Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[drinkanddestroy]

I got the Kino BRD of Port of Shadows. it?s noticeably darker than the Criterion DVD, as you will see in Beaver?s screencaps http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdreview3/portofshadows.htm

The DVD had some damaged shots. While I only watched a few minutes of the BRD, I didn?t notice much damage, so I guess they cleaned that up.

But what is really weird is that they changed the English subtitles. As a big fan of the movie who has seen it a few times and knows the dialogue, it is quite jarring to see new (and not necessarily improved) subtitles.

For this reason, I think I will stick with the DVD, and live with the damaged frames

Studio Canal also released a BRD. From Beaver?s screencap I see that that movie has yet another subtitle!

[dave jenkins]

Studio Canal also released a BRD. From Beaver?s screencap I see that that movie has yet another subtitle!

The possible variations are nearly infinite. As with all translated dialog.

Nosferatu in Venice (1988) - 0/10. Kinski, Venice, naked women . . . and yet, this is probably the worst film ever made. Lots of posing, also many ridiculous speeches (though none by Klaus, who mostly acts by grimacing). Christopher Plummer and Donald Pleasence are also in the film, and completely wasted.

[dave jenkins]

Fitzcarraldo (1982) - 7/10. Not my favorite Herzog, so it sat in the BFI box from 2014 unwatched until now. But after the harrowing experience of Nosferatu in Venice, I wanted to see something with Kinski that was reasonably good. I'm still rather indifferent to this title--the pulling-the-steamship-over-the-mountain sequence is cool, but the film takes forever to get there--but this time I really appreciated the beauty of every frame. Man, talk about a well-lit film. In the 70s and early 80s Herzog used two photographers as his principal cameramen: Thomas Mauch (Aguirre) and Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein (Heart of Glass; Nosferatu). I'd been thinking that Schmidt-Reitwein was the better of the two, but this film is credited to Mauch and it looks superb. Lots of natural lighting and never any unmotivated artificial illumination.  I guess this is one of those films that work best playing in the background while you get on with other things. Every once in a while you can look up and suddenly see something beautiful.

[dave jenkins]

Crossfire (1947) - 5/10. Beats me why some people like this film. It's just a lot of talk, and not very interesting talk at that. Robert Ryan gives a great performance, of course, but he isn't playing a very interesting character. There are no interesting characters in the film at all; even Mitchum here is just a collection of surly lines. Some say this is a film noir, but it's really just a civics lesson told by typically anodyne Robert Young. The new blu-ray, though, sure looks nice.

[drinkanddestroy]

Crossfire (1947) - 5/10. Beats me why some people like this film. It's just a lot of talk, and not very interesting talk at that. Robert Ryan gives a great performance, of course, but he isn't playing a very interesting character. There are no interesting characters in the film at all; even Mitchum here is just a collection of surly lines. Some say this is a film noir, but it's really just a civics lesson told by typically anodyne Robert Young. The new blu-ray, though, sure looks nice.

The civics speech by Young may be the one bad part of the movie. This is an 8/10

[Cusser]

"All Good Now" 2010, rate 6/10.  Based on the Durst murder/disappearance.  Kirsten Dunst was good, so was Ryan Gosling.

[dave jenkins]

My Cousin Rachel (1952) - 10/10. Wow, an early 50s film filled with both kink and ambiguity (though there is no ambiguity about the kink). Richard Burton (quite young here) does his usual ham routine, but it really works, contrasting well with Olivia de Havilland's underplaying. I've never read the novel, but I'm guessing Daphne du Maurier was going for gothic meets Henry James. What fun. And nice to see California playing once again the rocky coast of Cornwall.

[dave jenkins]

La main du diable / Carnival of Sinners (1943) - 7/10. Pierre Fresnay sells his soul to the devil (a small man in black with a bowler hat) to become a successful artist. In the transaction he acquires a talisman: the amputated hand of a 15th Century monk. If he dies in possession he's going to hell; to save himself he can sell the hand but must do so at a loss, and he only paid a centime for it . . . Thus Tourneur pere crafts a tale of dread at almost the same time Tourneur fils was making Cat People.

