Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[dave jenkins]

Straight Time (1978) - 8/10. Dustin Hoffman violates his parole in order to rob banks with Harry Dean Stanton. Hey, Harry is a stand-up guy, why not? Great cast in addition to HDS: Theresa Russell, Gary Busey, M. Emmet Walsh, Kathy Bates, even an appearance by Eddie Bunker (who wrote the novel on which the movie is based). The only thing that doesn't really play is Dusty trying to throw his weight around. Who would credit that midget with being a heavy? Still, probably the greatest exploration of an ex-con's relationship with his parole officer. The new blu looks very good, in fact, probably better than the way the film looked in cinemas back in the day.

I probably didn't express my appreciation for the new transfer adequately. blu-ray.com has given the image a 5/5. And this:

Those who like the unmistakable appearance of 70s-era films will absolutely love Warner Archive's presentation of Straight Time, which features a 1080p transfer sourced from at least a 2K scan of original elements. That somewhat vague description will immediately become clear when you see this disc for yourself, which highlights the film's natural color palette and terrific film grain, both of which contribute to a strong amount of fine image detail and easily-seen textures on era-specific (read: gaudy) clothes and background elements. Sunny exteriors in and around the city look absolutely flawless, with period signage and storefronts reading particularly well -- if you're from L.A. or any major city and fondly recall the look of this particular time period, you'll be pausing quite often. Fundamentally, it's a pitch-perfect effort with deep black levels, excellent contrast with no edge enhancement or filtering, and an overall purist-friendly appearance that should be all too familiar for seasoned fans of Warner Archive catalog releases. It's just more fine work from the reliably great boutique label, and easily worth the upgrade from DVD on these merits alone.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Straight-Time-Blu-ray/68788/#Review

[dave jenkins]

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4633690/

Shot Caller (2017) 7/10

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is released from prison. There?s no BS here about wanting to go straight. He immediately goes back to crime. He looks like your typical perp, long hair, big mustache, lots of tattoos. Through flashbacks we learn that he was businessman and family man, who was imprisoned for a manslaughter and DWI, and forced to become a hardened tough guy to survive in prison.

Thanks for reminding me about this film. After reading your review, I realized there was a copy of this in the Jenkins Film Archive I had never watched, and I spun it today. I liked it a lot, and I'd go an "8" for a rating. I kind of wonder, Drink, if you completely understood the plot. Yeah, the lead character has to become a hardened tough guy, but there is more to the story than that. He manipulates the systems--both the inside and outside systems--so that he is not only able to survive, he's also able to foil the gang's gun-buying/selling operation when he gets out, and, by ultimately becoming the Shot Caller (once back inside), keep his family protected. The guy is actually too virtuous, too intelligent to be believed--his scheme is so labyrinthian you can't imagine anyone coming up with it, let alone bringing it off. And since he's not ever going to be able to enjoy life with his family again, it's incredible that he's willing to spend all his days in prison just to keep them safe. He's Mr. Total Self-Sacrifice. However, the way the story unfolds (with multiple flashbacks) allows the director to withhold that idea until the very last few minutes of the film. If we understood that he was a Boy Scout from the beginning, and that his essential goodness is never compromised (even when he's killing people), we wouldn't be able to accept the character or what the film is selling. So, the story is a kind of trick, but one that works really well.  I might have to share this one with Mrs. J.

[drinkanddestroy]

