New Hollywood Era

I am pretty sure that the frozen lake in the movie is actually not located in Germany. In universe it might be, but in reality, they leave the city and are suddenly somewhere in Scandinavia. Frozen lakes over which you can chase someone aren't all that common near Hamburg.

Oh the movie never says. Beatty hops on the car truck in Hamburg and the truck eventually stops...somewhere, somewhere wooded and rural with a frozen lake. Hollywood Geography probably.

Saw The Panic in Needle Park which was mentioned by jamespolk up thread. Good movie. It's strange to me that it screams 1970s even though it was only made in 1971...Was NYC just ahead in 1970s grittiness?? Anyways, reading the Ebert review of the time and he really disliked the puppy overboard scene. He doesn't really explain why other than it's obvious. I found it a fine why to show their lack of...well, everything. And he mentions the whole needle to the arm thing as shocking but just seems like pretty small potatoes almost 50 plus years later.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Feb 17th 2019 at 10:16:16 AM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

The 1970s was famous as a nadir for New York when everything looked shitty like The Panic in Needle Park and Taxi Driver. The city was going bankrupt and begged the feds for relief and Gerald Ford refused in a presidential address that was famously summarized by the NY Post as "Ford to City: Drop Dead". (Helped cost him the 1976 presidential election.). So yes, NYC was definitely ahead of the curve in 1970s grittiness.

Edited by jamespolk on Feb 17th 2019 at 7:32:39 AM

Watched Murder on the Orient Express. This was my first Agatha Christie adaption I've ever watched. I quite enjoyed it. I couldn't really guess the ending which, although not a deal-breaker for me when it comes to a mystery, it does dampen the fun a bit. Finney is a great Poirot.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Watched Wanda, Barbara Loden's only film as a director (she also wrote the movie and starred in it). I wasn't a big fan. The setting is a Crapsack World filled with poverty, which I tend not to enjoy watching (I didn't particularly like Bicycle Thieves for the same reason). The title character is a complete ditz, which got annoying pretty quickly, and I thought the pacing was off—the story only really took a new direction (besides "being poor and living in a low-income community sucks") after two thirds of runtime, and by that time I was already deep into Eight Deadly Words territory. It felt like the movie was trying to say something, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched The Heartbreak Kid (1972). I had already watched the remake with Ben Stiller many years ago, and I didn't like that version. The basic plot is that a man realizes on his honeymoon that the prospect of spending the rest of his life with the woman he married isn't all that appealing to him, and then he falls for another woman...

Basically, the characters are all pretty terrible, with the notable exception of the other woman's father, who is instead the Only Sane Man. The movie is a kind of Cringe Comedy, except it's not really a comedy. It's more of a "being annoyed at all the characters for being jerks or otherwise very flawed" kind of movie. It has a couple of funny moments, such as the aforementioned father calling the protagonist out on his bullshit and the protagonist pulling a Bavarian Fire Drill to get his crush's classmates to leave the two of them alone, but otherwise it's more of a drama about how people can ruin their own lives and the lives of others.

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I like the Albert Finney Murder on the Orient Express, though I have to say I prefer the other Hercule Poirot film from this era, the Peter Ustinov Death On The Nile. I personally prefer not being able to figure out murder mysteries, because then I can be impressed by the detective (assuming I feel the explanation checks out, that is).

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Killer of Sheep, a 1977 Slice of Life film about people living in a poor African-American community (the main character works at a slaughterhouse, hence the title). The film really embodies ennui—we described it as "low-key depressing, and high-key boring". It's listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and from what I can gather that's because of the way the film handles race—there is no race-related conflict, no references to systemic issues, and very little in the way of stereotypes (though one character calls another a "jive turkey" and they do use racial slurs to address one another). In other words, the race of the characters is pretty incidental, and the movie could easily have been made about a racially quite dissimilar community with only minor alterations.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

If there was one thing that stuck around from New Hollywood once the Blockbuster era began, it was less reliance on sound stages and backlots and more emphasis on location shooting.

