rate the last movie you saw

[AndyDursin]

Sounds like as much fun as the similarly themed THE DAY OF THE LOCUST!

I hated LALALAND so I'm good with checking this out for curiosity value at some point. As bad as it is, I'd still rather sit through that than Aronofsky's movie with Fraser as a 600 pound wheelchair guy who fondles himself before dying. I've long detested that guy's overpraised (and increasingly unhinged) filmmaking, which I'll be happy to give a pass to completely.

Happy New Year is right!

[Monterey Jack]

I'd still rather sit through that than Aronofsky's movie with Fraser as a 600 pound wheelchair guy who fondles himself before dying. I've long detested that guy's overpraised (and increasingly unhinged) filmmaking, which I'll be happy to give a pass to completely.

My movie of the year. I broke down sobbing at the end.

[AndyDursin]

SPIES LIKE US
7/10



We managed to get Theo to (successfully) stay up until Midnight for the New Year by showing him SPIES LIKE US, a movie I hadn't seen since multiple viewings back in 5th grade, and which holds up pretty well as an amiable '80s updating of a Hope/Crosby ROAD movie (right down to a Hope cameo!). It's all due to Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd's enjoyable chemistry as hapless government employees being used as decoys to help out REAL spies attempting to corral a Russian missile behind enemy lines.

The first half of this movie is pretty much a riot, especially the scene in which Chase attempts to cheat his way through an exam (with proctor Frank Oz!) -- a moment that I remember audiences falling over with laughter and which still cracks me up. It's absolutely hysterical, and Chase engagingly breezes his way through this film, which is filled with cameos from many of director John Landis' peers and friends (Oz, Terry Gilliam, Costa-Gavras, B.B. King, Sam Raimi, Martin Brest, even Ray Harryhausen and Derek Meddings).

Sadly the last third of the movie becomes a grind once Landis gets a little preachy with the no-nukes sentiment, the laughs slow down and we're stuck with too many FX of satellites/missiles and a resolution to the thinly drawn story (concocted by Aykroyd for a movie intended for he and Belushi, and which prolific comedy writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel polished). I remember being bored at the end as a kid, especially when I had to see the movie during a friend's birthday party (my second viewing); the picture just slows down and struggles to find a way out once it realizes it has to have a proper ending, and even Elmer Bernstein's score for the film is pretty much forgettable (it also compounds the monotony of the finale too). I don't think this or THREE AMIGOS were nearly on the level of the scores he was writing for Ivan Reitman back in the day.

Still, I enjoyed watching it again -- even catching the hilarious posters for REDS and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO Landis put inside the Russian agents' cabin at the end -- and Theo appropriately laughed at the shenanigans throughout.

Warner's HD master of this film (which is on a Blu-Ray double feature with one of Chase's best movies, FUNNY FARM) is in serious need of a remaster. The SOURCE looks like a print, not the original negative, and even the test taking scene appears as if it's coming from a generation or two lower than the OCN. The sound is also markedly hissy and seems to have gone through some dynamic range compression -- which is odd because FUNNY FARM has a great transfer that still holds up well to this day.

One of the big hits of the Christmas '85 movie season deserves better.

[Paul MacLean]

...and even Elmer Bernstein's score is forgettable (it also compounds the monotony of the finale too).

Bernstein's score sure isn't Heavy Metal or Ghostbusters, but I think it has its moments. I like it better than Three Amigos or The Babe!

It's main problem is the lackluster performance by the Graunke Symphony (the same band which Jerry Goldsmith got stuck with on Total Recall, resulting in his demand to move the session to London!).

[AndyDursin]

Oh I agree it's better than THE BABE!

For me it's perfectly serviceable, but when the movie kind of grinds down, we get a lot of bombastic (and kind of tedious) "action/suspense music" that just compounds the problems. I also didn't find the thematic material very memorable. This score doesn't have a "hook" like the themes in STRIPES, which is kind of a similar (but much better) score. The main SPIES theme sounds like a generic western theme he composed.

