
  2. HIGH SIERRA (1941)
  3. MURDER, MY SWEET (1944)
  4. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
  5. THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
  6. THE STRANGER (1946)
  7. THE BLUE DAHLIA (1946)
  8. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946)
  9. GILDA (1946)
  10. OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
  11. ODD MAN OUT (1947)
  12. DARK PASSAGE (1947)
  13. THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1948)
  14. KEY LARGO (1948)
  15. SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (1948)
  16. THE NAKED CITY (1948)
  17. WHITE HEAT (1949)
  18. THE THIRD MAN (1949)
  19. ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949)
  20. D.O.A. (1949)
  21. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)
  22. IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)
  23. KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952)
  24. THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953)
  25. THE BIG HEAT (1953)
  26. SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957)
  27. TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)

If I left out one of your favorites or if you detest one of my listed films, feel free to speak up and make your opinions known in the comments below.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 5

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Suspense – Alfred Hitchcock

I’m faking a lot of thinking here with this category.  Alfred Hitchcock usually can be considered as a creator of crime or specifically murder stories.  But sometimes it’s a spy story or something really crazy like birds turning against humanity.  So, suspense is probably as good a label as anything else.

For most of his career Hitchcock produced very high-quality product.  At his peak he could get the best actors and lavish budgets to make his films.  But even on a shoestring like with Psycho he could produce a memorable movie.  At the very end he did produce some awful stuff.  I assume he was beginning to fail due to old age.

I’ve reviewed most of these movies separately if you want my detailed opinion on them.  But here’s a list of what I liked in Hitchcock’s output.  I still haven’t seen all his films but there are enough to form more than a good list of his best stuff.

  1. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  2. The 39 Steps (1935)
  3. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
  4. Suspicion (1941)
  5. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
  6. Lifeboat (1944)
  7. Spellbound (1945)
  8. Notorious (1946)
  9. Rope (1948)
  10. Strangers on a Train (1951)
  11. Dial M for Murder (1953)
  12. Rear Window (1954)
  13. To Catch a Thief (1955)
  14. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
  15. North by Northwest (1959)
  16. Psycho (1960)
  17. The Birds (1963)

If I left out one of your favorites or if you detest one of my listed films, feel free to speak up and make your Hitchcockian opinions known in the comments below.  People are usually very decided in their feelings about his films, one way or the other.  For instance, film aficionados consider “Vertigo” Hitchcock’s greatest masterpiece and a seminal work of cinematic importance.  But being a philistine, I despise it.  So, I left it out.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 4

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Westerns – Modern

I’m dividing Westerns into two categories; Classic and Modern, because they really are completely different categories.  I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting modern westerns in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed a number of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion, you can do a search on the site.

  1. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)
  2. A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)
  3. FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965)
  4. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966)
  5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969)
  6. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
  7. TRUE GRIT (1969)
  8. JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972)
  9. HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)
  10. THE SHOOTIST (1976)
  11. THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976)
  12. THE LONG RIDERS (1980)
  13. PALE RIDER (1985)
  14. SILVERADO (1985)
  15. UNFORGIVEN (1992)
  16. TOMBSTONE (1993)
  17. WYATT EARP (1994)
  18. OPEN RANGE (2003)
  19. 3:10 TO YUMA (2007)
  20. TRUE GRIT (2010)
  21. HELL OR HIGH WATER (2016)

Twenty-one is a long list.  Longer than I intended but I guess I have a soft spot for some of these movies.  I included both versions of “True Grit” and both Tombstone and Wyatt Earp.  And I broke my own western rule by including “Hell or High Water” because the time period is modern day.  But modern westerns are modern!

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  I’ve got a lot of Clint Eastwood in this list.  Not everyone likes his stuff.  I left out Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” and “Ride the High Country.”  I could have left out “Unforgiven” and “Silverado.”  Just how I felt at the moment.

Have at it.  Give your opinion in the comments.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 3

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Westerns – Classic

I’m dividing Westerns into two categories; Classic and Modern, because they really are completely different categories.  I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting classic westerns in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed a number of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion, you can do a search on the site.

  1. STAGECOACH (1939)
  2. DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939)
  3. THE WESTERNER (1940)
  4. THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON (1941)
  5. THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943)
  6. ‘MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946)
  7. FORT APACHE (1948)
  8. WINCHESTER ‘73 (1950)
  9. HIGH NOON (1952)
  10. 3:10 TO YUMA (1957)
  11. RIO BRAVO (1959)
  12. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962)
  13. EL DORADO (1966)

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  I left out some classic movies that are on everyone’s list; “The Searchers,” “Shane” and some others.  That’s just my taste. Some people consider “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” a western but because it took place in the mid-twentieth century I don’t consider it a classic western.  It’s a great film but I consider it something else.

