>>1662 >>1670 Read it. Didn't like it at all tbh. It's exactly the type of rehashed fanfiction crap that I didn't want to see. Boring meandering stuff with horrible dialog and zero style and atmosphere. Also way too many niggers, though that's probably not indicative of the original script. I now have even more respect for the actual film if this is what they were planning to do initially. I wonder myself what I would have done for the third Alien film if I had to do it. Perhaps set it in a completely different place unrelated to the first two films at all. And then have the new characters discover the craft with Ripley at the end of the film for tied continuity. Though that's basically postponing things rather than solving them since now you have the exact same dilemma of what to do with those characters in the cliffhanged "Alien 4".

>>1704 lol and i wanted to upload it to test run some graphic novel/screenplay thread, didn't because i got confused and downloaded the original early 90's comics instead of the newer Gibson ones. Alien 4/Resurrection always sparked my curiosity due to having an odd director helm it, a pre-Amelie Jean-Pierre Jeunet, always thought it was a risky move by everyone involved.

>>1706 I generally look fondly on Resurrection though I know that's an unpopular opinion since it's written by Joss Whedon who I can't stand myself. If Alien 3 is an actual film that's just rough around the edges, Resurrection is a full on schlock B-movie. Though it has its appeal due to some interesting imagery and general 90's vibe and aesthetics. It's pretty fun. And of course by the standards of today it's still a fairy decent action flick. In a way it was a good call to just turn in into over the top buffoonery when forced to make another Alien sequel, since by '97 the franchise felt dead and exhausted if only they knew.

It was shit.

Contrary to The Holy Mountain, I didn't fall asleep watching this one. Plotwise it's barebones and it feels that's just a tool for the setpieces. Good setpieces at that. That being said, the kid being naked wasn't necessary I'd actually want to watch something similar like this. There was a lot of stuff to like.

>>1910 >Plotwise it's barebones I thought the ending rounded it up nicely with the thematic of their blood line being cyclical, as the ending sequence practically leads to the beginning scene. But still it was pretty pretentious at times, with nods and references obscure enough for most publics. >wasn't necessary lol, it wasn't rare back then in rural towns to have butt nekid children prancing around but for a movie i agree it's a bit risky, thematically it kinda fits because he never had any clothes after wandering the desert and the only two costumes he knows of are a franciscan monk's and his own father's leather one. Taking into account the director and producer's background i would be very suspicious but it seems the kid Jodorowsky's own son so the usual thing to happen should've not happened... but who knows, they don't think like we humans do. >I'd actually want to watch something similar like this I remember discussing something similar and one anon recommending another film but i don't quite remember which one was, there's two names in my mind: 1970's Deadlock and 1969's Antonio das Mortes, the latter being the sequel of 1964's Black God, White Devil which goes about a gunslinger who hangs around and talks to a voodoo dude, kinda reminiscent of the scene were the Topo hangs around with The 4th Gunslinger. The director Rocha was a social character in Mexico around the same era Jodorowsky was (late 60's) so i don't doubt the chilean jew taking some tips from him or his work, can't say because i still haven't seen the films.

>>1914 >Black God, White Devil which goes about a gunslinger who hangs around and talks to a voodoo dude sounds right my alley

>>1910 I watched the first half hour of The Holy Mountain about 4 times before finally finishing it. I can't remember why I kept bailing out but maybe it's the same reason you fell asleep. if you want something similar to El topo, I recommend checking out Rafael Corkidi and Juan López Moctezuma. Both men worked on the film and exhibit a similar hallucinatory style in their own work. El topo is considered an acid western along with several other films, but I'm not sure the other acid westerns have much in common. It seems like most of those films are unconventional and unique in unrelated ways. (Although Dennis Hopper tried to channel Jodorowsky to salvage The Last Movie and it's still just a mess.)

>>1914 >Black God, White Devil I've just finished that movie, and it left me mixed feelings. On one hand, I think the first half is kind of genius. It depicts fairly well the kind of "christianity" that is held in LatAm, there's some good character development, and is interesting seeing the superstitious MC falling for the cult and burning bridges with his woman. Second half felt a bit like a waste of time. The character that becomes the focus of the movie isn't as intriguing as the movie pretends it is, it felt like there was a lot of time where nothing happened, and the bad acting really starts to show around these parts. Even then, the ending felt quite climactic. Antonio das Mortes was also a pretty good character, I liked how he was always introduced with folk music, his connections with Christianity, his mannerisms, and his appearance as well. There's plenty of scenes where his silhouette takes the spotlight and he has a distinctive look that I really like. Next to the leader of the cult he was my favourite character of the movie. I'll check out his movie later since, as I said before, this one left me a bit cold.