[Eric Paddon]

I saw "Spies Like Us" in the theaters and even back then I saw right away the obvious political agenda part of the film which is a screed against the Reagan SDI program. To me the film is a reminder of how long before there was Trump Derangement Syndrome in Hollywood there was Reagan Derangement Syndrome which stemmed from their obsessive belief that the Reagan defense build-up of the 80s and accurately calling Russia an "Evil Empire" (those were the days when conduct by Russia didn't seem to outrage them) was going to lead to nuclear war. The view of the military was still largely based on the "Dr. Strangelove" perspective that generals were all a bunch of wannabe Turgidsons and Rippers anxious to fight. So you not only had "Spies Like Us" which has to give us some evil generals but Akryoyd's film before this, "Dragnet" had to give us a crooked police commissioner named "Jane Kirkpatrick" that was an oh-so-obvious riff on Reagan's UN Ambassador of the day, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and of course the decade also gave us Hyams "2010" and "The Day After" which were hysterical reactions to the defense build-up of another kind.

[AndyDursin]

It's definitely obvious though most of it is SO lightweight none of it can be taken seriously (i.e. the constant running of some musical Reagan was in). Seen today it's hard to envision most viewers that didn't live through the time even knowing what it's even referencing. Like I wouldn't even know that DRAGNET joke.

[BobaMike]

Saw Avatar 2 today for my birthday. Long movie, and not any better than the first one 3/5 stars I guess.
The FX are pretty great, considering it's all just a cartoon. It looks like real water, the aliens look real, but I was never excited by anything I saw. Knowing that it's all on computer, whereas something like Top Gun was real made a big difference. The 3D was neat, but like all other 3d movies, you forget it's 3D 10 minutes in. To me 3D only works if the camera is stationary. As soon as it moves, it just looks like a 3D video game.

Hour 1: Reintroduce everything (Na-vi good, humans bad. Pandora is paradise, with animals and plants that are magical plot devices).
Hour 2: Free-Willy/ fake underwater sea documentary. Na'vi can speak to whales now! We even get whale eye viewpoint. One good shark chase that was actually a bit tense.
A major subplot is about being anti-whaling. That James Cameron, what a risk-taker.
Hour 3: Battle/titanic sinking ship. Best part of the movie, although the army of Na'vi strangely are absent for the last half. Did they leave? Take a nap? The fight through a capsizing ship was cool. Made me wish someone would remake Poseidon Adventure in 3D!
Annoying point - one character has no problem killing tons of baddies, but the main bad guy? Nope. Saves him. For the sequel.

The score is okay, when it is noticeable. Sounds almost like Horner. I liked hearing the Danger Motif again! The song at the end is garbage.

My son said he liked it more than the first, although there was a lot of squirming. I'll be fine if I never see it again.

[Eric Paddon]

It's definitely obvious though most of it is SO lightweight none of it can be taken seriously (i.e. the constant running of some musical Reagan was in). Seen today it's hard to envision most viewers that didn't live through the time even knowing what it's even referencing. Like I wouldn't even know that DRAGNET joke.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick was a very big name back in the day. She gave a memorable speech at the 84 GOP Convention where she ripped the Democrats for being the "Blame America First" crowd (and she was an ex-Humphrey Democrat) which is why she was hated and despised by the libs.

[Eric Paddon]

The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) 7.5 of 10
-Early 60s WW2 spy drama based on a true story. William Holden is an American-born Swedish businessman who has been using his country's neutrality to keep trading with the Germans until he gets roped by the Allies into doing intelligence work for them that involves deceiving the Germans about building an oil refinery in Sweden. This allows him to make frequent trips to Germany to collect intelligence. Lili Palmer is the German woman secretly working for the Allies he falls in love with. The film benefits from fascinating location photography (though sometimes the actual early 60s shooting period seeps through in this period piece) and Palmer, despite being close to 50 at the time is radiant and compelling in her tragic part. But the film does last an overly long 140 minutes and might have benefited from some tightening. An early post-Fox score by Alfred Newman.

Arabesque (1966) 5.5 of 10
-Stanley Donen attempted to do another "Charade" again but this film ends up being a bit of a misfire. The stylish elements are there but Gregory Peck trying to be like Cary Grant is too much a stretch. And the film's maddening plot just gets too maddening after awhile to the point where by the time we reached the climactic chase scenes on horseback and on a rail bridge, I was ready to do my best Graham Chapman and stop the film for being "TOO SILLY!" "Charade" by contrast managed to keep things more in balance and was better constructed as a film.

[Paul MacLean]

And the film's maddening plot just gets too maddening after awhile to the point where by the time we reached the climactic chase scenes on horseback and on a rail bridge, I was ready to do my best Graham Chapman and stop the film for being "TOO SILLY!"

Tho the way Peck destroys the helicopter was pretty cool.

