mkaroly wrote:PLAY MISTY FOR ME - 7/10. I have decided to go back and watch Clint Eastwood's directorial output (and some of his other stuff). His directing style is kind of easy-going...not a lot happens with the camera. He tkes his time...there's almost a laid-back sense to his style of directing. Having said that, I enjoyed this movie since it was a precursor to films like Fatal Attraction and such. It's effectively creepy and the woman who plays the stalker was REALLY creepy...that scene in the cab when she keeps telling him she loves him freaked me out. She was really the motor that kept the film interesting since she had to go back and forth between so many different emotional changes. The ending was suspenseful and well filmed with the light and shadows. Good directorial debut.

Jessica Walter, better known as a TV guest star mainstay but who made quite a powerful impact in that film and deserved an Oscar nomination a lot more than Close ever did for Fatal Attraction!

The Core (2003): 1.5/10

The release of Christopher Young's score on CD made me Netflix this to assess the music, and gad, what a stinker. Laughable science, special effects barely more advanced than your typical SyFy Channel offering, rank overacting by a terrific cast (Aaron Eckhart, Hillary Swank, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo) that should have known better...it's every bit as inept as any disaster "epic" helmed by Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. As for Young's music, it's fine, but not "pay thirty bucks for 100 minutes' worth" fine.

Dances With Wolves (theatrical version / Region 2 Blu-ray)

Still a great film after 21 years. And while it is very similar to A Man Called Horse, it possesses enough originality in its own right. Although Russell Means dismissed it as "Lawrence of the Plains" I feel this film made a lot of strides in the portrayal of Native Americans, who before Dances With Wolves were rarely depicted as real people.

The film is perhaps a little overlong, and Costner's mullet is a little anachronistic (odd, considering the period-accurate facial hair he sports earlier in the film), but the action sequences are superb, and Dean Semler captures it all with exquisite visual poetry. Remember when movies looked great because of how they were photographed (before this age of tinting, bleaching, desaturating, CGI-retrofitting and otherwise screwing with the imagery to make it look "more cool")?

The performances are also amazing, with enormously intricate but subtle touches to each character. I'd say the film is even more strong in the intimate "human" scenes than in its epic moments. And is there any question that the score is some of John Barry's finest work? Barry's gift for evoking elegant nobility adds (and even creates) a whole other dimension to both the grandeur of the story and the intimacy of the character interactions.

I opted for the Region 2 Blu-ray, since only the extended cut is available in the US. I never cared for the extended cut, which adds a lot which is extraneous, and pointless -- except for two key sequences (one involving the killing of white hunters, and the other a beautiful sequence filmed in the Grand Tetons, both of which ought to have been in the theatrical cut).

The transfer of the Region 2 Blu-ray is excellent, save for a few shots that look to have been taken from an inferior source (in which colors bleed and there is heavy compression bitmapping). The music track suffers from a little "wow" which most people might not notice (but I have relative pitch so it's obvious to me).

Dances With Wolves was an influential film too, creating a new "sub-genre" which combined the "he man" action epic with the romantic allure of the chick flick, paving the way for things like Last of the Mohicans, Legends of the Fall, Braveheart and Gladiator.

Transformers: Droop Of My Eyelids: 1/2 / 10

God, how can a movie crammed with such relentless mayhem and carnage (after a NINETY-MINUTE setup of non-stop "funny" mugging schtick) be so goddamn boring? And talk about a hideously wasted cast...John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, and even the frail voice of poor Leonard Nimoy are all shamelessly squandered. And why am I supposed to cheer for the "hero" Optimus Prime when he flat-out executes the villain in cold blood while he's totally incapacitated and begging for his life? Sucker Punch was the only other movie I've seen this year I hated with more of a passion than this piece of soulless drek.

And Buzz Aldrin? SHAME. ON. YOU.

