rate the last movie you saw

[Monterey Jack]

-Sausage Party (2016): 8/10

Typically filthy and one-note Seth Rogen production, with the novelty of being a Pixar-style CGI animated feature (replete with an impressive opening Alan Manken song number). Rogen doesn't stray far from his usual obsessions -- dick jokes, weed jokes, homo-erotic gags -- but if you're a fan (as I am), this offers plenty of big laughs and even a dash of philosophical meat to chew on. When Salma Hayek is cast as a lesbian taco, you know exactly what you're in for. Seems to run out of stream towards the end (despite a 90-minute running time), but still a bright spot in an otherwise abysmal summer movie season. Do NOT let the kiddies anywhere near this.

[Eric Paddon]

Grand Prix (1966) 7 of 10

-Although I'd watched this film several times in the past, I always tended to yawn my way through all the stuff in-between the racing sequences. This time with the Blu-Ray I really paid attention and critically examined the film in a way I never did before. The strength of the film and its reason for being is the outstanding racing sequences, done with no blue screens whatsoever. We are seeing in beautiful HD preserved for all time Formula 1 racing as it was in the mid-1960s when the public exposure to it was in murky B/W footage on ABC Wide World Of Sports. Here we get a sense of how big the spectacle really was and we also see so many real drivers appearing too (many of whom lost their lives in the years following like 1966 Indy 500 winner and multiple world champion Graham Hill). The footage of Monte Carlo and Monza (which no longer uses the oval track part) is breathtaking.

-Now as for the fictional plots regarding the lives of the drivers, it's thin stuff but I was more charitable this time out with my only hostile feelings being for Eva Marie Saint's godawful performance and the totally uninteresting romance of her and Yves Montand. IMO, we would have had a better paced film if they'd cut Saint's role entirely and allowed Montand to cast a more legendary shadow by not letting us see much of his private life beyond the weary asides he makes etc.

-Even though James Garner would develop a long-term interest in racing as a result of this film (driving the pace car at Indy a number of times), in the end Steve McQueen would have been better in this part because this role of a loner American driver of whom we never learn ANYTHING about in terms of his background, personal life etc. is too much a McQueen role and not a Garner type role. It's too bad McQueen's bad meeting with the producer kept him from doing this. I know I should revisit "Le Mans" someday which I haven't seen in years but I know its not as good a movie with an even more threadbare plotline.

-Probably the big surprise for me this time was how good Jessica Walter, long a favorite of mine from the TV guest star circuit, does in the film as the wife of Brian Bedford and who has a brief fling with Garner. It's a very believable performance and the most believable of the fictional subplots. In the end, she and Bedford make up without phony emotionalism and without changing their minds about how they feel about the source of their conflict. Compared to the shallow absurdity of the Montand-Saint relationship its a breath of fresh air by contrast. As a result of this, I'm going to be getting and seeing soon for the first time Charlton Heston's "Number One" which basically has her in a similar role.

[Monterey Jack]

-Kubo & The Two Strings (2016): 9.5/10

It took until the summer was virtually over, but FINALLY, a great film that isn't a remake, reboot, sequel or some other bit of synergistic Hollywood "product". Another madly-detailed stop-motion opus from the geniuses at Laika studios (the creators of Coraline, ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls), it's brimming with gorgeous animation, adroit voice work (from the likes of Charlize Theron, Rooney Mara and a somewhat miscast but still amusing Matthew McConaughey) and boosted by an excellent Dario Marianelli score. Younger kids might find it a bit slow in spots (especially in this grab-bag summer filled with whack-a-mole farting CGI animal movies every two weeks), but older kids and adult animation buffs will find much to savor. See it!

[Paul MacLean]

Grand Prix (1966) 7 of 10

I had to watch this film at least six times (!) when writing the liner notes for Lukas' CD! There's no denying the impressive spectacle of the racing sequences (which seamlessly blend actual Formula 1 racing footage with scripted scenes of the cast in the drivers seat).

Agreed on Garner's casting vs. McQueen's. Garner's intrinsic screen persona leans too much toward the "nice guy" end of the spectrum whereas McQueen was always a more convincing "edgy bad boy".

Probably the big surprise for me this time was how good Jessica Walter, long a favorite of mine from the TV guest star circuit, does in the film as the wife of Brian Bedford and who has a brief fling with Garner.

She was good, but the one who "got my spark plugs firing" was Françoise Hardy (grrrrr)...

