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You wound me arny
The Movie Preview, Review, & Recommendation Thread pt. II
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Dropbear
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The Invisible Man (2020). Big budget and solid acting but the editor could have chopped it down some more. A few good plot twists and lots of suspense. 7/10
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Lmao! Is it really a cult-classic? It is corny AF!
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such a serious young man you are
Kingstonian
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Rylance should have got a jail sentence for that haircut.
The setting is 1968 during the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago against the backdrop of the Vietnam war.
Many head there from different parts of the US to protest. No permits are granted, but that doesn't stop several groups including the Students for a Democratic Society led by Eddie Redmayne's character/the Yippies led by Sacha Baron Choen's and Jeremy Strong's characters/etc.....and Bobby Seale(Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) of the Black Panthers from wanting to let their voices be heard.
The local police aren't having it and violent confrontations break out. The seven "ringleaders" are charged with conspiracy and brought to trial.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a reluctant US Attorney who is tasked with prosecuting the case....one he initially doesn't feel can be won. The incompetent judge(Frank Langella) doesn't help the main attorney for the defense(Mark Rylance aka William Kunstler) make his case.
What you get is a riveting 2 hour movie about injustice, political ideas, and in the end..."justice"! Very good performances by all!
Well worth a watch! 2 hours flows by.
4.25/5.
I checked wiki and it does seem the judge was a bit crazy.
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I'm watching Rebecca. Of course it's me so it'll take a few viewings to finish but it's finally getting to the haunting part. Kristin Scott Thomas played the female sex interest in Gosford Park in 2001 and now she is the downstairs housekeeper.
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I damn-well loved Kristin Scott Thomas in the 1990s and 2000s. Hugh Grant's character in Four Weddings and a Funeral was a fool to ignore her and go after Andie McDowell's character instead.
Kingstonian
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‘Hillbilly Elegy’. Watchable. From the reviews, I thought it would be really dire.
On balance, I would prefer to watch Jethro and Ellie Mae in ‘The Beverley Hillbillies’ though.
On balance, I would prefer to watch Jethro and Ellie Mae in ‘The Beverley Hillbillies’ though.
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I thought the book pretty bloody good although I don't agree with all his conclusions. I cant imagine it as a film at all.
Pimpernel Smith
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Kristin looked fantastic around the time of Bitter Moon. She hasn't gone the botox route so looks like a 60 year old now. Lives in Paris, I reckon she'd be a game girl as regards eating out every night and the finer things in life.
Jenny Agutter was another one who still looked stunning in 1992. There's interviews on Youtube from the early 1990s and she's fit. I've been told that she was a big coke head when she lived in L.A. I don't hold that against her. But the difference between then and now is a lesson in how beauty ages and it's not good.
My missus wanted to watch that last night, I too thought it would be dire. So I gave it a miss.
The youngest wanted to watch Little Women on Saturday night, they've seen it several times, so we started to watch it again. I had to excuse myself, as I couldn't keep up with the jumping between 7 years later and back.
Pimpernel Smith
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The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone
Watched the non-recut version a couple of months ago, and it wasn't as bad as I remembered except for Sofia Coppola. I only remember glowing sycophantic reviews of her performance at the time. Still, tempted by this new director's edition.
www.telegraph.co.uk
Part III of the mafia saga has never been loved. Thanks to a sharp recut, both the film and Sofia Coppola’s performance will get their due...
The one problem with The Godfather: Part III that no amount of re-editing can ever solve is that it isn’t The Godfather or The Godfather: Part II. Over the near-half-century since their making, the first two panels of Francis Ford Coppola’s great American triptych have lost not a microjoule of their ferocity, grandeur and tragic-epic force. Coppola never intended the troubled third instalment – written and shot on a breakneck deadline, some 15 years after the release of the second – to be a continuation of the tale as much as a feature-length epilogue.
