cool movies i've seen - new thread

[jaime marzol]

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i checked out the glenn ford site. it was ok, but it's just a lot of posts from people telling him how much they love him. you really can't critique his films objectively, because the guy is there! it's like when schmidling hangs out here, we can't be objective because he gets all upset.

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[jaime marzol]

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ok, got home this morning at 3am, before going to be i flipped on the tube, and there it was, FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, the 3hr 5min version, not in lbx because it was on encore. handled about 35 minutes berore i passed out. it was.... ok. not my cup of tea, but i could see the filmmaker's craft was quiet good.

i thought hobits were furry creatures you could kill and bar-b-q, they are not. they are like munchkins with hairy feet!

[Michael]

Wow. I'm surprised to see so many negative or indifferent reviews of Lord/Rings. I LOVE the movie, and even more with the extended version. Saw "Two Towers" yesterday (finally!) and loved it as well. My only major complaints in both are the battle scenes with the all the camera movements and choppiness--it's too hard to tell what's going on and what I'm looking at! I have other small, small criticisms, but in all, I really love the movies and am delighted that they were faithful to the books.

Thanks!

[jaime marzol]

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michael, you just saw THE TWO TOWERS. those are the previews i saw and they looked great. FOTR looked real good, but it was for kids, i felt. a great film for kids. the previews of TTT looked more adult-ish. am i mistaken in this assumption?

i sat through a portion of FOTR, but it didn't grow on me.

i read what you wrote about the supplement on FOTR, sounds excellent. don't we wish there were such discs available of most of our fave films that had such fabulous supplements. voyager's PLAYER, and 8 1/2 have excellent supplements, as does their release of welles' OTHELLO.

[Welles Fan]

I saw TTT on Jan 30 (in time to use my free pass-included in the Extended Edition DVD), and loved it. They played a bit looser with the book in this one, but the battle scenes were awesome and Gollum was fantastic.

Jaime: The movies have to be seen in widescreen, else, don't bother. There are scenes that look like Maxfield Parrish paintings that will be lost in the fullscren version.

Also, much of the look of the film reminds me of the Hildebrandt Bros calendars I had in college, when everyone was into everything Tolkien (though Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn is a bit too scruffy, IMO).

Still, some people hate the books, and probably could not care less about a movie version of them.

[Cole]

Watched a few movies recently that were recommended by Wellesnet members, so I thought I’d give my comments about them. (Haven’t seen the latest installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, so I can’t comment on that.)

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. Saw the release version which I picked up at a local Hollywood Video store. I thought it was a decent movie – a very good movie in fact. Of the three Ford movies I’ve seen (the other two being STAGECOACH and SEARCHERS), I liked this the best. He knew how to make a good movie, that’s for sure, but I have this thing with westerns. For me, watching a western is like listening to country music. It ain’t easy. I guess I don’t share that hokey romantic view of the American west. But it’s probably just a personal thing with me, as every now and then I’ll watch, and fall in love with, some classic Japanese flick (most recently SANSHO THE BAILIFF) then later think to myself that it could have been done as a western. SANSHO blew me away, but if instead of slave traders it had been a band of American Indians breaking up a family unit, with John Wayne or Henry Fonda struggling to reunite the family, it wouldn’t have worked for me.

PEEPING TOM. From reading the comments here about this film, I eagerly looked for it at area video stores, and finally found it. I liked the movie, and found it quite interesting, but apparently not as much as other people on this board. I certainly wouldn’t put it on the level with PSYCHO or M, which are two of my favorite movies, but in a way I was somewhat relieved that PEEPING TOM didn’t have the same positive effect on me. I wouldn’t want to think that I’m predisposed to loving movies about psycho killers.

T-MEN. I just had to see if the movie was as “Wellesian” as Jaime claimed. And as far as that claim is concerned, I would say this: you probably won’t find another movie that shows more strongly the influence of Welles on another movie director. T-MEN really is a textbook example of how Welles influenced movie making: the use of shadows, odd camera angles, long takes without reverse shots, subjects in the foreground with activity going on in the background, etc. The entire movie doesn’t show the “Wellesian” style, and most of it is shot in a conventional manner, but there are plenty of “Wellesian” shots that make it interesting to watch. But the “Wellesian” style is strictly limited to the cinematography. As far as the story goes, and how the whole thing is put together, lets just say – it ain’t Welles.

[jaime marzol]

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4 other Ford films worth checking out, and i liked these films before i was a fan of westerns, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, GRAPES OF WRATH (toland cinematographer), THE LONG VOYAGE HOME (toland cinematographer), THE FUGITIVE.

LONG VOYAGE, and FUGITIVE i think are his most asthetic films, FUGITIVE was Ford's personal favorite.

i also read a lot about PEEPING TOM then was let down when i saw it, but made a copy of the disc anyway. then over time i would pop it in now and then and really started liking it.

T-MEN has nothing wellsian in the plot, or in character motivation, just visually. yes, in it you can see how welles' visuals inspired other directors, and how no one used them as well as welles, but it's a fun watch, and does have some darn innovative moments in it. mann was not a hack.

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