rate the last movie you saw

[Monterey Jack]

Bridget Fonda's hotness is off the chart...lol

God, I miss seeing her in movies.

[AndyDursin]

LOLLY MADONNA XXX
5/10



A few months ago I was watching TCM when they ran one of those archival, fluffy promotional “Making Of” featurettes inbetween movies. I was captivated by it because I had never heard of the film – an early ‘70s MGM “hayseed drama” named LOLLY-MADONNA XXX – despite the film offering an amazing array of talent, including Rod Steiger, Robert Ryan and a dynamite young cast including Jeff Bridges, Scott Wilson, Gary Busey, Randy Quaid, Ed Lauter and Season Hubley. This rarely-screened picture – which has never been released on video in any format – has finally made its way back into circulation courtesy of the Warner Archives, restoring the scope dimensions of cinematographer Philip Lathrop and director Richard C. Sarafian.

51lyucUYSWLBeyond the curiosity factor, “Lolly-Madonna XXX” (105 mins., 1972) is as strange as its title. Resembling what you might expect if you crossed “The Waltons” with “Deliverance,” this adaptation of the book by Sue Grafton – future bestselling mystery author – stars the young Hubley as a girl who’s abducted at a bus station in the Tennesse mountains. Mistaken as part of a prank by the Gutshall family to trash the moonshining operation of their nearby neighbors – the Feather clan – Hubley pleads her innocence to no avail, and instead gets wrapped up in a family feud between rival patriarchs Steiger and Ryan, whose offspring – Bridges, Wilson and Lauter on Steiger’s side, Busey and company on Ryan’s – range from the not-entirely bright to the downright deluded. Ultimately, the feud escalates once Ryan’s daughter is raped by Lauter and Wilson’s bumbling duo, and turns violent and bloody.

It’s hard to imagine how “Lolly-Madonna XXX” received a PG rating back in its day, as this bizarre, violent film – which is unique if nothing else – holds a strange, almost surrealistic spell on the viewer in spite of its shortcomings. Lathrop’s vivid lensing is only diminished here by elements that are far from pristine, no shock given how seldom the picture has ever been shown outside of a 1972 theatrical run. The Tennessee locales are nevertheless beautifully shot, as are the dingy abodes of both families, who seem like they’re living decades removed from the 1970s (only a black-and-white TV showing “Forbidden Planet” announces its specific era). The film starts off well, but derails once Lauter’s character pretends he’s an Elvis wannabe and croons to himself in a mirror (a spectacularly embarrassing sequence), and culminates in a downbeat climax heavy on a Vietnam allegory with needless bloodshed being spilled by both clans.

Director Sarafian also throws in all kinds of directorial tricks – flashbacks, still photos – in an effort to jazz up the picture, which only adds to its strangeness. With a fine Fred Myrow score, “Lolly-Madonna XXX” is a compelling film less for its dramatic content – which never gels – but rather its aesthetic trappings and presence of a young cast, many of whom were on the brink of stardom, plus a scenery-chewing Steiger, who’s kept in check until a hilarious outburst in the final moments.

[Jedbu]

I have read about this film over the years, and supposedly the way the studio redid her script is what has kept Sue Grafton from selling any movie rights to her Kelsey Millhone character. I asked her at a book signing years ago about whom she would like to play Kelsey in a movie version and she told me that after LOLLY MADONNA, she would not allow anyone to get their hands on the character and she was not going to change her mind-ever, and they had offered her A LOT of money for it. Too bad-they are great little detective stories and would adapt to the screen nicely.

[jkholm]

I have read about this film over the years, and supposedly the way the studio redid her script is what has kept Sue Grafton from selling any movie rights to her Kelsey Millhone character. I asked her at a book signing years ago about whom she would like to play Kelsey in a movie version and she told me that after LOLLY MADONNA, she would not allow anyone to get their hands on the character and she was not going to change her mind-ever, and they had offered her A LOT of money for it. Too bad-they are great little detective stories and would adapt to the screen nicely.