He and Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather novels, even came up with a title that framed it as such: The Death of Michael Corleone. But Hollywood marketing being what it is, the studio went with ‘Part III’ instead. What’s more, it had to be sent out to cinemas before Coppola was content he’d entirely made sense in the edit of its operatically heightened plot, involving incest, cursed bloodlines and serpentine Vatican conspiracies.
Thanks to Coppola’s much-publicised decision to cast his (entirely untrained) 18-year-old daughter Sofia – now an Oscar-winning filmmaker herself – in the pivotal role of Mary Corleone, Michael’s own teenage girl, it also arrived trailing the distinct whiff of nepotism, which became a focal point for critical attacks.
The supposed failure of The Godfather: Part III was always overstated. The scorn was tied partly to Coppola’s own fall from commercial and critical grace in the decade beforehand, and partly to the sheer nerve of it not being another masterpiece. But its unfulfilled promise – even on its own terms – must have rankled Coppola, so the director has now recut it into something more closely aligned with his original intentions. Step one was to restore that talismanic standalone title: the film introduces itself with a card which reads “The Godfather, Coda”, but then gives “The Death of Michael Corleone” a screen to itself.
The plot’s broad sweep remains largely unchanged from The Godfather: Part III. Al Pacino’s now middle-aged Michael, sporting a granite-grey crew cut that looks less clippered than chiselled, attempts to take the Corleone family legitimate once and for all via a high-stakes business deal with the Catholic Church. Yet the paths of righteousness only lead him to still-murkier vales of gangsterism and corruption, in Manhattan, Rome and finally Sicily itself.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” runs Pacino’s most famous line, which the actor delivers with a growl that comes up from the ground.
It lands all the more powerfully now, thanks to the smoother opening act that precedes it. The first hour of the film has been comprehensively reordered, lending more agonised oomph to Michael’s plight while helping clarify his motives. (It also juices up the unrest his manoeuvrings inspire among his former associates-slash-rivals, including Joe Mantegna’s ambitious and exhilaratingly unpleasant Joey Zasa.)
The deal struck by Michael with Donal Donnelly's Archbishop Gilday of the Vatican Bank originally occurred 40 minutes into the film: this is now the opening scene, and echoes the sequence in the first Godfather film in which Marlon Brando’s Don Vito holds court in his study as his daughter’s wedding takes place outside. Coppola is inviting us to reflect on how far the Corleone family has come, and yet also how little has fundamentally changed.
The now immediately obvious inescapability of these patterns makes Michael’s quest to redeem the Corleone name all the more tragic, as an entire portfolio of original sins comes back to haunt not just him, but his innocent offspring. His son Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio) is an aspiring opera singer, while Mary is the honorary chair of the Vito Corleone Foundation – a charitable endeavour designed to cleanse the family line.
But again, the family line has other ideas, as Michael’s hot-headed illegitimate nephew Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) embarks on an incestuous relationship with Mary while trying to make his own mark on the New York underworld.
Though the film’s second half has been considerably less tinkered-with than the first, Sofia Coppola’s notorious performance as Mary has been recalibrated to striking effect. Mary remains an awkward, naive and, yes, sometimes annoying presence – yet it’s now clear that this is simply who the character is, rather than a result of actorly ineptitude. Some ungainly moments that could be read either way have been judiciously cut, including a tantrum-like scamper away from her father and brother in Sicily.
The cost of this is a handful of clumsy transitions, but these are a price worth paying, and the film’s climax at the opera house in Palermo can now be savoured wince-free. This magnificent, devastating sequence remains almost untouched, though Coppola has cheekily replaced one moment of violence with a joltingly graphic alternate take. And there is a new, thrilling echo of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman in the film’s closing seconds, which have been subtly but powerfully reworked to turn the series’ repeated blessing for long life, “Cent’anni” – Italian for ‘a hundred years’ – into a kind of existential hex.
Together, the changes feel definitive: to draw an equivalence with Apocalypse Now, it’s a Final Cut as opposed to a Redux, and a vindication for its director after 30 years. Redemption may have eluded Michael Corleone, but his third film was more fortunate.