Watched Last Chants For A Slow Dance, a 1977 film about a man who leaves his wife and children for weeks at a time to go driving from place to place and basically just fuck around. One thing I particularly liked about it is the use of long takes, to the point where entire scenes are made up of a single shot that lasts for several minutes. The main character gets into conflicts again and again which I initially found interesting, but after two-thirds or so the film got a bit dull and repetitive.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point from 1970. I haven't generally been much of a fan of Antonioni's earlier films, but this one started out very interesting so I figured it might be more to my tastes. The first half-hour or so focuses on a group of radical university students. We get to see them discussing how to best bring about the political change they want to see, making preparations for their political activities, and carrying out those activities. This means the film gets to touch upon a number of interesting (and still relevant) topics. One such example is when the students go to buy guns: in order to get the shopkeeper to help them out a bit more than perhaps he should, they make some comments about what kind of neighbourhood they live in and needing to... protect their women. The racial angle there is not exactly subtle, and definitely not lost on the shopkeeper (nor, one would hope, the viewer). It all culminates in a deadly encounter with the police which felt a lot like a statement on Kent State but of course wasn't because the movie predates that event. It also felt pretty current—considering some highly-publicized, fairly recent Real Life events where encounters with police have turned deadly—which is kind of sad.

But then, the movie lost me. We leave the university and the politics behind to focus instead on a love story of sorts, and as I said I don't particularly like Antonioni's love stories (if they can be called that – it's L'Avventura, La Notte, L Eclisse, and Il deserto rosso I have in mind). There's a weird hallucinatory(?) orgy and I think the ending also takes place within a character's mind à la An American in Paris, but it's a bit unclear. I know some people have considered this one of the worst films ever made (including James Caan, apparently), but I think that's overly harsh. I mostly just felt disappointed that the film wasted such a good setup.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Little Murders (1971), a rather strange comedy. I think the best way to describe it is as a collection of vignettes with the same characters. It gets very surreal because every single character is at least somewhat off-kilter. At first it's fairly subtle, but it pretty quickly becomes obvious that it is a World Gone Mad. There is at least some kind of progression of events, but it wouldn't feel right to call it a "plot" since it's all so bizarre. The highlights include a judge going on a rant which is highly reminiscent of Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch and especially Donald Sutherland as a reverend officiating a wedding in a highly unorthodox way. I was unsure how I felt about the film for much of the runtime, but eventually came down on the side of enjoying it while being utterly bewildered by it.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Rewatched The Exorcist (1973) for the first time in a decade or so. It's probably the third or fourth time I've watched it overall. I watched it with my wife and a couple of friends, none of whom had seen it before. On the whole, we found it to be pretty okay but not living up to its legendary status (or indeed, my recollection).

Of course, we're not the target audience. While I can't speak for the others, I'm not religious and I don't believe in demonic possession (though I'm willing and able to suspend my disbelief in that regard if the movie is well-made, I'm guessing the impact is lessened for me compared to someone who views this as something that could actually happen). But more, much more than this, we're not the target audience because we weren't even born when the movie was made.

The Exorcist was of course very shocking when it first came out; nothing quite like it had been produced before. It could obviously never have been made under The Hays Code—the coarse language alone would have made that a non-starter—but the style and overall feel of the movie also differs considerably from that of horror films made in the decades prior. It's also rather different from most horror films nowadays—for example, I don't think many directors today would either hold off for so long before showing anything overtly malicious happening or devote as much time to ruling out non-supernatural explanations as this film does. All that being said, I guess Seinfeld Is Unfunny because this movie is really not all that shocking compared to modern horror films such as Hereditary and the Saw franchise (or even compared to some films that came out in the decade that followed, such as Alien, The Shining, and The Thing).

The main issues we had with the movie had to do with the pacing and how information was, or wasn't, communicated to the audience. There were three things in particular that stood out to us in that regard. The first one is the prologue in Iraq, which is fairly lengthy at ten minutes or so and very opaque for a first-time viewer. It's supposed to introduce Merrin and establish that he has history with the demon, but it does both pretty poorly. Halfway through the movie or so, one of my friends said "I wonder what that stuff at the beginning has to do with the rest of the film". The second is Chris' decision to take Regan to the hospital for testing. While it doesn't quite come completely out of nowhere, it comes off as a massive overreaction since basically all we've seen at that point is Regan saying that she can't sleep because her bed's shaking (we also found it hilarious that the doctor prescribes Ritalin like it's nothing but then goes on to say that depression is out of his field). The third is the death of Karras' mother, which happens offscreen (come to think of it, there are only four Character Deaths—Burke Dennings, Karras' mother, Merrin, and Karras—and only the last one is shown onscreen). We see Karras visiting his mother in the psychiatric ward and promising to bring her home, before discussing putting her somewhere else with his uncle and hitting the gym. Then we cut to a party at the MacNeils' where Karras' friend mentions that he found out that his mother died "last night" and that she had been dead at her home for a few days before anybody found her (which made us rather confused since it seemed like the party was on the evening of the day when Karras visited her). That last one especially is a rather egregious violation of Show, Don't Tell. To me, these are all telltale signs of making an adaptation from book to film without having thought it through properly.