So, there it is.  Feel free to add what I have left off or disagree with what I’ve included in the comments below.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 2

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2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 2

Comedy

I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting comedy movies in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed a number of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion, you can do a search on the site.

  1. IT’S A GIFT (1934)
  2. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935)
  3. MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE (1935)
  4. THE BANK DICK (1940)
  5. ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)
  6. THE ODD COUPLE (1968)
  7. BLAZING SADDLES (1974)
  8. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
  9. MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)
  10. GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)
  11. PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES (1987)
  12. BEETLEJUICE (1988)
  13. UNCLE BUCK (1989)
  14. GROUNDHOG DAY (1993)
  15. SO I MARRIED AN AX MURDERER (1993)
  16. AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY (1997)
  17. THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)
  18. OFFICE SPACE (1999)
  19. GALAXY QUEST (1999)
  20. SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004)
  21. IDIOCRACY (2006)

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  It has to be.  More than any other genre comedy is incredibly personal and therefore subjective.  It is also age specific.  My children would list twenty movies from 2000 to the present day that I haven’t seen nor would want to watch.  I have tried to leave out comedies that I consider marginal that happen to overlap with my most active movie watching era.  So, I haven’t included “The Blues Brothers,” “Caddyshack.” “Stripes,” “Animal House,” “Meatballs,” “National Lampoon: Vacation,” “Trading Places” and a bunch of other movies from my heyday.  I put Ghostbusters in as the best representative for that era.  Someone else would have chosen otherwise.

I hope my list will inspire a million spirited comments.  Everyone has their favorites and their turkeys.  Unlike politics we can all have our opinions on comedy movies without fear of doing any damage.  Have at it.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 1

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When reality collapses under a landslide of madness:

  • POTUS exposed as a human vegetable
  • Cost of living now requires selling kidneys for gas money
  • Illegal aliens and homeless drug addicts now the two largest voting blocks in some blue states
  • Kamala Harris imagining herself as president unencumbered by anyone wanting to vote for her.
  • Morning Joe both extols Joe Biden as the sharpest he’s ever been and begs him to step aside to avoid defeat.

Well then, it’s time to take off the pundit cap and try to enjoy life a little.

I’ve always been partial to watching movies.  My tastes probably fall somewhere in the middle.  I’m definitely not part of the avant-garde by any means.  I’ve never enjoyed Cinéma verité and the various other European schools that abounded in the 1950s and 1960s.  They always just looked like low budget crap that someone made with a home movie camera and no money.  But by the same token I think that at least 80% of the output of Hollywood in its heyday was pretty poor stuff.

I totally believe that cinema is not a single subject.  There are several distinct things that get lumped together as movies.  Hopefully they all contain the characteristic that they entertain.  But beyond that I think one kind of movie makes you feel and another makes you think.  Now that is not to say that a movie that makes you think doesn’t also engage your emotions.  That would be odd in a movie created by humans.  But what I’m indicating is that many, even most movies don’t really make you think.  And that is not to say that only high-brow art-house movies can delve into the human condition.  Far from it.  Even someone as populist and popular as Frank Capra can capture a character or a moment that makes you think about the big questions.

So, I think I’ll divide my discussions about movies into two main categories; entertainment and enlightenment.  And let’s start with entertainment.  Because it is the summer and that is the season when we want to enjoy the beautiful weather and make believe that the world is a happy place where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are just cartoon characters who dress in primary colors and get chased around by the Tasmanian Devil and eventually eaten.  So, let’s see.

Well, first things first, we’ll divide and conquer.  Let’s divide things into genres:

  • Science fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Action/Adventure
  • Comedy
  • Drama

Science Fiction

I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting sci-fi movies in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed almost all of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion you can do a search on the site.

  1. Destination: Moon
  2. The Thing from Another World
  3. Them!
  4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  5. The Time Machine
  6. The Day the Earth Stood Still
  7. War of the Worlds
  8. Forbidden Planet
  9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
  10. Blade Runner
  11. Alien
  12. Terminator
  13. Starship Troopers
  14. Independence Day
  15. 12 Monkeys
  16. Jurassic Park
  17. The Matrix
  18. Contact
  19. Firefly
  20. Serenity
  21. The Martian
  22. Dune

 

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  I left out Star Trek and Star Wars.  I consider Star Wars fantasy and I consider Star Trek mostly awful.  But the same could be said for several of the movies I put on my list.  I hope my list will inspire a million spirited comments.  Everyone has their favorites and their turkeys.  Unlike politics we can all have our opinions on sci-fi movies without fear of doing any damage.  Have at it.

Without Wincing

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It’s Wednesday night and I’ve been watching some YouTube videos by right-wing Hollywood types; Nick Searcy, Andrew Klavan, Steve Deace.  These guys have made the transition from Hollywood actors and writers to conservatives who want to create content that doesn’t outrage their convictions.

