rate the last movie you saw

[AndyDursin]

It's scarcely any different than the other ending, him running off alone versus them running off together. I don't think it's supposed to be depressing at all.

The contrived ending is the US theatrical one where they overlaid Darkness laughing like its going to lead into some kind of sequel.

[Eric Paddon]

No, I wouldn't say its depressing, but it is a bit marginally "less happy". But then again, like I said this is not the kind of movie that I know how to connect with which is why films like Willow, Labyrinth, Dark Crystal and even the LOTR trilogy remain unseen by me. Of late, I've been trying to see if its time to finally see more 80s-early 90s films I avoided at the time simply because unlike the one-note prequel/sequel/reboot crap of today films of this era were still trying to be their own stand-alone creations.

[Monterey Jack]

Legend is a movie with A+ visuals (and music!) yoked to a C-level story and characters who range from bland to obnoxious. I've warmed to it a bit over the years, but even my last viewing of the film a few years back caused me to break into unintentional laughs on more than one occasion.



I "get" what Scott was trying to do with it, and the Goldsmith score goes to great lengths to impart the movie with a timeless, ravishing fairy tale atmosphere, but it's all so...twee. I remember watching the Tangerine Dream U.S. cut on VHS with my mother in the mid-90s, getting to this scene, and standing up to exclaim, "This is awful", before walking out of the room.



The photography and Rob Bottin's makeup designs are spectacular, so it's annoying I can't enjoy the film on anything but the most surface-y levels. So much superb film craft, getting squandered.

[AndyDursin]

Too bad the European version can't be seen as well since I get that's a different rights holder.

It's not a different rights holder per se -- Fox has the movie overseas, Universal domestically, but they co-own it depending on where you are. The European version was easily found (and still can be) in Fox's Blu-Rays available outside the U.S.

Universal apparently could have released it in the US but opted not to when they did their box set...the producer of it had told me they were going to use it before they found the 113 min version.

I just don't think Ridley Scott's people thought it was important to include in the US release. It's slightly longer than the US edit but still similar in length (93 minutes) and has the same ending (them running off together) minus the silly Darkness laughing ('oh no it's not over yet!') bit.

It also has some different lines and such, which Arrow's featurette in their fantastic release compiles together. Mostly minor discrepancies from the US theatrical edit -- minus Jerry's score of course!

[Eric Paddon]

That's really the only reason I'd prefer to try it, because it has Goldsmith's score. If I'm going to watch this movie I'd rather it be two versions with Jerry!

I don't have a region-free player though I can rip a foreign region Blu-Ray to my computer and reconvert back to a blank Blu-Ray (did that with Indicator's version of the Midway TV cut). Maybe someday I'd go that route if I felt like it but the movie isn't making that big an impression on me in general.

[AndyDursin]

The overseas Fox Blu-Rays of LEGEND aren't region coded so any release you get wouldn't be locked. They also have the longer version as a "bonus feature"

[Eric Paddon]

The Vanishing (1993) 7.5 of 10
-Another blind sample for me on the OOP Twilight Time Blu-Ray. I have to admit this turned out to be pretty good. Bridges is off-the-wall psycho-evil and the tension holds up to the end. Not being familiar with the Dutch original version, I read now how critics were ticked off that this film went for a "happy" ending but frankly I doubt I could have handled it if they'd done it the same way. I don't like sadistic endings which is basically from the description what the original was, so good for Fox that they wanted it to end different (though I'm not going to buy Julie Kirgo's typically pretentious liner notes crap that the critics negativity stemmed from the idea that the happy ending is too "feminist". It's just the usual critic's bias in favor of bleak, downcast stuff that they think is more "artistic". I will admit I wish there'd been a longer "wrap-up" scene at the end).

[Paul MacLean]

But then again, like I said this is not the kind of movie that I know how to connect with which is why films like Willow, Labyrinth, Dark Crystal and even the LOTR trilogy remain unseen by me.

The Dark Crystal is worth a look -- even if the genre is not (as you say) your cup of tea. The Dark Crystal is an astonishing achievement -- an entrie film whose cast are puppets, yet believable characters. Plus it's an amazing-looking film, and Trevor Jones' score is one of the best ever written for the fantasy genre.

