I agree on the 78 ending. That was the kind of ending that I think they did just to revel in ending on a downer note which by then was becoming the faddish thing to do.

The Taking Of Pelham 123 (1974): 8.5/10

Classic thriller finally gets an anamorphic transfer on Blu-Ray. I've read complaints about the new Blu looking too "dark" on another forum, but compared to that ancient laserdisc transfer they plopped onto DVD a dozen years ago, this looks as good as can reasonably be expected for a mid-70's genre flick. Shame there are no extras, but just having a good-looking anamorphic transfer is enough for me.

"Gesundheit."

Too "Dark"? It's a gritty film from 1974 set in the NYC subway system!!

It's what movies used to look like.

AndyDursin wrote:Too "Dark"? It's a gritty film from 1974 set in the NYC subway system!!

It's what movies used to look like.

My thoughts exactly. It's not Peter Hyams The Relic dark.

My favorite moment of the film is Matthau's brief double-take when he realizes that Inspector Daniels, whom he's been talking to on the radio all this time is black and he tries to finesse his way out, "Oh, ah.....I thought you were a.....shorter guy."

I'm not a great fan of the "film noir" genre but I did have a few films in a boxed set that I got because it included "The Lineup" (which I reviewed earlier). I gave a couple more films in that set a look.

"The Sniper" (1952). 6.5 of 10.
-Great because of the location shooting in SF just like "The Lineup" and also a very ingenious shot staged by director Edward Dymytryk of the sniper taking down a worker on a smokestack who spots him from his vantage point. It gets dragged down though by a pretentious speech from future Broadway star Richard Kiley as a police psychiatrist on the problems of society causing this guy to exist etc.

"The Big Heat" (1952). 5.5 of 10.
-This one with Glenn Ford as the cop whose attempt to bring down mob figure Alexander Scourby (who in his first scene is talking in his normal, familiar voice from documentaries but in all his subsequent scenes affects a TERRIBLE Italian accent) leads to tragic results for Ford grew rather tiresome for me after awhile. Lee Marvin is okay in an early role as a henchman, but Gloria Grahame as the bad girl who in the end helps Ford is annoying.

"The Naked City" (1948). 8.5 of 10
-I'm not one ever inclined to say a kind word about Jules Dassin and Albert Maltz, but this is a terrific movie, that like "The Sniper" and "The Lineup" in San Francisco, preserves an image of New York City in a vanished era that makes the film transcend its story over time, and the story I might add is very good. It's also amusing to see "Caz Dolowicz" from "The Taking Of Pelham, One Two, Three" as one of the detectives, and a young James Gregory as a patrolman (considering how on "Barney Miller", the "Inspector Luger" character is always reminiscing about the old days, that makes Gregory's appearance in this film as a beat cop in the height of those "old days" all the more priceless).

I'm still not a great fan of the "noir" genre, but these kinds of movies that preserve on film the places and cities they were made IMO performed a valuable historical service over the long haul.

I'm not a great fan of the "film noir" genre but I did have a few films in a boxed set that I got because it included "The Lineup" (which I reviewed earlier). I gave a couple more films in that set a look.

I'm not a massive film noir fan either. I watched Aldrich's KISS ME DEADLY for the first time on the Criterion release (coming out in a couple of weeks) and was surprised how crudely made it was. Stationary camerawork, pretty low budget, unlikeable characters...there are some films in the genre I like, but it's not a fave genre of mine per se.

Procedural cop films that influenced the creation of "Dragnet" on radio and TV are the ones I rate higher. "Double Indemnity" and "The Killers" are of course classics but those are the only noir films in the classic sense that I can watch repeatedly.

The Quick & The Dead (1995): 7.5/10

Fun, underrated riff on Spaghetti Western tropes features typically stylish Sam Raimi visuals, great photography by Dante Spinotti (which looks excellent on Blu-Ray) and a fantastic Alan Silvestri score, but the film's biggest problem is the poor central performance by Sharon Stone. Clint Eastwood could get away with basing an entire performance on a series of tics, squints and glowers, but Sharon Stone ain't no Clint Eastwood. I kept imagining someone like Uma Thurman playing the role a lot more convincingly. Still, with such a great supporting cast (Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and a shockingly skinny and baby-faced Leonardo DeCaprio), I can let her weak Woman With No Name schtick pass. A shame there's no extras on the disc...I'd love to see the excised Bruce Campbell cameo and hear a Raimi commentary on this.

Just an FYI, the QUICK AND THE DEAD UK Blu-Ray has the love scene (which was shown in the trailers but cut from the U.S. release) in it. It's also region free and pretty cheap from Amazon UK.

I already bought the U.S. Blu-Ray, so I'm not double dipping just for the sex scene (which you can see on YouTube). I just want to see Bruce Campbell as the "Wedding Shemp".