LOL. I liked it much better than SUCKER PUNCH and both of the earlier TF films....not that I actually liked it, but I guess my threshold for Bay is higher than you MJ. At least I found it much more far watchable than SUCKER PUNCH.

That said I don't actually own any of his films in my collection other than THE ISLAND.

You also didn't mention Shia! The most bland, flavorless lead since...well I can't even think of someone duller on-screen from a comparable generation. What Spielberg saw in this kid, I don't get it.

AndyDursin wrote: You also didn't mention Shia! The most bland, flavorless lead since...well I can't even think of someone duller on-screen from a comparable generation. What Spielberg saw in this kid, I don't get it.

I don't get it, either.

I didn't dislike TF 3 as much as Jack did but the thing painfully reeked of "Let's get one last cash grab out of this."

I'm glad Shia and Bay are done with TF.

Tarzan's Peril (1951) 7.5 of 10
-This is my favorite of the Lex Barker Tarzan films since it has a good compact plot, a good scene-chewing villain in George MacReady and also IMO the best of the post-Maureen O'Sullivan Janes in Virginia Huston who brings more maturity to the role than the other ladies Barker worked alongside.

The Naked Prey (1968) 6.5 of 10
-Saw this as a YouTube download. It's cult status I think is a tad overrated, but it is an effectively done tale that benefited from being made at the tail-end of an era where you couldn't be extremely graphic. The one part of the action I found unconvincing was Cornel Wilde at one point stumbling through a path where there an infinite number of snakes all around him yet he never takes notice of them and he amazingly never gets bit!

AndyDursin wrote:You also didn't mention Shia! The most bland, flavorless lead since...well I can't even think of someone duller on-screen from a comparable generation. What Spielberg saw in this kid, I don't get it.

Spielberg likes him because he looks like a more handsome version of himself at that age, so he's trying to live vicariously through the little twerp by shoving him in America's face at every turn. Look, it's America's Everyteen[tm] in Transformers! Look, it's Indy Jr....Jr.!

And if LaBeef were merely bland, that'd be bad enough, but he's one of the most JITTERY young actors I've ever seen. Every second he's on-screen, he's constantly stammering, shrieking and/or hysterically spazzing out, like he dropped acid 30 seconds before every take. Even Nicolas Cage at his bugs**t-craziest has nothing on this kid for sheer, manic obnoxiousness. Of course, this makes him the perfect leading "man" for Michael Bay, a filmmaker who directs like a man afflicted with irritable bowel syndrome. There's never a second to breathe in any of his films (despite their absurd, David Lean-esque running times), no humor that isn't aimed strictly at horny fourteen-year-olds, no sly wit, nothing but ferocious, jackhammer more-ness. I remember Jeff Bond writing in an issue of FSM back when The Rock (a movie I hated even at the easy-to-please age of 22) that the directorial style was like "using an exclamation point at the end of every sentence". You look at Die Hard, and that's a film full of luxurious pauses, a film where every camera move is motivated, a film with no shakey-cam, a film where the humor arises naturally from tense situations, a film where the first gunshot isn't fired until eighteen minutes into the running time. Compared to the Bay-styled overkill that typifies modern-day action cinema, Die Hard (which was criticized by some at the time as excessive and absurd) now looks as stripped-down and elegant and timeless as an Alfred Hitchcock thriller from the 50's. People will still be discussing Die Hard fifty years from now, but who will remember the films of Michael Bay with any sense of genuine pleasure?

Angela's Ashes

A very good film...but somewhat disappointing, as I expected it to be better. Certainly the story of Frank McCourt's real-life childhood (in which he lost three siblings and his teenage sweetheart) is fraught with heartbreak. The performances are excellent, the art direction and photography are superb and John Williams' score is outstanding. The film also really brings to light just how much Ireland was really a third-world country in the early 20th century. But...it just didn't affect me as much as it should have. There was just something emotionally sedate about the whole film.