[Eric Paddon]

I was impressed with her too and despite her minimal dialogue she also blew away Eva Marie Saint acting wise and in believability. Characters like hers and Jessica's do have their counterparts in the real racing world (the groupie girlfriends and the frustrated wives who ultimately have to make peace with their man's desire to race if they want the marriage to survive). Saint's was absurd from start to finish and maybe we could have seen a little more of Montand's wife Genevieve Page because they didn't give us enough of her to make me see why we should automatically take Montand's side regarding the state of his marriage.

I have long been a racing fan but more so of the Indianapolis 500 and the Indy cars in general. It's too bad that the big film about Indy in this era, "Winning" was so weak by comparison (though it and "Le Mans" I'll watch again any time over "Days Of Thunder"!)

[Monterey Jack]

-Spies Like Us (1985): 8/10

-Funny Farm (1988): 9/10

Re-visited these two 80's Chevy Chase comedies for the first time in nearly 30 years today, and both hold up surprisingly well. Granted, Spies Like Us has become a total Cold War period piece by now, but I have fond memories of these kinds of movies when I was a kid, where scowling, parka-clad Russians wearing coats with BIG WIDE BELTS would bark about "Your papers!" and the like. It's goofy, irreverent fun, crammed with the usual barrage of gratuitous cameos that pepper all of John Landis' films that I totally didn't get back in the day but now had me muttering, "Terry Gilliam! Sam Raimi! Joel Coen...!" every two minutes. Funny Farm plays totally different to my viewing of it back in the day, however...while I enjoyed parts of it then, it was mainly the more broad, slapsticky moments I responded to. But viewed from an adult perspective, it's a surprisingly witty, clever and ultimately warm-hearted film, with great chemistry between Chase and the gorgeous Madolyn Smith and full of big laughs. It even looks like a million bucks, a real classy production all around (boasting a terrific Elmer Bernstein score that deserves a CD release). A real nostalgic pleasure to watch these again, even if the Blu-Ray transfers are not the greatest (Spies Like Us looks especially rough).

[Eric Paddon]

Le Mans (1971) 5 of 10

-After revisiting "Grand Prix" I moved on to this one, and this film makes you realize just why a fictional through-line, even a poorly written one is sometimes needed in a movie such as this. I have to think McQueen made this movie as a way of getting even for not being in "Grand Prix" or perhaps because his biggest box office rival Paul Newman had by this point done his racing movie too. The end result though is something that comes off like a giant big-screen home movie or a documentary with no narration because while the location footage of Le Mans and the race looks terrific on a widescreen canvas and in a quality print, there is literally *nothing* that goes on to hold the viewer's interest. We don't even get on-screen racing action that can hold our attention except for a contrived final lap finale where the lead car goes out with a flat tire and then McQueen outruns his "rival" to keep him from passing his team car for the victory (I wonder if McQueen didn't want to have his character win the race so he could avoid having to show some life and excitement on the winning stand!). If "Grand Prix" could have trimmed a little bit in its fictional subplots, "Le Mans" need a LOT more to remain engaging.

-See my thread here where I know I became the first person in the world to discover that a section of LeGrand's cue at the finale where McQueen locks eyes with Elga Andersen was recycled into the 1982 entrance music medley at EPCOT Center in Florida! http://andyfilm.com/mboard/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5315

-Speaking of Elga Andersen, I have to mention how I was familiar with her name from the fact that she later married Peter Gimbel, an undersea diver (and whose documentary on sharks was an inspiration to the producers of "Jaws") who did a number of dives on the Andrea Doria wreck. I still have to this day the documentary of their 1981 dive that recovered the safe from inside the hull and how it was later opened on live TV in an event that while not as disastrous as Geraldo's Al Capone special still landed with a thud since the safe mostly contained bank notes that didn't become visible until after the special was over.

[Eric Paddon]

Number One (1968) 7 of 10

-This was Heston's first film after POTA and I ended up being impressed as it shows him as a star NFL quarterback having to confront that his career is over. The filmmakers were able to secure permission from the NFL so that Heston plays for the New Orleans Saints and we see authentic NFL footage utilized and there is a tone of authenticity in seeing football as it was in the late 60s when it was becoming a phenomenon but when the players were still as Heston says in the film making very low wages overall so it has a dimension that's totally different from today (and its an era when NFL players had more dignity about them than they do now).

