I Just Watched...

[HoldenIsHere]

ALSO ALSO

Yes, THE BEGUILED is great...

there is SOMETHING INTRIGUING about PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW even if it is a confounding movie on multiple levels.

i recently rewatched PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and while I don't have a clue what it's really all about, I don't dislike it.

I only included American movies on my list.

If I weren't using that filter there are others I would add.

But, yes, THE BEGUILED . . .

[Lorna]

I do not care for THE GODFATHER.

I've never seen THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123

I’m curious as to why you don’t like the Godfather. I’m not mad at this opinion mind you, it’s *perfectly valid one.* I’m OK with it but I thought Marlon Brando sucked.

I’m not always a good predictor of what people will, and will not like, but I would be willing to bet five dollars that you would, especially like THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123- especially as someone who lives in Chicago and maybe takes the L train (this movie is set in New York but it’s a similar urban scenario TO any BIG CITY, it also has a lot about city politics and police politics) also lots of accents, which I know you enjoy.

It’s also got an extremely good performance from Walter Matthau, and a very funny ending. It was based on the novel I have no idea if the book is as good as the film.

Also, I just remembered that **Robert Shaw** is in it and he is SUPERB.

[Detective Jim McLeod]

Film Geek (2023) Theater 8/10

Film maker Richard Shepard tells of his obsession with movies during the 1970s and 1980s and his relationship with his mysterious father.

I just saw this at the Film Forum in NYC. It is great documentary for film fans. Shepard has directed some TV and only a few films, The Matador (2005) with Pierce Bronson is probably the most famous.
Shepard talks of his father who got him into film and he never knew what his dad did for a living, but he did mix with some shady people.
The film clips are amazing from over 200 films, running the gamut from Citizen Kane to porno.
He also give some extra time to some films that really impressed him like King Kong (1933), The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974 and Rocky (1976).
Shepard is a New Yorker so he shows the city in film during the 1970s and 1980s, with clips of gritty grimy era of The French Connection and Death Wish.
He also pays tribute to long gone NY movie theaters that I myself have been to.
If you can, try to seek this out.

[Detective Jim McLeod]

delete duplicate post

[HoldenIsHere]

I do not care for THE GODFATHER.

I've never seen THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123

I’m curious as to why you don’t like the Godfather. I’m not mad at this opinion mind you, it’s *perfectly valid one.* I’m OK with it but I thought Marlon Brando sucked.

I’m not always a good predictor of what people will, and will not like, but I would be willing to bet five dollars that you would, especially like THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123- especially as someone who lives in Chicago and maybe takes the L train (this movie is set in New York but it’s a similar urban scenario TO any BIG CITY, it also has a lot about city politics and police politics) also lots of accents, which I know you enjoy.

It’s also got an extremely good performance from Walter Matthau, and a very funny ending. It was based on the novel I have no idea if the book is as good as the film.

Also, I just remembered that **Robert Shaw** is in it and he is SUPERB.

The subject matter of THE GODFATHER holds no interest to me and the movie itself was not captivating enough for me to ignore that.
I really struggled to finish the movie when I had to watch it for a class in college.
I think I watched it in fifteen or twenty minutes intervals over a period of a few days.
I can't see myself ever watching it from beginning to end in one viewing.

I suspect I will enjoy THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 for a lot of reasons.

[jamesjazzguitar]

I just watched Cheyenne, episode Fury at Rio Hondo. This was a remake of Hawks\Bogie's To Have and Have Not. Most of the dialog, as well as associated action, was scene-for-scene \ word-for-word. There was the two women (Bacall and Moran), as well as the sidekick (Brennan).

The setting was the Mexico revolution against the French. Thus, opposite of the movie, the French were the bad guys. The Mexicans are trying to smuggle guns from the USA to help the cause, and Cheyenne gets trapped in the middle. He starts out as not wanting to be involved in their politics (just like Bogie) but ends up saving the day. The Bacall replacement is a singer and sings a song and the Moran replacement is the wife of the main Mexican revolutionary. There is also a piano player just like Cricket (Carmichael).

What really got me was the word-for-word dialog, even the funny and sarcastic Bogie lines. E.g. when the lead Mexican guy, who is with his wife, just like the movie, is shot, Cheyenne says "don't get blood on the cushion of the stagecoach". (just like Bogie says but about his boat!).

The ending is the same, with Cheyenne getting the French captain to release the sidekick and signing letter that allow all of them safe passage, and the piano playing a happy song and the sidekick doing a little dance while leaving!

[Bronxgirl48]

Highlights of the 70s list. Pared down a bit from the other thread's lists that I make to include only the ultimate highlights. And yes, I know my taste can be strange.....

