And it was scandalous – CK was a sensation partially because it was a thinly-veiled character assassination of William Randolph Hearst, who tried his best to bury the film, thus adding to its allure.
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Ah yes…and there’s
“In a party like this, you can get a contact high!”
“Up yours, ratso!”
True. The word “entire” was a bit of accidental hyperbole.
Also, I should acknowledge that Chaplin and (for a time) Griffith had this kind of clout, so it wasn’t completely unprecedented.
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Anybody ever seen Morituri? I’d never heard of it, but man, it was pretty dang good. Brando stars, but Yul Brenner and Janet Margolin hand in more impressive performances.
Take a gander at this shot
Holy fuck.
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No never heard of it before tonight. Apparently it was a BO bomb when it came out. I wonder why?
I was only able to see the first half, but it really looked good. It was wonderful to see Yul Brynner really acting in a serious role. And it had to be one of Brando’s most generous performances.
And yes, that is an amazing shot.
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And I should add, all the cinematography in that movie was beautiful.
I loved the engine room shots especially.
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Wow. Reminds me of a B&W WWII sub movie I saw years ago late one night. Wish I knew what it was called; it was the very definition of claustrophobic suspense.
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Damn that looks good.
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I am going there! I finally watched Troll 2 last year after having heard it slagged as one of the very worst movies ever made, and IMO it is nowhere even close to that level of badness. Only somebody raised on Hollywood sensibilities who has never watched any Italian cinema would have that reaction. It is just a normal Italian kid’s horror/fantasy movie which has the obvious quirks of any production written by people who don’t know the language very well. So apart from some puzzling stilted lines (you can’t piss on hospitality!) and the horrible acting of Darren Ewing as Arnold (They’re eating her… and then they’re going to eat me… OH MY GOD!) it is for the most part a competent movie.
For some people, a low-budget foreign kid’s movie might be sufficiently low-hanging fruit to mock with turkey status, but I have watched quite a few genuinely troubled specimens where even the basic technical craft of getting the audio and visuals recorded, or telling a comprehensible story was too challenging. Movies which look like they were shot in a closet, sound like they have fallen down a well, and skip about as if edited with a garden weasel and some packing tape. While far from perfect, Troll 2 exhibited none of those flaws. It was well made, apart from some iffy makeup, and had a great villain portrayed by Deborah Reed, who I looked up in hopes of seeing in something else. Nowhere near as bad as its reputation might suggest. If it is really the worst thing you’ve ever seen - consider yourself lucky!
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I can hardly wait, but Polygon’s one-off movie adaptation of Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame! is due for release two weeks from today.
Considering that comic book movies are supposedly all the rage these days, it’s a bit disappointing that there is hardly any promotion of work based upon comics I actually like.
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https://www.canvas.net/browse/bsu/tcm3/courses/hitchcock50
We invite movie lovers and online learners from around the world to join us for a free, flexible online course, TCM Presents The Master of Suspense: 50 Years of Hitchcock (#Hitchcock50). This is the third free online course to be offered by TCM and Ball State, following Film Noir (2015) and Slapstick Comedy (2016).
In this Hitchcock course, enjoy multimedia course materials, daily in-app messaging with movie clips, mini-games, and ongoing interactions with fellow film fans on the TCM message boards or at #Hitchcock50.
These organizations (TCM and Ball State University) and this teacher (Richard Edwards, Ph.D.) have been doing this yearly since 2015. The 2015 film noir course was great. The 2016 slapstick course was rather weaker, due to being shorter and I think the instructor either had less time to give to the course or was simply less interested/knowledgeable. This one looks promising.
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So much win!
Overrated: Escape From New York.
Lee Van Cleef was wasted on this terrible film. Amazing set design. Film gets bogged down by terrible narration, terrible CGI, and subplots that go nowhere. Kurt Russel did his best Eastwood impression, but it comes off as a smartass edgelord rather than an intimidating special forces vet.
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That’s the joke!
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Yeah, but Ernest Borgnine! Harry Dean Stanton! Donald Pleasance! I have no way of hating this film.
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I agree with this, but for different reasons.
My problem with the movie is that it supposed to be an “action” movie, but nothing much ever happens in it. There’s nothing but a lot of wandering around.
Also, the sets don’t look anything like New York.
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Flagged as off topic. If you want to argue the semantics of film criticism, please feel free to go start your own thread.
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The infiltration sequences were really well done and the most tense part of the film. Then the film completely loses it at the Crazies sequence. The Ring sequence was also awfully boring. Harold’s motivations were never clear. The climax devolved into a Rambo scene complete with a pithy one liner.
And the CGI. God, the CGI was awful. I get that Carpenter wanted it to have a futuristic feel, but the CGI was nowhere near ready to do a movie of that scope and vision.
The Wall was pretty cool, though. I’m tempted to build it next time Mr Orange goes to Manhattan.
(It didn’t help that I kept comparing Kurt Russel’s stupid growl to David Hayter’s one. Solid Snake > Snake Plissken)
The film just didn’t feel like it knew what it wanted to be. A western? A spoof? A horror movie? Action? Political thriller? Somebody at the studio should have intervened long before it reached the shooting stage.
It’s a film in dire need of a complete reboot.
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I dread to think what they’d do to it now.
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