rate the last movie you saw

[Monterey Jack]

Darkman (1990): 8/10

In many ways, I prefer this to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies, as it replicates the kinetic visual style of comic books a lot more creatively on a fraction of the budget. Bill Pope's cinematography is tremendous (and looks great on Blu-Ray), Danny Elfman's score is one of the best of his post-Batman superhero efforts, and the film is ludicrously thrilling and frequently hilarious ("TAKE IT, TAKE THE FUZZY ELEPHANT!" ). Just a shame a genuine special edition release has never come to pass. I'd love to hear Raimi's thoughts on the film, even if the likeliness that Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand sitting down for interviews about it are remote in the extreme. They couldn't even stick the trailer on the Blu?

Plus, "Final Shemp" alert!

[AndyDursin]

The DARKMAN Blu-Ray is one of the worst examples of noise reduction sucking the grain out of the image completely...or I should say one of the best examples of that kind of practice.

[Monterey Jack]

I thought it looked pretty damn good, myself. Then again, I'm no expert.

[AndyDursin]

I thought it looked pretty damn good, myself. Then again, I'm no expert.

How big is your TV MJ? I think the larger your set, the more obvious it is. It's way too "smooth", there's almost no grain or sharpness in it...one of several Universal failures in the last few months.

[Monterey Jack]

I thought it looked pretty damn good, myself. Then again, I'm no expert.

How big is your TV MJ? I think the larger your set, the more obvious it is. It's way too "smooth", there's almost no grain or sharpness in it...one of several Universal failures in the last few months.

Mine's about 42''. Even if they added a bunch of DNR to the film, it still looks better than that horribly-antiquated, artifact-plagued DVD transfer.

[AndyDursin]

It's better than DVD, no doubt, but it should've been treated with more care. Alas...

I agree with you entirely about the film. In fact I even mentioned it's funny how with a fraction of the budget that DARKMAN is much more entertaining than Spidey 3 at least (though I do think 3 gets a bum rap as you do also).

[Monterey Jack]

I still fail to see how a superhero film from the director of three of the most profitible superhero movies of all time can't get a special edition release with a "from the director of Spider-Man!" sticker affixed to the shrink-wrap. When you consider how many box-office bombs get loaded SEs these days (look at Scott Pilgrim...lost a bundle, and yet the Blu-Ray has literally DAYS' worth of extras), why does a film that more than doubled its budget in 1990 dollars and continues to cultivate a small but growing cult get diddly-squat as far as extras? Just a commentary, a handful of deleted scenes and a brief retrospective documentary would be great.

[AndyDursin]

FAST FIVE 8.5/10

A great way to kick off the summer movie season, this fifth entry in the now-long-running Fast & The Furious series is easily the best of the whole lot -- a deliriously crisp, entertaining barrage of slambang action scenes and character interplay that makes for a rousing good time.

Director Justin Lin and writer Chris Morgan, who have been on the series since "Tokyo Drift," incorporate nearly every single living character from all prior installments, in a story involving Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster running afoul of a drug czar in Rio. They want to pull off one more heist and take him down, but find themselves being tracked by US government baddie Dwayne Johnson as well.

Diesel and the cast are laid back and relaxed -- and one can sense the interplay between this multi-cultural, multi-national cast being the root that Universal wants to explore in a 6th installment that (supposedly) will be heavier on heist elements than car aspects.

That said, you really don't need to have seen all the prior sequels to make sense of this one, as the film manages to be fun and exciting without being heavy -- and the brilliantly executed car chase finale is one of the best I've ever seen. Ridiculous? Sure. But over the top in a way that manages to be faintly believable as opposed to merely cartoonish like your typical Michael Bay film (think more like "True Lies" than "Transformers"). That Lin also manages to make it work visually (and editorially) in a way that isn't totally incomprehensible to the viewer is another feather in his cap.

Overall, I was tremendously entertained, and make sure you stay through the first set of credits or else you'll miss a cameo from another series alumnus, one that sets in motion the next installment!

As if there was any doubt to the film cleaning up at the box-office (it's already opened huge overseas) -- the almost sold-out audience I saw the movie with tonight managed to be a mix of whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, teenagers, bikers, and families with kids! No wonder why Universal can't wait to make another one.

[mkaroly]

MANHATTAN (1979) - 10/10. I can't not give this movie high marks; unlike ANNIE HALL, which has more of a structureless improvisational feel to it, MANHATTAN seems more structured, more polished, and more fluid. As a piece of cinematic "art", from start to finish, I think it continues to hold up. And although I already rated this movie high up on the scale in the past, I appreciate it more now (even thought eh whole 40+ year old dating a 17 year old still makes me uncomfortable). The only thing that kind of stands out in the movie as a negative for me is Michael Murphy's Yale. I think he was one of Woody Allen's least charismatic/interesting supporting actors. But that's a minor complaint.

STARDUST MEMORIES (1980) - 5/10. I still can't quite come to terms with this movie. I still don't know if I like it or not. I never cared for Charlotte Rampling- I never bought into her dangerous sensuality. There are certainly some good moments in the film (for whatever reason I really enjoyed the UFO sequences, and I liked Dorrie's "breakdown" scene), but I'm not sure I "get it" as a whole film. It's interesting yet I can't quite connect with it.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY (1982) - 5/10. This film is much more straight-forward than STARDUST MEMORIES, and I didn't like this film when I saw it at first. Watching it again though, I enjoyed the quirkiness of the characters more this time around, especially Allen's Andrew. I liked that this film had just the six of them in it, and they interacted well together as a cast (though I didn't particularly care for Tony Roberts in this film- wish he would have gotten someone else to play the part). I loved the scenery of the country as well. However, I don't think it's near his best work.

