if things have gone tits-up, they’ve gone wrong.
“My plan to start the day with a lovely bowl of muesli went tits-up when I tripped over the cat and dropped the f**king milk all over the floor.”
1 Like
- Milius: Big Wednesday
- Sjöström: Outlaw and His Wife
- Griffith: Hearts of the World
- Hughes: Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
- Cronenberg: Naked Lunch
- Ross: Hunger Games
- Edwards: The Party
- Pudovkin: Mother
- Deodato: House on the Edge of the Park
- Malle: Le fou follet
1 Like
Happy Death Day (2017)
The Groundhog Day of Horror. College student Tree is having birthday but it’s also her death day: at the end of the day she is stabbed to death by a masked killer and then catapulted back to the morning of the same day. To escape from the time loop, she’ll have to endure the events (over and over again) in order to find out who’s killing her (over and over again) …
A not so very original idea (to put it mildly) that works surprisingly well thanks to a couple of excellent performances by Jessica Rothe (as Tree the Loop Girl) and Israel Broussard, the boy she has only met the night before and in whose dorm room she wakes up every morning. There are a few scares but all in all this is one of those serio-comic horror fantasies that are (almost) family friendly and are appreciated better by critics than horror aficionados (it holds a 73% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes).
I had a good time with it, and the only real flaw seems to me that the film fails to come up with a satisfying conclusion. The original, more intriguing, but also much darker ending was changed after audiences at test screenings had responded negatively to it.
2 Likes
Last week or so:
Spring (Benson/Moorhead, 2015) 
Jailhouse Rock (Thorpe, 1957)
Them! (Douglas, 1954)
Dial M For Murder (Hitchcock, 1954)
Dead Space: Downfall (Patton, 2008)
Love Me Tender (Webb, 1956)
Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017)
House (Obayashi, 1977)
Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean, 1957)
Knocked Up (Apatow, 2007)
Titanic (Cameron, 1997)
Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson, 2002)
Dead Space: Aftermath (Disa, 2011)
North by Northwest (Hitchcock, 1959)
12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
Not too much love for Hitchcock …
I’m not a real Hitch fan myself, but these are two of his movie I like
(I like the two Elvis movies as well)
The Defiant Ones - 1958 (Stanley Kramer)
One of those classic films I like to like.
I enjoy watching Kramer films, one of the few moralist directors clever enough to trap his films in their message, not an easy task for any director. He was also a good actors director.
The Defiant Ones it’s a very interesting film, and also an influential one, and not only because of the remakes, a few thing usual in the sixties started here.
Both Curtis and Poitier team very well, and I’m not their biggest fan.
Not a bad choice for a classical film to watch
The Man From Deep River - 3.5/5
Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals - 3.5/5
Massacre in Dinosaur Valley - 3/5
Mountain of the Cannibal God - 3/5
Kite (1998)= - 4.5/5
Murder on the Orient Express (2017) -5/10
Heh,…this remake is not as good as the original, it drags quiet a bit and i didn’t like the cast that much, except for maybe Michelle Pfeiffer. But, it’s worth a watch if you’re game.
Broken Arrow with James Stewart (1950)
La taularde - Audrey Estrougo (2015)
Not classic stuff but a not a total bad movie nevertheless. To start one of the characters, well sort of, Sophie Marceau husband which we never see is named Phillipe Leroy (in honor of his character on the French classic Le Trou made in 1959) so a good start.
Sophie Marceau is still a lovely bird now in her fifties I wish, she’s got a great performance in a difficult character, one those parts every now and then famous actor’s like to play to show their versatility.
The film is quite violent, think of a WIP exploitation film from the 70’s, well this one is more violent because there’s no 70’s exploitation, only a gritty feeling of hard reality.
Of course there’s always the social part of the film with the critic to the French prison system. The main problem with La Taulard is that the story is a bit or a lot unidimensional, you can’t escape the prison literally, the all thing feels more like a documentary about life in prison, there’s no real story or characters development, just prison.