HARRY POTTER 7 PART 1: While it is a vast improvement over the past three films (IMO), cinematically and musically it still does not compare to the first three films for me. One of my complaints with the past few films is that they were too short and left out too much; this film seeks to rectify that but it's too long...lol...I guess I'll never be satisfied. The film (and I assume the story) has a lot of LOTR influence in it. I guess for me I just lost interest in the characters after POA and at this point I just want to see how the author ended everything. I don't remember a thing from Desplat's score, so I'm very disappointed in that. I'm happy that fans are getting their money's worth in this last installment, but the series lost me after POA and I'm just going through the motions of indifference now.

THE ROAD - Honestly, the entire time I was watching this film I thought it was made to look like a video game (specifically FALLOUT 3). It's a very grisly and disturbing picture about the human condition, but I'm not really into nuclear apocalyptic stuff. I do think Viggo is a very good actor and I have enjoyed seeing his performances in this as well as the LOTR films and his work for David Cronenberg. I just don't believe we will ever have a nuclear apocalypse because it would destroy the very power structures someone would want to have to rule the globe (economic, governmental, etc.). That's a different topic for a different thread. So there wasn't much in the film that I found interesting or compelling. It's not a terrible film but it's not compelling.

I guess for me I just lost interest in the characters after POA and at this point I just want to see how the author ended everything. I don't remember a thing from Desplat's score, so I'm very disappointed in that. I'm happy that fans are getting their money's worth in this last installment, but the series lost me after POA and I'm just going through the motions of indifference now.

I completely agree with you Michael. I did find GOBLET OF FIRE entertaining enough but that was the start of the washed-out cinematography and "workmanlike" kind of storytelling in this series.

All of the last few installments run together and I'd be hard pressed to even tell you what happened in them. I think people who like the books find them more satisfying than everyone else, because they already know where the story is going. For people like us who didn't read them and are relying on the films themselves to render the plot, they're far less successful. IMO they haven't stood alone, the plots are convoluted, the movies are overlong, and they haven't given me a reason to care about anything that happens in them. I respect them, but they're still just kind of "blah" to me.

I also think they've made them on a more modest budget too -- hence Williams not returning, and using Yates who wasn't expensive either. They've kept the costs down but most of these films have been phoned in and are, to say the least, uninspired cinematically. The last couple of pictures have felt like expensive Syfy Channel mini-series.

"Airport 1975" (1974) 7 of 10.
=This used to be a film that I considered one of the low spots of the 70s disaster genre, especially given how it gave so much fodder for "Airplane" in spots. But maybe it's because modern filmmaking has become so awful that it now makes this film age better in the process. All I know is that there were fewer scenes evoking snickers and groans (Larry Storch's idiotic scenes as a pest TV reporter will always fall in that category along with Sid Caesar's silliness and the pointlessness of Myrna Loy's presence) than the last time I watched this which I now realize was more than ten years ago.

From the other thread...

SUPER 8 7.8/10

LIKED it. I wanted to love it, but I still liked what it was trying to do. Abrams is a TV guy but he at least has a good sense of how to make a good looking, honest to goodness movie that isn't all shaky-cam and a succession of action scenes like last week's X-MEN film. Plenty of lens flares though!!

I think my main problem was it is such an overt Spielberg homage -- at the beginning -- that when it veers into CLOVERFIELD in its second half the effect is a jarring one, because you go in expecting emotion and that Spielberg type of fantasy, and you end up with a loud, bombastic 2nd hour that's much more of a 1950s "monster movie". There's not much of a connection between the young kid and his dad, so there's no emotional investment you have built up between them...and all of the government guys are purely, completely "EVIL" to the degree that I snickered a few times when they'd show up on screen and Giacchino's CE3K copycat motif would appear. There is no Peter Coyote type to off-set the "bad military" people, which shows you the lack of depth in the screenplay. Why there needed to be a bit of an "edge" with an older pot-smoking teen and an f-bomb was also kind of odd.

There are, however, some great moments, and a few affecting ones as well. As much as I didn't like Giacchino's score at times (PLEASE STOP WRITING THE STRING LADEN "LOST" MUSIC), both he and Abrams ended the movie splendidly with a great final shot and music that matched.

Overall as much as it was flawed, and could have been better, I still felt like I was watching a well constructed movie. The Spielberg salutes are obvious (the kid at the dining room table beating the doll just like in CE3K; the overhead shot of the town just like in E.T. and CE3K; the juxtaposition of a character in the background with a foreground object on the other end of the widescreen frame, seen in many of his earlier films; overpouring the dog food into the dish just like in the JAWS outtake, etc) but still fun.

If you like that type of film, or grew up on them, this is a nice throwback to those kind of genre films...not great, but an admirable try just the same.