Yes, Kinsey Milhone is a great character but Grafton has probably seen what happened with other movies based on a series of novels written by women that feature popular female characters. I'm thinking of V.I. WARSHAWSKI and ONE FOR THE MONEY both of which were major bombs.

[AndyDursin]

JAWS
10/10

Wow this Blu-Ray transfer really IS spectacular...caught details I hadn't noticed before. Great stuff, and my favorite film also.

[Monterey Jack]

JAWS
10/10

Wow this Blu-Ray transfer really IS spectacular...caught details I hadn't noticed before. Great stuff, and my favorite film also.

Yes and Yes. Introduced my 16-year-old nephew to the movie over vacation last week, and was delighted to see him squirming with anxiety in my peripheral vision. He absolutely loved it. I'm hoping that the movie will get a wide theatrical reissue for its 40th(!) anniversary next summer...what a treat it'd be to see it with a large audience.

"Drink to your leg?"

"I'll drink to your leg."

"Okay, we'll drink our legs...!"

[Monterey Jack]

-Ghostbusters (1984): 10/10

What a treat to see this in theaters. Audience was sadly comprised almost entirely of parents who dragged their under-ten kids to see it, so I was often the only person in attendance laughing hysterically at my favorite jokes while the kiddies just mewled in fright at the scary bits (ah, back when the PG rating actually had some balls...). The transfer and sound were both great....Sigourney Weaver never looked sexier in a movie.

[mkaroly]

APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX - 9/10. It has been a long time since I have seen this movie, and rather than watching the 1979 cut I decided to watch the newer version of the film. The Blu-Ray is stunning in its clarity and the film is so vibrant in its colors and scope, taking full advantage of the widescreen format. There is a lot I like about the film, especially its growing sense of uneasiness as it moves forward. There never really is a bright spot in the movie (aside from the ending); from the opening of the film to its closing there is a sense of foreboding and a pall over the characters, yet I still want to take that journey up the river and see how it ends.

The Redux version has something like 50 minutes or so of additional footage; both the extended Playboy Bunny scenes (though very heart wrenching and disturbing) and the French Plantation scenes slow the movie down, the latter being the worst offender and more of an opportunity to pontificate and say verbally what the film has been trying to say visually throughout. I know Brandon is iconic, and his portrayal of Kurtz is larger than life - FFC did a good job building up the mystery of Kurtz to the point where we finally get to see him at his compound - but I began to wonder if Brando was ultimately the right choice for that role...would it have worked with someone else there? We'll never know, but I never had those thoughts before seeing the film recently. I thought Sheen was pretty solid, and the cast on the boat was good as well.

I'm not quite so sure that the parallel between Willard's journey and Kurtz's journey was as sharp as it could have been. I liked the reflections on the journey of self, the duality of human nature (light and dark, good and evil), and the line between sanity and insanity with the Vietnam War being the environment in which these reflection played out. In the end, I felt FFC did a good job putting together a film from all the footage he had - maybe it isn't always as cohesive as it could have been, and maybe the mythic allusions (Duvall's character as a Cyclops, the Playboy Bunnies as Sirens) did not come out as clearly as intended, but it still remains for me a strong film that is interesting and certainly among FFC's best.

HEARTS OF DARKNESS - 9/10. I really enjoy watching this documentary but I wish it was longer. There isn't a ton to say about it except that I also wish more of the private conversations could have made the cut (the stuff concerning Martin Sheen's heart attack is priceless). It is a great companion piece to the movie.

[Paul MacLean]

Captain America: Winter Soldier

A tedious, unremarkable bore, full of the same old thing -- formulaic CGI effects and frenetic fight scenes (which look like those in every other action movie), loud, blunt, unmusical "scoring", and a forgettable script (I've already forgotten most of the plot details).


The Lego Movie

A fun, very clever, satirical "kids" movie, with a positive (but not preachy) message about belief in one's self. One of the best of this year's summer releases.