Labyrinth is more of an acquired taste. It's much closer to the aesthetic of The Muppet Show -- lots of song and dance numbers with a "celebrity guest". I like it, but I've had debates over this film with Andy, who definitely doesn't!

Willow is a very uneven movie -- with some terrific moments, and some very bad moments. Like Star Wars it is influenced by The Hidden Fortress (tho in this case it cribs from Kurosawa's film much-more blatantly, plus a lot of the characters are just repurposed characters from Star Wars).

Despite being a fan of the fantasy genre I never cared for LOTR. The source material was the best, but it didn't have a tenth of a visual imagination of 80s fantasy movies. Plus I find them overlong, dour and awkwardly-paced. I dislike Howard Shore's scores too!

One 80s fantasy which is definitely worth watching is Clash of the Titans, which, despite its "old school" effects fit perfectly into the era, and was a wonderful farewell for Ray Harryhaussen (and certainly his best film).

[AndyDursin]

As Paul said I've never been a big LABYRINTH fan -- it's ok but is too lightweight and I dislike the Trevor Jones synth score -- and WILLOW was a missed opportunity that I've never been big into either. I don't even like Horner's score! THE DARK CRYSTAL on the other hand is a spectacular achievement that holds up every time. Only the bland "human" like Gelfling characters and their vocal work leaves something to be desired, they're not as interesting as all the other elements in the movie (which is I guess one reason why Henson used an actual human in Jennifer Connelly as the lead for LABYRINTH). CLASH OF THE TITANS is one of my all time faves.

I've defended LEGEND many times and don't feel the need to rehash my reviews. I come back to it often because I love the score, the physical production design and art direction. It's one of my favorite "mood movies" for that. The story doesn't mean much to me and, the more I see it, becomes less significant to all the things I love about it as a piece of cinema. I don't need the story to work dramatically there when there's so much else there that I gravitate towards.

[Eric Paddon]

I have seen Clash Of The Titans. I didn't think Harryhausen's work landed until the Medusa sequence. The story wasn't particularly compelling compared to Jason and The Argonauts or even Golden Voyage of Sinbad which was more recent,

[Paul MacLean]

I have seen Clash Of The Titans. I didn't think Harryhausen's work landed until the Medusa sequence. The story wasn't particularly compelling compared to Jason and The Argonauts or even Golden Voyage of Sinbad which was more recent,

I love those old Harryhausen flicks, but I find Clash of the Titans a cut above them. To me, the script has more depth and better character development than any previous Harryhausen picture. Plus the "uptown" casting of people like Olivier, Bloom, Smith, etc., and maybe less-celebrated (but no less gifted) actors like Hamlin, Meredith, Bowker and Phillips, really elevates the film.

And will all due respect to masters like Herrmann, Rozsa and Morross, I think Laurence Rosenthal's score is the best ever written for a Harryhausen film.

[Paul MacLean]

Che! (6/10)

I'd heard this one of the worst films of the 1960s, but having watched it, I can't say it was uniformly awful. But that is not to say it is good either. It's biggest issue is that it is just so...unceremonious -- which is a problem considering its subject is so volatile and polarizing a figure.

The choice of Omar Sharif for the titular character smacks of "stunt casting" but he is surprisingly convincing, and he does quite look the part. I'm not sure how historically-accurate the film is, but it depicts Che as the real brains behind Fidel Castro's revolution, and that all of "El Presidente's" most significant (I can't call them "good") ideas came from Guevara. The monstrous acts of the Castro regime are downplayed, and Castro (played by Jack Palance -- in a relatively believable performance!) is depicted as civic-minded and altruistic; Batista is portrayed as the more punitive autocrat. The title character however is shown to be a militaristic zealot -- obsessed with uniting all of Latin American under a single communist banner -- with no interest in whether the common people share his revolutionary dreams. Guevara's mindset is one of "I know what's best for them" (which is something this film actually does get right about communist revolutionaries).