In cinemas on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 December and on Blu-ray from December 7
Watched the non-recut version a couple of months ago, and it wasn't as bad as I remembered except for Sofia Coppola. I only remember glowing sycophantic reviews of her performance at the time. Still, tempted by this new director's edition.
The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, review: Coppola fixes his greatest botch at last
Part III of the mafia saga has never been loved. Thanks to a sharp recut, both the film and Sofia Coppola’s performance will get their due
www.telegraph.co.uk
Part III of the mafia saga has never been loved. Thanks to a sharp recut, both the film and Sofia Coppola’s performance will get their due...
The one problem with The Godfather: Part III that no amount of re-editing can ever solve is that it isn’t The Godfather or The Godfather: Part II. Over the near-half-century since their making, the first two panels of Francis Ford Coppola’s great American triptych have lost not a microjoule of their ferocity, grandeur and tragic-epic force. Coppola never intended the troubled third instalment – written and shot on a breakneck deadline, some 15 years after the release of the second – to be a continuation of the tale as much as a feature-length epilogue.
He and Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather novels, even came up with a title that framed it as such: The Death of Michael Corleone. But Hollywood marketing being what it is, the studio went with ‘Part III’ instead. What’s more, it had to be sent out to cinemas before Coppola was content he’d entirely made sense in the edit of its operatically heightened plot, involving incest, cursed bloodlines and serpentine Vatican conspiracies.
Thanks to Coppola’s much-publicised decision to cast his (entirely untrained) 18-year-old daughter Sofia – now an Oscar-winning filmmaker herself – in the pivotal role of Mary Corleone, Michael’s own teenage girl, it also arrived trailing the distinct whiff of nepotism, which became a focal point for critical attacks.
The supposed failure of The Godfather: Part III was always overstated. The scorn was tied partly to Coppola’s own fall from commercial and critical grace in the decade beforehand, and partly to the sheer nerve of it not being another masterpiece. But its unfulfilled promise – even on its own terms – must have rankled Coppola, so the director has now recut it into something more closely aligned with his original intentions. Step one was to restore that talismanic standalone title: the film introduces itself with a card which reads “The Godfather, Coda”, but then gives “The Death of Michael Corleone” a screen to itself.
The plot’s broad sweep remains largely unchanged from The Godfather: Part III. Al Pacino’s now middle-aged Michael, sporting a granite-grey crew cut that looks less clippered than chiselled, attempts to take the Corleone family legitimate once and for all via a high-stakes business deal with the Catholic Church. Yet the paths of righteousness only lead him to still-murkier vales of gangsterism and corruption, in Manhattan, Rome and finally Sicily itself.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” runs Pacino’s most famous line, which the actor delivers with a growl that comes up from the ground.
It lands all the more powerfully now, thanks to the smoother opening act that precedes it. The first hour of the film has been comprehensively reordered, lending more agonised oomph to Michael’s plight while helping clarify his motives. (It also juices up the unrest his manoeuvrings inspire among his former associates-slash-rivals, including Joe Mantegna’s ambitious and exhilaratingly unpleasant Joey Zasa.)
The deal struck by Michael with Donal Donnelly's Archbishop Gilday of the Vatican Bank originally occurred 40 minutes into the film: this is now the opening scene, and echoes the sequence in the first Godfather film in which Marlon Brando’s Don Vito holds court in his study as his daughter’s wedding takes place outside. Coppola is inviting us to reflect on how far the Corleone family has come, and yet also how little has fundamentally changed.
The now immediately obvious inescapability of these patterns makes Michael’s quest to redeem the Corleone name all the more tragic, as an entire portfolio of original sins comes back to haunt not just him, but his innocent offspring. His son Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio) is an aspiring opera singer, while Mary is the honorary chair of the Vito Corleone Foundation – a charitable endeavour designed to cleanse the family line.
But again, the family line has other ideas, as Michael’s hot-headed illegitimate nephew Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) embarks on an incestuous relationship with Mary while trying to make his own mark on the New York underworld.
