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That said, I still love what we've got
Dear C.
My favourite Christmas movie of that kind definitely is and forever will be:
THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT
but Die Hard comes a close second...
That's the funniest thing I read all day...
...from my perspective being an old sod of 42 years (in 8 days...)
Yes please seek it out. The Long Kiss Goodnight sees Geena Davis at her coolest ever and she kicks-ass like no other.
Furthermore it features a brilliant Samuel L. Jackson at the top of his game.
I really don't recall many beats or scenes from the movie, just bits and pieces and the overall thought that it was real entertaining. I'll have to throw it at the top of my 'To See' list.
One of the best action films ever, as far as I'm concerned. Iko Uwais is a god damn beast, he just doesn't break a sweat as he totally demolishes dozens of goons with his fists. The action scenes are off the charts - the prison fight in the mud, the nightclub fight, and the entire 40 minutes climax, from intro of Hammer girl and Bat boy, to the big final fight of Rama vs Hammer + Bat and that last beast in the kitchen. 2.5 hours of pure cinematic brilliance in terms of action movies. Every punch and kick feels extremely brutal, and I cringe many times due to this brutality. It will take a long time to beat this film, unless Gareth Evans makes The Raid 3 soon.
NOTHING
Having said this I admit and I am ashamed that I have never seen The Raid or The Raid 2 @DaltonCraig007 and @Major_Boothroyd
I heard quite a few bad things about The Raid 2, being boring and not nearly as good as the first one etc. I think that's why I never bothered to get them.
Tell me otherwise...do I have to get them?
I love the Battle Royale films by the way.
Let me start by saying I'll watch anything Tom Hanks is in. The man is a legend as far as I'm concerned.
As expected, he didn't let me down today. This is an excellent film, and the second biopic I've seen lately (the other being the equally superb Snowden). This story is about Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the crew, and the passengers of US Airways Flight 1549, which departed LaGuardia Airport on January 15, 2009 and then crash landed in the Hudson River, on account of losing two engines to a bird strike shortly after takeoff. All passengers and crew were saved.
The film focuses on the aftermath of the crash, & the National Transportation Safety Board's attempts to find human blame for the crash.
Expertly directed by Clint Eastwood, the film is tense and moving. In addition to the always outstanding Hanks, it boasts an excellent supporting cast, including Aaron Eckhart as First Officer Jeffery Skiles & Laura Linney as Mrs. Sully.
It's a great story of humanity, bravery and calm thinking in a moment of chaos, and is all the more impressive given how tragically everything could have ended.
Recommended!
Sully is directed by Clint Eastwood? Shame on me, I didn't realise that. While I thought Sully will be the common boring biopic, this now has made my "immediately pre-order" item list as I own all Eastwood directed films, and oh boy, has he never let me down once.
A legend behind the camera and in front.
Thanks for that review! I might have missed this silly me.
So I popped in the Blu-ray of the fabulous....
GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES
Another film that underlines the fact that the 50's are my favourite decade of Hollywood.
Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe command the screen from frame one to the last second.
The music is such a delight and many of the musical numbers are such a treat to watch and listen to.
There is the most famous sequence of them all when it comes to Marilyn (I guess) when she sings Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend on that huge bright red steps in that fantastic bright pink dress, surrounded by dancers in tuxedos.
But what follows shortly in a courtroom is my real favourite moment of the film
Jane Russell singing Diamonds, posing as Marilyn, conquering the courtroom. It's a hoot, it's hilarious and Jane Russell is bloody impressive.
I have to add, that this film looks particularly great in High Definition. The colours are especially fantastic, all the beautiful dresses look great in all their detail.
Luckily I got the 10 film Blu-ray Box of Monroe a couple of years ago, which also includes All About Eve and Niagara and all her famous movies.
I'll continue my Film Noir Marathon but I'll throw in one or the other Monroe movie every now and then.
I will write short reviews about the Noir films in my "b&w Film Noir/suspense film" thread.