[AndyDursin]

THE GIRL FROM PETROVKA (1974)
4/10


Always wanted to see this rarely screened 1974 Zanuck/Brown bomb -- which you now can thanks to a region-free German Blu-Ray Universal put out there a couple of years ago. Notice nobody is breaking down the doors to bring this to another country, the reason for which is obvious after seeing just a few minutes of "The Girl From Petrovka."

A miscast Hal Holbrook stars as an American journalist who falls for a Russian ballerina -- an equally miscast Goldie Hawn -- in a Robert Ellis Miller-helmed picture that's top-flight across the board with its production team: a first class Henry Mancini score, Vilmos Zsigmond scope cinematography, Anthony Hopkins in the supporting cast, and a script by the "Don't Look Now" tandem of Allan Scott and Chris Bryant. Yet something went very awry with this offbeat movie that's not very funny, romantic or suspenseful, as mopey Holbrook tries to get over the death of his wife by being won over by Hawn, playing a Soviet free spirit inside the Iron Curtain. It basically goes nowhere with endless bickering between the lead duo, capped by a downbeat ending that apparently changes the upbeat end of its source material. Hey, it WAS the '70s after all.

At least Mancini's (unreleased) score* is nice (and the end title is gorgeous -- I'd much rather hear this than his FRENZY!) and Zsigmond's widescreen lensing (Vienna standing in for Moscow) is likewise pleasant to look at.

*Weirdly, Roy Budd is credited with composing the song Hawn sings in the film -- one wonders if Mancini was brought into re-score this one, but I can't find much information on it...understandable since the picture has been a curiosity for some buffs (like this one) but few others.

[Eric Paddon]

And the film's maddening plot just gets too maddening after awhile to the point where by the time we reached the climactic chase scenes on horseback and on a rail bridge, I was ready to do my best Graham Chapman and stop the film for being "TOO SILLY!"

Tho the way Peck destroys the helicopter was pretty cool.

Given how exposed Peck, Loren and the PM were on the bridge, John Merivale ends up winning the prize for being the WORST shot ever (perhaps equaled only by the ineptitude of all the German soldiers in "Where Eagles Dare")

[Eric Paddon]

Fate Is The Hunter (1964) 7 of 10
-I like this film, but looking at it again last night I think the script approached the story from the wrong angle in trying to make the esoteric point that Glenn Ford doesn't do a good job of doing in the hearing scene about fate being responsible for the plane crash ultimately etc. The way to have made this point effectively would have been to make the angle of the film be not about all this backstory of dead pilot Rod Taylor but to focus on stewardess Suzanne Pleshette, the sole survivor of the crash and her "survivor guilt" trauma. Since the climax of the film involves Pleshette's memory of what happened as key to discovering the case of the plane crash, then the esoteric point about Fate would have been more powerful since Pleshette's character would have realized that she had to survive in order to recall what happened so the true cause of the crash could be determined. As it is, the film ends up being a near-miss from my standpoint.

[Paul MacLean]

Mother, Jugs and Speed (7/10)

Bill Cosby stars as a maverick driver for a poorly-managed ambulance service, in this 1976 movie that endeavors to depict the perils -- and ludicrous situations -- faced by urban EMTs. Unfortunately, the film's comedic aspirations are rarely laugh-out-loud funny (even with someone like Cosby on-hand). The more serious, dramatic elements are mostly well-balanced with the humor, though there are a couple of scenes which are exceedingly dark -- and almost out-of-place in what is otherwise a "light entertainment".

If nothing else Mother, Jugs and Speed is an interesting time capsule of the 1970s -- with the disco tune that accompanies the title sequence, the 8-Track player in Cosby's ambulance, and the way it bursts with things that wouldn't be permitted in a movie today -- a lax view of tobacco, alcohol and drug use, as well as its attitude toward sex and gender. Raquel Welch plays a secretary who continually suffers the catcalls of coworkers who have dubbed her "Jugs" -- something unheard of in our post-"me too" era (I doubt younger viewers watching this movie would even believe that people actually behaved this way in decades past).

On a certain level this movie has an honest rawness, which I found a refreshing contrast to the "slick seriousness" which pervades so many movies today. The cast is certainly eclectic -- along with Cosby and Welch, there is also Harvey Keitel, Bruce Davison, Larry Hagman, and even Dick Butkus! And you can't say that between this, Bullitt, Breaking Away and Krull, director Peter Yates wasn't versatile. It's not a bad movie, but it falls short of its potential (particularly as a comedy), and while you come away from it sufficiently entertained, you can't help but wish it was better.