[Monterey Jack]

The Tourist: 4/10

Leaden Hitchcock-wannabe squanders a terrific cast and a wonderful James Newton Howard score (one of last year's best) on a desperately uncompelling Wrong Man thriller.

[AndyDursin]

The Tourist: 4/10

Leaden Hitchcock-wannabe squanders a terrific cast and a wonderful James Newton Howard score (one of last year's best) on a desperately uncompelling Wrong Man thriller.

Exactly what I said

[AndyDursin]

THOR 8.5/10

Loved it. Not perfect, but great fun. More comments in the THOR thread!

[Eric Paddon]

The Seven-Ups (1973) 6.5 of 10
-Found this for only $5 at Barnes and Noble so I decided to give it a try. I was fascinated by the NY location shooting and seeing like with French Connection and The Taking Of Pelham One-Two-Three, a documentation of NY in decline in the 70s. The car chase was outstanding (though I noticed how rather too quickly they went from the GW Bridge to one of the NY state parkways, I guess to avoid a climax in NJ!). The problem I had is that the narrative was not always easy to follow, which of course is a reflection of the new trends coming into filmmaking at that point in time. Oh, and as a "1776" fan I immediately recognized the voice of the replacement Ben Franklin, Rex Everhart (who filled in for an ill Howard Da Silva on the cast album) as Scheider's superior.
Scheider's performance is outstanding. It's now easier to see how he got "Jaws".

Seconds 6.5 of 10
-I revisited this on a used DVD I got so I could hear Frankenheimer's commentary track (which he did for a laserdisc release as he keeps using that term). It was informative though I felt he spent a bit too much time praising James Wong Howe at the expense of going into more details about the film's storyline etc. I do have to say that I found his defense of the nudity in the wine scene quite unconvincing, especially his assertion that it would have somehow looked more like an orgy without the nudity. The scene goes on forever and it belabors an obvious point that would have been made in the cut version.

-I was fascinated to hear there was a cut scene of Hudson's character visiting his daughter that took place immediate before he goes back to NY to see his wife. Had they run together, then the magnitude of the guilt Hudson's character feels at this point would have been more effectively communicated. I just wish Frankenheimer had elaborated on how the scene unfolded. But still, it was nice to know the narrative had dealt with this point because it struck me as incomplete to have established that the daughter was living out west in proximity to where Hudson is now living and then not do anything with that.

-Seeing Richard Anderson at the operating table makes it impossible to avoid just impulsively going, "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him!"

-This film is disturbing and fascinating on many levels. I guess what I would have liked to have seen was a more deep narrative and storyline than what the film ultimately gives us.

[AndyDursin]

THIN RED LINE

8/10

Amazing what Hans Zimmer can do when he actually dials it down and writes music instead of ambient noise or typical MV "wall of sound" scores.

This film looks utterly spectacular in Criterion's Blu-Ray. I still don't think all the poetry works in concert with the material -- a little goes a long way -- and it's likewise fascinating to hear how the film was written with Adrien Brody as the lead, then changed during shooting so Jim Caviezel's character basically took over that spot (something that Brody was furious about, for good reason). That Malick was more interested in the non-war aspect of the film than shooting the battle sequences (one crew member floats that they were thinking of Renny Harlin coming in to handle those sequences) is unsurprising given how the film turned out, but it's still a moody, beautiful looking picture, and a great deal more satisfying than Malick's subsequent "New World." Caviezel and Sean Penn are both superb in the film, as are Nick Nolte and Elias Koteas, though the real star is DP John Toll and Malick's visuals.

Criterion's BD doesn't include all the scenes from the 5 hour version of the movie, nor does it restore the cameos of all the actors who were cut, but it does feature Mickey Rourke's output, another scene for George Clooney (who was also irate since his contribution was reduced to one brief scene at the end), and what I assume was the original ending for Brody's character. Plenty of other outstanding extras include casting, editorial, and music vignettes with a remarkably candid Zimmer.

[Eric Paddon]

Billy-The Early Years of Billy Graham (2008) 7 of 10
-I came across this low-budget film that came and went rather quickly a couple years ago today, and I was quite impressed. The film was a sympathetic look at Billy Graham's early life to the time of his Los Angeles Crusade in 1949 that launched him into the national spotlight. Martin Landau, as Billy's friend from those years, Chuck Templeton (an evangelist who lost his faith in a sea of doubts during that time) acts as narrator looking back from his deathbed in 2001. Armie Hammer, who plays Graham doesn't have the look quite right (lacking the waviness in the hair) but the voice and the gestures he nails perfect. In the climactic scene as he as Graham delivers his powerful sermon in Los Angeles, it has the authentic sound of Graham himself and offers a perfect indicator of the power of his persona that made him the best evangelist there ever will be.

There were some flaws which I attribute to a less than fully developed script. I would not have ended the film cold with Graham's LA sermon since some explanation for how this was the event that made him nationally famous (thanks in part to the promotion of Graham by William Randolph Hearst in his newspaper empire) I think would have been helpful. Also, some of the staging and sequences are a bit too awkward and forced, especially the moment when Templeton meets Graham at a party and within ten seconds is confronting him with all the challenging questions that led Templeton away from faith. Definitely should have been allowed to "breathe" a bit more with the two exchanging more pleasantries before diving into all that.

The film is certainly not of the same caliber ultimately as "A Man Called Peter" which is the film that this invites comparisons to, as the story of a great Christian preacher of the 20th century, but in a way that's a comment on how the life of Billy Graham, which in an earlier age would have merited a big screen treatment as an A-level prestige film, is sadly not the kind of thing big-budget Hollywood with its attitudes of today will ever be interested in doing. They'd rather give us self-serving biopics about the likes of Larry Flynt and Alfred Kinsey instead.