North By Northwest is my number one Hitchcock because it is what I call a ‘seamless entertainment’ which would please an undemanding audience and yet, as soon as one scratches the surface, all this amazing Freudian content spill out. It is this dual nature that does it for me. I know there’s Freudian stuff in most of Hitchcock’s films. I’ve never been troubled by implausibility in the plot of North By Northwest and I think it licks along really well. In addition, it has two fabulous stars in their prime – not Rod Taylor, Anthony Perkins or Tippi Hedren but JAMES MASON AND CARY GRANT!
North By Northwest is my number one Hitchcock because it is what I call a ‘seamless entertainment’ which would please an undemanding audience and yet, as soon as one scratches the surface, all this amazing Freudian content spills out. It is this dual nature that does it for me. I know there’s Freudian stuff in most of Hitchcock’s films. I’ve never been troubled by implausibility in the plot of North By Northwest and I think it licks along really well. In addition, it has two fabulous stars in their prime – not Rod Taylor, Anthony Perkins or Tippi Hedren but JAMES MASON AND CARY GRANT!
I’m a big fan of P T Anderson, and I was excited when I heard about There Will Be Blood, but when I saw it it was a let-down for me. I love Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and most of all Punch-Drunk Love. I really like as well Daniel Day-Lewis, who I think was at his best in In The Name Of The Father, but for me in TWBB his performance was a bit over-wrought. TWBB is a story of an entrepreneur who wasn’t very nice to the people around him. At his best P T Anderson has communicated a shear joy of movie-making (the amazing opening take and the swimming pool scene of Boogie Nights) or the wit of Punch-Drunk Love. With Boogie Nights and Magnolia he is a good inheritor of the Altman influence. Where does TWBB fit into this? What is so good about it?
Roscoe, I didn’t say I disliked TWBB, but I couldn’t share others’ enthusiasm for it.
No, it didn’t sound like a bunch of crap, Shannan. I do know it’s sometimes hard to say why one likes of doesn’t like something, so thanks for sharing your thoughts. There have been films I initially disliked or was indifferent to and was ‘turned around’ on by a bit of help or explanation from a friend or critic. Others I was bowled over by as I watched them but which fell by the wayside on further thought. Maybe with some help I’ll see what’s good in TWBB.
The reviews at DVDBeaver are essentially technical reviews of the DVDs. While there is some comment on the artistic value of the films, the technical comment is what DVDBeaver is about.
I’m in the UK and I enjoy the reviews at www.dvdtimes.co.uk and usually reviews R0, R1 and R2 DVDs. The reviews there are written by well-informed writers, but writers who lack the wayward pretentiousness of many more established critics, and they usually argue fairly coherently whatever it is they want to say. I think DVD reviews are very useful because movie reviewers review the films under time pressure, and the few months of reflection and perspective between the movie’s release and the release of the DVD often allows the DVD’s review ot be more considered and useful.
www.dvd-basen.dk is a review database the collects reviews of DVDs of different regions and helps when making a purchase in choosing between the different regional versions.
Seems a good opportunity to suggest some great ‘forgotten films’ I carry a candle for:-
Who’ll Stop The Rain? (aka Dog Soldiers) (Karel Reisz 1978) – Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld & Michael Moriarty in a great post-Vietnam movie
State of Grace (Phil Joanou 1990) – Irish gangs movie with Sean Penn, Ed Harris, John C Reilly & Gary Oldman and music by Ennio Morricone. Amazing that such a film, with such credits, should be so forgotten, but it has. Oldman once claimed that it contained his best screen performance.
My latest discovery is Quills (Philip Kaufman 2000) in which Geoffrey Rush gives a amazing performance as the Marquis de Sade in an asylum, accompanied by Kate Winslet, Michael Caine and Joaquin Phoenix
Someone in this thread suggested anything by Kore-eda. I would say get hold of Maborosi, one of the great films of all time.
