Last movie you saw

Exactly

Ninja turtles.. excellent for kids

Somewhere in queens ..good movie especially if from Brooklyn or Queens

Gran Turismo

Flash

Heart of stone

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Although most well known for her films with Yasujiro Ozu, Setsuko Hara made two films with another titan of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa - 1946's No Regret for Our Youth and The Idiot, 1951. The latter is based on the Dostoevsky play of the same name. It's good to OK, but at 166 min it's a bit of a slog. Hara is the highlight as she plays a temptress, a nice departure from her usual virginal roles.

No Regret for Our Youth is the much better picture IMO. It's the story of a silly, young girl coming of age to be a person of great moral substance and courage set amid the upheaval in Japan during the period immediately before and after WW2. Hara gets to show off much greater acting range than in her Ozu films. Also, the great Kurosawa cinematography is on display in this one of his earliest films. Highly recommended....T

 

I just did 5 days at the Telluride Film Festival. It was our first time, and made a few rookie mistakes. We saw some good movies, and some weird ones, and learned that's just life in the Film Festival world.

Good ones were :
The Holdovers - Paul Giamatti play a crabby boys school professor who has to stay on campus over the Christmas Holiday with a cook and a group of boys. Kind of a Breakfast Club with a new take

Rustin - a story about the guy that pushed MLK and others to have a March on Washington in 1963. Didn't expect to like is, but the acting is really good.

Daddio - a 2 person film where Sean Penn is a taxi driver who picks up Dakota Johnson (50 shades of grey) at the airport, and engages her in conversation while they are stuck in traffic coming into NYC. Thought it would be tough to pull off with just 2 people, but it was actually really good. Her facial expressions could tell their own story, as he watched her in the rear view mirror.

NYAD - about the long distance swimmer who tried to swim from Cuba to the US. Annette Bening is Diana Nyad, and Jodie Foster is her best friend who takes on her coaching for the attempts.

The Royal Hotel - with the blonde girl from Ozark was dark but pretty good.

Saltburn - about a dorky college guy who befriends the cool rich guy, and goes home with him over the holidays. Lots of twists and turns, and dark, but worth streaming.


We heard The Bikeriders was good. Tuesday with Julia Louis-Dreyfus was weird, and that Poor Things with Emma Stone was crazy but good.

Janet Planet had several friends walking out of it. All of us Strangers was weird , and would be a hard pass for me.

Being up at 9,500' elevation in Mountain Village, it's hard to have a bad day. I recommend going to this Festival

 

Cool! The new restoration of The Unknown (1927) - Tod Browning, Lon Chaney and a young Joan Crawford in hot pants! - was shown at Telluride. Would have loved to see that...T

 

The last movie we saw a few days ago was “my big fat greek wedding #3”. Not that good, we should have waited for the movie to be available on iTunes. The last movie before this one, last month, was “Mission Impossible” (great).

 

The original BFGW was great. My wife any I saw it on a cruise ship. Directly mirrors our family setups - mine is huge, ethnic Sicilian family and she's the only child of two only children parents.

BFGW2 was a dud IMO. Sounds like 3 is the same...T

 

Priest of Darkness, 1936. Notable as one of only three films directed by Sadao Yamanaka that is not lost. Yamanaka died in 1938 in Manchuria after being drafted. His films are said to have influenced other noted Japanese directors, notably Ozu. POD is also the earliest extant film of the great Setsuko Hara, whose films I've been binging. POD revolves around Hara's struggles to keep her brother on a straight and narrow path. Hara is only 16, but all the traits that would make her a legendary actress a decade later are on full display. If you buy into the plot line that her innocence and resolve are such that people with formerly evil motives would forego their own self interest to help her, then you'll like the picture. I do, and therefore, I did! Recommended.

The Daughter of the Samurai. 1937. Stars Setsuko Hara and Sessue Hayakawa. German/Japanese co-production. Revolves around the conflict between East and West in the run up to WW2. It's OK, but dated. Mildly recommended, but more as a historical document than as cinema.

A Ball at the Anjo House. 1947. A great film that deals with the loss of status and fortune by a family with the dissolution of the Japanese peerage post-WW2. They decide to hold one final ball before their house is sold. Class struggle abounds as once noble elites are humbled, while erstwhile commoners rise in ascendancy through both honest work and nefarious means. While the lost of privilege comes with obvious downsides, the movie points holds out hope for the potential advantages in the classless society to come. Highly recommended.