-Jessica Walter, who had been effective as a race car driver's wife in a troubled marriage in "Grand Prix" does a good job here as well though in cross-checking Heston's journal on the production of this film there were a number of extra scenes filmed flashing back to their earlier days that didn't make the final cut of the film (we do get one flashback of Heston as a rookie that I confess is the one moment where I couldn't suspend my disbelief and accept him in the role). As she did in "Grand Prix" the picture of the marriage and its struggles is quite believable. When I'd read that Diana Muldaur, another familiar face from the 60s-70s TV guest circuit played the part of Heston's mistress I couldn't help but think the the casting must have been reversed but I was proved wrong once I saw it as Muldaur does well playing against her usual type from TV as a more free-spirited woman that fits the part.

-However, this film lost a point because of the ending which ends on a way too ambiguous artsy-fartsy note of being obsessed with a visual image when some final exposition was needed. We KNOW that we have seen the final end of a career (though oddly no one gathers around him to see if he's okay) but shouldn't this give us some final reflection by him with his wife? What job is he going to take? What is his attitude? The whole film has been a build-up to this moment of decision. And when the moment comes, the film just ends coldly before we know what he's going to do and that makes the film a cheat on that level.

-It's too bad it had to end that way because it is a refreshingly authentic portrait of the NFL in this era and merits a look for that reason. One little irony in the score being done by Dominic Frontiere is that he would later be married to an NFL owner himself!

[AndyDursin]

THE NICE GUYS
6/10

Everyone laments the dearth of adult movies making their way to movie theaters nowadays – but what can you do when a picture intended as an antidote to mindless CGI blockbusters itself turns out to be overrated?

That’s the regrettable case with “The Nice Guys,” Shane Black’s tale of a former detective-turned-private eye (Ryan Gosling), who teams up with a grizzled dick (Russell Crowe) to investigate the death (or is it disappearance) of a porn star in Hollywood circa 1977. Black’s film looks to have all the elements in place for a rollicking good time, but “The Nice Guys” feels more like posturing than it does an authentic recreation of not only time and place (outside of a few billboards, Pong-playing gamers and the era’s fashions, what’s the point of the setting?), but the very type of film Black wants to evoke here (“The Long Goodbye” by way of “Lethal Weapon,” essentially). Gosling and Crowe, saddled with an especially unconvincing accent, strain to strike up a chemistry together and never quite get there; the script thinks it’s being funny and clever, but seldom hits the mark; and the sleazy case at the center of it all is never all that interesting (Hollywood filmmakers seem to have more of a preoccupation with the porn industry than the rest of us).

A movie you go in rooting for, “The Nice Guys” is still watchable – and Angourie Rice’s performance as Gosling’s teen daughter is a standout – yet it’s ultimately a letdown, no matter how few films like it there were at this summer’s sequel-laden, mediocre box-office.

[Monterey Jack]

"Hickory-dickory, Doc! Cain has picked his lock!"



-Raising Cain: Recut (1992/2016): 8.5/10

Brian De Palma's looney, self-referential 1992 thriller -- chockablock with split personalities, adultery subplots that go nowhere, surreal dream sequences nesting inside each other like Matryoshka dolls, and a particularly bent series of performances by John Lithgow in multiple roles -- is finally restored to a close approximation of the director's original intent in this dandy new version by Peet Gelderblom, who reconstructed the film online using the original screenplay as a guideline and whose work so impressed De Palma that the director lobbied to have it included on the new Blu-Ray release from Scream Factory. Re-ordering the scenes now makes the film's storytelling perspective shift radically...now instead of opening with Lithgow's character and immediately setting up the purple thriller aspects of the storyline, we begin with Lolita Davidovich's romantic storyline, as she hooks up with old flame Steven Bauer, and the film echoes the structure of that Rosetta Stone of De Palma's Hitchcock fetishization, Psycho (and his own, earlier Psycho riff, Dressed To Kill). It makes the film's transformation from pulp harlequin romanticism into the director's suspense stomping grounds all the more jarring and effective. If I were to show this to someone who had never seen it before, this new cut would definitely be the preferred version. Does it transform the film from a studio-marred botch into a new masterpiece? Hardly...the movie still has certain stylistic and narrative flaws (including some awful, expository voiceover narration from Davidovich that De Palma wisely excised when he wrote similar mush for Angie Dickinson during the museum sequence in Dressed To Kill, but tossed out when the scene worked perfectly well on its own), and if you don't "get" De Palma's heightened, garish playfulness in deconstructing the thriller form, you'll likely find yourself laughing for the wrong reasons. If you do appreciate the director's nimble mixture of suspense and black comedy as I do, then Raising Cain is a film worthy of re-discovery, especially in this new version that will almost certainly be my go-to way to watch it from now on (although kudos to Scream for including the studio-imposed theatrical version as well, for historical purposes).