I love The Singer (Quand J’Etais Chanteur) (Xavier Giannoli 2006) in which Gerard Depardieu gives a fantastic return-to-form performance as a provincial crooner (he does his own singing).
Raging Bull, you can’t hold Hitchcock responsible for what others say about his films. Hitchcock films ‘look easy’, but when other directors try to make ‘a Hitchcock’ we see how hard it must be. Just the humour, deeply embedded throughout his work, is inimitable, and he was very good at understanding and toying with the viewer’s expectations. Then there’s the mothers and the Freudian content….
This is a great thread, and I’m pleased to see others share my opinion about Wes Anderson. I loved The Royal Tenebaums, but he’s been in a nosedive since then. I sat agog watching Zissou, wonderng whether anything interesting was ever going to happen, and Darjeeling was a pretty offensive depiction of three Americans rampaging through a picture-postcard India. I’ve just got the wrong type of sense of humour for Anderson.
I’ve Loved You So Long is a pretty solid film in which Kristin Scott Thomas gives an outstanding performance, so it’s a real shame that it has a terrible cop-out ending (can’t say what it is for fear of spoilers).
I once started a thread on another movie forum: “Eyes Wide Shut: Masterpiece or Crap?”. Views on the film were mixed, to say the least. I’m slightly on the crap side, as I find too much of it embarrassing and cheesy. I think Lolita deserves more recognition, as it is a pretty unfilmable novel and Kubrick kept its essence of the novel and made a very good film of it, IMO, and the film stands up very well today. For me 2001 is at the top of the list.
I always go to www.allmovie.com. Whenever I find myself at IMDB it seems hugely inferior. For reviews and opinions Rottentomatoes and maybe Metacritic.
The Oscars is a rubbishy trade show in support of foursquare marketable commodities, not art. They can still be amusing in the way a horserace can be amusing to someone who knows nothing about horses – have a quick flutter, laugh about it and move on.
Ford directed about 84 films between 1917 and 1966, including The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, My Darling Clementine and Stagecoach. Leone directed seven films between 1961 and 1984.including Once Upon a Time in the West and the Eastwood trilogy. Whatever one’s personal tastes are, it is surely no contest.
I was excited when I first discovered these forums, but I’ve drifted away from them because for my taste there were too many list-type threads, or other threads, such as Rate The Last Movie You Saw, or Who Is The Best Living Director?, that encouraged brief or one-word answers, and I was getting the impression that many here were more interested in asserting their opinions than in engaging with others. Just saying that one’s favourite director is Scorsese is BORING; it becomes interesting when we argue a case and say why we think what we think. We need ARGUMENT, DISCUSSION and INTERACTION. Needless to say, when I say argument I don’t mean rudeness. Sorry for the rant.
This is a very interesting question and I’ve often thought about it, and for me I’m not sure of the answer. Recently I’ve become more disenchanted with critics, so I’m even less sure how I choose films. It is something like osmosis, I have certain expectations of certain actors, directors, and the films of certain countries, etc, based on my long interest in cinema, and in addition I go through phases when I want to catch up on a certain director, etc. Unlike many of my friends I’m as happy to re-watch films I like as I am to see a new film, and I’m as happy seeing old as new. Then, sometimes, a film I’ve seen pops up in my thoughts, and I think ’I’ll watch that this evening’. Some favs I’ve watched half a dozen or so times. At one stage I was watching All That Jazz every three months or so, and I’m just about to re-watch the Godfather trilogy.
I really like The Grissom Gang, and I don’t understand why it isn’t better known. There are plenty of films that show gangsters as impressive guys keeping ahead of the game, with good suits, nice houses, attractive wives/girlfriends, etc, until they get their comuppance towards the end (eg The Godfather), so I quite welcome films that depict them as simply mad and bad, like The Grissom Gang does. Even as I write this I can think of other ‘mad and bad’ gangsters, such as those in Ferrara’s The Funeral, or those in Peckinpah’s Ride The High Country, or Richard Conte in The Big Combo, but, Aldrich being Aldrich, the idea is pushed as far as it will go, and having them led by their mad mother is a nice touch.