I also strongly suspect that Alan Parker cut-up, reordered (and even discarded) much of the score. Wonderful cues like "The Lanes of Limmerick" and "Delivering Telegrams" are not used. Perhaps these were written expressly for the CD, but these cues so perfectly fit the tone of the scenes they are named after, I'm convinced they were scored for them. I think if Parker had used Williams' music intact, it would have given the film the very emotional intensity it is lacking.

Oh, and here's a weird one -- the DVD I watched was a PAL Region 2 disc. And like all PAL DVDs it is time-compressed -- however in this case they actually pitch-corrected the soundtrack, so although it runs 4% faster, the music is all in the correct key! This is the first instance I have come across this. I wish more PAL DVDs were corrected in this way.

Angela's Ashes is one of the most miserable, repetitive, unintentionally hilarious movies I have ever seen. John Williams' score was the sole redeeming factor.

Monterey Jack wrote:Angela's Ashes is one of the most miserable, repetitive, unintentionally hilarious movies I have ever seen. John Williams' score was the sole redeeming factor.

I certainly didn't see anything "hilarious" about this film. I thought the film was good; I just felt it was somewhat emotionally sedate.

I'm sure if John Williams' score had been allowed to make its full contribution, Angela's Ashes would have been a better film.

Monterey Jack wrote:Angela's Ashes is one of the most miserable, repetitive, unintentionally hilarious movies I have ever seen. John Williams' score was the sole redeeming factor.

It's "miserable" because the guy's upbringing WAS miserable. And it's "repetitive" because that's exactly what happened to his family. Did you want them to do song-and-dance numbers?

No offense to you MJ as people can differ on films, but of all the things I've ever read online, your perspective on this film is one of the flat-out strangest I've ever read....but whatever floats your boat, like they say.

Monterey Jack wrote:
Spielberg likes him because he looks like a more handsome version of himself at that age, so he's trying to live vicariously through the little twerp by shoving him in America's face at every turn. Look, it's America's Everyteen[tm] in Transformers! Look, it's Indy Jr....Jr.!

You know what? I think you might be right.

Now if you really want to go into scary territory start trying to analyze George Lucas in the same fashion, especially when watching garbage like the Phantom Menace and looking at those kids and so forth.

And if LaBeef were merely bland, that'd be bad enough, but he's one of the most JITTERY young actors I've ever seen. Every second he's on-screen, he's constantly stammering, shrieking and/or hysterically spazzing out, like he dropped acid 30 seconds before every take. Even Nicolas Cage at his bugs**t-craziest has nothing on this kid for sheer, manic obnoxiousness. Of course, this makes him the perfect leading "man" for Michael Bay, a filmmaker who directs like a man afflicted with irritable bowel syndrome. There's never a second to breathe in any of his films (despite their absurd, David Lean-esque running times), no humor that isn't aimed strictly at horny fourteen-year-olds, no sly wit, nothing but ferocious, jackhammer more-ness. I remember Jeff Bond writing in an issue of FSM back when The Rock (a movie I hated even at the easy-to-please age of 22) that the directorial style was like "using an exclamation point at the end of every sentence".

You look at Die Hard, and that's a film full of luxurious pauses, a film where every camera move is motivated, a film with no shakey-cam, a film where the humor arises naturally from tense situations, a film where the first gunshot isn't fired until eighteen minutes into the running time. Compared to the Bay-styled overkill that typifies modern-day action cinema, Die Hard (which was criticized by some at the time as excessive and absurd) now looks as stripped-down and elegant and timeless as an Alfred Hitchcock thriller from the 50's. People will still be discussing Die Hard fifty years from now, but who will remember the films of Michael Bay with any sense of genuine pleasure?

Couldn't agree more.

AndyDursin wrote:Did you want them to do song-and-dance numbers?

Yeah MJ, are your sure it was Angela's Ashes you saw, and not THIS film?

I did not like Angela's Ashes at all, save for Williams' score. To me it was one of the most self-absorbed pieces of dreck I had seen in years. Never cared for it.