And listening to them talk about the blacklisting and the gatekeeping you can’t help but feel discouraged.  And look at Disney where they’ve lost more than a billion dollars in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars series in the last year or two.  Even the remakes of the legacy Disney fairy tales are scaring away the parents.  Would these losses make them reconsider what they’re doing?  Nope.  Doubling down doesn’t even begin to describe their behavior.  It’s pretty depressing.

But I think I detect a hint of desperation.  It seems the strategy is to monopolize the entertainment choices utterly.  It’s almost as if they’re afraid people will find out that movies that are entertaining can actually exist.  And it makes sense.  Even they must know that their stuff is for the most part unwatchable.  So, all they can do is blockade anyone else trying to get funding and book theaters.  And so far, that’s worked.  But slowly, slowly, even glacially some stuff is leaking by.  So far, it’s all been Christian movies.  But the definition of what’s a Christian movie is being stretched.  Last year a “Christian horror movie;” Nefarious made $12 million from box office and streaming off of a $1 million total cost.  That’s a very nice return on investment.  Compare that to Disney spending $3 billion and getting back $2 billion.  Negative return on investment, not so great.

Then there was Netflix putting out the comedy specials by Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais.  Netflix’s own employees attempted to block the showing of these specials.  They saw these comedy routines as transphobic and hateful.  But Netflix decided that they need money more than they needed virtue signaling to their employees.  Another good sign.

Now conservative social media outlets are trying their hand at making movies.  The Daily Wire has made a couple of forays into comedy.  I don’t think they’ve succeeded yet but I give them full marks for trying.  Eventually somebody is going to make a stab at it and hit pay dirt.  And when that happens there will be a lot more.  Netflix is already one foot in the door.  All they’ll need is for a non-woke film maker to figure out the formula and they’ll be setting up shop and pumping stuff out.  There hasn’t been a decent comedy in a decade and if one studio starts putting them out, they’ll end up printing money.

So, I think we will get some alternatives to Hollywood.  And we’ll get it by supporting it ourselves.  What was that stupid Obama mantra?  “You are the change you’ve been waiting for?”  It’s horrible to realize but it’s actually true for our side.  We will have to stand up all these new platforms ourselves.  We’ll have to buy the tickets and take out subscriptions and buy books and go to plays just to make sure there actually is a non-woke alternative to all this awful crap they keep pumping out.

But finally, one fine day, Disney and Time Warner and NBC-Universal and whatever other woke behemoths there are will wither away all together and we’ll look out over a landscape where girl-boss jedi and Captain Marvel have been relegated to senior living facilities with a maximum of three cats and one bottle of wine a night.  And nobody declares their pronouns and spiderman is a man.

And on that day, I’ll bring my first great-grandson to the movies without wincing.

Andrew Klavan Inteviews Mamet

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David Mamet famously declared he had ceased to be a “brain dead liberal” back around the time of the 9/11 attacks.  And the Left has been attacking him ever since.  And since he is a playwright and a movie script writer that has had an enormous impact on his career and life.

Here Andrew Klavan talks to him about what that’s been like and why it’s okay.  I find it interesting to hear how those on the inside of the matrix describe the process of being attacked by the antibodies of the collective.  It’s like an autoimmune disease or more closely it’s as if these people have become cancer cells and have now been detected by the immune system.

Toward the end Mamet speaks very enthusiastically about what will be happening while Hollywood is dying.  “You don’t need a lot of money to make a movie.  You need a phone and a good idea.”  I find that very hopeful.

 

Troy (2004) – A Movie Review

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As a former student of classical languages and literature I suppose I should be categorically opposed to this movie.  But to be honest I probably enjoyed around three quarters of it.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Now full disclosure, the movie Troy resembles Homer’s Iliad about as closely as my grandson’s middle school band’s rendition of the Blue Danube Waltz resembles that performed by the Berlin Philharmonic.  In other words, not a lot.

But that really isn’t important.  The question is whether it succeeds on its own terms.  What we’re presented with is an adventure film masquerading as a literary epic.  We have the story of Orlando Bloom as Paris absconding with Menelaus’ wife Helen from Sparta and taking her to Troy where her new father-in-law Peter O’Toole as Priam decides that they’ll defy Agamemnon and try to keep Helen even if Brad Pitt as Achilles is preparing to run amok on the windy plains of Troy.

In order to turn an epic poem into a two-hour movie some compromise had to be taken with the plot.  Instead of a ten-year war we have a ten-day war.  And some folks had to be sacrificed.  For instance, both Menelaus and Ajax are axed in the second day of battle.  Now that is surprising since in the Hellenic version Menelaus is one of the few heroes to reach a ripe old age after the war.  And equally surprising, not only does Paris survive but he ends up keeping Helen.  Shocker!