Fuck it, i am bored and despite having tons of movies left in the bag i haven't seen any in at least 2 years that is in the same level as you guys. I can start any day with that bag but because i have my brain fried i want to request someone here to name one film so i can comment on it in this thread, anything goes as long as i can find it. I requested the same to my irl peers to challenge my own vision but they are too hollywoodized and don't want to because i rec'd them many and they haven't watched any, so i came to the only other source i sympathize.

>>2067 Watch Andrei Rublev

>>2068 I did watch it some years ago but don't mind doing it again because it's a treat. Guess that's the first one, will make some webms and write it down.

>>2067 Sex Survey Results I am not joking

Lately I've become intrigued by Thomas Ligotti's short horror stories. Ligotti is popular in the dissident sphere -- in some ways he's a successor to Lovecraft -- but I only heard of him recently. Many of his stories are read by amateurs on youtube, making for handy podcast-length listening. Ligotti's writing creates such powerful visuals in my mind I was interested to see screen adaptions of his work. Unfortunately the film version of his story "The Frolic" was a big letdown -- even though Ligotti himself worked on the screenplay! The original story involves a prison psychologist at home in the evening, speaking to his wife about his meetings with a strange murderer. As the psychologist goes into deeper details about the murderer, the atmosphere in his home is one of escalating dread. The short film has less focus on atmosphere and more focus on acting, perhaps unavoidably so, but most people would see it as a downmarket Silence of the Lambs where main attraction is the wEEeeEird yet brilliant murderer. Instead of slowly building suspense, the film is peppered with cheap jump scares. Another great thing about the original story was its ambiguity, giving the reader a puzzle that demands attention to every small detail. The film throws this away by adding scenes that explain far too much. It's disappointing that this project turned out so poorly because the work deserves much better. Regardless, here are some Ligotti stories for your listening pleasure: The Bungalow House, The Town Manager - https://pseudopod.org/people/thomas-ligotti/ Gas Station Carnivals - https://youtube.com/watch?v=w-UY6DtZLDA The Frolic - https://youtube.com/watch?v=w11mfpEVSDw

>>2068 I've been in rocky situations for some months but how about this, when i finish reading a couple of books i've been meaning to about cinematography i will review it and then analyze its photography aspects using the tools i hope those pdf's give me. I haven't watched a single movie by my own will since your reply so don't think i skipped it >>2109 Jokes on you i watched it back in the day along with all the stuff they released quickly when they revived the channel, a tough watch because narratively speaking it does not move the plot or "joke" other than the very few odd responses like the recurring caller being specific or drunk calling. Hell, why not, i will do the same as i said up here except i now know there's not much in-between other than the clock and sky actually moving realistically, the ironical Tarkovskian warning ("are you still watching?") and said recurring caller.

1st post this month, lol.

