I watched the Dark Knight Rises last night, I really enjoyed it. Not as good as the last movie but still pretty good 8/10.
I got home about 1am and watched the Devils Advocate, damn good movie as well 8/10
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I watched the Dark Knight Rises last night, I really enjoyed it. Not as good as the last movie but still pretty good 8/10.
I got home about 1am and watched the Devils Advocate, damn good movie as well 8/10
Last night I watched The Grey with Liam Neeson. A group of Canadian survivors of an air crash in the wilderness are menaced by a pack of wolves.
I didn't hope for much, but I was pleasantly surprised. The photography was great, and the story was made much more interesting by focusing upon the characters in the group. It was also a limited story, but enjoyable none the less. 6/10
Watched the film adaption of McCarthy's The Road and went into not expecting it to impact me like the book and it surely did not but I still had a tear or two. Not a bad film at all.
I’m watching Sideways again, very enjoyable film and certainly the greatest mid-life crisis, Allenesque wine road movie there has ever been.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375063/
Watched The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johanssun. Not bad - 6/10.
"Friends with Kids" 8/10 I liked it. I like Jennifer Westfeldt, but I actually prefer a previous movie that she made, "Ira and Abby" which I think is funnier and says more about relationships. However, I did enjoy it.
I finally got around to finishing Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which was honestly a chore to sit through. What can I say, it's merely a reproduction of most of his films--Owen Wilson even does a remarkable job in impersonating him. 4/10
I liked Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris.
Last night I saw Jay and Mark Duplass' Jeff, Who Lives at Home: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588334/
My score would be 9/10.
Jeff is a new age sort of guy. His brother is not. They answer the question: What is the greatest day in human history? If the answer is not obvious, you should probably see the movie.
The Razor's Edge (1946)
This is a brilliant adaptation of WS Maugham's novel about expatriate Americans living in Paris after the Wall Street crash of 1929. Naturally, certain sections of the book had to be left out but the continuity is maintained and the acting from an all star cast is nothing short of outstanding. Special mention must be made of Gene Tierney and Anne Baxter as the two leading female characters who personify their respective fictional creations as crafted by Maugham's incisive imagination.
Here is the scene where the group run into the tragic Sophie MacDonald in a Bal Musette after she has gone to the dogs following the death of her husband and child in a Chicago car crash. Anne Baxter gives a towering performance of someone on the brink of self destruction.
A terrific film that deserves 10/10 for remaining as true as possible to the the book while allowing for its transformation into the medium of cinema.
http://youtu.be/IXId86uFMA4
I thought it was a below par Allen film but I would have given it maybe a 6/10.Quote:
Originally Posted by suprematist
I have favourited the film as all of it appears to be available on youtube. I'll give it a go. I've not read the book.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emil Miller
Tonight's late film choice is Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanour's. It's a pretty good one with a good ending as I remember.
Yes I too saw it on Youtube but I have to say that, having read the novel several times, I put off watching the film for fear of the film doing less than justice to the book. Anyhow, I was so pleased that whole chunks of the Maugham's dialogue is incorporated into the screenplay and the acting is as good as could be expected. I did feel a bit sorry for Herbert Marshall, who plays Maugham, as he has to be both involved and at the same time an outsider recording the events; a difficult role to play.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neely
I think you would find it instructive to read the book, if only for comparison's sake, but it will cerainly give you quite a lot to think about.
Tonight I watched Stalingrad - a German made film dubbed into English.
It was very good, and seemed to reflect events and conditions around the battle itself that I recognised from other reading. 6/10
Last night I watched 'They Who Dare' a WWII story that was principally a vehicle for Dirk Bogarde as the leader of a group of commandos and Greek resistance fighters on a mission to destroy enemy aircraft on a Greek island. I was expecting a Boy's Own Paper yarn but it didn't even measure up as that. The commandos were more like Boy Scouts than hardened soldiers and the whole thing resembled a wizard wheeze to upset the enemy rather than a machine like operation to cause maximum damage to the enemy's aerial capability. 0/10
Tonight I watched Chicago Deadline (1949) starring Alan Ladd in a remarkably ill-fitting suit in which he plays a reporter on the trail of addressees listed in the notebook of a girl found dead in a seedy hotel room. The plot lines are so convoluted that I honestly didn't know what was going on or why. The film had a kind of consistent ghastliness that kept one watching but on any objective assessment it must be 0/10
I have just finished watching Night People ( 1956 ). The cast includes Gregory Peck and Broderick Crawford in a story set in Berlin during the cold war in which an American soldier is kidnapped and taken to the Eastern zone as a hostage for two people that are wanted ostensibly by the Russians. As the plot unfolds, it transpires that it's actually an undercover group of Nazis working for the Russians who are responsible for the kidnapping who, without he Russians knowledge, want to settle old scores with two members of the 1944 Hitler bomb plot.
Peck plays an American intelligence officer using a female double agent to effect a transfer but there's a double-cross ending that's quite well done.
Good performances all round and an intriguing story gets this 6/10. It would have been more but the script is rather overstated.