So, you might ask what does survive the translation from page to screen?  Well, I’d say Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Priam and Hector are recognizably themselves.  Agamemnon is an arrogant fool.  Odysseus is the wily survivor and Achilles is the aristocratic demi-god following his doom.  Priam is the honorable king who must see his country and family laid waste.  But the most sympathetic character is of course Hector.  Here is the good man, prince, husband, son, brother and father trying to save his country from a creature that no man can defeat.  It is his fate to kill the cousin of the monster and now have to face him in single combat.  And he will die and his body will be lashed to the back of Achilles chariot and dragged around the plains of Troy in ignominy.  And this gives his father the chance to beg Achilles mercy to allow for decent burial.

So quite a bit of the story survives.  We even get the Trojan horse scene, which truth be told isn’t part of the Iliad.  It’s more of an aside in a story in the Odyssey.

As you can imagine, the whole thing is sort of a hot mess.  To his credit I think Brad Pitt acquits himself quite skillfully in his characterization of Achilles.  His relation to the primary and secondary characters is consistent and generally very entertaining.  Unfortunately, all of this relatively positive film making falls apart in the last scene.  The sack of Troy is highly unsatisfactory.  The death of Achilles seems to fall flat and lacks emotional interest.

So, who, if anyone, can I recommend this movie to?  Well, to start with Brad Pitt fans might want to give it a watch.  I’d say fans of sword and sandals epics might like it.  Strict devotees of Homer will be affronted and may throw things at the screen.  My opinion is that it is relatively entertaining with some weak scenes and an unsatisfying ending.  Of course, your milage may vary.

Thoughts on Current SF&F in Cinema – Part 1

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When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in “film” would allow a decent version of the Lord of the Rings to be made.  When Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon over live action was made in 1978, I was quite surprised at how good it was.  And I hoped that he would continue the project to finish the complete story.  But he never did.  Maybe he didn’t make enough money or maybe he got bored.  And so, it would be another twenty years before anyone tried again.

Peter Jackson did a remarkable job both visually and artistically of capturing Tolkien’s story.  And I think he proved that we have reached a point where regardless of the unreal or fantastic nature of the story CGI can produce a convincing visual representation of that story on the screen.  And that was an important moment.  For a fan of science fiction and fantasy this is the promised land.

And yet, what have we got now?  For every film like Dune where the story faithfully reproduces a worthwhile piece of fiction, we get ten movies like “The Marvels” or “The Last Jedi” or “Madame Web” where the visuals are successful but the story and the acting are unwatchable.

Well, that’s reality.  The cultural and societal standards are pretty awful so even if some interesting topic like the Second Age of Middle Earth (Rings of Power) or Harry Seldon’s Psychohistory (Foundation) are being filmed chances are that the result will be terrible.

But the only good thing I can say is that the potential exists for a rogue force like Elon Musk to come along and fund an independent studio to produce some exciting projects.  So, eventually we will get good movies.  Eventually the profit motive will succeed.  Who knows we may be forced to watch Chinese or Hungarian movies in subtitles but it will come.  So, patience, patience.

And what might make a good project?  Well, based on what we know would sell, how about space opera that is a lot more interesting than the Star Wars universe?  How about a project to film the Lensman series?  A few updates to the technology might be needed and the chronology might need to be tweaked but then the story would be easily turned into a series of films.  It has likeable heroes, awful villains, interesting aliens and plenty of space battles.  And best of all, not a girl boss in sight.  Just classic square-jawed heroes saving the day and rescuing the damsel in distress.  I would guess that the Lensman saga would be easily as popular as Star Wars and in fact more so.

Now another popular film idea would be the Heinlein juveniles.  There are several good candidates.  As a first choice I’d go with, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.”  It has all the requisite ingredients for a good young adult movie; human interest, suspense, adventure, pathos, humor and the resolution of a coming-of-age story.  As a second choice I’d recommend, “The Star Beast.”

It’s an interesting thing to reflect that a really satisfactory movie version of a Heinlein book has never been done.  The only one he ever had a hand in was Destination Moon.  And while technically there were interesting aspects to the production as a movie it was pretty cut and dry; more of a primer on rocket flight than work of fiction.  In terms of popularity, I guess Starship Troopers is the best of those produced, even though the director made it in the spirit of a mockery of the underlying philosophy of the book.  A faithful portrayal of Starship Troopers would be an amazing idea for a movie.

And rounding off my picks for Heinlein would be, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”  I think this story would make an excellent film too. I’d especially enjoy seeing the rail gun attack on Earth on the big screen.  And I think the friendship between Manny and the artificial intelligence Mike would work great on the screen.

I’ll have to think of some other classic sf&f books that would make good movies.  If you can think of any you’d like to see made, leave them in the comments.