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Movies you haven't seen?

Started by Apestrife, 20 October, 2019, 10:01:40 AM

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JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: Professor Bear on 21 October, 2019, 02:35:04 PM
The Rambo movies change drastically as they progress - the first one is more a drama about a traumatised Vietnam veteran terrorising a small town, and then the next one is about the terrifying monster from the previous movie being a good guy now because he kills communists instead of cops.  In the third movie he teams up with Al Qaeda.

Sright. I remember watching Rambo : First Blood Part 2 as a kid, and thinking it was absolutely amazing.  Tried again a few years ago and had to turn it off halfway through out of boredom.  First Blood remains brilliant though; where Sly is more Raoul Moate than John Wayne.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"


Frank

Quote from: Frank on 20 October, 2019, 12:41:57 PM
I've watched the start of Metropolis a few times, but because it's a black and white, subtitled film from the twenties, BBC2 always stuck it on late at night and I dozed off.

Watched it and didn't snore once! Reviewing a classic is pointless*, but I was struck by how beautiful the cinematography and production design are. I watched The Lady Vanishes around the same time, which is great, but, like most US and UK films of the period, looks like a pool of sick next to this.

And the performances are wild! Lang's M is one of my favourite movies, but the tone of the acting in that is mostly naturalistic, apart from Lorre's deranged killer. In Metropolis, *EVERYONE* is giving it the full Nicolas Cage**, maybe because they were stage actors who felt they had to compensate for the lack of dialogue?

The actress who plays Maria is never done clutching her boobs to express emotion and the youthful male lead (a middle-aged man in Kabuki slap) reacts to discovering her*** in the arms of his father by miming a seal balancing on a beach ball for at least a minute (in long shot, too).

It's a truly brilliant film, but it reminded me of an awful film. The ruler of a vast future city conspires with an outcast to foment disorder using a robot that gives me a hard-on - and the whole thing ends with a rooftop fight and the villain falling from a high building.

William Wisher definitely screened this before he wrote the screenplay for the 1995 Stallone film.


* On the Chart Music podcast, host Al Needham usually provides a short biographical introduction to each featured act, but when a show covers an episode of Top Of The Pops containing a performance by an artist who's become part of the furniture of public life he'll begin FORMED AS THE QUARRYMEN IN LIVERPOOL IN 1960, THE BEATLES ARE *THE*FUCKING*BEATLES*, before getting on with the discussion of this specific performance, since there's nothing new to be said about a topic on which everyone already has an entrenched opinion

** When Cage was doing the rounds for Mandy, he described what he was aspiring to in his more hysterical and mannered performances as German Expressionism. The only reference point I had for that was Lorre in M, but I can see this was probably a much greater influence

*** Her robot equivalent, anyway. Special mention must be made of Brigitte Helm's fantastic characterisation of Metal Maria, whose droopy eyelid and bizarre posture (neck thrust forward at shoulder height) allow her to be distinguished from her fleshy progenitor. She also performs the least sexy Sexy Dance committed to film - not sure whether that's because she's a robot or because she's German

JOE SOAP

#48
Quote from: Frank on 10 November, 2019, 02:55:06 PM
** When Cage was doing the rounds for Mandy, he described what he was aspiring to in his more hysterical and mannered performances as German Expressionism. The only reference point I had for that was Lorre in M, but I can see this was probably a much greater influence

Cage built his career on being Timothy Carey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJDkLgwJopQ

https://youtu.be/JkqQFS4GWak?t=104

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egRbQ_ZsToQ

Tjm86

Quote from: Frank on 10 November, 2019, 02:55:06 PM
The ruler of a vast future city conspires with an outcast to foment disorder using a robot that gives me a hard-on -

Hammerstein gives you a hard-on?????   :o

Frank


JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: Frank on 10 November, 2019, 02:55:06 PM

And the performances are wild! Lang's M is one of my favourite movies, but the tone of the acting in that is mostly naturalistic, apart from Lorre's deranged killer. In Metropolis, *EVERYONE* is giving it the full Nicolas Cage**, maybe because they were stage actors who felt they had to compensate for the lack of dialogue?


It's an amazing piece of work alright.  While I'm no expert on cinema history (did a tiny bit of it for my degree many years ago, but that's it) I think that movie actors took a long time to get over the fact that you didn't need to enunciate loudly and gesticulate exaggeratedly for the sake of the people in the back row any more. 

It was the likes of Brando, iirc, who helped bring more naturalistic method acting to Hollywood films.  This was of course before the tragic citrus-based death that inspired the name of his last ever movie.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

TordelBack

I thought it was set on a submarine? Or was it a sandwich?

JOE SOAP

The advent of sound/dialogue profoundly changed the acting style. Initially because it limited movement as the recording sound equipment for on-set dialogue was cumbersome (microphones hidden in plants, lamps and other props) and didn't allow for too much prancing and wild gesticulation from actors – and of course actors didn't need to exaggerate emotion through performance once writers could put words in their mouths, or not, as the case may be.

The ability of film-makers/actors to punctuate scenes with a more sophisticated soundtrack of sound and silence in dialogue changed the dynamic but it took a few decades to get back to the more elaborate staging and visual dynamism that evolved in the language of the silents.