1970
Airport
Catch-22
Darling Lili
Donkey Skin
I Never Sang for My Father
Little Big Man
Lovers and Other Strangers
Patton
Puzzle of a Downfall Child
Ryan's Daughter
Something for Everyone
Sunflower
The Aristocats
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
The Conformist
The Landlord
The Out-of-Towners
The Owl and the Pussycat
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
The Walking Stick
The Wild Child

1971
A New Leaf
Dirty Harry
Fiddler on the Roof
Harold and Maude
Klute
Nicholas and Alexandra
Play Misty for Me
Straw Dogs
Such Good Friends
Summer of '42
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Taking Off
Tales of Beatrix Potter
The Beguiled
The Boy Friend
The Emigrants
The Grissom Gang
The Hired Hand
The Last Valley
The Music Lovers
The Night Digger
The Touch
Two English Girls
What's the Matter with Helen?
Wild Rovers
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

1972
1776
Avanti!
Butterflies Are Free
Cabaret
Jeremiah Johnson
Junior Bonner
Lady Sings the Blues
Pete 'N Tillie
Play It Again, Sam
Savage Messiah
Slaughterhouse Five
Sounder
The Godfather
The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid
The Heartbreak Kid
The King of Marvin Gardens
The New Land
Travels with My Aunt
What's Up, Doc?

1973
Amarcord
Bang the Drum Slowly
Breezy
Cinderella Liberty
Day for Night
Emperor of the North
Jeremy
Oklahoma Crude
Paper Moon
Papillon
Sleeper
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The Iceman Cometh
The Last of Sheila
The Nelson Affair
The Way We Were

1974
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Alice in the Cities
Blazing Saddles
Chinatown
Claudine
Harry and Tonto
Lost in the Stars
Murder on the Orient Express
That's Entertainment!
The Conversation
The Gambler
The Great Gatsby
The Longest Yard
The Parallax View
The Sugarland Express
The Taking of Pellham One Two Three
The Tamarind Seed
The White Dawn
Thieves Like Us
Young Frankenstein

1975
At Long Last Love
Barry Lyndon
Crazy Mama
Dog Day Afternoon
Farewell My Lovely
French Connection II
Hearts of the West
Love and Death
Nashville
Night Moves
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Picnic at Hanging Rock
The Day of the Locust
The Magic Flute
The Man in the Glass Booth
The Man Who Would Be King
The Prisoner of Second Avenue
The Romantic Englishwoman
The Stepford Wives
The Story of Adele H
The Sunshine Boys

1976
A Matter of Time
A Star is Born
Bugsy Malone
Face to Face
Family Plot
Freaky Friday
Mikey and Nicky
Network
Nickelodeon
Obsession
Robin and Marian
Rocky
Silent Movie
Small Change
Taxi Driver
The Bad News Bears
The Last Tycoon
The Little Girl That Lives Down the Lane
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
The Shootist
Voyage of the Damned

1977
3 Women
A Little Night Music
A Special Day
Citizen's Band
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Islands in the Stream
Julia
Roseland
Star Wars
The Duellists
The Goodbye Girl
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers

1978
An Unmarried Woman
Autumn Sonata
Comes a Horseman
Death on the Nile
Fedora
Foul Play
House Calls
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
Movie Movie
Remember My Name
Superman
The Cheap Detective
The Great Train Robbery
The Green Room
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

1979
10
A Little Romance
Alien
All That Jazz
Apocalypse Now
Breaking Away
Hardcore
Kramer Vs. Kramer
My Brilliant Career
Norma Rae
Promises in the Dark
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Starting Over
The Black Stallion
The Electric Horseman
Time After Time
Wise Blood
Yanks

BREEZY!!! Haven't seen that one in a long time. Probably couldn't be made today....Teenage drifter brings "middle-aged" businessman back to life, metaphorically speaking. Kay Lenz and William Holden! Nifty Malibu setting, if I recall correctly. (it's been years)

[txfilmfan]

I just watched Cheyenne, episode Fury at Rio Hondo. This was a remake of Hawks\Bogie's To Have and Have Not. Most of the dialog, as well as associated action, was scene-for-scene \ word-for-word. There was the two women (Bacall and Moran), as well as the sidekick (Brennan).

The setting was the Mexico revolution against the French. Thus, opposite of the movie, the French were the bad guys. The Mexicans are trying to smuggle guns from the USA to help the cause, and Cheyenne gets trapped in the middle. He starts out as not wanting to be involved in their politics (just like Bogie) but ends up saving the day. The Bacall replacement is a singer and sings a song and the Moran replacement is the wife of the main Mexican revolutionary. There is also a piano player just like Cricket (Carmichael).

What really got me was the word-for-word dialog, even the funny and sarcastic Bogie lines. E.g. when the lead Mexican guy, who is with his wife, just like the movie, is shot, Cheyenne says "don't get blood on the cushion of the stagecoach". (just like Bogie says but about his boat!).

The ending is the same, with Cheyenne getting the French captain to release the sidekick and signing letter that allow all of them safe passage, and the piano playing a happy song and the sidekick doing a little dance while leaving!