Today i can say i like action films, i've been watching action films for the past 3 or 4 years, trashy action and the more violent the better but there has to be intention and elegance if possible hence my predilection to Hong Kong flicks although i've only explored thoroughly the 60's to the early 80's, just a bit before the established HK blood opera era but have delved into its defining early years (82-86). Skipping extremely important figures in the 80's and 90's (and a particular one in the 70's) has only made this journey thrilling because i know i am still in for a treat. Due to considering these joints low-class and really nothing much other than their excellent choreography/stuntmantship and particular focus on loyalty & brotherhood, two topics i particularly enjoy, i haven't really got much of a thought in writing about them in "last movie you've seen" threads of the past and this one thinking not to waste your time, in fact i could definitely say due to my safest bet in entertainment and "turn brain off" being such movies and depending them all the time in these my latest struggling years i have neglected 3 to 4 years of watching "good" films or at least ones that go beyond punches. Partly because of this "guilt", partly because i have seen a clear distinction in eras and styles of the all-eternal hand-to-hand fight scene (along with gun shooting antics or "gun fu") and greatly part for being amused and inspired by what HKanon did time ago in that Top 50 Fight scenes thread i've been thinking and cooking a thread about action in general, with my initial punch at it being the review and video samples of a couple famous action coordinators' basic and intermediate filmographies (in Asia these fellas being the de-facto main directors concerning fight scenes hence consistency among their works) this dump should include 20+ initial movies and also wanted to write a very basic summary regarding what i've seen in idiosyncrasy of themes, movements, styles and other minutia of what composes the chinese action genre. Due to trying to polish my sketching skills to illustrate such visual figures to you i've stalled it more than i would like to admit. Today, after saying i've watched 120+ such films ranging from early Shaw Brothers to late Golden Harvest (which is little considering how much shit they churned out) not to count the non-Hong Kong action stuff from America and Europe which might range in the 300+ altogether, i can safely say i've watched the most violent, gut-kicking movie of all by a not-so-shabby margin... at least in the opinion of this guy here writing this post who lives in a relatively contemporary but gangsterish society making friends along the way and going out to see for myself, add to it that plot-wise this dude concerns himself in loyalty & brotherhood, a consequence of valuing such things IRL along with maintaining my position against people trying to put someone down and conducting oneself with mental integrity/ideological consistency. I am not a tough guy but i can say i usually have my pants up, metaphorically speaking (sans one time i was caught mentally and physically very off but worked for it to not happen again no gay or NTR stuff happened let's not worry but i don't forget it) still having said this corny declaration i found myself forced to do so because this movie comes to me in a particular state of mind and knowledge plus personal experiences that make its action way too close to a nowadays person seeing it as a viewer, a voyeur, a witness to people geting punched or harmed with in movies and get their minds worked by feelings IRL. It will sound even more corny to say that this declaration of "the most" is made because the movie takes the psychological realm, "hurr durr words are the real violence" is such a tripe declaration especially when the genre at hand features fighters castrating opponents in mid-air with their bare hands or chopping people in half vertically like an anime, but when a movie very clearly kicks both the on-screen characters AND the viewer in different ways both at the same time while also having thematic and behavioral consistency, a rare thing in cheap films, then things escalate a notch to the point that after having seen the movie i feel with the obligation to write such post.

Such movie does not feature the best gun scenes, they look like plastic dollar store revolvers that shoot spark powder plus no technique or tactics yet the shock of pulling a gun on something is there; it also doesn't have the best hand-to-hand combat, far from it really considering the experts cast although it is nervous arm-flinging fighting in desperation, the same that makes seasoned trainers look like fear-stuck thugs; its plot is not even that good to begin with and "suffers" from the classic Shaw Brothers syndrome of its late years in trying to inject gear-grinding comedy into many scenes but at the end of the day the thing that strikes me the most is that characters, as poorly or greatly as they might be written, have in them action consequences and intentions that make this movie not feel like two ritualistic men personifying elegant animals in combat or two quasi-immortal hitmen flying with a gun in each hand, but a pair of seemingly-competent protag and villain committing several not-so-much mistakes but instinctive, idiosyncratically-coherent actions that doom their lives. All this context and now-long-winded post was simply to say that this picture despite having its shortcomings seems to have, for me, all its pieces work and work well, so well in fact that due to said production attempting to do several things at once and achieving them with both the characters suffering the physical & emotional consequences and the viewer the "i have no mouth and i must scream" sentiment of being a witness in a shitshow that this visual narrative effort i believe, no, i refuse to accept that this was an accident of circumstance or an entire sentimental product of my personal collective experiences being moved slightly. Said product might not be 9 or 8 in a 10 scale of action goodness, nor a 8 or 7 in a very specific sub-set of rules like H2H, set design or gun fighting, but this movie certainly is a 6 in many areas some of which i haven't seen being combined so effortlessly or that i knew could be tackled directly into a gangster movie although that may be because i checked it without expecting nearly as much consistency. This consistency, including the "shock" moments which are predictable but you still don't want to see them, is coupled with a crucial thing in the script (which i repeat don't think were made without thinking about them) said thing is the rational irrationality of its characters, being unnervingly pushed over or cornered like desperate animals, it sounds dumb but people are animals sometimes and i've seen such cases IRL, they are not often showcased on film because it makes seemingly smart characters dumb or merely said actions "are not realistic" for people in their positions. But it happens and it happens a lot, people are irrational, the dumb act on instinct and the clever are ritualistic, common sense is not that common. That's what makes this movie feel real without feeling like watching a real documentary, it's a dramatization of violent men who start acting way too real mid-way for someone who has seen stuff, it is dumb and doesn't make sense but in its explicit ways it does make sense when seeing the characters act in primordial instinct and out of fear/rage which in turns becomes vulgar displays of power: Irrational but with a shallow, implicit logic sense behind them that often were also unjust. This felt like real violence. To put it shortly in a lapidary, "quote this on the poster" way: This movie taken in parts is not that special, if anything it is toned down and not very developed for what it is in the blood opera genre to the point of smirking or chuckling, but as a whole it's the first time i've seen something that felt like watching Saw and cuckold porn at the same time in terms regarding the type of feeling, and boy it is not arousal. It is funny to think one of the kung fu genre's most emblematic villain actors wrote, starred and directed it. I might be overselling this by a mile but i repeat this is a rock i stumbled upon in my journey and own belief system, this was a defining point on what violence really looks like to me other than the villain not killing the children (absurdity!) or hate-raping the co-protagonist, as acid and unglorified it seems in its "small" but most important scenes. A rock for you might be another particular movie that grabs your balls in a way your gonads do not like or haven't encountered before. For me this made me reach a certain entertainment-wise peak, this case violence, that i think will not be surpassed in a short while... and for that i think this is an interesting gem to see for people deep into a genre who prouds its stock characters in moral and logical behavior high grounds, if you see this without a similar trip you might as well watch City On Fire again (or for the first time, good movie). Still, i might feel like this because it's only the fifth film i've watched in 5 or 6 months but also the fifth in the last 5 days.