In terms of production value Che! has the scope of a TV movie (despite being helmed by legendary Hollywood journeyman Richard Fleischer). The Cuban scenes are obviously shot in Mexico -- and look convincing. The Bolivian scenes however are all shot on the Fox ranch in Malibu. Che leads his guerilla forces through the same locations used in Planet of the Apes and The Beastmaster, while the scenes of a helicopter flying Che's dead body through the mountains look exactly like the title sequence from M*A*S*H!

I'll be honest, I only watched this movie because I've had the Lalo Schifrin album for a long time and wanted to see how the score worked in the film. I was a little surprised to discover that Schifrin's music was completely re-arranged for listening, and I only heard one piece of music (a source cue) which actually got carried over the the album with no alteration.

[Eric Paddon]

Waterworld (1995) 6.5 of 10

-Another in the category of 80s-90s films I never saw until now with both the theatrical cut and the TV edit (actually the fan-edit that combines the TV and theatrical cut so we don't have censored dialogue). Wasn't as bad as its reputation might have led me to think. The fact that it didn't rely on CGI much and went with all those full-scale sets kind of works in its favor now though it demonstrated why no one will ever make a film that way again. The real problem though is that Costner is just a total axxhole for too long in the film, trying to throw Helen and Enola overboard and then as the extended cut reveals, selling them to slavers (I always found it odd that they referred to "Slavers" but we never saw them in the theatrical cut; now we know that this was due to edits). That just doesn't help the film if they wait too long for the kind of bonding with characters there should be.

-The longer cut has a few good things (the council meeting on the atoll; the ending scenes with the Everest plaque and the final exchange between Costner and Tripplehorn) but also some bad things (The aforementioned exchange that Costner was going to sell them to slavers; Hopper's golf obsession and the rather pointless exchange about Evolution which only seems to be there to make Hopper seem more like a 'Fundamentalist'). And honestly, we could have done without the blatant 90s topicality of Exxon Valdez and Joe Hazlewood which really comes off as mean-spirited today because Hazlewood was hardly a demonic figure worthy of that kind of treatment (he was never found guilty of more than a misdemeanor offense and in fact the cause of the accident was likely more than one person's fault but for goodness sake he wasn't a mass murderer).

-I've really never gotten into James Newton Howard's work composing wise but he came up with a good score here that actually had some distinctiveness that is not to be found in today's music scores. Overall it was watchable but not great. Glad I did get around to it at last and I'll be interested in reading more about the whole troubled production history now that I have seen it.

[Paul MacLean]

^^ I found Waterworld watchable, though it was a near-complete ripoff of The Road Warrior -- post-apocalyptic scenario in which a self-serving nomad evades deranged brigands, discovers a compound of survivors who mistrust him, and eventually "finds his humanity" by helping others, but bids farewell to his newfound friends at the end.

The style of the sets and costumes is near-identical to those of Road Warrior as well, while Costner's swim to the sunken cities is similar to the final scenes of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Road Warrior and Thunderdome cinematographer Dean Semler also photographed Waterworld, so the lighting, lens selection, etc. has the same look.

That said, I admire Kevin Reynolds for making a big-budget feature entirely on the ocean. I can't imagine what colossal pain in the arse that must have been. Should anyone have really been surprised such a production went over budget?

I've really never gotten into James Newton Howard's work composing wise but he came up with a good score here that actually had some distinctiveness that is not to be found in today's music scores.

Newton-Howard is a composer I really respect -- but despite the fact his scores "do all the right things" I've never been into his music as a standalone entity.

For me the only memorable thing in that movie was one Jean Triplehorn...

[Paul MacLean]

I remember watching the Tangerine Dream U.S. cut on VHS with my mother in the mid-90s, getting to this scene, and standing up to exclaim, "This is awful", before walking out of the room.

The US cut is awful -- Tangerine Dream's music ruins the movie. Their 80s synthpop invests the film with the feel of an MTV music video (heck, the final scenes of Legend's US cut are essentially a music video!).

I maintain that with Jerry Goldsmith's elegant, classical score, Legend takes on the quality of a more European picture -- almost an art film. Or perhaps more accurately an interesting mashup of art film and chick flick. (As I've said before, most fans of Legend are women.)