If I was of age in the 40s and found myself around Hollywood, I would have gotten myself into some fun trouble. I'd have stayed away from Lauren though, so as not to feel Bogie's rage. ;)
I finished my day of flat-out action films with this utter masterpiece of the genre. Action from start to finish, insane set-pieces, brilliant soundtrack, fantastic lead performances from Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. Along with 'The Raid 2 that I watched right before this, it is one of the best action films that I can think of. In the last 10 years, only 'Bourne Ultimatum', 'Taken', 'The Raid' (2012) and the last 2 'Mission Impossible' films are worthy of being in the same league as 'Fury Road' and 'Raid 2'. That is, of course, outside of Asian films where epic action films are released on a regular basis. I really hope they can make a sequel to this, as I missed it in the big screen, so I'd like to experience the follow-up in cinemas.
I've heard rumblings that a MMFR sequel is in the works starring Furiosa in a prequel, but I am sort of hoping it's not true as that story was already told in a series of comics that ran up to the movie's release. And I just want to see Hardy as Max again, because the arc they put him through in the film, going from a feral animal to human again was beautiful.
Mine would probably be:
1.) Road Warrior
2.) Fury Road
3.) Thunderdome
4.) Mad Max
But I adore them all; some of my favorites of all time in many respects. I also like that they each have a different feel to them. Mad Max (1) is a police procedural/revenge film with serious edge, Road Warrior is a roaring outback western, Thunderdome feels like a disaster film with surprising elements of savior cinema tossed in that make Max out to be a Jesus type figure, and Fury Road is the car chase behemoth featuring the bloodiest road trip I've ever seen. They are all so different yet so apart of each other.
Max is one of the greatest modern myth characters we've got around. I love that over time George Miller has crafted him into less of a man and more of a legend, as more and more of the people he has helped carry along his story, giving him immortality. When things go wrong the people of the Wasteland pray that Max is out there somewhere, much like parents scare their kids with stories of the bogeyman.
I couldn't compare it with Fury Road to be honest. Both movies are in a league of their own.
Mad Max is a great start and I like it how society still does function to a certain extend in the first one.
Thunderdome is pure mindless mid eighties b-movie feel fun. But it's clearly the weakest of the lot. If it weren't for the astonishingly good performance of Tina Turner, the movie could even be called trash.
You get to see the best opening to a Max film as he enters Bartertown and fights in a dome to survive, for one, in one of the coolest action sequences I've ever seen. Bartertown's brilliance is that though it's intended to be the grand new world of liberty for all following the destruction of the last one, it's secretly just a microcosm of the old world, where tyranny is still in practice, the minorities or "different" parties are put out to pasture and only a small elite survive and thrive while the rest languish in poverty. And of course there's the Greek tinged "bread and circuses" that the society of Bartertown exemplifies, where the peasantry are sated and tricked into complacency with the entertainment of the Thunderdome bouts.
And of course, what follows after Max encounters Bartertown is a surprisingly emotional story that perfectly displays what it's like to be in the wasteland, as the old generation (in Max) and new generation (the wandering kids) clash. Max becomes an accidental Jesus-like savior figure for the kids he confronts, whose collective hopes haven't been eroded like his had by years of facing the harshest realities of the world. The beauty and horror of so many of those kids Max confronts is that most of them were born after the world went to hell, and so they had no memory of the old world that was lost to war and destruction, for better or worse. Max, however, was there for all of it, and in telling the kids that their dream world is gone and can't come back, he's facing his own demons and all the things he's been forced to do to rescue a world that never could've been saved in the first place.
And of course, the ending is perfect. An amazing chase and confrontation between the warring parties breaks out following the destruction of Bartertown (like the storming of a palace), and at the conclusion Max for the first time in the series sacrifices himself for no other reason than because he wants to help, even though he's getting nothing in return. I nearly choke up when he races out from the cliff edge and crashes into Auntie's horde to clear the way for the kids to fly to freedom as they go to a better world to speak his story into legend, leaving him once again on his own to wander the wasteland.
Beautiful.
A perennial favorite I remember seeing opening weekend. In a decade that was flooded with slasher flicks, Freddy, Jason, and Halloween, 1985 brought us this affectionate tribute to classic Hammer and Universal horrors, and decades of vampire movies.
The make up and effects hold up well, as does the humor. The film is funny as hell, and has some great performances by Roddy McDowell as an homage to Peter Cushing and Chris Sarandon as the main antagonist vampire.