>>2378 Did you mention the title somewhere in there?

>>2380 Sorry for the late reply >Did you mention the title no :^) but i left strong clues It will probably be underwhelming hence said reaction but i can make a visual map on how everyone gets fucked in the end in both physical and psychological ways if you want me to resume it and drive my point straight on, spoilers galore tho or i can simply tell you but part of me still thinks this movie simply went too hard on me as a old chivalry porn watcher, a normal viewer foreign to this i think wouldn't mind the movie that much hence the expectation part played an important role. It works in pairs/dual destinies which is a karma/asian thing to do. As i said this doesn't feel like an accident, it seems to be based on the usual karmic system old kung fu movies had but moves it to an urban environment and goes away with the normal chivalry/honor conventions that people were used to, hence the shock when trust is easily betrayed and violence becomes primal rage rather than ritualistic elegance. It plays somewhat in the same ballpark as earlier works' conventions and that's why i think its deconstructive nature in other conventions works so well, or at least for me. That's a "problem" i have with these kind of plot movies, it seems confusing how some works feel intuitively like complex narratives, as if it was an adapted work from a detailed source, but in reality they are very simple and made with quickshot scripts. Yet the feeling stays there as if someone planned every detail and it's executed in a somewhat shallow or quickfire way, as if it could be fleshed out way more but they opt to just not. The Kid with the Golden Arm has a similar feel to it, mindless action (and not really on par with other works from the same guys) but the characters' personalities and conceptual interaction and traits among them make it feel like it was adapted from a major work or had way too much planning and too little time to film it, and that is because the characters and their personalities as a whole make sense and complement its thematic story up to a t. Some heroes are not that different from some villains, their motivations are just different and what mostly takes them apart is benefit to society or to themselves, yet some egos are fed with certain acts without actually fully realizing their collateral damage. That, for example, is a not-shallow take on what seems a pretty straightforward morally black-and-white wuxia movie, but that message seems to be clearly there as all the interpretative pieces are presented despite never being acknowledged by the narrative itself.

>Vortex-Gaspar Noe, 2021 "For My Damaged Right Eye" but weaker. I was expecting the editing cuts to at least mean something like you expect the series of events to be consecutive but it's actually multiple events occurring as part of a schedule that all happen differently, but no, it's just split screen on analog 16mm(?) film because Gaspar thought it looked cool. At best I can say it depressed me because it reminded me I can't live for myself but have no one to live for. At worst, it was bland, Noe should stick to rape.

>>2587 I've seen all of his feature films up to Climax. I wasn't too interested in Vortex until I saw he cast Dario Argento. I didn't realize it was based on a gimmick...

