What movie are you viewing at the moment?

[Brecht]

Prince of the City (1981)



Trailer

NYPD narcotics detective Danny Ciello works in the Special Investigations Unit. He and his partners are called "Princes of the City" because they're given free rein to do pretty much everything they deem necessary to crack cases. Given this privileged position, they award themselves by stealing money from dope dealers or buying information from junkies by supplying them with seized drugs. After he beats up a junkie, Danny is haunted by feelings of guilt and is soon approached by internal affairs and federal prosecutors who are investigating police corruption. Danny agrees to cooperate as long as he doesn't have to turn in his partners but it doesn't work like that.

Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City is a much overlooked gem. I suppose it was too New Hollywood for an era already dominated by Spielberg/Lucas-style blockbusters. But it's also unnecessary overlong (almost three hours), reaching a point when it begins to test the viewer's patience. There's a large cast of good performers which raises the question why Treat Williams was chosen for the lead role. I don't mean to be a smartass as I'm just a viewer like everyone else and not a film critic but there's not one convincing second in his performance. This was definitely a challenging role and Treat Williams was pretty much overacting all the time.

[Sir Honkers]

Despicable Me 1&2. My wife loves a villain who secretly has a heart of gold and I had a few chuckles...well a lot actually.

[scoundrel]

Yet another Hallmark movie - I probably need therapy, but I couldn't give a shit.

There are only so many plot-lines. This one is the love stories of mutually antagonistic characters, not a million miles distant from the premise of the Shakespeare comedies The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing, in which men and women who constantly quarrel at the drop of a hat gradually come together and reconcile. The charm of this model lies in the opportunity for character development and a little bit of psychological depth.

Rachel Leigh Cook, who also co-wrote and co-produced the film, plays the attractive but introverted and slightly arrogant bookworm heroine. Mary Campbell runs her retired parents' bookstore and is deeply angst because the business is failing and she doesn't know what to do; only that unless she does something she will be forced to close up quite soon. She is intensely fascinated by books and literature as an art form and, with the help of her younger brother, she runs a weekly book club for like-minded people, discussing classics such as The Great Gatsby. But this isn't going to repair the balance sheet.

Her first positive and sensible step is to appeal to a professional PR executive who is both an old friend and in debt to Mary for past favours. All the obvious promotional strategics require cash outlay, which Mary simply can't support; but Janet Dunleavy (Sandy Sidhu) is realistic and supportive, pointing out that no client ever comes to her if things are great, but only ever turns up if things are broken. Janet is a fixer, and she likes a challenge; Mary has come to the right shop.

One of Janet's paying clients is the city's ice hocky team: it was filmed in Vancouver BTW, but no city or country is specified in the script and we could just as easily be in Portland or Seattle or anywhere on the Pacific North West coast. One of the team's star players is a persistent jerk who has turned being sent off and suspended into an art form, because he simply cannot hold his tongue if he thinks the referee has made a bad decision.

To make matters a little bit worse, Adam Claybourne (Niall Matter in what I think is a jolly good acting performance) is an idiot off the pitch as well. The team manager is a seriously hot thirty-something lady, not much older than him (Tammy Gillis plays Erica, another nicely judged half-serious, half comic performance and frankly she is well hot) and about five years ago she and Adam were an item. Not anymore; Adam's never ending puerile behaviour became too much for Erica, who is sternly practical and sensible, though sometimes humane. She dismissed Adam from her life and from the team, but has relented just enough to agree with the team owner, her father, and allow Adam to transfer back to the team, because even though he is getting old to be a top flight ice hockey player, he is gifted and Erica reckons that anyone who is good enough is young enough. As the film goes on, it becomes apparent that Erica is not totally closing the door to other options either. But the histrionics and sendings off are as bad as they ever were and Erica has decided that the last chance saloon is now open. This is where Janet Dunleavy and her firm come in.

Adam is a celebrity and has a fan base, even though he is unpopular due to being a hardy-perennial Captain Stupid. As Janet points out, people don't like him but they enjoy his playing on the ice rink and they want to like him, if he would only meet them halfway and try to be likable. Its a bit like the John McEnroe problem; a really good player who just cant resist the urge to fuck people off. Janet sees two opportunities; one is to humanise Adam's public image, and the other is to finance and support the rehabilitation of Mary's struggling independent bookstore and make it viable again, in which Adam as a celebrity "sponsor" and endorser could play a crucial role.

The trouble is, Mary and Adam have met once before, and it didn't go well. Adam thinks all bookstores should be naturally be coffee shops and Mary is determined not to sell coffee etc, and (which maybe was a bit mean) she is drinking her own home made coffee in the shop and won't even make a cup for Adam gratis when he asks nicely after having randomly bought a book on how to croquet. Adam was supercillious at first and rubbed her up the wrong way, but she is not innocent of blame either. But there is a very pleasing comic sequence with inter-cut scenes in which Janet deploys high calibre fast talking skills in order to overcome their mutual anatgonism just enough that they will agree to with gritted teeth to work together.