Thanks for reminding me about this film. After reading your review, I realized there was a copy of this in the Jenkins Film Archive I had never watched, and I spun it today. I liked it a lot, and I'd go an "8" for a rating. I kind of wonder, Drink, if you completely understood the plot. Yeah, the lead character has to become a hardened tough guy, but there is more to the story than that. He manipulates the systems--both the inside and outside systems--so that he is not only able to survive, he's also able to foil the gang's gun-buying/selling operation when he gets out, and, by ultimately becoming the Shot Caller (once back inside), keep his family protected. The guy is actually too virtuous, too intelligent to be believed--his scheme is so labyrinthian you can't imagine anyone coming up with it, let alone bringing it off. And since he's not ever going to be able to enjoy life with his family again, it's incredible that he's willing to spend all his days in prison just to keep them safe. He's Mr. Total Self-Sacrifice. However, the way the story unfolds (with multiple flashbacks) allows the director to withhold that idea until the very last few minutes of the film. If we understood that he was a Boy Scout from the beginning, and that his essential goodness is never compromised (even when he's killing people), we wouldn't be able to accept the character or what the film is selling. So, the story is a kind of trick, but one that works really well.  I might have to share this one with Mrs. J.

Yes I understood it ? I just didn?t want to write all that detail you did because that is a big spoiler! I never write such detail in the RTLMYS thread, only in a film?s dedicated thread (unless I write ?spoiler alert.?)

Yeah, this film only works as a flashback. Direct narrative wouldn?t work. We learn in flashbacks that the bad guy stuff is just to protect his family. It?s pretty well made.

[dave jenkins]

Why, then, did Ms. Baltimore freak out over it? It's got this very hopeful message and a very upbeat ending. One man, against long odds, can make a difference.

[drinkanddestroy]

Why, then, did Ms. Baltimore freak out over it? It's got this very hopeful message and a very upbeat ending. One man, against long odds, can make a difference.

I guess that while being horrified over the violence, she missed the big picture 

[noodles_leone]

I'm not sure we can move to other movies yet. Everybody on this board has first to admit Mank is a masterpiece.

[cigar joe]

I'm not sure we can move to other movies yet. Everybody on this board has first to admit Mank is a masterpiece.

lol

[dave jenkins]

Ema (2019) - 9/10. Dance; music; Reggaeton; autotune; Valparaiso; funicular railways; a seaport; adoption; re-adoption; Mariana Di Girilamo; orgies; polymorphous perversions; Gael Garcia Bernal; NASA solar photography; long takes; tracking shots; a non-linear narrative; and did I mention the flame thrower?: a film by Pablo Larrain. Plot descriptions are a cheat because much of the story is hidden until the final reveal in the last 10 minutes. Suffice it to say, what appears to be aimless posturing by the heroine is in fact part of an intricate design. A film with great cutting and some fantastic images.

Because my wife likes this film so much (because of the dancing, I believe, not the orgy scene) we got a copy of the UK blu and re-watched it. It's similar to Shot Caller in that the lead character's plan in each is only made apparent at the end, a reveal that causes us to re-conceptualize all we have witnessed up to that point. It's an interesting trick, but it renders all the previous attempts at filmic naturalism moot. You walk away thinking, "Wow, that was so real," but also, "That was so un-real."

[dave jenkins]

The Night Strangler (1973) - Follow-up to The Night Stalker, the second TV pilot for Kolchak (Darren McGavin), the news reporter with a penchant for investigating  supernatural stories which no one believes. This one has a great cast: Jo Ann Pflug, Simon Oakland, Scott Brady, Wally Cox (!), John Carradine, Margaret Hamilton (!!), and, in the role of the monster, Richard Anderson (!!!). And it's set in Seattle, so native Seattleites such as Your Humble Narrator can luxuriate in early 70s images of the Space Needle, the University of Washington campus, and the houseboats on Lake Union. It also affords a great gag. The story makes use of Underground Seattle, a disused part of the city that was built over and then forgotten (until it became a place for tourists to visit). The conceit of the film is that there is a kind of frozen-in-time world down below, and late in the picture Kolchak figures out that that is where the Strangler is hiding. So Kolchack burrows down into the underground world and discovers, just below present-day Seattle . . . the Bradbury Bldg! Ha! The elevator works fine and everything. I guess this TV movie did all right at the time because after it aired (in a shortened version) the network picked up the series (coming to blu-ray very soon).

[cigar joe]

I guess this TV movie did all right at the time because after it aired (in a shortened version) the network picked up the series (coming to blu-ray very soon).