>>2588 I mean if you're someone who enjoys basic arthouse slice of life family drama films Go watch The Stranger(1991) it's far better written and I had seen it before handhell the scene between the mom and grandma in Disney's capeshit show Ms Marvel is better written than this regardless of quality as it's not as well written or does anything of value with editing choices or cinematography which waters down what could be a artistic technique to just that a gimmick then you can give it a watch.

>>2589 Everything All At Once: Good introduction, didnt really feel it developed from a movie act 1. Details to come.

Just saw 12 Angry Men (1957) Its an excellent film, wouldn't bother to post about it if it wasn't, its mostly just talking, but it got really intense for me early on. Made me wonder, how far would i be willing/able to go against such pressure of majority before giving up on what i think is right and would i even try. It was time well spent, recommend.

>>2636 Geez you guys, it is none other than Louis C.K.! What are you doing visiting this humble board about actual films and motion pictures from around the world? We've never had a celebrity visit before (other than medieval film anon) especially not one from someone who has appeared in media we certainly haven't watched but it is good thing anyways. Also what do you mean posters are mad? what is your job here? all your reply text seems confusing but i know very well who's behind the post. Have a blessed day my man

not sure if you can call it a film, but its a series of 3 episodes around 40 mins each. i liked it to say the least! some elements were a bit too showy or dramatic even for an anime like when a massive skyscraper tilts like 35 degrees it was able to right itself with some gyroscopic control without anything breaking. i'll still say it felt like everything i wanted in an 80s/90s cyberpunk style anime and then some. loved the psychic elements to each episode, dug the action sequences, music was i guess pretty choice. didn't understand it and my translated subs version looked like it was missing the mark on lyrics idk. still highly recommend. check it out if you haven't. hopefully you'll wish it had more than 3 episodes like i do now.

>>2634 While Sidney Lumet was a genius when it came to film making, it's clear he knows jack shit when it comes to the legal system. Even more present in his other legal drama, The Verdict (which I would highly recommend watching next).

>>2648 With 12 Angry Men I fault the writer since it was originally a play. I might say a little more about it if I have time. But what was wrong with The Verdict? I haven't seen in in a while.

>>2649 >it was originally a play teleplay, my mistake

Watched original The Manchurian Candidate. Loved the visuals they weren't over the top and were dynamic enough. Surprised at how much depth the main character had. I feel the script is very focused and there is very little bloat. Overall I loved it, only issues I had was with Sinatras character and some of the decisions by the government pulled me out of the experience.

It was American Psycho but this was the 20th time I watched it.

Law Abiding Citizen I enjoyed the concept a lot more than the execution.

>>2696 I felt the same. Would of been much improved if it took a hard anti-establishment tone and made Gerard Butler the unquestioned hero, i.e. Death Wish.

Il mulino del Po AKA The Mill on the Po (1949) A bit of a hidden gem here -- underrated on imdb with Carlo Ponti producing a Fellini screenplay, photographed by Aldo Tonti. Factional disputes arise in a farming community along Italy's greatest river, pitting the local land baron against his peasant workers, labor organizers against individualist entrepreneurs, the king's tax collectors against a tax-dodging business, and two families of a prospective marriage. Most of these factions get a realistic rendering from Fellini, who avoids puerile advocacy for one side or another. Instead he creates characters who posses a mixture of noble intentions and moral failings, with a healthy sprinkling of provincial idiosyncrasies to keep the story entertaining. But as everything builds toward an exciting climax (and hopeful resolution to the community's many divides), the story takes a poorly-motivated divergence to an entirely new conflict, bringing the film to an unsatisfying end.

Saw The House That Jack Built (2018). It felt like jew propaganda aimed at intj types.

>>2742 It's not good, but I still think it's one of the better Lars Von Tryhard films.

La Haine Someone wanted to watch this with me (very out of character, in hindsight), and I figured I'd finally give La Haine a try. It was very well done, and I wish I could give a good writeup on it for you guys, but my experience watching it was overwhelmed by one thing: Fuck the french. I really enjoyed the acting, writing, and cinematography, and it had a lot of memorable moments; the problem is that it's french lowlifes, french police brutality, and ugly french architecture. I look at the movie as a whole and instead of thinking about characters or themes (which I can think of for fragmentary moments), I find myself asking: what the fuck is wrong with France? Why are they like this? It's as though they used to have something beautiful, then pissed all over it and themselves. I realise that the filmmaker likely intended this on some level, but he and his film are part of this as well: this disgusting Parisian, post-French Revolution rot on a nation that used to be beautiful and likely still is in places. This film feels as though it is turning me into an inverse ouiaboo. It gives me a desire to seek out and learn more about the French so I can learn how they disgust me so and what they had before they succame to this disease. Yuck.