[Eric Paddon]

Watching some more classics for the first time, mostly (though not all) with an eye toward letting me play the CDs I already have on hand and am not familiar with or have ordered.

White Heat (1949) 8 of 10

-I'd never seen this before and only remember 30 years ago seeing a TV commercial for it on Channel 5 showing Cagney flipping out in the prison cafeteria. But I had a fascinating time watching Cagney prove how you could play psycho effectively in an era when foul language wasn't going to be heard on screen. Edmond O'Brien as the undercover investigator basically gives us an expanded take of his "Killers" role to good effect. I was really impressed how the story kept taking all kinds of fascinating twists and turns that imagine my surprise that the script came from the team of Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts who decades later would be the producers of "Mannix" and then "Charlies Angels!"

The Lost Weekend (1945) 6.8 of 10

-This is a case of a film I was long familiar with for decades and had seen and heard all kinds of parody sketches based on it, but had never seen it until now. Unfortunately, much like my first viewing of "Casablanca" which was spoiled by years of seeing parodies and send-ups beforehand, this one doesn't come off as effective as it would have had I seen it first with impressionable eyes. Milland's Oscar-winning performance that probably ended his days as a leading man, gets a bit too over the top to the point and the script just lathers it on so thick that honestly I had to ask just how different is this film from the much ridiculed films and TV shows (like "Dragnet") that warned us about marijuana use? Seeing Howard Da Silva decades before "1776" was a nice surprise and I can see what Rozsa did music wise that justified my getting the score as one of my last purchases but this film won't rank as a big classic with me despite its sincere approach to the subject.

Jane Eyre (1943) 7 of 10

-Only because its part of the Herrmann at Fox box set that I've only listened to two scores of in all the years I've had it ("The Egyptian" and "Journey To The Center Of The Earth") did I rent this and get introduced to Herrmann doing a score that like the film itself evokes the visual style of "Citizen Kane". I found it fascinating to see an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor giving a strong performance in the opening minutes. I do know that Peggy Ann Garner certainly didn't grow up to look like Joan Fontaine! At any rate, not being familiar at all with the Bronte story this was like watching a fresh property and it worked overall for what it was. I also for the first time could tell that Rod Serling was deliberately echoing the ending of this (but with a downer twist) at the end of his TZ episode "The Long Morrow".

I saw the film version of "Ghost and Mrs. Muir" years ago but need to revisit it again for proper immersion to Herrmann's score and "Anna And The King Of Siam" will eventually follow too. If I'm going to call it a day for buying more scores, I have to give proper discovery/rediscovery to what I've got!

[mkaroly]

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR is one of my all-time favorite films and it is my favorite Bernard Herrmann score. Unabashedly romantic in its construction, Hermann's score captures the mood of the film and the "romanticism" in the film's themes. Beautiful, beautiful score...amazing that it came from the pen of one of the most tempestuous composers in film music.

[AndyDursin]

I really did not care for RAISING CAIN when I saw it years ago. I think my friend asked outloud "what the hell is going on" at one point in the theater.

I'll give the recut a go over the weekend. I'm curious what they did to the music editing with the chronology of sequences changed, though.

[Paul MacLean]

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR is one of my all-time favorite films and it is my favorite Bernard Herrmann score. Unabashedly romantic in its construction, Hermann's score captures the mood of the film and the "romanticism" in the film's themes. Beautiful, beautiful score...amazing that it came from the pen of one of the most tempestuous composers in film music.

Agreed. For all the praise heaped on Herrmann's scores for Citizen Kane, the Hitchcock films and Taxi Driver (which are great scores, I agree), my personal favorites are actually The Ghost an Mrs. Muir and The Three Worlds of Gulliver!

[Monterey Jack]

I really did not care for RAISING CAIN when I saw it years ago. I think my friend asked outloud "what the hell is going on" at one point in the theater.

Switching the chronology around to get to the John Lithgow thriller elements of the film immediately for the theatrical cut not only robs them of their intended out-of-nowhere shock value, but also made the film difficult to follow. This new cut makes the movie immeasurably better...and without adding or removing a frame of footage! I mean, if it's a movie you hated before (as most people did), this won't magically make it into a new experience, but if you're a De Palma fan as I am, it definitely plays a lot better now. If only we could get a restoration of the equally-compromised Snake Eyes with the insane "tidal wave" ending...

I'll give the recut a go over the weekend. I'm curious what they did to the music editing with the chronology of sequences changed, though.

I didn't notice any awkward edits with Donaggio's score...I think it was lucky that he didn't score over the parts of the film that were juggled around to make this new edit.