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bleary

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Posts posted by bleary

  1. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    But what if I were to say, “Yes, her 40-year-old family friend locked her in a bedroom and exposed himself to her, but she’s 20! She knew what she was doing...”

    This is a slight misrepresentation of my remarks, since I made it clear that the scene where she exposes herself is sexual assault.  Now if you swap the genders, I feel the same way.  If, in this swapped case, after the man sexually harassed the 20-year-old woman in this way, she then calls the man inviting him to meet with her at a hotel, I would say that yes, she is making the decision to do that.

  2. Posted

    4 hours ago, grudlian. said:

    I think it's kind of weird that Paul and Amy kind of gloss over that Mrs. Robinson is basically a sexual predator in this. They mention Benjamin being prey but they also talk about how sexy and confidant she is repeatedly. I get Benjamin it's old enough to make his own decisions but she's still twice his age and he's very clearly saying no to her at every step of the way. I was really grossed out by it.

    Honestly, I didn't even consider this as a potential problem until I read your comment, which absolutely is a gender double-standard because I'd certainly feel the same way as you if the genders were swapped.  However, I don't entire agree about the extent of Mrs. Robinson's misconduct.  Certainly, when she corners Ben in Elaine's room and exposes herself to him, this is clearly sexual assault.  But I do feel that in everything that happens after Benjamin leaves the house that night, he has complete agency.  Sure, she is psychologically manipulative, but he's not a child.  He's 20/21 years old, of sound mind.  She isn't threatening him, there's no power imbalance.  He is capable of making the decision he does, and I think to put it all on Mrs. Robinson as a predator is to bend-over-backwards to forgive Benjamin's share of the blame (if there even is any blame to give).

    That said, I agree with everyone here that it's clear Mrs. Robinson is interested in Ben because she thinks she can get what she wants with him (which I was almost literally screaming at the podcast when Amy wondered what she saw in him).  She's not going after those other seemingly fun guys because she already knows how Benjamin will act, having known him for many years.  And it's not only that she knows what to say to persuade him, but that she knows that he's more likely to appreciate her both as a virgin/pseudo-virgin and as someone who might have gawked at her pubescently for the better part of a decade.  So I don't think their relationship is at all gross, although it was preceded by a gross act (the flashing scene) and followed by a gross act (the rape accusation).

    But that's my opinion as someone who mostly agreed with Amy in this episode and who largely agreed with Roger Ebert's re-review, so I might be a Mrs. Robinson apologist.  (Part of it may be my annoyance that 34-36 year old Anne Bancroft doesn't get enough credit for plausibly playing 10-15 years above her own age better than Dustin Hoffman could play 6-8 years below his own age.  Bancroft's performance truly blew me away on this rewatch.)

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    42 minutes ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    On the complaints about loud Italian stereotypes, well . . . the movie is written by Tony Lip's own son. He might not know that much about Don Shirley, but he probably does know what his own father was like. Maybe he really did talk like that. I probably wouldn't accuse Scorsese of stereotyping if he puts "loud Italians" in his own movies. Presumably he's drawing from experience there.

    The "my father really was a dumb stereotype" defense. 😄

    In all seriousness though, that performance doesn't work at all for me.  And sure, maybe it's the character's fault more than the actor, but I'm not about to laud Viggo for it.  I feel like unfortunately, the academy does reward these situations, where some aspect of the filmmaking takes a film from complete shitshow to merely mediocre (cf. Bohemian Rhapsody's film editing, Christopher Plummer's nomination for All the Money in the World, etc.).  Viggo was not able to make me relate to, or even care about this character in the slightest.  Perhaps due to the writing, it was near impossible for any actor to do so, but that doesn't make for something impressive in my opinion.  (However, I don't hold this failure against Viggo.  I still would have taken his performance in Captain Fantastic two years ago over Casey Affleck, and I thought he was great in Eastern Promises too, as well as the LOTR series of course.)

    • Like 2

  4. Posted

    Just now, sycasey 2.0 said:

    Generally agree, though again in fairness this old Tweet didn't resurface until after the movie had already been made, so the people who financed and promoted it had already done so, possibly unaware of the man's history.

    That raises the general question: why can't billion-dollar companies vet people's social media better?  They probably could have paid an intern $100 to go through his entire Twitter feed and flag anything unsavory. 