>>2752 >this disgusting Parisian, post-French Revolution rot on a nation that used to be beautiful and likely still is in places. >This film feels as though it is turning me into an inverse ouiaboo. It gives me a desire to seek out and learn more about the French so I can learn how they disgust me so and what they had before they succame to this disease. I feel the same way about America and when it wrong, and because of film, memory, and anecdotal proximity we can contrast how much had changed in 10, 40, 100 years across psyche, race, emotions, logic, and architecture among its people whereas you're going to have to crack open some books and dig on the internet for say France. As for the French what the great Aryan chimpout of 1789 entailed for the rest of the country was the genocide minorities, by tongue or lives, and Paris' cementation as the nation's cultural hegemon. Every minority language in France is dead or languishing except Elsässisch and Basque (I think) which have significantly fallen in the number of speakers whereas the rest of the country has vague or superficial notions of a true local culture like yankee v. southerner in America. Many people I feel do not understand the scope, damage, and similarity to the Russian Revolution that the French Revolution's ramifications had on a cultural level, what liberalism and nationalism were when they were new and paving the way for other petty governmental ideologies, what was lost, the insanity of the new age religions that sprang up, and what it turned the people into. Were the French always so snooty and insufferable? Or is that just Parisians, as Paris still composes and makes up the country as its cultural epicenter deeming what is and isn't and how it is like Hollywood does for American culture. How many voices have been ignored or silenced in 230+ years or tinged by perception of stereotypes of France and Paris. It puts into perspective that we've been living in the same political era for 2 centuries and that mindsets have not changed much to an extent.

Although Loves of a Blonde was a breakout film for Milos Forman, nominated for a foreign language Oscar, it's one of the least impressive Czech films I've seen. It can't even be the best Czech film from 1965, as Intimate Lighting (directed by Loves of a Blonde co-writer Ivan Passer) and probably even The Shop on Main Street are both superior. To be fair, the film has a hilarious scene near the beginning where middle-aged army reservists attempt to woo young factory girls at a local shindig. But the film's central concern -- one girl's struggle to keep a man around for more than an evening -- just isn't very interesting, as her character has little appeal beyond her blond hair.

I watched Crash (1996) and did not like it much. For all of the sexual content in the film it sure wasn't sexy, so I'm pretty sure the intent of the film wasn't pornographic; perhaps watching the film roughly approximates the feeling of being the only normal person at a fetish club and just witnessing everyone else. Vaughan was probably the most interesting character, with everyone else more or less just along for the ride. Probably wont' watch this one again any time soon.

>>2921 I haven't seen it for a while. Since sexual deviancy has become more mainstream recently, I was thinking the film may provoke more disgust for helping promote it. I did enjoy The Atrocity Exhibition, more experimental and also based on Ballard.

>>2923 >I was thinking the film may provoke more disgust for helping promote it Perhaps. I couldn't really tell if the film was some sort of weird extended metaphor or if it was just an attempt to explore/normalize bizarre fetishes and sexual depravity, much like Secretary (2002). I watched Primer (2004) yesterday and enjoyed it, but I think I'll need to watch it at least another two times before I start to get it.

Méditerranée (1963) Postcard photography of grand sites around the Mediterranean are spoiled by the voiceover of a dour Frenchman muttering about the banality of existence. Death is a recurring theme in the collage of images, seen in a mummy's face, the grounds of a dilapidated estate, a beautiful girl on a gurney, and (most cruelly) a matador teasing and slaying a bull. This short film's influence on Godard's Contempt stems from its sunnier beach scenes and Greek architecture.

Honestly would of been a much better overall film if the main character wasn't a dyke.

