It is strange that soon after seeing the masterful CITIZEN KANE, I witness another Orson Welles film that pales so thoroughly in comparison. The story is pretty simple...where Welles plays a Nazi war criminal in hiding and Edward G. Robinson is the FBI man hell bent on discovering him. I even liked Welles' performance...but there is no "big scene", no elaborate direction or set design...and ultimately...nothing distinguishing.
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Truly horrifying, truly grotesque, and completely impressive. I feel like I have seen movies like this forever...movies where an alien life form can take the form of humans, and humans become increasingly paranoid about each other. Never before has it been done so well as in this film. The make-up effects could be cheesy and silly in a lesser movie, but John Carpenter makes them nightmarish. I can't believe I had never seen this film before.
I was thoroughly surprised by this movie. I thought this movie was going to be an adventure about prospecting for gold...not the archetypal expression of greed, mistrust, and an almost Shakespearean tragedy. Bogart is quite a bastard in this film, and I loved Walter Houston as the grizzled, old prospector. This isn't an adventure movie at all...it is a deep, psychological exercise showing how money can corrupt and pervert friendships. Very impressive and classic.
I loved 2001's VANILLA SKY, which Cameron Crowe made as an almost shot-for-shot remake of this film, OPEN YOUR EYES. I think I even like the Spanish original more than VANILLA SKY for a few reasons. First, the explantion is spelled out at the end much more clearly, and even though I figured it all out at the end of VANILLA SKY, it took a LOT of imagination and work. OPEN YOUR EYES rewards you for your patience, VANILLA SKY tested it. I also LOVE Penelope Cruz in roles where she speaks her native Spanish, it makes her so much sexier and likable. What a fantastic movie.
Very Simple, very disturbing, very exciting...and after seeing DELIVERANCE, I am never going out into the Wilderness or visiting the Deep South ever again. I also will forever detest the sound of a banjo. But in all seriousness, this was a grotesquely entertaining film.
The 1950s were full of corny Sci-Fi features. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is one that has a bit more brain behind it...and more than its 2008 remake does. There isn't much action, and most of the film has Klaatu just talking to humans and trying to get a grasp on who they are and how they act. Sometimes the relentless dialogue gets tedious, but this film, directed by the great Robert Wise, is entertaining enough to not be pigeonholed into that B-Movie status.
Amazing cinematography, brilliant acting, PERFECT screenplay...but the Best Movie Ever Made?? I don't quite agree with that, but I can completely understand why it is usually chosen as such. The legend about Orson Welles, only in his mid-20s, having carte-blanche from his studio, came up with this Masterpiece.It is interesting that a movie without sex or violence, about a media mogul and his life, can hold such interest. The flashback nature of the screenplay is its brilliance, and I'd be pressed to find a better photographed film, EVER. I get it. I finally get the hooplah over CITIZEN KANE.
Some movies are timeless classics, but others are classics for their time. The previously seen THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD is a timeless classic, obviously dated, but no less entertaining and not that different than a movie of its kind made today. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD is a classic for basically setting the foundation for a whole genre of horror movies, the Zombie movie. However, even though it may have been shocking and frightening in its time, the movie is too silly and too tame to really withstand the test of time. As a movie-lover whose appetite for Zombie films has previously been sated by 28 DAYS LATER and Zack Snyder's DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, Romero's original opus just doesn't do much for me.
I now understand why Woody Allen is always talking about how he is inspired by Ingmar Bergman. THE SEVENTH SEAL is the first film I have seen of Bergman's, and it certainly has a kind of Woody Allen feel to it (of which I am VERY well versed). In Allen films, people sit around talking about life, death, and god...and comically absurd things happen to them. In THE SEVENTH SEAL, people sit around talking about Life, Death, and God...and dramatically intense things happen to them. Watching Max Von Sydow (did this guy ever NOT look 70 years old?) play Chess with Death is a pretty iconic image, and the setting of a plague torn Sweden post-crusades is quite a environment for people to start believing that the Apocalypse is nigh. Well done, if a bit uneven and rambling at times.
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These are Kevin's viewings out of the above Steven Jay Schneider tome Archives
May 2012
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