Watched this again and the story has some real problems. The terms of the bargain keep changing: first, there's the bit about selling the hand at a loss; then things change--Fresnay can sell the hand back to the devil. Every day he delays, though, the price doubles, and because the hand delivers what he needs, Fresnay holds on to it too long and so has trouble meeting the devil's price. Finally, it's revealed that the hand was never the devil's to sell. It was stolen from the body of that 15th Century monk, and must be returned to its rightful resting place. WTF? It's like the filmmakers were making the story up as they were in the middle of production. There are still some good things about the film, but I'm lowering the score to a "6."

[noodles_leone]

The Clockmaker (1974) 7.5/10

Another famous Tavernier I hadn't seen and definitely one of his best. It also happens to be his very first, which can be spotted in the way he's sometimes too attached to show his hometown (Lyon) rather than taking care of the story. Apart from that, it's a fresh take on a classic story: a young working class man kills a bourgeois, but the story is told from the point of view of the father of the killer. Yes, it's a Marxist friendly movie, I don't think it's for Drink.

It's also pretty interesting to see that even in his first very movie, Tavernier already liked to introduce his main character in a scene with many other characters, so that the guy is met in a social context. So the character inhabits a living, breathing and (especially) social world.

[dave jenkins]

Danryu / Warm Current (1957) - 8/10. A melodrama unlike any other--the pace is dizzying. Yasuzo Masumura was an amazing director. https://ok.ru/video/2400972966510

[noodles_leone]

Cross of iron (1977) - 8/10
4th viewing? Or something.
Each time, the movie strikes me as messier and more flawed than the previous time. It really is a rough draft of something that would have been a true masterpiece, had Peckinpah done it a few years earlier. I'm still very annoyed by the actors speaking English/American (some of them try to speak with a German accent - sometimes - and some of them don't bother, which adds to the ragtag feel). The events, the chronology and the geography of the movie are never clear. Lots of terribly used "fade to..." But that ending maybe my favorite Peckinpah ending (ahead of Cable Hogue) and makes me forgive/forget a lot of the flaws up to that point.

Also, question for all of you: had war even been shown as this savage in a movie at that point?

[stanton]

There was a cruel trilogy by Masaki Kobayashi in the 60s, and well, and some older classics like All Quiet on the Western Front and Deutsche Westfront 1918 (Pabst 1932) showed also the war already as hell.

There are more like Uomini contro ... (Rosi 1968) and (but in a totally different way) For King and Country (Losey 1965), which are also rather bleak.

Hmm, not to forget Kubrick's Paths of Glory ...

I think there are more, war was always the stuff with which directors could trespass boundaries.

Cross of Iron is a sometimes odd mix of cliches, especially typical German war film cliches, and the undercutting of such cliches. Some dialogues are quite pretentious, instead of "realistic", but then the film has also real intelligent stuff in it, and like all Peckinpah films enough brilliant scenes.

[dave jenkins]

Cross of iron (1977) - 8/10
But that ending maybe my favorite Peckinpah ending (ahead of Cable Hogue) and makes me forgive/forget a lot of the flaws up to that point.

Yes.

[dave jenkins]

Cross of Iron is a sometimes odd mix of cliches, especially typical German war film cliches, and the undercutting of such cliches. Some dialogues are quite pretentious, instead of "realistic", but then the film has also real intelligent stuff in it, and like all Peckinpah films enough brilliant scenes.

Yes.

Just received the Studio Canal 3-disc special edition from Japan. Great 88-page booklet included, all in Japanese (Mrs. Jenks will love it!). The transfer looks pretty good, although all the grain has been scrubbed. I sure enjoy this film.

[dave jenkins]

There was a cruel trilogy by Masaki Kobayashi in the 60s, and well, and some older classics like All Quiet on the Western Front and Deutsche Westfront 1918 (Pabst 1932) showed also the war already as hell.

There's no reason to exclude Yasuzo Masumura's Red Angel (1966) which gives the woman's perspective, in particular, that of a battlefield nurse: https://ok.ru/video/2400984369774

Harrowing.