The action is certainly jaw-dropping in this and features some very imaginative set-pieces. As a whole film though it doesn't match the first Raid, as I find the connecting stuff utterly tedious, overlong and uninvolving.
Remember that thriller film about technology and social networking where it's told to be easily used against you? Well, here's another one like it, starring Pierce Brosnan as a successful billionaire Mike Regan who runs a big aircraft company. Stumbled upon an I.T. guy who helps him fix a glitch during a business demonstration during a meeting, it's discovered at later stages that this person has psychic problems as well as mental health issues. When things start blurring between Regan and the I.T. guy, the latter starts ruining his life and his family with the use of heavy computers and networks...
Average film. No awes, no evidence to blow you away. Just your average thriller by John Moore. But, seeing Brosnan around is always a good thing. And there are minor amount of spy elements with Brosnan in performance, as well.
There are actors that can pull off action and drama convincingly enough. And then there is Lee Marvin.
If ever there was a film that showcased the purest definition of a "man," it's Point Blank with Lee Marvin in the driver's seat. These days cinema is so jammed full of movies with older actors taking on action roles that there's little air for others to breathe, but Lee Marvin was doing this kind of big screen work before it was cool at a time when most of today's geriatric action heroes weren't even of legal age yet.
Lee was the real deal, and an actor you could believe in every scene where he was asked to pummel a few ruffians into submission or take up a gun to defend himself. After all, this was a guy who became a decorated Marine during WWII, racking up medals for his bravery in the face of danger after being discharged when he was wounded in a battle where most of his fellow soldiers died. His experience of war and its horrors left an everlasting impact on him after that, and when he eventually got into acting-by sheer accident-he kept to his principles. He turned down handfuls of roles that went on to make other actors famous simply because he felt those films glorified war and watered down the sacrifices people like his fellow soldiers made in the heat of conflict, and in every role he took where he was tasked with displaying a violent act, he made it as unpleasant to watch as he could in an effort to show audiences it was never the solution to any problems.
And so Lee teaches us in Point Blank, a crime-fueled neo-noir featuring the actor as a man on the hunt for money he feels is owed to him, shooting and punching his way up a criminal ladder in search of any man who can get him what he desires. Lee is unhinged in this role as a man who takes nothing from nobody, and his performance is a study in how to portray strength in demeanor. Marvin plays a largely silent protagonist named Walker in this film, and so much of what makes him frightening and compelling as a character is in how Lee is able to give him an inner life that is visible in just his eyes and the way he composes himself. You see his tortured ego, his violent impulses bubbling, and his frustrations at the unraveling of his demands and actions coming more and more undone. Only a few actors can so credibly display the sense of danger Lee does here doing his own fighting and shooting, and that's because his war experience taught him how to fight and kill for real. Watching him on screen even in a fake performance you can see and feel how the real experiences of WWII left their marks on him as he brutalizes men left and right in choreography that is messy and unfair, just like the real conflicts he'd faced two decades before as a young man in the middle of a larger than life fight.
True to his word, Lee shows the brutality of violence and the dirtiness involved in conflict in Point Blank, a film that explores how far we go to risk it all for so little. It features a perfect mix of movie magic in its use of the camera, sound, sets and the noir staples of light and shadow, but above all it presents a dark and engrossing world, and we see it all through Lee's eyes as he takes us on a crazy, tortured, wild ride.
For those who like seeing older actors kick butt, check out Marvin as one of the grandaddies of it all in this movie as he shows them all how it's done. @DaltonCraig007, I think you in particular would enjoy this one.
Lee Marvin has fast become one of my all time favorites in not only what he brought to the table as an actor, but in who he was as a man of honor, and I look forward to seeing anything else of his I can.
Hey Brady, I haven't seen Point Blank yet. Another one I have to get it seems.
It's amazing, I have really seen so many films of the 50s and 60s and yet there are still gems left unseen and even some classics for me to discover yet.
Of all the decades I must have seen the most movies of the 90s (naturally as I was in my late teens early twenties then), followed by 50s, 60s, 00s, 80s, 70s, 10s, 40s, 30s, 20s