Predictably enough, the new partnership does not run smoothly. For example, one of Janet's wheezes is to have Mary's bookstore nominally sponsor the local junior high school ice hockey team and have Adam use his enforced spare time under suspension to coach it. Mary knows almost nothing about ice hockey but cannot resist the urge to participate in the first coaching session when she should stand aside, mainly because she strongly suspects Adam will introduce innocent childrens' minds to his own non-Corinthian ideas about sport. But this scene is her first discovery that Adam is not totally a jerk; for Adam, the team comes before personal problems and she is a bit humbled when he sets the better example. Adam turns out both to be very good with kids and to have simple principles and values she is forced to respect. On the other hand, Adam's bloody-minded impulsiveness remains entrenched and he manages to spoil his early progress by dissing the referee again at the first school match, while Mary silently looks for a hole in the ground to swallow her up.

For their next trick, they manage to quarrel in public at two successive book events, which is counter-productive for Adam's image rebuilding but starts to bring attention to them from gossip columnists who are quick to sniff out the possibility of a romantic entanglement; partly because Mary treats Adam like an errant boyfriend needing to be disciplined and he doesn't discourage this.
Little by little, they form a closer bond and begin to realise that there is more to all this than marketing and PR and in fact they have things in common and dreams in common. Adam is a gadfly who has never been settled in any team let alone any relationship; Mary finds out that he is in fact rather damaged and vulnerable, a product of the revolving door foster home system, and correctly deduces that he leaves first in case he is made to leave later. This softens her heart towards him considerably.

Meanwhile Adam deduces that Mary is very family-oriented, and ultimately wants to marry and have the stereotypical home with children and white picket fence. The book store is her family's business and this is why she is so emotionally committed to it; it is not really about money at all, but about family and continuity; and Mary is rather unselfishly forfeiting other things which she would like to have because family comes first. One day, the book store will pass into the hands of Mary's children, if she is blessed. But this scheme requires love and commitment from a man, and part of the film is about Adam making his own decisions concerning love and priorities, in which his own whims can no longer take precedence to his duty.

Adam is sternly tested by Erica, the team manager, who would rather like to dally with him some more and is willing to play dirty pool, deliberately imposing clashing commitments by force of team discipline to break up his schedule with Mary and undermine their newly forming relationship, and a key part of the ending is how gently and elegantly he defies the woman he used to love in order to show love and commitment to his new flame; and how sporting Erica is because she recognises that her jerk former boyfriend is learning not to be a jerk anymore. Also, Adam's best friend and roommate on the team is a very well set up chap who is not at all unwilling to be dallied with by a confident and assertive and very attractive lady in her early thirties who would like to squired by a man who knows how make clear to a lady that she is only as safe as she wants to be and no safer than that. Erica was going to fire Adam for defying team orders, leaving the evening party and attending Mary's crucial book store anniversary party instead; she is inclined to be jealous. But when he decides he will face this punishment and go get his woman, Erica relents a little bit. Provided this is the Real Thing and Adam is on a life changing mission, Erica can live with it. Adam's roommate is in the room; Erica may well still enjoy a very pleasant end to the evening and no harm done to anyone. She is willing (conditionally) to let Adam go in peace. On Monday they will discuss Adam's future in the team, but it might not be dismissal because Erica is not really all that miffed and there is something new in Adam which she likes, even if she isn't going to get it for herself. Maybe they can still be friends.

Hallmark financed the project as one of four films for their winterfest season. Ice hockey is a winter sport of course. The film has a bit of a Norman Rockwell Christmas card feel to it visually, but has a little of spirit and edge which save it from being too comfortable and saccharine. I have seen it twice now and that's fine.

[Brecht]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

I probably need therapy

You need to get laid ffs...

Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (1957)



Excerpt

Hamburg, 1944: a waitress is murdered and her boyfriend, Willi Keun (Werner Peters), arrested. But the real killer is the half-witted Bruno Lüdke (Mario Adorf). The case comes to the attention of Detective Axel Kersten (Claus Holm) from Berlin. He discovers a series of similar murders that span over a period of eleven years, assuming the perpetrator might be a demented serial killer. As the case turns into a politically delicate matter, the SS is brought on board to help catch Lüdke. Kersten's liaison is Gruppenführer Rossdorf (Hannes Messemer) who is interested in Lüdke's apprehension for reasons of "racial hygiene". Proving that the murders were committed by a mentally challenged person might help passing a law that would enable the final extermination of the handicapped.

In 1952 and after a successful career in Hollywood, noir master Robert Siodmak decided to return to his native Germany. The Devil Strikes at Night (as it is known to English-speaking audiences) is based on a series of articles written by Will Berthold and published in the Münchner Illustrierte paper. Bruno Lüdke admitted to a number of murders and was dubbed "the worst serial killer in the history of crime in Germany" when in fact he didn't commit any of them. He died in 1944 in Vienna, probably from the consequences of human experiments.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Brecht

You need to get laid ffs...

Women terrify me, Brecht. It's like meeting the Borg.

[neo2008]

An Eye for Beauty









I enjoyed this film for what it was a view of the beauty of life,love,relationships,friendships and the world itself ,and the opposites of beauty death and betrayal.It meanders here and there but i loved the casual feel of it and it's characters,i know some people absolutely hated this film but it appealed to me throughout its hour and 46 minute run time.