Acting performances that have really stuck in my mind are:-
1: Marlon Brando in The Godfather, although I think as much credit should go to Coppola for having cast Brando, when Brando’s name was mud, and he had to fight his backers to keep Brando in the film.
2: Julianne Moore in The Hours. She shares the lead with Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman and, while having very little to do other than be a bored housewife in her kitchen (she bakes a black cake!), she walks away with the film.
3: Daniel Day-Lewis in In The Name Of The Father. Not an outstanding film, but it contains an unbelievably believable performance from Day-Lewis, better than his performance in There Will Be Blood, in my opinion.
4: Natalie Portman in Leon. I’ve given up hoping she will ever be as well cast or as good again.
5: Penélope Cruz in Elegy. Elegy is a recent film that slipped by and most people missed it. It is a very good film and it has the performance from Cruz that persuaded me that she is a serious actress, and not just a beautiful actress who takes parts where she plays aspects of herself.
There’s something in a film I’ve thought about quite a lot, and just can’t understand. It’s in North By Northwest (a film I love). There’s a scene, very near to the end of the film where, after all the travails of the plot, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint kiss each other. They are standing up, and as they kiss Cary Grant fondles her head, running his hands all over it. I know I used the work ‘fondle’, but don’t get excited, it’s not like that, it just looks to me a bit eye-catching and bizarre. I wonder whether Grant was directed to do it, or it’s just his way of kissing, or it’s just me.
I love Antonioni, and this is the Antonioni film I love most. Pure poetry. Yes, I know it has a great ending, but the ending of The Passenger is pretty amazing, too. L’Eclisse seems to me to distil the pure essence of Antonioni, although I’ve probably watched La Notte more often – I guess I just love Jean Moreau’s sulky look. (I don’t understand what stops Criterion from publishing La Notte, as they already have L’Eclisse and L’Avventura). I think many Antonioni films have ‘cheesy’ scenes, such as the sex romp in Blow-Up, or the nymphomaniac scene in La Notte. For me, L’Eclisse has no cheesy scenes. Some commentator, when asked what L’Eclisse was ‘about’ said ‘architecture’. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
I think that when Nichoson isn’t good he gets hammy and mannered. His performance in Chinatown is borderline. He is past his peak but was fine in About Schmidt and The Pledge and terrible in The Departed. I love Five Easy Pieces, although I think Nicholson’s performance in it, while good, is slightly laboured. His best film where he doesn’t play himself is The King Of Marvin Gardens, otherwise it’s The Last Detail and Cuckoo. Cuckoo is simply an enduring masterpiece. Both films are impossible to imagine without Nicholson.
Top 5 Hitchcock about 3 years ago
North By Northwest is my number one Hitchcock because it is what I call a ‘seamless entertainment’ which would please an undemanding audience and yet, as soon as one scratches the surface, all this amazing Freudian content spill out. It is this dual nature that does it for me. I know there’s Freudian stuff in most of Hitchcock’s films. I’ve never been troubled by implausibility in the plot of North By Northwest and I think it licks along really well. In addition, it has two fabulous stars in their prime – not Rod Taylor, Anthony Perkins or Tippi Hedren but JAMES MASON AND CARY GRANT!
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Top 5 Hitchcock about 3 years ago
North By Northwest is my number one Hitchcock because it is what I call a ‘seamless entertainment’ which would please an undemanding audience and yet, as soon as one scratches the surface, all this amazing Freudian content spills out. It is this dual nature that does it for me. I know there’s Freudian stuff in most of Hitchcock’s films. I’ve never been troubled by implausibility in the plot of North By Northwest and I think it licks along really well. In addition, it has two fabulous stars in their prime – not Rod Taylor, Anthony Perkins or Tippi Hedren but JAMES MASON AND CARY GRANT!
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Masterpieces By Mediocre Directors about 3 years ago
This thread has come hopelessly off the rails, with names such as Coppola, PT Anderson and David Fincher being taken as mediocre directors.
