This is like an Anti-Casablanca. There is criminals, hideouts, women, and astonishing black & white cinematography. But where Casablanca had some hope and good intentions...The Third Man is a bit pessimistic. It was filmed in post-war Vienna and it really sets quite a mood. The mystery that Joseph Cotten is trying to solve kept me intrigued and the arrival of Orson Welles is so great. That scene in the ferris wheel is definitely the best part.
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Terrance Malick has such somber, slow-moving, hypnotic movies. This film was slow, but short, and wholly melancholic and tragic. People have complained that the love triangle and the emotions that come from it aren't quite fleshed out. I got why Malick kept it all reserved. The point of view is from the young girl and how she observes it all...and the desolation of the vast wheat fields adds to the somber mood and sloth-like advances of the day. I found it intriguing and whimsical.
Sometimes I really don't get these old classics. I kind of hated this film. It is only 60 min long so it feels like half a movie. All of the actors fall on eachothers cues and it always seems as if each actor is just waiting for the other actor to finish talking so they can say their line. It is NEVER natural. The entire film felt like a FAMILY GUY cutaway where they make fun of the attitudes, speech patterns, and accents of these old timey movies. And Mae West? Her character is pretty terrible. She is nothing more than a floozy whose loyalties lie to whomever seems to be in her presence. She isn't smart, manipulative, or even that sexy...just available to the closest man.
A lot of fugitive movies nowadays owe a lot to this film. Beatty and Dunaway are great, and the direction is top notch. For 1967, I was surprised by how subversive and unconventional it was. Natural Born Killers and The Devil's Rejects were obviously offspring of this film...but as I have read...this was a movie that opened the door to these kinds of ultraviolent fugitive tales. Very entertaining with turns by Gene Hackman and Gene Wilder.
I know this grade must seem severe, but I just finished watching a 3hr 17 minute movie about Intolerance, which only exhibits 4 stories from the past and present about how Intolerance has been around a long time. DUH. My grade is not necessarily for how the movie is made (costumes and sets are rather impressive for the time period), but I would NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER want to sit through this monstrosity of a movie again. Therefore, it merits an F. I guess I am also pretty Intolerant!!
I'm knocking out these Buster Keaton comedies pretty efficiently, but this one pales in comparison to the earlier efforts. The story about a man who needs to be married in the next 24hrs or lose out on a huge inheritance is so boring and contrived. I know it may have been novel in 1925, but that doesn't make it interesting now. The final 10 minutes or so is a Buster Keaton classic-style chase from innumerable brides, and that is of course fun and exciting as Keaton risks his life for his stunts...but overall it is just a simpler film in comparison to his other films.
Very odd and wonderfully preformed by Colm Feore and ultimately an adequate performance like production about the stranger pianist. Gives bits and pieces about Gould without really telling a story, which I guess is sort of the point. That’s it.
A David Cronenberg film but a David Lynch film in spirit. Pretty gruesome and shocking, but ultimately nonsensical. I get the allegory of the nature of reality in regards to television, but it is just presented so strangely complete with people with vaginas in their chests.
Very long, very slow, and kind of brilliant. A masterful work by Sergio Leonne. Really cool to see blue eyed Henry Fonda as a bad ass. Not much happens and it was still mesmerizing and so good.
In these days of the Matrix, Kill Bill, and Zhang, Yimou films, this film just feels incredibly cheesy to me. I know now where Balls of Fury got its source material. This feels like a third rate Bond film, and the “hi-yah” feels really silly.
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These are Kevin's viewings out of the above Steven Jay Schneider tome Archives
May 2012
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