T

 

How does that work ? They have a movie theatre that you show up and watch a bunch of short films ? How do they handle all the people ?

I love Telluride - need to get back there.

MDS

 

You can go to their website to see what the ticket options are. We went with some regulars, so went with their recommendation of buying the Acme pass, which has one large theatre in Mountain Village that holds around 500. All the other movies are in the Town of Telluride at 5-7 venues, only one being the old movie theatre. The rest are in small venues they arrange around town.

Each day there will be a list of what movies are playing where, and they move them around so you have a chance to see most of them you want to. At our venue, for something we knew would be popular, we sent out a line holder 45minute - 1 hour ahead of the movie time. At around the 30 minute before point, they start letting people in, according to what passes they have. We only had one movie, the Sean Penn / Dakota Johnson, that we were some of the last to get seats in. For the rest, not an issue.

We had heard that in town, you would have to wait a little longer, as the lower level patrons and non sponsors can line up as well. They usually have some tickets available for walk ups for $20 each.

We saw 2-3 movies a day, and really had a fun time with it. I would recommend going.

 

Still binging my way through Setsuko Hara's non-Ozu films...

Tokyo no josei - 1939 - may be the closest thing I've seen to a Japanese pre-code! Hara plays a women determined to break into the male world of selling cars. Pretty gritty for 1939. Recommended.

Aoi sanmyaku & Zoku Aoi sanmyaku - 1939 - interesting idea, a two-part movie released a week apart. Hara is a progressive teacher involved in the struggle between traditionalism and modernity, a recurring theme in Japanese cinema of the time. Would have been better as a single 90 minute movie.

Repast - 1951 - directed by Mikio Naruse - Hara has the task of encouraging her niece to not be so rash after her first argument with her new husband, while her own marriage of 5 years is in a rut. Contrived happy ending brings it down a notch. Her husband is a dolt; Hara should have kicked him to the curb.

Sudden Rain - 1956. Also directed by Naruse. Not seen many of his films, but this is more or less a re-working of Repast. Meh.

Tokyo no koibito - 1952 - two screen legends - Toshiro Mifune and Setsuko Hara - play against type in this comedy about simple Tokyo folk. Drama is added by the sickness/death of their friend, a tea-house girl, played spectacularly well by Yoko Sugi. Recommended.

T

 

1960 Daughters, Wives and a Mother
Very good. A soaper, but you get to enjoy three top Japanese actresses in one movie - Setsuko Hara, Hideko Takamine and Haruko Sugimura.

1948 Temptation
Meh. Wouldn't watch it again.

1945 Three Women of the North
The last movie released in Japan during WW2, the day before Hiroshima was nuked. Not much story. What little there is extols the role of women in the war effort. Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine - two giants of Japanese cinema - star. Good.

Sound of the Mountain. 1954. Totally blown away. So much so, I watched it again a few nights later. To think that Japanese films were dealing with themes like abortion and divorce at a time that Hollywood was still under the tyranny of the production code is stupefying. Setsuko Hara is a wife trapped in an unhappy marriage. Her performance is majestic. She forms a close friendship with her father in law - So Yamamura, known in the West for Tora! Tora! Tora! - who gives a great performance as the FIL. Ken Uehara is good as Hara's cheating hubby. Directed by Mikio Naruse. Highly recommended.

T

 

Tokyo Twilight - 1957 - the darkest Ozu film I can recall. Abortion, abandonment, divorce, pain and misery. In addition to fine performances by Ozu regulars - Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara - Ineko Arima stands out as the troubled young lover.

Late Autumn - 1960 - Ozu in color! Side is like a dog with a bone! [emoji2] Reworking of his 1949 classic Late Spring from the female perspective. Ozu sprinkled in a bit more light comedy than in his previous collaborations with Hara. Mariko Okada is fabulous as the stand-in for the youth of Japan telling the old geezers where to get off. Highly recommended.

T

 

"Labor Day"
Kate Winslet & Josh Brolin . I think ShowTime
VERY GOOD!!! Very unusual Story line

 

Equalizer 3 Absolutely awful.

