Films you've seen lately

[Dave2002]

Arsenic and Old Lace - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036613/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

An absolute hoot - even in black and white. Finally noticed Dr Gillespie (Raymond Massey) in the "Boris Karloff" role - Jonathan. This is total lunacy - great fun - with Cary Grant as the principal character Mortimer Brewster. The director was Frank Capra - otherwise well known for a Christmas film - It's a Wonderful Life.

If you've never seen it, add it to the "must see" list - though don't expect high art!

[Nick Armstrong]

Brilliant and hilarious turn from the young Alec Guinness in Ronald Neame's 1952 The Card (screenplay Eric Ambler based on Arnold Bennett's novel): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045056...f_=tt_ov_st_sm

Nice score by William Alwyn

[richardfinegold]

Dumbo Tim Burton does the remake. Took the Grandkids. Burton's trademark creepiness in spades. The three year old spent the entire movie hiding her eyes.
Couldn't they just have done a straight remake? It's Disney, for crying out loud...

[Dave2002]

Dumbo Tim Burton does the remake. Took the Grandkids. Burton's trademark creepiness in spades. The three year old spent the entire movie hiding her eyes.
Couldn't they just have done a straight remake? It's Disney, for crying out loud...

Mark Kermode - one of the critics over here, said that the original was better and more fun.

[eighthobstruction]

....just watched The Passenger 1975 + jack Nickleson /Maria Sniedder....never seren before, bit like pace and atmosphere (tho' Spanish),leaving you up in the air like : Performance....recorded from Sat'....goodv late afternoon feed avec some Potato Tortilla with Hollandaise Sauce +salt/black pepper....

[LMcD]

Brilliant and hilarious turn from the young Alec Guinness in Ronald Neame's 1952 The Card (screenplay Eric Ambler based on Arnold Bennett's novel): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045056...f_=tt_ov_st_sm

Nice score by William Alwyn

We watched this on TPTV a few weeks ago. I wonder whether the 'football club saviour' storyline inspired the 'Glorious Gordon' episode of Michael Palin's 'Ripping Yarns'.
Do you suppose Alwyn used the income from his film scores to subsidize other less profitable work?

[Richard Tarleton]

The Highwaymen, on Netflix - the true story of the two retired, grizzled Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer and Manny Gault, who hunted down Bonnie and Clyde. Told from their point of view, you don't see Bonnie and Clyde's faces until the very end, when it's quite shocking. Starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson who look very grizzled indeed, with Kathy Bates doing a good turn as the Governor. Great cinematography too, with startling images of dustbowl USA in the 1930s.

[vinteuil]

....just watched The Passenger 1975 + jack Nickleson /Maria Sniedder....never seren before, bit like pace and atmosphere (tho' Spanish),leaving you up in the air like : Performance....recorded from Sat'......

... and I hope you relished the film's extraordinary penultimate shot, a seven-minute long one-take tracking shot which begins in Locke's hotel room, looking out on to a dusty, run-down square, pushes out through the bars of the hotel window into the square, rotates 180 degrees, and finally tracks back to a close exterior view of the room's interior...



.

[richardfinegold]

The Highwaymen, on Netflix - the true story of the two retired, grizzled Texas Rangers, Frank Hamer and Manny Gault, who hunted down Bonnie and Clyde. Told from their point of view, you don't see Bonnie and Clyde's faces until the very end, when it's quite shocking. Starring Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson who look very grizzled indeed, with Kathy Bates doing a good turn as the Governor. Great cinematography too, with startling images of dustbowl USA in the 1930s.

It was pretty good. Another one of those over the hill gang recover past glories. The older I get the more sympathetic I become to this theme...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Whistle Down the Wind at Skipton Plaza - a lifelong favourite film for me, but the first time I've seen it in a cinema. Wonderful film, and Arnold's Music matches it pitch perfect: just on the borderlinbe of sentimentality, but skillfully avoiding it.

"It's not Jesus - it's just a fella."

[teamsaint]

Whistle Down the Wind at Skipton Plaza - a lifelong favourite film for me, but the first time I've seen it in a cinema. Wonderful film, and Arnold's Music matches it pitch perfect: just on the borderlinbe of sentimentality, but skillfully avoiding it.

"It's not Jesus - it's just a fella."

Never seen it. But I'll make sure I do now.

[Pabmusic]

Whistle Down the Wind at Skipton Plaza - a lifelong favourite film for me, but the first time I've seen it in a cinema. Wonderful film, and Arnold's Music matches it pitch perfect: just on the borderlinbe of sentimentality, but skillfully avoiding it.

"It's not Jesus - it's just a fella."

The final scene has the added depth that murder with a firearm was, in 1961, a capital offence. Something that (thankfully) younger generations might not know.

[LMcD]

Never seen it. But I'll make sure I do now.

It crops up periodically on Talking Pictures TV.

[johncorrigan]

I mentioned this elsewhere, but though 'Amazing Grace' may not be the greatest example of cinema ever made, Aretha is utterly incredible in this film from '72 when she 'returned to church'. As her Father says, 'she never left her church!'

No ego from Aretha; just praise. Wonderful performance from a woman at the peak of her power.

[Richard Tarleton]

Watched The Favourite - was fairly bored, though stuck with it as Mrs T seemed to be quite enjoying it. With its obvious emphasis on the lead characters the political complexities of the time were grossly oversimplified - what anyone not familiar with the history of the period could have made of it I can't imagine. In fact so much of it is speculative or fictitious that I'm really not sure what the point of it was. The poison/horse/brothel/scar bit total fiction.

Eclectic (random, anachronistic) selection of music (no original score) - among much else, that Handel from Barry Lyndon again, Schubert D960 2nd movement .....