WB was the producer of the TV show, and they were known for recycling scripts among their various westerns of the 50s and 60s, so it's no surprise they "borrowed" from their theatrical library as well.

[kingrat]

Speaking of the 1970s: consider the difference between Blow-Up (1966) and The Conversation (1974), which borrows liberally from the plot of Blow-Up, only with sound instead of photography. When Antonioni seems like the fun guy in the room, you know something is seriously out of whack. Swinging London in the Carnaby Street era vs. American skyscrapers in a brown/green world. David Hemmings in tight white pants vs. Gene Hackman looking like Gene Hackman. The women in The Conversation are either unattractive or treacherous or both; Hackman only wishes, like much of the audience for Blow-Up, that he could sign up for that orgy with the two probably underage girls.

Of course the dolly birds and the sex and the fashion photography all represent capitalist decadence, and we hate that, don't we? But how grim and grimy and grungy is the world of The Conversation, the cinematic equivalent of acid reflux. Can we really blame all of that on Richard Nixon? If this "felt right" to the audience, and the film was a big hit, smooched over by critics, is it a case of "been using downers so long they feel like uppers to me?"

[Allhallowsday]

...I suspect I will enjoy THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 for a lot of reasons.

One of the channels we're getting has had it on, I just watched it practically twice in the last 72 hours... damned near endlessly watchable.
If you like WALTER MATTHAU, you'll enjoy it.

[Hibi]

Yes, Alma is back as a Spanish name, pronounced "Ahlma." The name from the past was "you can call me Al-ma."

What movie character was named Alma? I seem to remember one.

Don't forget Thelma Ritter in Pillow Talk! "You're my inspiration.... Alma!"

LOL! That's right!

[TikiSoo]

Thanks all for the suggestions- I just requested Pelham One Two Three from my library. Apparently there’s a remake, I had to search out the one with Walter Matthau, thanks for mentioning him.
Heh, they had to dumb down the title of the remake to 1 2 3.

I watched The Godfather only once after initially kind of seeing some of it at the Drive In with my Mom & Grandmother. They made sure I stayed in the back seat for the horse in the bed scene!
I watched it all the way through and have zero desire to see it again nor the sequels. I recall liking the polite civility & honor shown to “family” in contrast with the gory violence.

I actually knew New England’s Mob Boss thirty years ago, he’s most likely dead by now, he was an old guy back then. I did some restoration work for him, and was the only “girl” allowed in his clubhouse.
He took me out to lunch a few times and was very sweet but told tales of his method of buying new cars for his wife and after he & they are both dead hoped the police never search his acarage property well…as there may be bodies dumped in that well.
I stupidly once said, “Geez, don’t you ever feel like a bully? Why not work things out with those who disagree with you?” while my co-workers cringed! Good thing I was a cute little girl!

[Detective Jim McLeod]

Thanks all for the suggestions- I just requested Pelham One Two Three from my library. Apparently there’s a remake, I had to search out the one with Walter Matthau, thanks for mentioning him.
Heh, they had to dumb down the title of the remake to 1 2 3.

Tiki, please come back with your thoughts after seeing this, I saw it when first released (the first R rated movie I ever saw) and it is now in my top 20 favorites of all time.

[CinemaInternational]

Two more films.....

True Believer (1989) -- The idea of James Woods playing a lawyer with 60s radical leanings is quite ironic from today's standpoint, but regardless of what one thinks of him offscreen, his exceptional, committed performance, considerably better than the film around him, provides just about all the juice this film has. Robert Downey Jr is good as his young assistant, but the film itself is overly busy, increasingly melodramatic, kind of nonsensical, and suffers under the weight of an overbearing musical score. The direction is pretty smooth though and helps to make the script seem a bit better than it otherwise would be.

Mother Night (1996) -- Based on a Kurt Vonnegut novel, this film tells a very dark tale. It's the story of an American (Nick Nolte) living in Germany who is recruited by the Allies to pretend to be a Nazi by stating the most hateful Anti-Semitic statements on radio trasmissions that actually served as coded information for the Allies. But then after the war, America refuses to acknowledge him as a spy, leaving the man without a country, surrounded by Russian moles, hunted by authorities as a war criminal, with German sympathizers as the only ones who will tolerate his presence, and with him haunted by the evil words he spoke so forcefully on those radio transmissions. It's a very disturbing story, with all sorts of discordant moods, but it is extremely well acted by Nolte and also by supporting players Sheryl Lee and John Goodman. It's definitely one of the bleakest films I can recall.

[HoldenIsHere]

Yes, Alma is back as a Spanish name, pronounced "Ahlma." The name from the past was "you can call me Al-ma."

What movie character was named Alma? I seem to remember one.

Don't forget Thelma Ritter in Pillow Talk! "You're my inspiration.... Alma!"

The sweetie and I love PILLOW TALK.