Though the film’s second half has been considerably less tinkered-with than the first, Sofia Coppola’s notorious performance as Mary has been recalibrated to striking effect. Mary remains an awkward, naive and, yes, sometimes annoying presence – yet it’s now clear that this is simply who the character is, rather than a result of actorly ineptitude. Some ungainly moments that could be read either way have been judiciously cut, including a tantrum-like scamper away from her father and brother in Sicily.
The cost of this is a handful of clumsy transitions, but these are a price worth paying, and the film’s climax at the opera house in Palermo can now be savoured wince-free. This magnificent, devastating sequence remains almost untouched, though Coppola has cheekily replaced one moment of violence with a joltingly graphic alternate take. And there is a new, thrilling echo of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman in the film’s closing seconds, which have been subtly but powerfully reworked to turn the series’ repeated blessing for long life, “Cent’anni” – Italian for ‘a hundred years’ – into a kind of existential hex.
Together, the changes feel definitive: to draw an equivalence with Apocalypse Now, it’s a Final Cut as opposed to a Redux, and a vindication for its director after 30 years. Redemption may have eluded Michael Corleone, but his third film was more fortunate.
In cinemas on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 December and on Blu-ray from December 7
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With Hollywood lazily relying on sequels or reimagined movies and prior actors and actresses wanting a pay day I wouldn't be surprised if you saw another one.
Blade Runner. Wall Street. Indiana Jones. Jurassic Park. Top Gun. You know it was over when they sold you a trilogy box set and then suddenly they add another movie.
Blade Runner. Wall Street. Indiana Jones. Jurassic Park. Top Gun. You know it was over when they sold you a trilogy box set and then suddenly they add another movie.
Pimpernel Smith
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I thought the Blade Runner sequel was very good and naff in parts. Indiana Jones hit and miss and hit. Top Gun, definitely not.
formby002
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Top Gun is the gay-est movie of the 80s and I thought that when i first saw in on the big screen.
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Case in point. There is a Matrix 4 next year.
Pimpernel Smith
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Never took to the Matrix. The Wachowski sisters are now saying the original filmed was trans themed.
Pimpernel Smith
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Watched Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen last night, an excellent return to form.
Mathew McConaughey was superb, as was Hugh Grant playing an un-Hugh Grant character, very charming in fact.
Mathew McConaughey was superb, as was Hugh Grant playing an un-Hugh Grant character, very charming in fact.
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I rather liked Michelle Dockery.
formby002
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Not really a preview this. I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind last night on Netflix, a film that I haven't seen since I watched in when it first came out on the pictures in 1978. What a fantastic film it is. I was surprised how many scenes came back to me after 42 years! I would love to watch it again on the big screen.
Roy's (Dreyfuss' character) eldest son would have been about the same age as myself at the time I watched it. Quite touching.
Roy's (Dreyfuss' character) eldest son would have been about the same age as myself at the time I watched it. Quite touching.
Pimpernel Smith
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I'm trying to think of similar situation, the only one I can think of, is John Voight's boxing film The Champ. Only seen it the cinema and I remember wanting to go and see Moonraker, but my father hated the James Bond franchise with a passion, so we went to see The Champ instead. I was very disappointed, but The Champ was good and had me in tears at the end.
Another one I've just remembered is Breaking Away, again from 1979, but I saw it on BBC 2 in 1980/81 and I've never seen it since.
And another: The Million Pound Note with Gregory Peck. I watched it on television must have been the late 1970s and I watched it on one of those classic out of copyright Youtube channels a couple of months back. I remembered quite a few scenes once they started. A brilliant film.
De Slag om de Schelde / Battle of the Scheldt is out next week in the Netherlands:
During the battle, allied troops opened up the shipping route to Antwerp so the port could be used to supply allied forces in north-west Europe. The battle claimed 10,000 lives but was crucial for the liberation of Belgium and the Netherlands. Set in late 1944 and shot in Dutch and English, the film follows the lives of three people involved in the conflict: a young pro-Nazi Dutchman, a stray English glider pilot and a secretary who works for the mayor of Vlissingen and is in the resistance.