How To Train Your Dragon II

Not quite as good as the first one, but a more-than-worthy follow-up. Exciting, engaging, and well-written, with some unexpected plot developments, and (unlike Craptain America) an excellent and inventive use of CGI. Roger Deakins returns as visual consultant, and the resultant film is beautifully "photographed", as it were. John Powell's music is also first-rate, with stalwart orchestral cues and a nice "Celtic" ring to it (heck, I might even buy this score!).

[Jedbu]

DRAFT DAY-7/10

Kevin Costner is one of those movie stars who, when he was hot, seemed ready to take some of that Jimmy Stewart likeability/comparison away from Tom Hanks, and whether in hindsight you feel that DANCES WITH WOLVES is now in the Academy of the Overrated and did not deserve its Oscars, you have to admit that for a first time director pulling off a western epic with a lot of the dialogue in the Sioux language he at least did not fall on his face and we got some quite excellent acting with Mary McDonnell and Graham Greene in their roles. He blew it, of course, with THE POSTMAN, which some people reassigned "Kevin's Gate," which is what many were calling DWW before the critical huzzahs and huge box office. He got it back and then some (IMHO) with OPEN RANGE, which in many ways is DWW's superior if for no other reason than he gave us probably the best western shootout since RIO BRAVO. His star has dimmed a bit over the years and his choice of material has been middling at best, but I really liked DRAFT DAY, in which he plays the GM of the Cleveland Browns and faces many tough choices, both personal and professional on the day of the NFL draft.

With a damn fine cast that includes Frank Langella, Denis Leary, Jennifer Garner, Chadwick Boseman, Sean Combs and Sam Elliott, among others, the first half treads a fine line between office politics, soap opera and deal making with not always perfect results (Griffin Newman as "the new intern," which is both a thankless role and not much of a performance to write home about, is one example). The second half, as the draft gets nearer then begins, actually gets pretty suspenseful as deals are made, hopes go way up and then way down and what used to be an event that you used to hear about on the news or read in the paper afterwards without a lot of hoopla has now become the equal of the Oscars to pro football fans, gets awfully tense as crunch time approaches-who would have thought that how and why someone is chosen to play pro ball and the whole convoluted machinations about picks in different rounds both present and future would actually have some dramatic punch? Being a Clevelander and having had championship chances smashed on an almost consistent basis for years (who can ever forget or forgive Brian Sipe's monumental blunder in 1981?) and even losing the team to Baltimore in the middle of the night (a plague on the Modell house and the Ravens) has made many of us almost as passionate about the team as baseball's Boston Red Sox or Chicago Cubs-at least Boston finally got their championship, we are still waiting for ours. So, as you can imagine, this film really intrigued me, and seeing some familiar sights (the Westside Market, the Flats) made me feel pretty good, as the filmmakers actually went there to film some stuff (as opposed to the makers of MAJOR LEAGUE, which did not).

This is one of director Ivan Reitman's better films, and even though the editing gets a little full of itself at times (using optical effects to have characters miles apart in the same room is a gimmick that got a little old toward the end) it never overwhelms the film, and the various plot threads are taken care of nicely if not neatly. One hopes that someday (!) that real-life results go the way they do in this film.

[mkaroly]

MOONRAKER - 7/10. Warning...guilty pleasure! There is actually a lot about the film that falls short, especially in the story's logic. For example, why would Drax immediately order his henchman to "take care of Mr. Bond" and thus raise his suspicions when he should be courting Bond and not giving him any reason to investigate his company (ie Bond is working for his side)? Second, when Bond and Goodhead are in the shuttle, Bond asks why it's getting so hot and some other inane questions so that Holly can respond and fill the audience in. Any way you slice it, I have a hard time believing Bond, who identified a toxic chemical compound and the flower it belonged to, would actually ask those questions in the shuttle. The movie doesn't flow very well either - it seems like there were a bunch of set pieces and vignettes that were sewn together into a whole story. Bond relies on gadgets a bit too much (the land gondola was a bit much...but funny), and he and Holly didn't have a lot of sexual energy between them. It is becoming too easy at this point to see the stunt doubles, and Roger Moore is looking way to old and slow to be an effective Bond.