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What's so good about There Will B Blood? about 3 years ago
I’m a big fan of P T Anderson, and I was excited when I heard about There Will Be Blood, but when I saw it it was a let-down for me. I love Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and most of all Punch-Drunk Love. I really like as well Daniel Day-Lewis, who I think was at his best in In The Name Of The Father, but for me in TWBB his performance was a bit over-wrought. TWBB is a story of an entrepreneur who wasn’t very nice to the people around him. At his best P T Anderson has communicated a shear joy of movie-making (the amazing opening take and the swimming pool scene of Boogie Nights) or the wit of Punch-Drunk Love. With Boogie Nights and Magnolia he is a good inheritor of the Altman influence. Where does TWBB fit into this? What is so good about it?
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What's so good about There Will B Blood? about 3 years ago
Roscoe, I didn’t say I disliked TWBB, but I couldn’t share others’ enthusiasm for it.
No, it didn’t sound like a bunch of crap, Shannan. I do know it’s sometimes hard to say why one likes of doesn’t like something, so thanks for sharing your thoughts. There have been films I initially disliked or was indifferent to and was ‘turned around’ on by a bit of help or explanation from a friend or critic. Others I was bowled over by as I watched them but which fell by the wayside on further thought. Maybe with some help I’ll see what’s good in TWBB.
Go to Comment
Best site for DVD reviews? about 3 years ago
The reviews at DVDBeaver are essentially technical reviews of the DVDs. While there is some comment on the artistic value of the films, the technical comment is what DVDBeaver is about.
I’m in the UK and I enjoy the reviews at www.dvdtimes.co.uk and usually reviews R0, R1 and R2 DVDs. The reviews there are written by well-informed writers, but writers who lack the wayward pretentiousness of many more established critics, and they usually argue fairly coherently whatever it is they want to say. I think DVD reviews are very useful because movie reviewers review the films under time pressure, and the few months of reflection and perspective between the movie’s release and the release of the DVD often allows the DVD’s review ot be more considered and useful.
www.dvd-basen.dk is a review database the collects reviews of DVDs of different regions and helps when making a purchase in choosing between the different regional versions.
Go to Comment
recommend me a film! about 3 years ago
Seems a good opportunity to suggest some great ‘forgotten films’ I carry a candle for:-
Who’ll Stop The Rain? (aka Dog Soldiers) (Karel Reisz 1978) – Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld & Michael Moriarty in a great post-Vietnam movie
State of Grace (Phil Joanou 1990) – Irish gangs movie with Sean Penn, Ed Harris, John C Reilly & Gary Oldman and music by Ennio Morricone. Amazing that such a film, with such credits, should be so forgotten, but it has. Oldman once claimed that it contained his best screen performance.
My latest discovery is Quills (Philip Kaufman 2000) in which Geoffrey Rush gives a amazing performance as the Marquis de Sade in an asylum, accompanied by Kate Winslet, Michael Caine and Joaquin Phoenix
Someone in this thread suggested anything by Kore-eda. I would say get hold of Maborosi, one of the great films of all time.
I love The Singer (Quand J’Etais Chanteur) (Xavier Giannoli 2006) in which Gerard Depardieu gives a fantastic return-to-form performance as a provincial crooner (he does his own singing).
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Who do you think the most overrated director is? about 3 years ago
Raging Bull, you can’t hold Hitchcock responsible for what others say about his films. Hitchcock films ‘look easy’, but when other directors try to make ‘a Hitchcock’ we see how hard it must be. Just the humour, deeply embedded throughout his work, is inimitable, and he was very good at understanding and toying with the viewer’s expectations. Then there’s the mothers and the Freudian content….
This is a great thread, and I’m pleased to see others share my opinion about Wes Anderson. I loved The Royal Tenebaums, but he’s been in a nosedive since then. I sat agog watching Zissou, wonderng whether anything interesting was ever going to happen, and Darjeeling was a pretty offensive depiction of three Americans rampaging through a picture-postcard India. I’ve just got the wrong type of sense of humour for Anderson.
