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I dont believe you lot.
You comment in these threads then forget it!
Check out She wore a yellow ribbon!
And all will be pristine.
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The Counsellor
ridley scott. Fairly ordinary tale of lawyer getting involved with severly dodgy drug people to make a quick buck.
But we've seen it all before. The only thing that was brain-scarring memorable was a scene with cameron diaz and a car windscreen!
Id give that scene an 8 out of ten but the film 4 out of ten.
There must be better projects than this for Ridley scott?
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Jim
i concur with your 8.5 for La conf. One if those rare films that has a lot going for it. It could be argued as much as a 9.
And one of the few films where Kim Basinger had any actual sex appeal.
Solid cast and well scripted.
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Posted: |
Jul 4, 2016 - 11:59 AM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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NUMBER ONE (1969) 4/10
When I discovered recently that this was out as a MOD DVD release since last November, I thought of getting it, but then looked to see if it was available on Amazon Prime streaming, and it was, for just $3.99 and in 1080p HD. As I can hear Heston himself say, "To hell with a DVD!" So, I watched it last week.
I saw it when it originally came out in '69 when I was ten. I was obsessed with PLANET OF THE APES from the year before, so my dad just had to take me to a re-issue of BEN-HUR in '69 and then NUMBER ONE later that same year. The story is about a pro football quarterback, named Ron "Cat" Catlan, for the New Orleans Saints whose best days are now behind him and he's not dealing with it too well to say the least.
Since my dad wasn't into football back then any more than I am now, I can't imagine he much enjoyed this movie, which is sometimes sarcastically referred as NUMBER TWO, because as a drama that's pretty much what it is. It was directed by Tom Gries, who had done the great western WILL PENNY with Heston in early '67, but this movie just didn't have a chance. The script is the problem, it's poorly developed and just doesn't project any true understanding of its main character, and Heston projected too much intelligence to be this asshole of a guy that just can't deal with the reality of his aging. The supporting cast is great, but it's all a waste. Why all involved went with the script they had, I don't understand.
The story seemed to have great appeal to Heston, but I think he's miscast. Apparently, many others did too. Here's something from the Wikipedia page on the movie:
Despite having All-Pro signal-caller Billy Kilmer as an instructor, Charlton Heston did not make a very convincing pro quarterback. "I marveled at how skinny he was in a Saints uniform," said local DJ Bob Walker, who was an extra in the movie. "It hung on him like a cheap suit three sizes too big. When the cameras weren't rolling we watched him try to throw some passes. His receiver was 10-20 yards away and his alleged passes didn't come close." Joe Wendryhoski, who basically played himself in the film as the Saints center, called Heston "a great guy, very sociable" who unfortunately "didn't have an athletic bone in his body. As a quarterback, he left a lot to be desired."
In the final scene when Catlan is crushed by the Dallas defense (actually portrayed by Saints players Mike Tilleman, Dave Rowe and Fred Whittingham), neither Heston nor the producer felt the hit on him was realistic enough, so Heston asked them to cut loose to really make it look authentic. On the second take, the trio slammed the actor to the ground, breaking three of his ribs.
According to Heston in his biography, they only broke one of his ribs.
I met Heston once, at Macy's in NYC where he was doing a book signing for his first book, "An Actor's Life," in late '78 or early '79. As someone who had grown up with him as one of my major movie "heroes," it was a depressingly underwhelming experience. He wasn't anywhere near as imposing as he usually appeared on the screen. Although he was tall (I think 6'3"), he was indeed slim framed. All I can say is, gee how the camera does lie. I shook hands with him and he had the most delicate of fingers and soft skin as if he'd never worked a day in his life. He also had the strangest red hair. Of course, later I learned he wore a toupee. He had very little to say to the many people that were there, and to me, he seemed quite ill at ease. At the time, I knew nothing of his politics.
Of course, I've since learned quite a lot of uncomplimentary things about Heston that mostly concern, putting aside his politics and NRA involvement, his pretentiousness as an actor and general narcissism. Director Ted Post had little good to say about him (and he knew him since their days in NYC in the early '50s), but his co-star in both WILL PENNY and NUMBER ONE, Bruce Dern, said in his autobiography that he was told by some before he worked with Heston that "you probably won't like him," but Dern found he did like him. L.Q. Jones, who worked with Heston in MAJOR DUNDEE, said of his screen acting style, "Heston was a "poser." I think that was something also said of John Wayne's screen acting. I'm currently reading a memoir by James Garner, who simply calls Heston "a stiff."