On the plus side there’s Sophie, so if you like WIP movies, and don’t mind some French pretentiousness is not a bad movie, if you don’t it’s a bad film, I’m on the first category
2,5 out of 5
Last ten days or so:
The Ritual (Bruckner, 2017)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)
Thor: Ragnarok (Waititi, 2017)
Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971)
Godzilla (Honda, 1954)
The Hallow (Hardy, 2015)
The Ghoul (Tunley, 2017)
Rashōmon (Kurosawa, 1950)
mother! (Aronofsky, 2017)
Plan 9 From Outer Space (Wood, 1959)
High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 1953)
Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, 2017)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
The Greatest Showman (2017)-8.5/10
Das Boot Director’s Cut (1981)-8/10
The Lives of Others (2006)-7.5/10
Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986)-5.9/10
Whiteout (2009)-5/10
Hero and the Terror (1988)-4.5/10
Last 10 films:
41. Bolotnikov: Harms
42. Ambo: …When you look away (Doc)
43. Robinson: Withnail and I
44. Greenaway: Eisenstein in Guanajuato
45. Balabanov: Pro urodov i ljudei
46. Malle: Zazie dans le métro
47. Kassila: Tähdet kertovat komisario Palmu
48. MacNaughton: And Now Something Completely Different
49. McLaglen: McLintock!
50. Haneke: Happy End (Cinema)
Last ten days or so:
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (Shizuno/Seshita, 2017)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Mute (Jones, 2018)
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)
Bullitt (Yates, 1968)
Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960)
Happy Death Day (Landon, 2017)
Prevenge (Lowe, 2017)
One-Eyed Jacks (Brando, 1961)
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Tremaine, 2013)
Onibaba (Shindo, 1964)
Coco (Unkrich/Molina, 2017)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
Verónica (Plaza, 2017)
The Mercenary (Corbucci, 1968)
From Russia With Love (Young, 1963)
Following on from having watched my favourite movies from the '50s every day in February, I’m now attempting to watch my favourite movies from the '60s every day in March (guess what I’ll be up to in April, eh?). With twelve Spags in amongst my choices for the month, it’ll be like a mini-SpagvemberFest.
Last ten:
- Panama: The Court Jester
- Robbins, Wise: West Side Story
- Kassovitz: Le haine
- von Trier: Nymphomaniac I
- von Trier: Nymphomaniac II
- Goulding: Chump at Oxford
- Vari: Ritornano quelli della calibro 38
- Kotcheff: Wake in Fright
- Jodorowsky: Holy Mountain
- Peckinpah: The Deadly Companions
In the Heat of the Night (1967, Norman Jewison)
A mystery thriller, set in a small town in Mississippi. What has four eyes and still can’t see? Right: Mississippi. Sidney Poitier is Virgil Tibbs, a black man who is picked up at the train station by the local police and accused of murdering a businessman. It turns out that Tibbs was just passing through and that he’s also an experienced homicide detective from the East Coast. Tibbs wants to go home, say goodbye to those rednecks as soon as possible, but is asked by his own chief to assist the local police in investigating the crime …
In the Heat of the Night was filmed shortly after Congress had enacted the Civil Rights Act (1964) that had given equal rights to US citizens and outlawed racial discrimination. It offers a bleak, uneasy image of a Southern community, at odds with history and itself. The movie owes a lot to Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, who both turn in magnificent performances, but as a crime thriller it has its shortcomings: like so many mystery thrillers, it feels rather mechanical, with too many twists and turns that are only introduced to keep the altogether flimsy plot moving. And its conclusion is less than satisfactory.
I’ve seen this numerous times (first time in the mid 70s) and it remains a firm favourite.
The power of the film comes from the two leads, which continues to be fascinating on repeated viewings - I think the actual, mystery and solving of the case is incidental to the clash of the main characters. Perhaps after 50 years, to some people the film’s message now seems a little obvious or simplified - but I believe it opened many eyes to the injustices of the times … and not just those in the notorious deep southern states.
It’s also wonderfully stylistic in it’s use of camera and music … so, as an audience we’re not just beaten over the head with ‘the message’, we’re also treated to something that’s aesthetically intriguing too.
PS: The book by John Ball, is a really poorly written piece of pulp, which seemed more exploitative that investigative.
To me it still looked rather fresh, not dated (or simplified for that matter). Compared to a contemporary movie like Get Out, that’s also about racial prejudice and discrimination, it was far more convincing. But the whodunit plot isn’t anything special. The film is more about character (and social comments) than plot maybe, but a better plot would’ve been welcome. I haven’t read the nove, but can imagine that it was second rate.
Annihilation is quite a mindfuck. Brilliant film
- Sirk: Has Anyone Seen My Gal?
- Assayas: Clouds of Sils Maria
- Mogherini: Pyjama Girl Case
- Ercoli: Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion
- Keaton: The General
- Henzell : Harder They Come
- Almodovar: High Heels
- Kokkonen: Pohjantähteet
- Kotcheff: First Blood
- Russel: The Lair of the White Worm