But dang it, I like this film! Lol...despite what I find bad about it, I love the humor in it and Bond's smarminess; I like the human touch they added to Jaws' character, and it looked like Kiel had a great time playing the role. That this was Bernard Lee's last film adds a poignancy to it as well. And despite my complaints about Holly Goodhead's and Bond's chemistry, I liked that they could both hold their own and were both cool and collected in the situations they found themselves in. I also think John Barry's score is one of his best for a Bond film - the ethereal otherwordliness of it works really well - it is almost operatic: the scene where Corrine is fired, the journey of the shuttle to the space station, the music that plays underneath Bond's following the woman in white to the caves, and the beautiful title track sung exquisitely by Shirley Bassey...it has its faults, but MOONRAKER is my guilty favorite Bond film. And with Kiel's death, his "Well...here's to us" line was quite moving.

[AndyDursin]

Nothing wrong with Moonraker. Big colorful and fun...not to mention one of the biggest hits of the late 70s.

[Monterey Jack]

I just can't warm to Moonraker, which is basically a more lavish, extravagant, and dumb remake of The Spy Who Loved Me with none of its immediate predecessor's style or suspense. Virtually EVERY action sequence in the film is sabotaged at the last moment with some idiotic quip or clumsy bit of physical comedy, or both. And poor Richard Kiel -- such a cool, menacing presence in TSWLM -- is directed to mug incessantly, and is completely neutered as a result (which is why he never should have been brought back in the first place). The low point is him flapping his arms like Wile E. Coyote plummeting off a cliff when his parachute malfunctions in the opening sequence, ruining an otherwise brilliantly-shot setpiece. The film's impressive visual effects hold up (the miniatures of Drax's space station are superb), John Barry's lush score is a definite plus, and there are good moments and lines studded throughout (the scene where Roger Moore is nearly accelerated to death in Drax's centrifuge is genuinely tense, and for once is not wrecked by some bad pun at the last moment...it's one of the rare moments during Moore's tenure in the role where he looks genuinely rattled by a near-death experience), but overall the film is bloated, buffoonish, and about as far from Ian Fleming as you could possibly get. 5/10

Still, it's about a million times better than Die Another Day... [spits]

[John Johnson]

An interesting special on the Royal premiere of Moonraker. Back in those days, ITV used to show the these type of programmes. Roger with a beard, probably around the time he was filming North Sea Hijack (Ffolkes).

[mkaroly]

I just can't warm to Moonraker, which is basically a more lavish, extravagant, and dumb remake of The Spy Who Loved Me with none of its immediate predecessor's style or suspense. Virtually EVERY action sequence in the film is sabotaged at the last moment with some idiotic quip or clumsy bit of physical comedy, or both. And poor Richard Kiel -- such a cool, menacing presence in TSWLM -- is directed to mug incessantly, and is completely neutered as a result (which is why he never should have been brought back in the first place). The low point is him flapping his arms like Wile E. Coyote plummeting off a cliff when his parachute malfunctions in the opening sequence, ruining an otherwise brilliantly-shot setpiece. The film's impressive visual effects hold up (the miniatures of Drax's space station are superb), John Barry's lush score is a definite plus, and there are good moments and lines studded throughout (the scene where Roger Moore is nearly accelerated to death in Drax's centrifuge is genuinely tense, and for once is not wrecked by some bad pun at the last moment...it's one of the rare moments during Moore's tenure in the role where he looks genuinely rattled by a near-death experience), but overall the film is bloated, buffoonish, and about as far from Ian Fleming as you could possibly get. 5/10.

I think the reason that Jaws got "lighter" in the role had to do with all the mail they received from kids wanting Jaws to be a good guy - at least that's what I concluded from the documentary. So they lightened him up and made him likeable.