I'll just say that I find Heston only as good as his script and director, and just leave it at that, except for this advice, DON'T meet your movie heroes and don't go out of your way to see NUMBER ONE.
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Veronica Guerin - 7.5/10 - Well acted and thoughtful and certainly a worthy character to show in a film, i remember her killing at the time, it was very sad. What is appalling is that all of the filth who had her murdered are out of prison already and nobody was done her killing anyway.
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Fright Night Part 2 - 5.5/10 - It's an okay watch. Nowhere near as good as the original. Julie Carmen is sultry as the main vampire and the werewolf guy is good fun. There are some really nice prosthetic effects in this, my favourite being the melting skull. The film itself has too many dull stretches, and the main character is actually pretty annoying on several occasions, especially when trying to be "cool". There is some unintentional hilarity in a rollerskating vampire and the dance choreography. The score is nice again, like the first one, but less memorable like the film.
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Posted: |
Jul 5, 2016 - 7:12 PM
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By: |
RoryR
(Member)
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GREYSTOKE, THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES (1984) 5.5/10
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (2016) 6/10
A couple nights ago I watched on Blu-ray the 1984 GREYSTOKE again in preparation for the new Tarzan movie. I saw GREYSTOKE when it first came out. I wasn't that crazy about it then and I'm still not. In no way would I call this film a classic, other than that it's now just past 32 years old and still has some entertainment value (it's at least well-produced), but it's also very much a slightly ill-conceived mess. I guess the idea behind it was to make the original Tarzan origin story more plausible and somehow less fantastic. Only problem with that is that the concept is utterly absurd and there's no way around it. They try very hard to deal realistically with the apes in this movie, which are presented as regular chimpanzees, represented by probably the best ape suits ever created. Kudos to Rick Baker and his team on this one, and to the performers in the suits. 32 years later, some of it still marvels.
There's just one problem.... the apes in the original Edgar Rice Burroughs stories weren't chimpanzees, but a fictional species of chimp/gorilla-like apes with their own language. In real life, a group of chimpanzees would not adopt a human infant, no matter how heartbroken a mother chimp was over her own dead infant. Instead what they most assuredly would do is eat it! How do I know this, because it's been recorded in our real world, at least one incident of a baby snatched by a rogue chimpanzee that was later tracked down and found happily munching away on what was the infant's face.
Also there's just the almost impossible job of suspending disbelief and accepting that a human infant could survive all of the conditions of an African rain forest to then reach healthy adulthood. Hell, even a large percentage of actual apes don't survive it.
So, it's really ridiculous to try and present the Tarzan legend as anything other than the absurd Science Fiction fantasy that it is. And it's becomes quite sillier when the film moves to England and Tarzan has the expected problems trying to fit in to 19th century British culture.
It seems apparent the filmmakers weren't quite sure what they were doing, and ultimately the movie just seems a lament of the entire Tarzan concept and therefore utterly pointless.
The same can't be said of the new 2016 movie, which fully embraces it's pulp origins and complete absurdity. The film should have begun with the title "Long, long ago.... In an Africa that never was..." it's almost that unrealistic. The apes this time are present as more gorilla-like, which is good as gorillas are complete vegetarians and wouldn't automatically eat baby Tarzan, but the film later states that the apes aren't actually gorillas, so the new movie is actually closer to Burroughs than the '84 version.
Unfortunately this new take on Tarzan doesn't have a very interesting or complicated story and is rather boringly predictable. Yet it still manages to be passably entertaining if not entirely thrilling. The less than convincing CGI world it creates doesn't help things. It didn't seem to me to be quite as photo-realistic as it needed to be and the apes weren't up to the standards now set by the modern PLANET OF THE APES reboot/prequels. And Tarzan now is presented in near-superhero mode, even swinging through the trees less like previous Tarzans and more like current Spidermans.
Even though I can't entirely recommend the latest incarnation of Tarzan, I'd still give it a slight edge over the '84 version. At least you won't be bummed out about the legend of Tarzan at the end, and some may even look forward to a sequel.
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