This is not at all to say that I didn't like the film. I did, but its flaws were much more apparent to me this time. The third act is where the movie shines, for two main reasons: the scene of the actual exorcism is rather good, and Max von Sydow is fantastic as Merrin. In fact, the movie sees a sharp increase in quality when he (re-)enters the film in the third act, and a not quite as pronounced decline when he exits. Throughout his appearance in the third act (but not in the prologue since he doesn't really get to do much), he absolutely dominates the scene. We joked that he towers over the other actors not only because he is by far the best actor and his is the best performance by a significant margin, but also because he is way taller than the others.

We later watched The Exorcist III—skipping the second one because I've watched it so I know it sucks—and unanimously agreed that it is superior to the first one. I had watched it once before and I have to admit that it was at times a bit hokey and not quite as scary as I remembered, but for everyone else it was their first viewing and they were all pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Brad Dourif really knocks it out of the park.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Welp, this thread has been inactive for a while.

So, with the start of this year I decided to have a family movie night, where every Saturday we watch a movie either one that is on theater at the moment or a classic (in a broad sense) film.

For the next Movie Saturday, we will be watching Raging Bull, which just about fits the end of this era.

I find it amusing that of all the directors, Martin Scorsese is the director whose movies I watched the most of, with around 10.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Watched Once Upon a Time in the West. Wasn’t sure what to think of it. Might have been a little too slow for my liking.

West is my favourite of Sergio Leone's. It elevated Jason Robards to one of my favourite actors—at the very least, I would kill to have his voice.

Once Upon a Time in the West is straight up my favorite of Leone's movies (admittedly I still need to watch Once Upon a Time in America) and maybe one of my favorite movies ever? I'm not good at gauging that but it's definitely one I've revisited several times over.

At the very least, the score has some of Morricone's best compositions. That damn harmonica is still chilling.

Also watched Apocalypse Now. Def enjoyed the first half more than the second, especially with the character of Kilgore. Felt like I got lost in the second half, so it really out of nowhere to me when it was actually over. I did watch the Redux version though, so maybe watching the original would have been a different experience.

Definitely go with the theatrical. The scenes reintroduced in the Redux/Final cuts throw off both the pacing and tone, whereas the theatrical cut is this straight slide from noir to war to horror.

Apocalypse Now is a great example of how editing and pacing can make or break a film. I watched the Redux version first and didn't particularly like it, finding it to be rather dull. I later decided to give it a second chance by watching the theatrical version since it is generally considered to be one of the best films of all time (certainly one of the best war films, at least) and I had heard some people say that the Redux version was way inferior to the theatrical. I found myself agreeing entirely: the theatrical version is a masterpiece

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched The Last of Sheila, a 1973 Murder Mystery, with a couple of friends. We all rather liked it, though it's hard to deny that it's rather dated. For one thing, the characters are all Hollywood people or at least Hollywood-adjacent (director, screenwriter, agent, and so on) and make a lot of contemporary references. I had to "translate"/explain a few of them. For another, being a child molester is treated as a shameful secret but not really as a big deal. And of course the outfits and hairstyles just scream 1970s.

The film has a great cast with among others James Mason—one of my favourite actors even if he's a bit past his prime in this film—and Ian McShane way before he made it big. And the screenplay was co-written by Anthony Perkins, of all people. There's a lot of talent involved here, is what I'm saying.

The movie takes a fair while to get going, but when it does, it really does. As discussed above, I prefer it when I can't figure out the solution to murder mysteries. In that respect, this film was just perfect—we caught several of the clues, even most of them, way ahead of the resolution and even paused the movie to discuss it but couldn't quite figure out how it all fit together. A strong recommendation for any fans of the genre from me.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I also watched it lately, I also enjoyed the use of clues and foreshadowing.

As a bonus the action is set near my place, so I knew most places (and of course it is funnier when you notice something that is inconsistent with your local knowledge).

(On the other hand some of the references were probably lost on me).

Watched American Graffiti. Nice little slice of life movie. The most outrageous scene would def have to be that store robbery one. Either that or the car crash. Seriously.

Watched John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974). It's supposed to be something of a Cult Classic, though I can't say I particularly liked it. The special effects and hairstyles date the movie heavily, which I guess is part of the charm. For me, the main problem was the pacing. I read afterwards that a whole bunch of additional footage was shot in order to bring the movie to feature length, and it certainly feels that way. I did however really like the climax where they have to convince the (for some reason sentient) malfunctioning bomb not to explode and kill them all. It would probably have been better to just make it a short film instead.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

If you can watch the student film the theatrical film was expanded from I recommend it because I thought it was better paced.