There are only a handful of the series episodes that are worth watching the rest go South quickly. The two films are superior.

[dave jenkins]

There are only a handful of the series episodes that are worth watching the rest go South quickly. The two films are superior.

Good to know, thanks.

52 Pick-Up(1986) - 7/10. For an 80s P.o.S. with a TV vibe, this isn't too bad.  Oh yeah, snuff films (I remember them). Oh yeah, Vanity (I remember her). Oh yeah, the late Elmore Leonard (I guess we'll be hearing from him for some time to come). This has one of those plots that requires the not-at-all-credible total exclusion of the police. Respectable body count, though. Bad film score, of course.

[dave jenkins]

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) 6.5/10

The courtroom scenes in this movie are one of the most useless framing devices I have ever seen. Seems like they just did that cuz that was the style that crime dramas of the time (later to be classified by some French term) were doing. But it's just annoying and adds nothing at all. All that it does is, from the defendants you see in the opening scene, you know that Cagney was killed, and everyone else made it out alive.

Anyway, this movie seems to drag at times. I didn't enjoy many of the scenes with Helena Carter. She's a very good actress; but those scenes just weren't written well or sumthin; or maybe I enjoy seeing Cagney as gangster more than Cagney as lover.

Oh, and for Leone fans: there's one scene where someone tells Cagney: "You're nuts." Cagney's response is to slug the guy, and say, DON'T EVER SAY THAT AGAIN! DON'T EVER SAY THAT AGAIN!

sound familiar? 

Fair comments.

The plot is ridiculous, and the stuff with Helena Carter feels like it was dragged in from some other movie. The only purpose it could have had was to make Barbara Payton jealous or vindictive, to turn her against Cody--er, I mean, Cotter--but they didn't need it cause at the end she finds out the truth about how her brother died and that's what does the trick.

Great finale, though. Barbara screams out the title before she plugs Cagney. Cagney falls, climbs back up on his feet, and then Barbara lets him have it again. He doesn't get up THAT time. Oops, SPOILER! (I really should be more careful when talking about these 70-year-old movies.)

[dave jenkins]

Bad Blonde (1953) - 3/10. Not only that, but Bad Plot, Bad Chat, Bad Acting, Bad Sets, Bad Edits: i.e. Bad Film. Some of the blocking is well thought out, though, and the performers do a good job hitting their marks, so I'll give it that. I've been on a Barbara Payton kick lately, but with a film like this, I'm quickly getting over it.

[drinkanddestroy]

The Guilty (2021) 5.5/10 [Netflix stream]

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a cop who has been demoted to answering 911 calls. He gets a call from a woman who has been kidnapped and has to coordinate a response. Crappy movie. Takes place entirely on the 911 set.

Was filmed during the pandemic in fall 2020, not sure how much that affected things. Remake of a Danish film https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guilty_(2021_film)

[cigar joe]

The Third Day (1965) Directed by Jack Smight who next directed Harper. Starring George Peppard, Elizabeth Ashley, Roddy McDowall, Arthur O'Connell, Herbert Marshall,  Robert Webber, 
Sally Kellerman and Arte Johnson.

This is a Transitional Noir but just barely. Amnesiac Peppard climbs up a river bank not remembering a thing. He starts walking down the road finally getting to a roadhouse where everybody sees to know him. Turns out he's rich runs the town's main employer a pottery manufacturer. Everybody hates him because he was not only a belligerent drunk when he is in his ups but was also on the verge of selling the company. His Lincoln went in the drink with the towns nymphomaniac (Kellerman).  She is still alive but barely. Her husband (Johnson) vows to kill Peppard if she dies. Peppard remembers none of this previous life. This is one of those upper class/high society Noirs where way too much time is spent in the opulent mansion and not enough time with the flashbacks with Kellerman. And those are laughably soggy rather than steamy. There is a bit of stylistic cinematography but not enough to really save it. Plays more like a dated Hollywood Code Noir than the Neo Noir's to come. 6/10