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Review a Movie!


Snake45

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I’ve been recording movies off Turner Broadcast Network to watch when I can. I started doing this at beginning of the pandemic.  

Turner owns a huge catalog of old movies you never heard of. The station pretty much plays these nonstop with no commercials. And it’s a free channel on my Verizon Fios.

When I see old movies from the 1950s or earlier, I record. Some of them are bad, but it’s interesting to see what was done in the early days.

One movie was “Her Man” from 1930.  It was set in Havana and had a decent storyline.  Probably scandalous in it’s day!
 

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2 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

One movie was “Her Man” from 1930.  It was set in Havana and had a decent storyline.  Probably scandalous in it’s day!

I watch TCM a lot too.  Scandalous?  You bet!  "Her Man" is a "pre-Code" movie.  It was made before the Hayes Code got instituted in 1934. After that, Hollywood cracked down on stuff like...uh, prostitutes with a heart of gold.  

Another good pre-Code movie that Turner shows a lot:  "Night Nurse" with Barbara Stanwyck from 1931. 

And one of my favorites, "Gold Diggers of 1933."  That one looks like a fluffy Busby Berkeley musical, but it dealt with some very serious issues.  Like the economic grind of the Depression and the problems of  WWI veterans ("Remember My Forgotten Man").  It's also pretty risque for 1933.  When the repo men come in to take away all the stage props, they leave poor Ginger Rogers standing there with nothing much but her panties.

For your Turner viewing pleasure, here's a list of all the pre-Code movies so you can look out for the good stuff: 

List of pre-Code films - Wikipedia 

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Wife and I went to see another movie today. Because of our schedule today there was only one movie that fit in our time frame. That movie happened the Forever Purge.  Well. if you saw any of the other Purge movies you can probably figure out this one. While the other movies have the yearly purge last 12 hours ( 7 to 7) this one continues on after the horn declaring the purge is over due to those who want to keep it going. Not going to recommend this one unless you are one who likes almost endless violence. Some things bother me about these movies with a lot of gun play.  First one is how many movies do people keep shooting long after the firearm would be empty . Second . how many times does a bad guy get attacked and knock out but the good just runs off leaving a perfectly good gun?. Next, why do they always show people in a gun fight standing out in the open when there are good things to position themselves behind ?  Movies !

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16 hours ago, cobraman said:

Some things bother me about these movies with a lot of gun play.  First one is how many movies do people keep shooting long after the firearm would be empty . Second . how many times does a bad guy get attacked and knock out but the good just runs off leaving a perfectly good gun?. Next, why do they always show people in a gun fight standing out in the open when there are good things to position themselves behind ?  Movies !

A couple of other things that bother me about gun play in movies:

1.  Our Hero is armed with a handgun.  He dispatches a bunch of Bad Guys, in either a shoot-out or a battle scene.  He knows more Bad Guys are around, and the scene is now littered with automatic weapons from all those Bad Guys he just killed.  Does he pick up one of those weapons?  No, he keeps his handgun and shoots another 47 Bad Guys. Without reloading.

2.  If he does grab an automatic weapon, he never bothers to pick up any ammo for it.  In movies, all weapons have the same endless supply of ammo as Our Hero's magic handgun.

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Remember the A Team on TV?       They could have a short range gunfight and not hit anyone, but could shoot out a tyre from about 200 yds plus on a moving vehicle! A real tongue in cheek series with 'Face', Mad Murdoch and B.A. Baracuss with George Peppard in the lead role of Hannibal Smith.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I could swear someone here mentioned Ice Station Zebra, but I can't find it. Must have been in that thread that went bye-bye for some reason. :unsure:

Anyway, I watched it last night. Had never seen it. It's not too bad up until the scene where Patrick McGoohan tells Rock Hudson, finally, what the mission is and the movie's about. That's the high point of the movie. If you turn it off right there and assume it's all gonna work out, you'll have saved youself some time, because after that it gets stupider by the minute. 

Saw The Guns of Navarone last week for the first time in years. Not horrible but not great. Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare are all basically the same movie. Where Eagles Dare is probably the best of the three. Hey, it's got Clint Eastwood in it. :lol:

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On 9/9/2021 at 11:25 AM, Snake45 said:

I could swear someone here mentioned Ice Station Zebra, but I can't find it. Must have been in that thread that went bye-bye for some reason. :unsure:

Anyway, I watched it last night. Had never seen it. It's not too bad up until the scene where Patrick McGoohan tells Rock Hudson, finally, what the mission is and the movie's about. That's the high point of the movie. If you turn it off right there and assume it's all gonna work out, you'll have saved youself some time, because after that it gets stupider by the minute. 

Saw The Guns of Navarone last week for the first time in years. Not horrible but not great. Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare are all basically the same movie. Where Eagles Dare is probably the best of the three. Hey, it's got Clint Eastwood in it. :lol:

I never saw Ice station 🚉 zebra but I have seen the other two and enjoyed them. I believe Guns of Navarone is true..

