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Posted: |
Sep 24, 2020 - 10:35 AM
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By: |
Rameau
(Member)
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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)
I really like the André Previn score (I have the extended Rhino CD), but I've never seen the film, & it's on TCM (UK) so I recorded it & watched it this afternoon (it's mostly set in German occupied Paris in WW2). Well I haven't read a good word about it, & it was a huge box office dud for MGM, & although everyone's right about the film...for all that, I really quite enjoyed it. Lee J. Cobb hams it up as an old man (wild white hair & white droopy moustache) he plays Glenn Ford's grandfather, even though he's only five years older than Ford, but Lee J. isn't in it much. Glenn Ford is totally wooden in this, but the real problem is the female lead, the Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin, they had to re-voice her & the voice is totally wrong, it just looks odd (it's Angela Lansbury's voice). She doesn't do much in the part, so why couldn't they have cast an American or English actress who wouldn't need re-voicing? Yvette Mimieux also looks to be re-voiced.
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Rameau, I have four horsemen on dvd and also enjoyed it. Then again I'm a sucker for big 50's / 60's films with loads of names in them.
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Rameau, I have four horsemen on dvd and also enjoyed it. Then again I'm a sucker for big 50's / 60's films with loads of names in them.
The TCM was an old SD transfer, probably the same as the DVD, but it looked really nice, but no Overture (Entr'acte) like on the CD, I don't know if the DVD has it. I'll certainly keep it on the planner.
Not 100% sure but think dvd had the overture etc. It's a while since I watched it.
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Posted: |
Sep 24, 2020 - 7:33 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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30 MINUTES OR LESS (2011) – 7/10
This film is based on a real-life incident from 2003, in which pizza delivery man Brian Douglass Wells, with a bomb locked onto his neck, robbed a bank in Erie PA. In this film, it’s slacker pizza delivery man “Nick” (Jesse Eisenberg) who is locked into a bomb vest by “Dwayne” (Danny McBride) and ordered to rob a bank within 24 hours. A slacker himself, Dwayne wants $100,000 in order to hire a hit man (Michael Peña) to kill his ex-Marine father (Fred Ward), who is constantly on his case. With his inheritance, Dwayne and his more dim-witted buddy “Travis” (Nick Swardson) plan on opening a tanning salon. (It’ll be a babe magnet, you see.) Stuck in the vest, and with a ticking clock, Nick needs help with the bank robbery, so he turns to his best friend “Chet” (Aziz Ansari), with whom he’s recently had a falling out due to Nick’s dating of Chet’s sister “Kate” (Dilshad Vadsaria).
This could be a dramatic, tense thriller (the real-life case ended tragically), but that’s not what writer Michael Diliberti and director Ruben Fleischer are going after. They’re looking for something more comedic. The 24-hour window allowed by Dwayne offers Nick plenty of spare time to express his affections to Kate, to tell off his boss at the pizza parlor, and mainly to argue with Chet about perceived slights past and present, and whether and how to pull off the robbery. Meanwhile, Dwayne and Travis have their own back and forth. While there is some humor drawn out of these exchanges, overall, it’s pretty slim pickings.
It’s hard to tell whether Eisenberg is miscast or whether he’s just stuck with a misfocused script. But he neither shows the desperation his character should feel nor is he wacky enough to put across the broad humor that the creators seem to be aiming for. And the film has a flawed ending. The ending might be acceptable if the film was funnier, and we could accept it as a lark, but as it is, it just seems implausible, and leaves a lot of things unresolved. Nevertheless, the $28 million film turned a tidy profit on a $41 million worldwide gross.
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Flame of the Islands 5/10 with Yvonne de Carlo, Howard Duff and Kurt Kazner. An ok time passer. Easy on the brain. DeCarlo
Buys into a casino with Kazner, who turns out to be a bit of a slime, surprise.
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Motherless brooklyn
Ed norton vehicle, a kind of rain man with a tic as a 50s private detective. Wasnt bad, possibly 15 mins too long.
7.9 out of 10
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No Way Out (1950) 8/10 with Richard Widmark and a very young Sydney Poitier. A little belter of a film on a racist subject. Quite hard hitting for its year. Widmark was brilliantly disgusting as a racist pig. Sydney was quietly decent doctor. Alfred Newman's music was quite restrained and sparse but effective.
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DECISION BEFORE DAWN
1951
WW2 spy film about a u.s unit that recruits "good germans" among p.o.w.s to go back behind enemy lines and send back info about troop movements. Richard (satan bug) Baseheart stars but Oscar Werner steals the show as a young german, codename Happy. Hans christian (battle of the bulge "you vud murder my sonz?") Blech also plays another spy.
7.2 out of 10. Shown on sony movies, passed an afternoon.
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Posted: |
Sep 28, 2020 - 12:54 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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RIDERS OF DESTINY (1933) – 7/10
When stranger “Saunders” (John Wayne) shows up in town, he finds that rancher “Kincaid” (Forrest Taylor) is controlling most of the water rights in the area, and forcing other ranchers to either sell out to him or pay outrageous prices for water. He becomes fast friends with “Fay Denton” (Cecilia Parker) and her father (George Hayes), who own the only well in the area not under Kincaid’s control. But Kincaid orders hired gunman “Slip Morgan” (Earl Dwire) to stop Saunders’ meddling. When Saunders starts softly singing as he is forced into a gunfight, it becomes apparent to the townsfolk that he is really "Singin' Sandy," the most notorious gunman since Billy the Kid.
This was the first of a series of films John Wayne made for the newly-formed Lone Star Productions, which were released by Monogram. This was to be the first of a "Singin' Sandy" series, but, in a wise decision, no further films with that character were made. Modern sources disagree on who actually did the singing in this film. While some state that the voice is Wayne's, other credit Smith Ballew or Jack Kirk with dubbing the songs. Except for the brief gunfight singing, I don’t believe that Wayne sang the other, more complete songs. The voice on those songs is nothing like his.
Songs aside, the film is a pretty good western. Wayne is stalwart as usual. The action in this 1933 film is well staged, and is more in line with what you’d expect from a 1950s western than with what eventually came to be seen in the 1940s “C” westerns—meaning that fewer shots are fired and more hit their target. (Interestingly, there are no fistfights in the film, something that the 1940s films usually had more than one of.) The comedy relief is not obtrusive, and the film features a number of really good horse-riding stunts by Yakima Canutt. That’s about all you can expect from a “C” western.
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Hell's Outpost (1954) 6/10 with Rod Cameron, Chill Wills and John Russell. Ok time waster. For comes to town to help Chill run his mine. He having trouble in the form of Russell, hiss, boo. Fairly decent acting and plenty of skullduggery.
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A Walk in the Spring Rain 4/10 I like both Bergman and Quinn a lot but this is just average. The leads are good but this could have been called a walk through by numbers.
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The Rainmaker (1956) 8/10 quality performances by all, even if Burt was a bit Elmer and Hepburn was a bit old. Enjoyed it more than I thought. Earl Holiman was good playing a bit of a dope.
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