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Pimpernel Smith
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Started watching Woody Allen's A Rainy Day in New York, dreadful. As bad as his Match Point film.
So we watched Radio Days instead.
So we watched Radio Days instead.
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Harrison Ford is back for a fifth Indiana Jones - the final instalment.....for now.
Does that mean Shia Labeouf returns as the son?
Does that mean Shia Labeouf returns as the son?
formby002
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^
Jesus Christ he's 78!
Jesus Christ he's 78!
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We are obviously running out of capable actors.
formby002
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No, Hollywood is running out of ideas.
Pimpernel Smith
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With some excellent notable exceptions, they've been pretty dire for the past 30 years. Much more consistent in the 80s, even the pulp was aimed at you and not new demographic markets in China.
formby002
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The 90s was a great period for film, similar to the 70s IMO.
Pimpernel Smith
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I disagree, some classics in there, but overall I considered over rated tat, a prime example Forrest Gump.
formby002
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Take another look at the films released in the 90s. Start with Goodfellas and take it from there...
The 90s was a golden era for film, much like the 70s and for similar reasons....
Pimpernel Smith
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Watched Clint Eastwood's The Mule. Quite good, he can still act and direct, but his voice has gone and he's clearly an OAP now.
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Armageddon.
"I mean, you-you're NASA for cryin' out loud, you put a man on the moon, you're geniuses! You-you're the guys that think this shit up! I'm sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up and somebody backing them up!"
It's the United States of America. They probably have some experimental titanium plated shuttles just ready to go locked up in an underground facility underneath a mountain.
"I mean, you-you're NASA for cryin' out loud, you put a man on the moon, you're geniuses! You-you're the guys that think this shit up! I'm sure you got a team of men sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up and somebody backing them up!"
It's the United States of America. They probably have some experimental titanium plated shuttles just ready to go locked up in an underground facility underneath a mountain.
formby002
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Took Miss F. to watch Wonder Woman 84 yesterday.
She enjoyed it. Me....? Jesus Christ, what utter inept garbage.
These Marvel/DC Comic releases are absolute fucking shite...When I got back home I needed a large Balvenie Doublewood to stabilise my Chi...
She enjoyed it. Me....? Jesus Christ, what utter inept garbage.
These Marvel/DC Comic releases are absolute fucking shite...When I got back home I needed a large Balvenie Doublewood to stabilise my Chi...
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As Ricky Gervais said early in the year, they're all lazy sequels without much acting and a lot of working out and looking great in skin tight costumes. Were you expecting something deep and meaningful in the year 2020?
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downloaded the new wonder woman movie. its really one of the biggest piles of shit in the past 20 years. the whole thing, top to bottom, is just god awful.
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There is a dental clinic around where I live that was and continues to be decked out in Wonder Woman stuff including uniforms for all the staff. They did that shortly after the first movie's release. I wonder if a bad sequel means they will tear it down. I've never watched either but I assume it has something to do with power for women?
Pimpernel Smith
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Ford vs Ferrari, think they nailed the Italian and American corporate/industrialist look, culture and rivalry very well.
Christian Bale's accent was a bit strange and his melanoma looking spot on the top of his nose is unsightly. Surely he can get rid of that ugly looking thing?
Caitriona Balfe's accent had me perplexed, brummie, scouse?
Christian Bale's accent was a bit strange and his melanoma looking spot on the top of his nose is unsightly. Surely he can get rid of that ugly looking thing?
Caitriona Balfe's accent had me perplexed, brummie, scouse?
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Did anyone watch Tenet?
güero
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I enjoyed it a lot. Don't think it's as well thought through as his other movies though.
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Although I shouldn't care about the paltry money it takes to stream it I was wondering if it was on the level of Inception (which I enjoyed) or Dunkirk (which I found was a bit drawn out and drab).