  5. Posted

    2 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    In all my Google searching, I can only find articles referencing the one bad Villalonga tweet about Muslims on 9/11. And yes, that is bad. But given that he's apologized for it and I can't find any other incidents, I can't really be sure he's a "terrible person." Again, much of his behavior indicates to me that he's a not-very-smart guy who doesn't really do his homework, but I'm not sure there's great evidence of maliciousness.

    I'm somewhere in between you and Taylor on this one, but I will say that I believe even just one instance of being objectively super fucking racist should ensure that nothing you have to say about race relations gets taken seriously.  Not to be overly cliché, but no one but him truly knows what's in his heart, and if he's sincere about his apology, then good for him.  But bad on everyone who funded this movie, campaigned for this movie, and voted for this movie, because I don't believe he's earned a platform to talk about racism.  It's hard enough today to see any white people make clunky films about race (again, talking about the egregious win by Skin in live-action short) that if in addition, the filmmaker is in any way racist, let's just not have that film financed, okay?

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    1 hour ago, mjbok said:

    Really disappointed in this podcast.  This episode that is.  I would think listener picks would be from, I don't know, listeners.  Nope.  Mostly industry insiders, critics, writers, actors, etc.  This should have been a separate podcast.  I'd like to know what "real" people liked and didn't like which was why I looked forward to this episode. 

    Did they not take your call?

    I'm also not sure if listeners of this podcast would give an accurate reflection of "real" people anyway.  (As a point of reference, the 4 American-made 2018 films on the IMDb top 250 are Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Avengers: Infinity War, Green Book, and Bohemian Rhapsody.  Personally, I feel like hearing someone give a 5-star review of Bohemian Rhapsody would have felt a bit too much like a certain HDTGM segment.)

    I thought it was a nice episode, and I'm glad they touched on things like Searching and Shoplifters and even A Simple Favor which was certainly enjoyable if not cinematically important.  I would have liked a Hearts Beat Loud shoutout or maybe some talk about Minding the Gap, but I suppose I should have called in then!

    • Like 2

  8. Posted

    40 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    Frankly, I thought Amy & Paul focusing on twenty 2018 movies was too much, so would've preferred a more focused list for them to peruse.  

    I honestly could have listened to another twenty.  I love hearing them talk about what they liked and didn't like about these movies, even when I don't agree with them.

    To that end, what are some great 2018 films that haven't been discussed on either list so far?  They're not great, but I expect they'll touch on Green Book and Vice anyway.  I hope they talk a bit about what works and doesn't work in First Man, which I mostly enjoyed.  So what else?  Death of Stalin?  Isle of Dogs?  Wildlife?  Maybe Hearts Beat Loud?  I don't think any of these films belong on the AFI list, but I'd still like to hear Paul and Amy talk about them.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    23 hours ago, grudlian. said:

    Winter Soldier wants to be a 70s political thriller but I don't feel the claustrophobic paranoia of 3 Days Of The Condor; it just feels like Captain America to me. Ant Man wants to be a heist movie but it's not nearly as fun or thrilling as Ocean's 11.

     

    10 hours ago, taylorannephoto said:

    Winter Soldier doesn't have to be 3 Days Of The Condor because it's not trying to be that movie, but trying to say that makes it not air on the side of a 70s political thriller is ridiculous, because it absolutely does. None of these movies are ever going to be exactly like whatever genre their mimicking because that's the whole point - they are taking elements from a 70s political thriller, or a New Zealand comedy, or a family friendly film (that's what Ant-Man really is, not a heist film), and they make a superhero movie around that which automatically makes it different from anything else we've seen.

    I can't claim to know for sure why Amy and other critics are dismissive of superhero films, but I think this difference of opinions gets at the heart of it: expectations.

    Personally, I'm unabashedly a fan of the genre, having enjoyed Nolan's Batman films, having enjoyed the first X-Men trilogy, and having seen all the MCU films in theaters except Incredible Hulk and Thor 2.  (I even made it through 4 and a half seasons of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)  But admittedly, the broad strokes of the early MCU films are extremely similar, particularly in the origin stories which all seemed to follow the basic outline of somewhat normal man becomes endowed with seemingly unique powers, only to find that an evil person managed to develop the exact same powers but more evil, which leads to leads to a big, destructive, climactic punchfest.  Just the trope of fighting an evil version of someone with the same powers happened in Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Captain America: The First Avenger, which is four of the first five films.  You could argue that Thor and/or The Avengers qualify as well, since Loki is the "main" villain in both, even though he's rarely the one who comes to blows with the hero(es).  So while I saw these movies and loved how different Tony Stark is from any other superhero previously seen on film, and loved subsequently how Thor, Steve Rogers, and Ruffalo's Bruce Banner are all distinct and mostly well-realized characters (it took Thor a big longer than the others, but oh well), I can still imagine how someone else would see these films and dwell on how all of them have essentially the same plot.

    Then they started to change up the script a bit in Phase Two.  (While Taylor and others will point to Winter Soldier as being the breakthrough film, I still ride hard for the previous year's Iron Man 3.)  The films became much more varying in tone and (in my opinion) more interesting from a story point of view.  The result was that, for good or bad, these films got assigned these different subgenres, sometimes from critics and sometimes from directors or producers naming their influences.  So Winter Soldier became the "70s political thriller," Guardians became the "Flash Gordon-esque space opera," and Ant-Man became the "heist movie."  I think this set levels of expectation that were not reachable for some people.  While someone like me or Taylor could see Winter Soldier and relish the political thriller spin placed upon this already established character, I could see how someone like grudlian or maybe Amy could go into Winter Soldier hoping to see the 70's political thriller that people had lauded and instead feel tricked when the hero again fights someone who somehow has the exact same powers as him and the climax comes down to a lot of punching and kicking and a building getting destroyed.  If you go into Ant-Man and think you're going to get Ocean's 11, then I assume you exit the theater happy because Ant-Man is way more fun than Ocean's 11 (sorry, had to editorialize a little).

    So taking Phase One and Phase Two together, I can understand how someone could feel fatigued by the plot-sameness of the first bunch of movies, and then double-down on feeling angry when seemingly everyone else sees something new and different in the second bunch of movies but all they can see is the sameness in action from that first bunch.  As I wrote on the Canon board for The Avengers, I love the MCU films because of the character development and interactions, and I kind of don't care about the action (which is why I sort of low-key hated Infinity War because they tried to stuff in so much action).  I know it's always going to end with fists and feet and stuff, and while I can look past that amount of sameness, I get the point of view of those who don't.

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    On 1/31/2019 at 10:00 AM, AlmostAGhost said:

    I definitely don't see her to be pure evil or a villain quite as much her rep, but I'm not so sure about calling her "angelic" like Paul did lol

    I think there's something to this though.  Her costuming and hair are made to call this to mind: her nurse hat somewhat resembles a halo, while without it, her hair resembles devil's horns.  I think this is Milos Forman telling us that Ratched is sort of a devil disguised as an angel.  Her true nature is malevolent, but she hides behind her position to justify her behavior as being benevolent.  As others have said, she's a bully, and she went into a profession that allowed her to be a bully at that time.

    Also, I want to say something about this as an adaptation.  While I think one could rightly complain (as Ken Kesey did) that a lot is lost in the translation from novel to film, I want to commend this film for managing to adapt a first-person point-of-view novel without using any voiceover or narration, which is something that is rarely attempted even today.  We'll see To Kill A Mockingbird later along this list, which is one of my favorite novel adaptations, but what allows it to be so faithful is that they can use narration to provide any lines in the book that we wouldn't otherwise get.  So I give a lot of credit to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for not taking that easy road and instead crafting something that stands up independent of its source material.

  11. Posted

    One thought I had before listening to the podcast:  I believe the film is meant to take place in 1963 (which is when the play took place, and it would make sense with McMurphy commentating on a Yankees vs Dodgers World Series).  If so, then the film covers some time period including October 1963 (World Series) and December 1963 (Christmas).  However, there's no mention of the rather major event that took place in the US in November 1963.  Most probably, this is because the novel was written in 1962.  But could it have been a conscious decision to omit any mention of the JFK assassination?  Are we meant to think that this is another way the doctors and nurses are exerting control, by not allowing news of the outside world to enter in?  If they didn't want it to be an issue, why not set the film in 1962 instead?

  12. Posted

    5 hours ago, NYNoirFan said:

    This is a bit unfair, but I just love the "text" of this movie so much that I wish it had been appreciated a bit more in the discussion.

    I agree, I think it's a fantastic script, and Amy and Paul glossed over the dialogue here when they spent some time praising it in Double Indemnity, which I'm much less a fan of.  Double Indemnity has some great lines, but I always thought they were too written, and no one would actually talk that way.  In Sunset Blvd, the witty repartee seems more believable to me.

    I'll also vouch for how good Whatever Happened To Baby Jane is, though I don't agree with Amy that it's better than Sunset Blvd.  There's a great conversation to be had about the two films together though, and I've always thought that Bette Davis's performance as Jane, particularly in crafting the makeup and hair, was inspired by Gloria Swanson as Norma.  Jane is essentially the more horror movie version of Norma.  When Norma performs her old bits, it's more cute than sad.  When Jane performs her old bits, it's quite unsettling.

    A couple other connections to real-life that weren't mentioned in the podcast: when Norma visits DeMille on set, the film DeMille is directing was actually the film he was directing in reality at the time, Samson and Delilah, which went on to get nominated for five Oscars the same year as Sunset Blvd, and the two films were actually pitted against each other for Best Score.

    Also, I think there were more similarities between Gloria Swanson and Norma than Amy and Paul and Alicia implied.  Listening to the podcast, it seemed like they were saying that Gloria Swanson was getting plenty of steady work, but in reality, her film career had fizzled out at age 35.  Between 1934 and the 1950 release of Sunset Blvd, she only appeared in one feature-length film.  (I don't know the details about this break, though it seems suspicious that she signed a contract with MGM in 1934 and she immediately stopped booking film work.  I also don't know if she was doing stage acting during this time like Bette Davis did before Baby Jane.)

    At any rate, this is one of my favorite films and will probably end up in the top 10 on my list, so pretty close to the #16 position it holds on the AFI list.  (I currently have it at #4).

    • Like 2

  13. Posted

    7 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    Everything you mention here is totally passive.  They happened TO him, on little effort of his own.  Even the relationship with Ruth, he was just sent to her house, and they connected.  All these things served to keep him in that town.  If he was thinking of leaving, and he probably was, these things would happen and then he'd have to stay longer.

    Sure, but I don't think that's realistic to a lot of kids, and I think that's substantially more than the occasional moments of life that you cited before.

    Also, you talk about him thinking of leaving and that he probably was.  I think the fact that we can't make any reasonably strong inference about his internal feelings and motivations makes him lacking as a character.  You might say that's the point and that's what makes him unusual.  That's fine, but I don't find that interesting.

  14. Posted

    On 1/18/2019 at 10:33 AM, AlmostAGhost said:

    Sonny was just there.  Oh sure he found some occasional moments of life - that's what the Mexico trip was - but I found him a great comparison with those other two, and frankly it is probably realistic to a lot of kids.  Not everyone strives.  I liked seeing that.

     

    On 1/18/2019 at 11:41 AM, sycasey 2.0 said:

    He's the "observer" character, and by nature a passive person.

     

    1 hour ago, grudlian. said:

    It's about the teen who isn't going anywhere and maybe doesn't have a lot of dreams. Sonny is the best friend of the main character in most movies.

    My problem with this line of reasoning is that in terms of actions, Sonny is not at all passive.  I mean, I don't see it as a passive move to start a sexual relationship with a woman his mother's age.  And he had plenty of other moments of life: he married the hottest girl in school, he inherited a pool hall, his best friend nearly blinded him, he lost his marriage to the hottest girl in school, and his little brother figure gets killed in the street*.  I think it's a bit of a stretch to say this is a realistic year in the life of a normal American kid, and it's a lot to happen directly to someone for them to be considered merely an "observer."

    Now don't get me wrong: the fact that things ARE happening to Sonny is part of the reason why I like The Last Picture Show much much more than, say, American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused (I know both of those films take place over a single night instead of a year, but since they're all coming of age period pieces, they feel spiritually connected to me.)  I don't like those two movies because I absolutely do not care about a single character in them.  But I do care about Jacy and Sam and Ruth and Genevieve and even Duane in his own way.  And then I care about Sonny because these characters care about Sonny.  But the problem with either the character or the performance is that I never really understand WHY they care about Sonny (except maybe for Ruth).  And that just leaves an emotional hole for me in the middle of this otherwise wonderful group of people.

     

    *How did this not happen sooner?  Billy is standing in the middle of the main road of town every single day without anyone paying any attention to him.  It's a miracle he made it to 14, or however old he is.  Is this part of Bogdanovich's commentary on the changing times?  That you used to be able to stand in the middle of a well-traveled road without any fear of danger, but in these troubling times, people who idly stand in the middle of the road are liable to get hit by a truck?  And as I wrote in my Letterboxd review, where is Billy's adult?  Who is looking after Billy?  

  15. Posted

    I was really glad they read that review from Stanley Kauffmann, because that's more or less how I felt about the film.  I really admire the filmmaking and the performances, but I just can't connect with Timothy Bottoms as Sonny, so he drags the film down for me.  Either Amy or Paul was saying in the episode that they thought Jacy was more the main character than Sonny, but there's a big chunk in the middle of the movie where Jacy just disappears.  I certainly feel like I would enjoy the movie more if Jacy were the main character, as her arc is by far the most interesting.

    I still think it deserves its place on the top 100, but like Kauffmann, I wish I liked it more.

  16. Posted

    2 hours ago, gloriacassidy1999 said:

    For instance, it's insane that when Clint meets the woman whose face was cut he doesn't mention that she isn't actually blind and still has her breasts, acts of violence noted over and over that were supposed to be part of his self-justification for the killing. 

    So you're suggesting that when Munny sees Delilah for the first time, he should say that he thought she was supposed to be more disfigured?  I think this is partially handled by Munny complimenting her and telling her she looks better than he does.  But if you're saying that Munny would see this girl with major permanent facial scars and feel manipulated into helping a not-that-badly-disfigured person, I don't quite understand that.  I never got the feeling that the exact extent of the injuries were a crucial selling point in getting Munny involved.

    To the question of why are Ned's kidnapping and death both done off-screen, I see different reasons for each.  My guess is that the kidnapping didn't seem like it needed to be shown, since Ned was unarmed, having given his rifle to Munny and the Kid, so it doesn't seem absurd that he could be captured by a half-dozen armed men.  And secondly, it gives the audience a small shock to see that Little Bill has him.  But again, my overall feeling is that it's not a hugely necessary scene.  However, the reason they don't show the death is to put the audience in the same state of disbelief as Munny when he's told about it.  Particularly after the extent of the injuries to Delilah got exaggerated, both Munny and the audience have to think that maybe this is an exaggeration too, and that Ned may be just very badly injured.  Secondly, both Munny and the audience are drawing on their history: Munny has gotten into and out of scrapes with Ned for decades, so he has a hard time believing Ned could be dead.  Meanwhile, the audience has seen Westerns for decades and has the instinct that the narrative should be that Munny has to have someone to save, so Ned must be alive for Munny to save.  In telling and not showing, both the audience and Munny are made to think that this is not the way that this is supposed to go, and it must be a lie.

    As far as everything else in your post, you're mostly hitting on the reasons why I really like this film.  As to what the film is saying about the death penalty, I would say it's pretty definitively against it, but that's just another question about this film that's in the eye of the beholder.  Sure, the "protagonists" do successfully murder the two perpetrators, but there's no glory in it whatsoever, as one guy slowly bleeds to death so awfully that even Munny asks for mercy on his behalf, and the other guy is killed while taking a crap.  While it is technically what they set out to do, there's absolutely no victory in it.  So does it wind up supporting the murder of those men?  I would say no.

    To your point about whether the bounty was justified and Delilah's feelings about it, I think the film comes down pretty harshly on Strawberry Alice.  She and brothel owner Skinny are shown as two sides of the same coin.  While convention would prime us to think that Strawberry Alice is being a better advocate on Delilah's behalf than Skinny, the reality is that they both disregard Delilah's feelings the same amount.  I don't know if this is meant to be seen as political commentary, but certainly one could see Skinny as the pro-corporation point of view, with Alice representing the type of union leader who fights for personal victories instead of for the actual members.  (So then is Unforgiven anti-union? Again, eye of the beholder!)

    3 hours ago, gloriacassidy1999 said:

    Yet this ultimately scrambles the themes and confuses one about how one is supposed to evaluate the characters

    I think this is what makes the film so great!  How are we supposed to feel about these characters?  Is there a single character that is all good?  How many are all bad?  The fact that it so thoroughly eschews the white hats and black hats of classic Westerns is what makes it such a prime example of the Revisionist Western.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    7 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

    While I'm not overly familiar with westerns, my takeaway from Unforgiven was that it wasn't really all that revisionist.  Paul and Amy brought up some angles that I hadn't noticed so I guess it is more than I thought at first, but still overall, it feels to me to be basically built on the usual Western characters and telling a fairly typical story (an old vet pulled back into his old life; a 'search' for a bad guy). This isn't particularly a knock on the film though, I think it is told very well and gets a lot of strength from using those types of characters. It does infuse all of them with more moral depth which often makes them more interesting than, say, John Wayne in The Searchers, but still I'm not so sure.  Perhaps I need to watch more classic ones than I have, though, granted.

    Adding to what grudlian said, I also think there's a fair amount of subjectivity in the distinction between classical Western and revisionist Western.  Eastwood might not consider Unforgiven revisionist because he saw his character as the good guy and he saw Little Bill as the bad guy.  I am more inclined to agree with Amy, that Little Bill is a mostly good guy who made a poor judgment decision in pursuit of his goal to minimize violence in his town.

    I think the same could also be said for The Searchers, since many audiences of the time likely saw Ethan as a traditional hero, while others consider him as an antihero because of his bigotry and brutality.

    Amy made the point that it seems like there aren't any truly traditional Westerns on the AFI list, but I wonder where they'll come down on Shane.  I certainly see it as traditional, since there are clear black hats and white hats, but there is also some added emphasis on the brutality of gun violence, so I can see how some people would see that as revisionist as well. 

  18. Posted

    4 minutes ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

    I very much disagree with Amy's take that the movie is aggrandizing Will as a character. To me the tone of the scenes she referenced (the conversation with the prostitute and the final shootout) is far darker than that.

    It seems to me that the whole arc of his character is that he was never really devoted to being a non-violent family man. That's why he can't properly ride a horse or handle a gun when he's playing that role. He can't enjoy sex, so he refuses the offer (meanwhile his buddy Ned has no problem enjoying himself). It's only when Will fully commits to being the killer that he's able to take down Little Bill's whole posse (and it's no coincidence that this only happens after Ned has been killed). To me that's not aggrandizement, that's an examination of the dark heart of the classic Western. The camera putting you in Will's POV in that final scene is a challenge, not a ploy for sympathy.

    And in fact, the film comments on the aggrandizement of Will (and Little Bill and English Bob) through Beauchamp, who is perfectly willing to hero-worship and mythologize any gunslinger up until the moment when he's bested by another gunslinger.  I love the satirical way the film uses Beauchamp to criticize the very notion of aggrandizement of Western violence.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    To Amy's quibble that Munny shot terribly with his pistol initially, but was perfect in the final shootout, I think that tied into what Little Bill was saying to Beauchamp.  Little Bill was saying that it didn't matter how quick someone was on the draw or how well they could shoot with nothing on the line, it mattered whether they were able to keep their cool and make the shot they needed to make with their life in the balance.  The conversation was directly about that poor schmuck English Bob killed who shot himself in the foot trying to draw and still almost outdueled the drunk Bob.  The implication during that conversation is that English Bob was the kind of sharpshooter who was worthless with his life on the line, as we saw when he didn't trust himself to outshoot Little Bill in the jail but had no problem picking off birds from the train.  Little Bill sees himself as the perfect gunfighter (a Tim Duncan, if you will), whose ability to stay calm and focused and execute the fundamentals have served him to that point.  But Munny transcends this, being better than usual under pressure (like Michael Jordan, perhaps).  The threat and thrill of violence and the danger of being killed is something that fueled him for so much of his life, so after fighting against it so long, he not only succumbs to it, but embraces it, if only for the moment.

    At any rate, I like this film quite a bit, and was much more in agreement with Paul in this episode.  Unforgiven will almost definitely be higher on my personal rankings of these films, and probably in the top 40.  (I've got it slotted in at #11 so far.)

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    Apparently Unforgiven is playing on the History Channel on January 19, and Last Picture Show is playing on TCM on March 3.  🤷‍♂️

    Neither of my libraries had Unforgiven, so for the first time in 34 episodes, I actually had to pay for a movie for the podcast.

  21. Posted

    I guess I'm mostly in the camp of "it's lame and racist," to use Amy's words.  I'm on the fence about putting it on the list, because I do credit it for changing the way that landscapes are shot, but ultimately I vote no.  Even though Lawrence of Arabia is inspired by The Searchers cinematographically, it combines the camerawork with a better story (though also super problematic, but we'll get to that when the die rolls that lucky #7), so I'm mostly content without it on the list at all.

    I'm glad to hear Paul is rethinking High Noon though!  I like it, Shane, and Unforgiven considerably more than The Searchers.

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    1/3 - The Searchers
    1/10 - Unforgiven
    1/17 - The Last Picture Show
    1/24 - Sunset Boulevard

    Sunset Blvd can be streamed with Kanopy, I can find no other streaming info on the others at the moment.  

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    I'm 100% in agreement with Paul and Amy on this one.  I think while it was an important film in 1967, it doesn't play to me today as a great film.  I think it's on the borderline of top 100 and ultimately doesn't deserve to be on it, and I agree that at the very least, Beverly Hills Cop worked better as a police procedural.  (Also, Foley has a reasonable explanation for why he didn't reveal he was a cop until later, since he's in LA to do police work.  If Tibbs actually wanted to make that train, he could have flashed his badge a bit sooner and likely made it on time.  But that might be a Titanic "the door was big enough for two" type of complaint, in that the badge was flashed at the right time for the plot to advance.)

    And the race stuff plays completely different to me today, too.  Like Green Book, In the Heat of the Night is a film directed by a white male, off a screenplay written by a white male based on a story told by a white male.  And like Green Book, I really felt like In the Heat of the Night seems today like it was made for white people to watch and congratulate themselves on not being racist.  Now, Green Book is a bad movie (I think we can mostly agree on that), and In the Heat of the Night is nowhere near as toothless in its commentary, nor does it self-congratulate on its progressiveness as much as Green Book does, but I really resent it for pulling its punch a bit by having Tibbs momentarily obsessed with finding the most racist guy guilty, giving racist white dudes some "both sides" ammo.

    Anyway, all would be forgivable if this was a great movie, but I just don't think it is.  Like Paul and Amy said, it feels like it's trying to figure out how to a great movie, but it's just not quite there.  Paul and Amy were spot-on with their analysis of the music fills as feeling like 70s TV, and of Delores' monologue as being super absurd.

    But the best I can say about it is that it's not unenjoyable, and that Sidney Poitier is fucking awesome in it.

    • Like 2

  24. Posted

    I decided to make a separate thread for this, since it's rare that we get an episode on a film that coincides with the time that it plays on TCM, but a large number of the AFI Top 100 films play on TCM (and are usually subsequently available for 7 or 8 days on WatchTCM online, found here: http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/films/?ecid=subnavmoviesondemand ).  As we approach TCM's Oscar celebration in February, there should be more available than usual.  Not every single film that plays on TCM goes up online for the next week, but it seems to be the case often enough that it's always worth checking.  I know these still are unlikely to coincide with the episodes, but in case people are interested in watching them earlier/later, or if you have a DVR and want to record them and save them for later, here's the schedule of AFI films that I could find:

    Currently on WatchTCM:

    #55 North By Northwest - expires January 2nd
    #38 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - expires January 5th
    #88 Bringing Up Baby - expires January 8th

    Playing on TCM soon:

    #29 Double Indemnity - December 30
    #19 On The Waterfront - January 2
    #47 A Streetcar Named Desire - January 2
    #100 Ben-Hur - January 3
    #81 Spartacus - January 4
    #78 Modern Times - January 6
    #44 The Philadelphia Story - January 15 & 18
    #15 2001: A Space Odyssey - January 28
    #5 Singin' In the Rain - January 31
    #82 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - February 1
    #93 The French Connection - February 2
    #52 Taxi Driver - February 2
    #55 North By Northwest - February 2
    #26 Mr. Smith Goes To Washington - February 4
    #28 All About Eve - February 7
    #42 Bonnie and Clyde - February 9
    #98 Yankee Doodle Dandy - February 9
    #75 In the Heat of the Night - February 9
    #37 The Best Years of Our Lives - February 11
    #5 Singin' In the Rain - February 12
    #3 Casablanca - February 12
    #19 On The Waterfront - February 13
    #7 Lawrence of Arabia - February 13
    #36 The Bridge On the River Kwai - February 14
    #44 The Philadelphia Story - February 14
    #47 A Streetcar Named Desire - February 18
    #64 Network - February 18
    #100 Ben-Hur - February 18
    #27 High Noon - February 18
    #25 To Kill a Mockingbird - February 20
    #87 12 Angry Men - February 20
    #67 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - February 23
    #38 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - February 24
    #46 It Happened One Night - February 25
    #1 Citizen Kane - February 25
    #73 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - February 27
    #31 The Maltese Falcon - February 27
    #15 2001: A Space Odyssey - March 2
    #69 Tootsie - March 2
    #17 The Graduate - March 3
    #95 The Last Picture Show - March 3

     

    • Like 1
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