Favourite Films

[Graham Breeze]

... you can always wonder at the size of Claudia Cardinale's eyes...

Thinking of whom... tonight I shall be watching Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's Chinatown having just finished, possibly the outstanding film book of 2020, The Big Goodbye. Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (by Sam Wasson) which is a film book like no other. Dunaway was always a handful - she deigned not to flush the toilet in her trailer when filming and Polanski, well he did plead guilty to raping and sodomising a 13 year old before fleeing the USA to avoid justice and live in France, and Jack Nicholson was no stranger to cocaine: but it's the art that matters. After all nobody has ever said Wagner was a nice man to know.

[noel]

Thank you.

There isn't much of a shoot out but Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid directed by Sam Peckinpah is pretty good in its way; and is the only western I have ever bought on DVD. (Well actually I have two versions, one being the "Director's Cut" - although the Director was dead by the time that version was reconstructed).

I've seen a few Peckinpah films. Notably The Wild Bunch, which I suspect I would find too violent these days. Also Straw Dogs, which was banned until 2002 and is also very violent. I was surprised on looking through Peckinpah's wikipedia's filmography that he also directed Convoy!

I'll check out Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid next time it comes around.

[Graham Breeze]

I've seen a few Peckinpah films. Notably The Wild Bunch, which I suspect I would find too violent these days. Also Straw Dogs, which was banned until 2002 and is also very violent. I was surprised on looking through Peckinpah's wikipedia's filmography that he also directed Convoy!

I'll check out Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid next time it comes around.

Peckinpah was not a nice man. He was an alcoholic, uncontrollable by studios, he used to shoot guns on set to make a point, often unemployable,...and yet Guns In The Afternoon is elegiac, The Wild Bunch was the first US film to illustrate that when a large piece of hot lead tears into a body it makes a mess.

Peckinpah would be happy to film a real rape if he thought it made his film better.

My recollection is that Convoy was a joke that he did for the money. I have only seen it once.

I once saw Sam being interviewed live on BBC2 "Late Night Line-Up". He came on with a bottle of whiskey and swigged from it during the interview. To say the interviewer was non-plussed doesn't quite capture the scene.

[Graham Breeze]

Thinking of whom... tonight I shall be watching Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's Chinatown

Incidentally there is an intriguing cream coloured car driven by Faye Dunaway (in character) which I looked up on the International Movie Car Database which identifies 16 cars in the film in detail. It was a 1938 Packard Twelve.

But isn't it interesting that a Database exists solely to identify cars used in films?

My life has been so sheltered.

[Graham Breeze]

... the deeper issues that are at the core of films like Red River....

Having opined on Red River I watched it again.

Then I looked at one of the reference books I sometimes consult:

"magnificent
"one of the greatest achievements of American cinema
"rich masterpiece
"John Wayne's finest performance
"Hollywood film making at its highest level".

It was made 72 years ago, so before Hollywood descended into making serial comics for children and teenagers, and I don't think, in its genre, it has ever been surpassed.

It was written by Borden Chase, the music is by Dimitri Tiomkin and it was directed by Howard Hawks who I think was the best of the "jobbing" Hollywood directors. Red River is his masterpiece and is a Hollywood masterpiece.

[Travs]

Couple of films watched over the past couple of days...

Midway: good
Great Escape 2: not so

[noel]

How to train your dragon 3: OK, but not quite as good as the other two.

[Fellbeast]

I’m really liking South Korean films nowadays. Parasite and the Handmaiden are completely brilliant.

Parasite has to be one of the most beautifully filmed movies ever made and it’s just so so clever and funny in a black humour sort of way.

And before you say, although the handmaiden revolves around a lesbian love affair, it’s that affair, because nobody expected or planned for it, that causes all the double and triple dealing in the film which is really what it’s all about. Another really clever, funny and occasionally gruesome film that you can’t really predict how it will end until you get there

[Graham Breeze]

I recently bought the "special" edition DVD of Point Blank directed by John Boorman in 1967.

I saw it at the time of release (so in that endangered species known as a cinema) and recognised it as a breathtakingly original film noir and so it has remained. One of my reference books describes it with adjectives such as "metaphysical, gripping, magnificent, subtle complexity, mythical proportions,..."

It has been copied (eg a scene on the LA storm drain) ever since but skipping a 5000 word essay on film noir and Boorman's subsequent career, what makes the special DVD worth while is that it includes Boorman and Steven Soderbergh chatting to each other in real time as the film runs about how and why Boorman came to make the
film, determined the scenes, composed the shots, the response of the actors, the colour of the clothes and backgrounds, the use of the new Panavision camera lenses. And how great an actor Lee Marvin was.

It is the most illuminating insight into the art of film making that I have ever encountered.

[noel]

I finally watched Death of Stalin last night, which I had been looking forward to for a while. I had very mixed feelings. Although there were some moments when I felt the film captured the absurdity of the situation, most of the time I was just appalled by the senseless brutality of it all. Overall I felt it fell between two stools of telling the story, which is horrific; and making satire.

One highlight for me were the scenes focused on Michael Palin's character. Always striving to walk the fine line between personal feelings and the need to be in agreement with the party line.