I recently watched Mystery of the Wax Museum and then Doctor X, its sister movie from the year before. I'd say they're pretty standard movies, but the two-color Technicolor look is a nice gimmick. It feels really strange to see people like Fay Wray, Frank McHugh, Leila Bennett, and even Mae Busch in color back at the heights of their careers. I recall seeing Lionel Atwill in Son of Frankenstein but didn't remember what he looked like. I'd recommend Mystery of the Wax Museum over Doctor X. I found Glenda Farrell's reporter character to be more likeable than Lee Tracy's and the wax museum setting to be more memorable than the relatively run-of-the-mill medical academy featured in Doctor X. I thought the Doctor X climax was pretty good, but that to me was the best part of the story. The mad scientist equipment looked pretty cool, I'll give it that. They're nothing spectacular but are interesting for the novelty value.

>>2972 I watched Wax Museum a couple years ago. I forgot about the wisecracking reporter character. I've noticed that newspapers seemed to be a topic of great interest in films of that era. Maybe there's nothing to it -- journalism is a handy narrative device and newspapers were the primary method of mass communication at the time. But there was no similar trend of films about the television industry when that technology was eventually adopted.

>>2973 >I watched Wax Museum a couple years ago. I forgot about the wisecracking reporter character. I've noticed that newspapers seemed to be a topic of great interest in films of that era. Maybe there's nothing to it -- journalism is a handy narrative device and newspapers were the primary method of mass communication at the time. But there was no similar trend of films about the television industry when that technology was eventually adopted. I don't know how long the trend continued for, but I immediately thought of While the City Sleeps. But I suppose that was made at a time when TV was just catching on. I do think that it's more of a narrative device than anything. In a sense the audience can put themselves in the shoes of the reporter, since both are just gradually figuring out what's really going. It's an easy way to get away with exposition that could otherwise seem clumsy and also provides motivation for a character to involve themselves in potentially dangerous situations. Incidentally, I learned that Glenda Farrell continued playing a reporter like she did in Mystery of the Wax Museum with by starring in most of the Torchy Blane movies. Her portrayal provided the basis for Lois Lane in the Superman comics. The name "Lois Lane" came from Lola Lane, who was one of the two other actress to play the role. I've never seen any of those movies, so I can't say how much they really have in common. >Big News >Robert Armstrong I should watch that one. I've always liked Robert Armstrong's over-the-top acting style in the movies I've seen him in. I should give Blood on the Sun a try at some point too. Not only does it feature Robert Armstrong, but it has him in yellowface playing Hideki Tojo. It sounds pretty wacky. Plus James Cagney's the star, and he's probably my favorite actor. Robert Armstrong was an honorary member of the "Irish Mafia," so I guess it shouldn't come as any surprise that him and Cagney had a few movies together. >Libeled Lady I feel like I watched this one years ago because William Powell was in it but unfortunately don't remember much of it. Maybe I'm confusing it with My Man Godfrey, or maybe I saw both and don't remember either of them very well.

The last movie I watched (that wasn't a rewatch) was this Invasion of the Body Snatchers copycat. While I wouldn't say it gets the feeling of hopelessness and paranoia across as well, it's a decent variant of the formula. The protagonist is the wife in a newly married couple who realizes something's wrong with her husband. He's stopped showing interest in her and comes across like a completely different man from the one she fell in love with. There seem to be homosexual undertones, and interestingly enough the actor playing the husband ended up dying of HIV-related complications in the early '90s. It can't touch Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but I think it gets a bit overlooked due to the title sounding about as cliche as you can get for a '50s science fiction movie.

In William Wyler's The Big Country, New England seaman Gregory Peck takes a galloping stagecoach to meet his Texas fiancee, only to find her cattle baron father locked in a violent feud with a neighboring rancher. Speaking out against the use of violence, Peck becomes openly critical of his prospective in-laws as the feud escalates. Peck is supposed to garner the audience's admiration for his moral clarity. He's correct that the family is being too vindictive toward their enemies, but his aloof, antagonistic attitude towards these country folk is more annoying than any misbehavior on their part. What fun is a western move that henpecks western tropes and western people? The story tries to pump up the masculinity of wet-blanket Peck -- devising situations where he does see fit to use violence -- but this just makes his flamboyant moralizing seem arbitrary. I also note the ugly scenery of this film. There's nothing appealing about empty flatlands of dead grass stretching to the horizon. Also, most of the action takes place on a cattle ranch that is said to contain thousands of animals, Yet as characters ride horse all around the area there's not a cow in sight. A much better Gregory Peck western is William Wellman's noirish Yellow Sky, where the actor is cast against type as a bank robber on the run. I'd recommend it more than Wellman's more popular The Ox Bow Incident.