Scale of 1-10 an 8





JOSIE






Beautiful sweet-talking stranger Josie (Sophie Turner) struts into a small town with a secret to bad it's a lame and predictable secret !! Meandering and dull for the most part i got a couple of unintended laughs from it and Turner looks great but not even worth renting.

Scale of 1-10 a 1

[Wendigo]

Raiders of the Living Dead (1986)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138050/


A massive 2.2/10 on imdb - movie snobs

Opening with a hostage situation in a nuclear power plant the cops send in super trooper who makes hard work of handling a couple of goons

Cut to grandpa's home and he asks his nerdy grandson to fix his laserdisc player for him, the brat however manages to turn it into a laser weapon much to the disgust of his pet rat

Another cut to a newspaper reporter and his colleague who get a lead on some strange happenings on a remote island. He soon finds tout that a local scientist has been creating zombies.

Tie the last two parts together and the nerdy kid builds a weapon and with gramps goes a hunting the dead .... what's not to like


Love the theme tune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPA4JErpvnQ

clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbGYCDACp5w


movie pt 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlcZp9iJ74c





almost universally panned but it's one of my favourite films

[scoundrel]

I never followed the 1970s TV series, which I think used to be shown on BBC2 occasionally; so I didn't have any particular preconceptions.

This film has some fairly good actors in it but mostly they are wasted. Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Friends of course) has a shallow and silly part which suits him perfectly as the all-balls-and-no-brains spacecraft pilot, Major West. Just occasionally Major West shows he isn't empty of human spirit, most notably in a nice little interlude when the cute and unattached adult Robinson daughter [Heather Graham as Dr Judy Robinson] is overwhelmed and disoriented and frankly demoralised by the spectacle of an alien planet's night sky. Major West explains that this happened in history to the earliest European explorers who ventured into the Southern Hemisphere, and emulates the earlier mariners by inventing new constellations - Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny. This is just a little bit more sensitivity and more empathy than normal and totally in character, because naturally Major West has a professional interest in navigation. Of course he spoils it by making an unsubtle pass at the girl and getting a glass of water poured over him.

The two child actors playing the Robinson children are fine. None of the other adult players is at all bad, but the show stealer is certainly Gary Oldman as the sly and treacherous Dr Smith, a sabateur caught on the spaceship he intended to destroy and forced to seek a tenuous truce as a prisoner of people who know he tried to murder them. Oldman brings out the extremely dark humour of his character's personality, the man's cheerful acceptance of his own wickedness and remarkably accurate assessment of the individual traits of his captors. For entirely selfish reasons which he does not bother to pass off as anything other than totally selfish, Dr Smith saves the party more than once; and to their bitter annoyance he is simply too useful to shoot, even though its all his fault they are lost in space anyway.

I reckon about 5/10 and most of that because I thought the cast was not too bad.

[Sir Honkers]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

I never followed the 1970s TV series, which I think used to be shown on BBC2 occasionally; so I didn't have any particular preconceptions.

This film has some fairly good actors in it but mostly they are wasted. Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Friends of course) has a shallow and silly part which suits him perfectly as the all-balls-and-no-brains spacecraft pilot, Major West. Just occasionally Major West shows he isn't empty of human spirit, most notably in a nice little interlude when the cute and unattached adult Robinson daughter [Heather Graham as Dr Judy Robinson] is overwhelmed and disoriented and frankly demoralised by the spectacle of an alien planet's night sky. Major West explains that this happened in history to the earliest European explorers who ventured into the Southern Hemisphere, and emulates the earlier mariners by inventing new constellations - Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny. This is just a little bit more sensitivity and more empathy than normal and totally in character, because naturally Major West has a professional interest in navigation. Of course he spoils it by making an unsubtle pass at the girl and getting a glass of water poured over him.

The two child actors playing the Robinson children are fine. None of the other adult players is at all bad, but the show stealer is certainly Gary Oldman as the sly and treacherous Dr Smith, a sabateur caught on the spaceship he intended to destroy and forced to seek a tenuous truce as a prisoner of people who know he tried to murder them. Oldman brings out the extremely dark humour of his character's personality, the man's cheerful acceptance of his own wickedness and remarkably accurate assessment of the individual traits of his captors. For entirely selfish reasons which he does not bother to pass off as anything other than totally selfish, Dr Smith saves the party more than once; and to their bitter annoyance he is simply too useful to shoot, even though its all his fault they are lost in space anyway.

I reckon about 5/10 and most of that because I thought the cast was not too bad.

It's passing strange, but I think I'm the only person on the entire planet who likes this film. I consistently give it 10 'Danger Will Robinson's' up and having seen it a number of times, I still don't get why it's so villified. IMHO, one of the best scifis ever.

[Wendigo]

The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3289956/


Brian cox and Emile Hirsch, play a father and son both coroners who are tasked with solving the death of a young woman whose naked body is found buried in a crime scene.
The autopsy gets more sinister as they uncover not just a series of shocking facts about the state of the body, it nicely builds up the tension as a supernatural element slowly starts to emerge.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtTAhXuiRTc