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LawrenceA
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Posts
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Days Won
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Posts posted by LawrenceA
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February 2020
My Bloody Valentine (1981) February 4
X the Unknown (1956) February 18
Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966) February 18
Pet Sematary Two (1992) February 25
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27 minutes ago, shutoo said:
In a sort of nitch area I have ...The Tingler
I'm jealous!
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On 11/1/2019 at 4:53 PM, speedracer5 said:
I had to clear out another section of my bookshelf to fit in my Criterion, as I keep them all together, by type (blu ray vs dvd) and then alphabetically. They're next to my Fox Film Noir collection.
Darn your post! It inspired me to separate my Criterion movies, as well. I separated my Blu-rays from the DVD's a few weeks back, as they fit on the shelves better that way.
So today I separated the Criterion Blu-rays from the other Blu-rays, and the Criterion DVD's from the other DVD's. They do look nicer that way! I also separated some of the other "fancier" company releases, including the Shout/Scream Factory releases, the Arrow Video releases, the Olive Signature releases (I only have two of those, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Quiet Man), the AGFA releases, and finally the single Eureka Blu-ray I have (Fright Night).
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Prompted by a few posts in other threads, I was curious what posters or lobby cards anyone has on display in their homes or offices? I have a few posters left over from when I worked in video stores (Goodfellas, La Femme Nikita, Heat, The Grifters, a handful of others) but the only one I currently have up is this one, except that it has green lettering:
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7 hours ago, CoraSmith said:
Utøya: July 22 is based on the true events on the Norwegian island on the day of Anders Breivik's assault. It's filmed in a realistic style with a hand camera. It looks like it's shot in one major take, although that's not strictly so. It shows the experience of the young people in the camp. Andrea Berntzen plays the leading character who's missing her younger sister. After twenty minutes the first shots sound. The young people flee into the woods and try to save themselves. The next seventy minutes are full of panic and uncertainty. It's very intense.
I've seen 22 July, also from 2018, but English-language and from director Paul Greengrass. It covers the same event, but from the point of view of a young man (Jonas Strand Gravli), as well as a bit from the shooter's point of view. Have you seen this version as well, and if so, how would you compare the two? I liked the English-language version, or I should say, I was moved by it.
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On 11/1/2019 at 9:33 AM, TomJH said:
Cobra Woman (1944)
This may be the best remembered title of the six Technicolor "sands and sex" costume adventures in which Universal co-starred Maria Montez and Jon Hall during the war years. The "camp" factor is rated high with this film due to the cornball plot and, of course, that title.
May there always be a little room in at least a few of our hearts for this Latin Queen of Technicolor.
2.5 out of 4
This is getting a nice Blu-ray release from KL Studio Classics, on January 7th.
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As we approach the end of 2019, I'll invite anyone interested to post not only the usual Top Ten Favorites from this year, but also for the 2010-2019 decade. My choices for 2019 probably won't be set until midway through next year as I catch up with all the notable end-of-year releases. As of right now, I've only seen 2 movies from 2019 that I gave an 8/10 or higher rating (Midsommar and Dolemite Is My Name). Usually all of my top ten choices are 8/10 or higher rated, as well as my runner-up movies.
Top Ten Favorite Movies of the 2010's (2002 titles seen)
- 12 Years a Slave
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Hereditary
- The Cabin in the Woods
- Blade Runner 2049
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- Manchester By the Sea
- The Raid 2
- Inception
- Her
Runner-ups:
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Phantom Thread
- Dunkirk
- Whiplash
- 127 Hours
- Lincoln
- Under the Skin
- Monsters
- Widows
- Cloud Atlas
- The Descendants
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- Silence
- Life of Pi
- The Descendants
- Drive
- The Tree of Life
- The Master
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2018
- Burning, Chang-dong Lee, South Korea
- The Guilty, Gustav Moller, Denmark
- The Night Comes for Us, Timo Tjahjanto, Indonesia
- Border, Ali Abbasi, Sweden
- The Night Eats the World, Dominique Rocher, France
- Shadow, Zhang Yimou, China
- Operation Red Sea, Dante Lam, China
- Rampant, Sung-hoon Kim, South Korea
I've also seen:
- Climax, Gaspar Noe, France
- Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland
- Roma, Alfonso Cuaron, Mexico
- Ever After, Carolina Hellsgard, Germany
- Animas, Laura Alvea & Jose F. Ortuno, Spain
- Girls with Balls, Olivier Afonso, France
1001 Movies You Must See
- Capernaum, Nadine Labaki, Lebanon
- Roma, Alfonso Cuaron, Mexico
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Top Ten Vampire Movies
- Near Dark
- Nosferatu (1922)
- Let the Right One In
- Fright Night
- Dracula (1931)
- The Hunger
- Horror of Dracula
- Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Vampyr (1932)
- 30 Days of Night
Top Ten Werewolf Movies
- The Wolf Man (1941)
- An American Werewolf in London
- The Howling
- Werewolf of London
- Ginger Snaps
- Dog Soldiers
- Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
- Curse of the Werewolf
- I Was a Teenage Werewolf
- The Mark of the Wolfman
Top Ten Frankenstein Movies
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Frankenstein (1931)
- Son of Frankenstein
- Young Frankenstein
- Curse of Frankenstein
- Ghost of Frankenstein
- Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
- Frankenstein's Army
- Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
- Frankenhooker
Top Ten Ghost Movies
- The Shining
- The Changeling
- The Haunting (1963)
- The Uninvited
- The Legend of Hell House
- The Sixth Sense
- The Others
- Stir of Echoes
- The Innocents
- Carnival of Souls
Top Ten Devil/Demon/Witch Movies
- The Exorcist
- Evil Dead 2
- Curse/Night of the Demon
- Hereditary
- Angel Heart
- The Devil Rides Out
- Rosemary's Baby
- The 7th Victim
- The Witch
- Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
Top Ten Zombie Movies
- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- Return of the Living Dead
- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
- Re-Animator
- 28 Days Later
- Day of the Dead (1985)
- Dead Alive
- Cemetery Man
- Zombi 2 (1979)
- Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Top Ten Slasher Movies
- Halloween
- Psycho
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
- Halloween II (1981)
- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
- Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
- Scream
- A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors
- Bay of Blood
Top Ten Horror Anthologies
- Kwaidan
- Creepshow
- Dead of Night (1945)
- Black Sabbath
- Tales from the Crypt
- Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
- Vault of Horror
- The House That Dripped Blood
- V/H/S
- Tales of Terror
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I've already made my order this morning: Matewan, Olivier's Richard III, Chaplin's The Circus, and a Blu-ray upgrade of The Night of the Hunter.
This may be my last Criterion buying binge, as I now have all of the titles that I want from them. Hopefully they'll release some stuff I'm interested in next year.
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- Halloween
- The Shining
- Dawn of the Dead (1978)
- The Wolf Man
- Psycho
- Kwaidan
- The Exorcist
- Return of the Living Dead
- Suspiria
- Evil Dead 2
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8 hours ago, EricJ said:
Many of those Orion movies are now back in public-domain MGM Orphan status twenty years later, so, if we could get a Criterion of Princess Bride, it's not out of the realm of hope that they could bring Spinal Tap and Robocop back too.
Robocop is getting a deluxe Blu-ray release at the end of November courtesy of Arrow Video.
https://www.arrowfilms.com/product-detail/robocop-limited-edition-blu-ray/FCD1918
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2 minutes ago, NickAndNora34 said:
If you think that's crazy, you must not know that Michael Bay's "Armageddon" also got a Criterion release. One word: WOOF
Armageddon and The Rock. I like a lot of junk movies, and action flicks to boot, but thought both of those were atrocious. People thought Criterion had lost their minds, or "sold out, man", but it ended up being an anomaly. That being said, I recall reading that those were the two best selling releases Criterion has ever had.
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18 minutes ago, speedracer5 said:
Does anyone know if there's a noir that takes place in Portland, OR? I doubt it, as Portland doesn't seem very noir-like. Though there is Old Town at night that can be a bit sketchy... but not in an interesting, noirish way.
Portland Expose (1957)
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2 minutes ago, CinemaInternational said:
Latest cartoon is odd....
No whole concensus on what this sketch of Beyonce is referring to, although people have been guessing Diva (1981) or An Unmarried Woman (1978).
Diva is more likely. It's been on the Criterion Channel lately, and there were essays and commentary about it.
Another one I'll be skipping. I watched it a few months ago and didn't care for it at all.
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I re-watched Destination Moon, The Flying Saucer, and Rocketship X-M, all from 1950. I don't really have much to say about them. Destination Moon holds historical significance, but it's dull and corny. The Flying Saucer wasn't as amusingly bad as I remembered, just bad bad. But I liked Rocketship X-M a little more, thanks to the "ruins of an ancient civilization found on Mars" sequence. I love that sort of thing.
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Just now, Gershwin fan said:
https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/quentin+tarantinos+coolest+movies+of+all+time/
https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/quentin+tarantinos+top+20+spaghetti+westerns/kasparius/
Here are some more films that Tarantino mentioned liking and approving of.
He mentions Night of the Lepus in the first list as one of the coolest movies of all time.
"Giant" rabbit stampede!!!
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7 minutes ago, Gershwin fan said:
TCM probably doesn't have enough money to hire Tarantino as a regular like Mueller but I agree it would be cool to have him as a guest programmer. I remember he listed his favorite films and he had La Strada and noir films on it. Very good taste.
In the 2002 poll, Tarantino named these as the greatest films of all time:
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
- Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
- Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977)
- They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich, 1981)
- The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)
- Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)
- Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973)
- Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
- Five Fingers of Death (Chang-hwa Jeong, 1972)
- Hi Diddle Diddle (Andrew W. Stone, 1943)
Tarantino's selections a decade on, for the 2012 Sight & Sound directors poll, to compare and contrast:
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
- The Bad News Bears (Michael Ritchie, 1976)
- Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976)
- Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
- The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)
- His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1939)
- Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- Pretty Maids All in a Row (Roger Vadim, 1971)
- Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1997)
- Sorcerer (William Friedkin. 1977)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
And for good measure - Tarantino's picks for Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks of All Time:
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Dawn of the Dead
- Night of the Living Dead
- Halloween
- Coffy
- Rolling Thunder
- Five Fingers of Death
- The Mack
- The Girl From Starship Venus
- The Last House On The Left
- Master of the Flying Guillotine
- Wipeout
- The Street Fighter | Return of The Street Fighter | The Street Fighter's Last Revenge ("You just have to kinda consider all three of them together." - QT)
- The Psychic
- The Lady in Red
- Thriller: A Cruel Picture
- Suspiria
- Hammer of the Gods
- The Savage Seven
- The Pom Pom Girls
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3 minutes ago, MovieCollectorOH said:
The different video components are kept separate, like the McDLT.
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8 hours ago, EricJ said:
Wood was already an in-demand screenwriter by the time of Glen or Glenda?, as his script for "Jail Bait" was a big enough hit at the drive-ins to make him the on-schedule go-to guy for girl-delinquent B-movies.
If you're going to complain about the film getting the facts wrong, you should try to get yours right. The script for Jail Bait didn't make Wood an in-demand writer before Glen or Glenda? was made, as Glenda came out a year before Jail Bait did.
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The White Gorilla (1945) - 2/10 or 9/10
My favorite bad movie of the 1940's is this poverty row travesty starring Ray "Crash" Corrigan as Great White Hunter Steve Collins, who has traveled to Darkest Africa in search of the elusive White Gorilla. Much of the movie is comprised of footage from the 1927 silent adventure Perils of the Jungle, footage which Corrigan relates to a group of men in a trading post (including a sweaty Francis Ford, brother of John Ford). The silent footage tells the story of a group of white explorers who get into trouble with natives and the local fauna, only to be repeatedly rescued by Kimpo the White Jungle Boy (Bobby Nelson). Also featuring Lorraine Miller and "An All-Star Cast!"
Corrigan, a familiar face in dozens of low-budget westerns and serials, was also known for his frequent portrayals of gorillas, as he owned his own gorilla costumes. In one epic scene here, the White Gorilla (Corrigan) gets to battle another guy in a regular gorilla costume. The silent footage is unintentionally hilarious (Kimpo is quite the hero), while the writing for the new footage is frequently laughable ("The jungle - weird, mysterious.", "I've seen a lot of queer animals in the jungle, but none quite like the White Gorilla"). And it's only 61 minutes long. The 40's were a scarce decade for truly memorable bad movies, and for me, this one stands above the meager pack. Not to be confused with White Pongo, also from 1945 and also featuring a white gorilla.
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7 minutes ago, laffite said:
Interesting take. I didn't know she had an accent, can't remember it. But she does play unlikable characters, strong, pushy, and not sympathetic. I often wondered why she wasn't a bigger star. Sometimes that happens without really knowing why. She is terrific in FEMALE and even better in DODSWORTH. I always wondered why Marian Marsh (for instance) didn't become a star. It seems to me that she and even others would have more likely than Bette Davis to achieve stardom. But Bette, as we know, worked incredibly hard at it.
Her age was part of it. She was already 40 by the end of '32, which is old in Hollywood-actress years. Her film career was basically over by the time she appeared in Dodsworth in '36. Warners considered her too old and not bankable enough.
I liked her in the five or six films I've seen her in, and wish that she'd had more good roles in memorable movies.
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Dr. Cyclops (1940) - 6/10
Albert Dekker stars as mad scientist Dr. Thorkel, derisively nicknamed "Dr. Cyclops" because he has bad eyesight and wears thick glasses (yeah, the nickname doesn't make sense to me either, as the Cyclops had one eye, not thick glasses). Thorkel's experiments with radium allow him to shrink living creatures down to tiny size (because that's how radium works), which he does to a party of visitors who he had invited down to his secluded South American lair in order to look at something and then leave (really). The cast of shrunken heroes includes Thomas Coley, Janice Logan, Charles Halton, Victor Kilian, and Frank Yaconelli as "Pedro". Paul Fix shows up briefly at the beginning, long enough to get murdered in the film's best visual shot.
I hadn't watched this since I was a kid, and decided to revisit it since it's included in a box set I have. I liked the giant sets for the little people to run around, particularly the big cactus. There's some animal action with a black cat (named Satanis!), a dog, a bear, a parrot, and even an alligator. The cast is rather dull, though, with only Dekker's scenery-chewing standing out. Directed by Ernest B. Shoedsack of King Kong fame, and nominated for an Oscar for Special Effects (it lost to The Thief of Bagdad). The poster calls it "The Picture That Was Made Behind Locked Doors!"
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I love the film, too. Career best work from Depp and Burton, with terrific turns by Landau, Bill Murray, Lisa Marie (as Vampira), and George "The Animal" Steele. Lots of good character bits for others in the cast, too.
I watched the new Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name with Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore. It was written by the same duo (Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski), and very much has the same vibe. I really liked this movie, as well, and rank it as my second favorite release from this year that I've seen so far. It may help that I'm very familiar with Moore's cinematic output.
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Somewhat Off-Topic: What have you been reading lately?
in General Discussions
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I've been reading End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, by Bryan Walsh. It takes a look at various potential catastrophic end-of-the-world scenarios, as well as how we can prepare for them and potentially survive them (as a species, not necessarily on an individual level - this isn't a prepper how-to guide). I've only read the first two chapters thus far, covering asteroid strikes and supervolcano eruptions. Next up is nuclear war/accidents. It's been a fun, light read so far.