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So what's the film that your friends loved and you thought was rubbish. about 3 years ago
Yes, well, I’ll go with There Will Be Blood, too.
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When you see yet again that Citizen Kane is the best film ever. What film do you secretly think of? about 3 years ago
For me it’s Tokyo Story. So opposite to CK in every way, and SO moving….
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Who do you think the most overrated director is? about 3 years ago
Now I’ve seen The Wrestler I’ve forgiven Darren Aronofsky for Requiem For A Dream.
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who is the greatest living filmmaker? about 3 years ago
Toss-up between Abbas Kiarostami and Hou Hsiao Hsien
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GREAT MOVIES WITH BAD ENDINGS... about 3 years ago
I’ve Loved You So Long is a pretty solid film in which Kristin Scott Thomas gives an outstanding performance, so it’s a real shame that it has a terrible cop-out ending (can’t say what it is for fear of spoilers).
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What modern films are great? about 3 years ago
That’s a good list, M. I was shocked that this thread had got this far without a mention of 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days.
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which books are unfilmable? about 3 years ago
The Bible
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How could such a great director make such a lousy movie? about 3 years ago
What about Michael Ritchie? He made The Candidate and Smile, and since then just dross.
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Modern Westerns about 3 years ago
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that The Right Stuff is a western with supersonic aeroplanes.
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K.U.B.R.I.C.K. about 3 years ago
I once started a thread on another movie forum: “Eyes Wide Shut: Masterpiece or Crap?”. Views on the film were mixed, to say the least. I’m slightly on the crap side, as I find too much of it embarrassing and cheesy. I think Lolita deserves more recognition, as it is a pretty unfilmable novel and Kubrick kept its essence of the novel and made a very good film of it, IMO, and the film stands up very well today. For me 2001 is at the top of the list.
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What is the best movie reference site for a 'quick dip'? about 3 years ago
I always go to www.allmovie.com. Whenever I find myself at IMDB it seems hugely inferior. For reviews and opinions Rottentomatoes and maybe Metacritic.
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most overrated oscar performances or robberies about 3 years ago
The Oscars is a rubbishy trade show in support of foursquare marketable commodities, not art. They can still be amusing in the way a horserace can be amusing to someone who knows nothing about horses – have a quick flutter, laugh about it and move on.
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When I say "A Perfect Film", What One Film Pops Into Your Head First? about 3 years ago
I’m slighty torn between North By Northwest and Tokyo Story.
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The Western: Ford or Leone about 3 years ago
Ford directed about 84 films between 1917 and 1966, including The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, My Darling Clementine and Stagecoach. Leone directed seven films between 1961 and 1984.including Once Upon a Time in the West and the Eastwood trilogy. Whatever one’s personal tastes are, it is surely no contest.
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Which famous actors don't have the presence or charisma to carry a film? about 3 years ago
My candidates:-
Gregory Peck
Charlotte Rampling
Rutger Hauer
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Work harder to make this forums better about 3 years ago
I was excited when I first discovered these forums, but I’ve drifted away from them because for my taste there were too many list-type threads, or other threads, such as Rate The Last Movie You Saw, or Who Is The Best Living Director?, that encouraged brief or one-word answers, and I was getting the impression that many here were more interested in asserting their opinions than in engaging with others. Just saying that one’s favourite director is Scorsese is BORING; it becomes interesting when we argue a case and say why we think what we think. We need ARGUMENT, DISCUSSION and INTERACTION. Needless to say, when I say argument I don’t mean rudeness. Sorry for the rant.