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4 hours ago, Snake45 said:

I checked on that. It's "based on a novel by..." the same guy who wrote the other two and I didn't research further. All fiction as far as I know.

Alistair Maclean… great Scottish thriller writer of the 60s and 70s. Lots of movies based on his books: Breakheart Pass, Fear is the Key, Puppet on a Chain as well as the above. A bit formulaic, like you say, but the good ones are really good. His first book HMS Ulysses is based on his real life wartime experiences and is one of the good ones. The Satan Bug scared the … out of me as a 13 year old. And for members of this forum, The Way to Dusty Death, which is set in and around 1970s Formula One, is on topic…

best,

M.

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Alistair Maclean, my Favorite Thriller Writer! His early books are his best, but the Mid Year books are good too. His last few books recycle much of the plots from his early books, and are thus sort of bland. Ice Station Zebra really demonstrates Maclean's talent for writing about the Arctic and Cold Weather. Read it in July, and you will be 10 deg colder by the time you are done. I've read every book he's ever written. The way to Dusty Death is a great book, capturing the atmosphere of mid '60s/'70s, F1 Racing. 

Fear is the Key, is one of my favorites. Creepy, Moody, and still plausible, it has some of his best writing.

 

Now, My Review. My Wife and I watched the 1992 Movie, Universal Soldier. Stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. It showcases a really cool Transformers Style Big Rig, a 1955 Buick in the most "Improbable Paint Job Ever".

The Movie starts with a Bang, showing a terrorist attack at the Hoover Dam. The US Gov't end in the UinSols. The arrive by Plane and deploy. It shows the only Footage I've ever seen of a SuperGuppy AirFreighter.  They unload the enormous Rig from the Guppy! Fabulous. Once this happens, the movie goes down hill fast.

I'll not spoil the rest, just note that this movies allows Dolph Lundgren to showcase "BOTH' of his expressions. A real stretch on his part. The story remained Silly, but Believable in a Cartoon Way, up until the the final confrontation. It was, 'over the top', contrived and pushed the movie from Fun to Stupid, in just 10 seconds.

On the old Car Model Magazine "Reel Review" Scale, I give it 2 out of 5 gluetubes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just watched the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion on HBOMAX. Not sure if I saw it before or not, but it's fabulous. I don't know why it doesn't have the respect and following of, say The Matrix or Blade Runner. IMHO it's even better than those. Highly recommended! 

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It’s funny.. I posted about an old 1932 movie 🎥 and people knew about it!

Here’s what I’ve kept in my DVR from Turner Classics and watch once my wife has fallen asleep in her chair..

The Affairs of Annabelle 1938 - Lucille Ball.  A comedy, funny in an ancient slapstick way. It was interesting to see young Lucy… she was 27 in the movie!

She Done Him Wrong 1933 -Mae West and Cary Grant. Interesting historic movie. Music was bad. The origin of some of Mae’s classic lines like “Why Don’t You Come Up And See Me Sometime?”  I don’t get the whole Mae West appeal as she slurs her words.. guess that was sexy in 1933.

Story line was flawed as Mae was pretty much a singer in a bar but was rich and had lots of diamonds..

And then we tried to go a bit more contemporary 1982s Diner.. slow moving and an anti-climatic end.. one of those movies where you keep watching because it just has to get better. It didn’t.. and it ended like someone threw the emergency brake on in a train!

Edited by Tom Geiger
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Why I love flea markets, aside from stuff like the Craftsman '64 Corvair I found this week...

There are always lots of vendors selling DVD's.  I had the 2-disc set of "Wonderland" (2003), and the main movie disc quit working.  It just wouldn't load. Tried all the usual fixes of cleaning etc. with no luck.

Found another 2-disc set this week at the flea market.  It works fine, and cost me one whole dollar.

The review part:  for those who've never seen it, that's an excellent true-crime movie.  Val Kilmer is great as burnt-out porn star John Holmes.  Holmes hooked up with a gang of the dumbest and most inept crooks ever.  These criminal masterminds decided to rip off one of the meanest and best-connected men in Los Angeles, club owner and drug dealer Eddie Nash. 

That ended with the Wonderland Murders in July 1981, known to the LAPD as the "Four On The Floor Murders."  Four people found in a house on Wonderland Ave. in Laurel Canyon, beaten to death with lead pipes.

The Wonderland case was the first ever in which the LAPD videotaped a crime scene. Those police videotapes are on the DVD set and they are...grim.  One LAPD detective on the case also worked on the Manson murders.  He said the Wonderland killings were even worse.

The set also includes a short bio film about John Holmes, a nearly 2-hour documentary about the real murders and some other good special features. 

One complaint I've heard about the movie:  it shows the same things happening from different points of view, like the famous Japanese movie "Rashomon."  Some people found that confusing and hard to follow.  It didn't bother me. 

 

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