 

I liked it because it was set in my parents old town

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Kudos to TCM for going avant-garde. They showed Kurutta Ichipeiji - 1928 . Based on a short story by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. With less than 1% of Japanese silent movies surviving, any of these is precious, but, wow, what a strange movie. It's about an old man who takes a job at an insane asylum to be closer to his wife. Reminiscent of old German horror films. Read all you can online about the film before watching, or you'll never figure out what's going on! Cinematography/editing are revolutionary for the time.

A much less weird film based on Kawabata's work is The Dancing Girl of Izu (1933). Summer romance between an itinerant traveling performer - a dancing girl - and a university boy on holiday. As I watch more classic Japanese cinema, one obvious difference with classic Hollywood films is the former are not afraid to end without final resolution toofthe conflict(s) that drive the story arc. No, patented "and they lived happily ever after" final reel to be sure. Mildly recommended.

Mr. Thank You. 1936. Early Japanese talkie. Another film based on a Kawabata short story. This is sort of Stagecoach mashed up with The Grapes of Wrath transported to Japan. A mother and daughter travel from their rural village to Tokyo. This is the height of the Great Depression and the mother has a "job" lined up for her daughter, to "be a rich man's plaything" is I think how Kawabata put it euphemistically. On their bus trip, an interesting cast of characters - each with their own tale of pity and woe. Michiko Kuwano - who died tragically young @ 31 in 1946 - is great role as a fallen women who is has been to/from Tokyo multiple times. So, her "experience" is contrasted to that of the innocent newcomer, a glimpse into the future for the daughter if you will. Excellent movie. Highly recommended...T

 

Ojosan Kanpai. 1949. Shoji Sano and Setsuko Hara. I can't tell you how much I loved this movie. Director Keisuke Kinoshita later went on to fame with classics such as Twenty-Four Eyes and The Garden of Women with another great actress of classic Japanese cinema, Hideko Takamine. But, he really nailed it Ojosan It's got all the excellent drama of Ball at the Anjo House (post # 6985) with a few light comedic bits to break up the heaviness.

Taifuken no onna. 1948. Setsuko Hara and So Yamamura. I've been trying to hunt down a copy of this film for a long time, and when I finally did, I worried it would not live up to my imaginings. Holy cow! Setsuko Hara is not the "Eternal Virgin" of her more well-known Ozu films. She is a former Army nurse, and (it's implied) prostitute, from the wrong side of the tracks who falls in with smugglers. In fact, she's a tougher nut than any of her male compadres. If you've seen Key Largo (Bogie & Bacall) or Strange Cargo (Crawford & Gable), Taifuken has a similar vibe. Hara owns this film. I enjoyed it so much, I watched it twice, back to back. Once to soak up the action, character arc and subtitles. Then, a second time just to watch Ms. Hara blow this movie out of the water.

T

 

Don't Breathe 2.........................didn't enjoy it at all.

 

Was the 1st one any good? I was thinking of watching it.

 

First one was definitely better than the second one, I didn't mind watching the first one.

 

Netflix Jake Paul doc. Actually pretty good


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Hideko, the Bus Conductor - 1941 - cute little 54 min film, directed by Mikio Naruse, about the adventures of a young bus conductor (she collects the fares) and driver who develop and implement several schemes to advertise their humble bus line in the face of more modern competitors. Nice to see Hideko Takamine in the time frame after she was a child star and before she became a legendary actress of classic Japanese cinema...T

 

In the theatre, Skyfall (not very good), just watched Usual Suspects on TV, love that movie.

 

I watched this latest Indiana Jones movie on the airplane. It got some pretty poor reviews. So I'm watching it and I'm trying to figure why this is a bad movie because I agree with the reviews. And I figure it out.

Its just one "bit" after another after another after another. Its like someone made up a list of action bits and then sprinkled them throughout the movie without much reason. And its soooooooooooooooooooooooooo CGI. Remember the original with the stuntman under the truck? That was so cool. I watch it today and I still think its cool.

Now its just one cartoon shot after another. They forgot what makes an Indiana Jones movie: The characters, the story, and the real believable action.

 

The Critical Drinker had a series of videos on YouTube entitled "Why Modern Movies Suck". I don't agree with everything he says, but CGI overload was one of his complaints. An emphasis on constant action versus character arc and plot development was another.

Of course, the most modern movie I've seen was The Hangover, so what do I know!

T