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How do you choose what to watch? about 3 years ago
This is a very interesting question and I’ve often thought about it, and for me I’m not sure of the answer. Recently I’ve become more disenchanted with critics, so I’m even less sure how I choose films. It is something like osmosis, I have certain expectations of certain actors, directors, and the films of certain countries, etc, based on my long interest in cinema, and in addition I go through phases when I want to catch up on a certain director, etc. Unlike many of my friends I’m as happy to re-watch films I like as I am to see a new film, and I’m as happy seeing old as new. Then, sometimes, a film I’ve seen pops up in my thoughts, and I think ’I’ll watch that this evening’. Some favs I’ve watched half a dozen or so times. At one stage I was watching All That Jazz every three months or so, and I’m just about to re-watch the Godfather trilogy.
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ALDRICH about 3 years ago
I really like The Grissom Gang, and I don’t understand why it isn’t better known. There are plenty of films that show gangsters as impressive guys keeping ahead of the game, with good suits, nice houses, attractive wives/girlfriends, etc, until they get their comuppance towards the end (eg The Godfather), so I quite welcome films that depict them as simply mad and bad, like The Grissom Gang does. Even as I write this I can think of other ‘mad and bad’ gangsters, such as those in Ferrara’s The Funeral, or those in Peckinpah’s Ride The High Country, or Richard Conte in The Big Combo, but, Aldrich being Aldrich, the idea is pushed as far as it will go, and having them led by their mad mother is a nice touch.
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Top performances of all time. about 3 years ago
Acting performances that have really stuck in my mind are:-
1: Marlon Brando in The Godfather, although I think as much credit should go to Coppola for having cast Brando, when Brando’s name was mud, and he had to fight his backers to keep Brando in the film.
2: Julianne Moore in The Hours. She shares the lead with Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman and, while having very little to do other than be a bored housewife in her kitchen (she bakes a black cake!), she walks away with the film.
3: Daniel Day-Lewis in In The Name Of The Father. Not an outstanding film, but it contains an unbelievably believable performance from Day-Lewis, better than his performance in There Will Be Blood, in my opinion.
4: Natalie Portman in Leon. I’ve given up hoping she will ever be as well cast or as good again.
5: Penélope Cruz in Elegy. Elegy is a recent film that slipped by and most people missed it. It is a very good film and it has the performance from Cruz that persuaded me that she is a serious actress, and not just a beautiful actress who takes parts where she plays aspects of herself.
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Favourite snippet (some quirky little thing a character does) about 3 years ago
There’s something in a film I’ve thought about quite a lot, and just can’t understand. It’s in North By Northwest (a film I love). There’s a scene, very near to the end of the film where, after all the travails of the plot, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint kiss each other. They are standing up, and as they kiss Cary Grant fondles her head, running his hands all over it. I know I used the work ‘fondle’, but don’t get excited, it’s not like that, it just looks to me a bit eye-catching and bizarre. I wonder whether Grant was directed to do it, or it’s just his way of kissing, or it’s just me.
Go to Comment
Antonioni (and DiVenanzo) L'eclisse about 3 years ago
I love Antonioni, and this is the Antonioni film I love most. Pure poetry. Yes, I know it has a great ending, but the ending of The Passenger is pretty amazing, too. L’Eclisse seems to me to distil the pure essence of Antonioni, although I’ve probably watched La Notte more often – I guess I just love Jean Moreau’s sulky look. (I don’t understand what stops Criterion from publishing La Notte, as they already have L’Eclisse and L’Avventura). I think many Antonioni films have ‘cheesy’ scenes, such as the sex romp in Blow-Up, or the nymphomaniac scene in La Notte. For me, L’Eclisse has no cheesy scenes. Some commentator, when asked what L’Eclisse was ‘about’ said ‘architecture’. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
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ESSENTIAL JACK NICHOLSON about 3 years ago
I think that when Nichoson isn’t good he gets hammy and mannered. His performance in Chinatown is borderline. He is past his peak but was fine in About Schmidt and The Pledge and terrible in The Departed. I love Five Easy Pieces, although I think Nicholson’s performance in it, while good, is slightly laboured. His best film where he doesn’t play himself is The King Of Marvin Gardens, otherwise it’s The Last Detail and Cuckoo. Cuckoo is simply an enduring masterpiece. Both films are impossible to imagine without Nicholson.
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