Bad Movie Logo
"A website to the detriment of good film"
Custom Search
HOMEB-MOVIE REVIEWSREADER REVIEWSFORUMINTERVIEWSUPDATESABOUT
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 06:43:06 PM
713370 Posts in 53058 Topics by 7725 Members
Latest Member: wibwao
Badmovies.org Forum  |  Movies  |  Good Movies  |  April Viewings « previous next »
Poll
Question: Which of my April viewings have you seen?
The Man With A Movie Camera (1929) - 0 (0%)
The Bycycle Thief (1948) - 1 (20%)
Solaris (2002) - 1 (20%)
Luther (1973) - 3 (60%)
Total Voters: 4

Pages: [1]
Author Topic: April Viewings  (Read 4469 times)
Scott
Frightening Fanatic of Horrible Cinema
****

Karma: 186
Posts: 5785


Hey, I'm in the situation room ! ! !


WWW
« on: April 29, 2008, 02:19:12 PM »

Only saw 4 films this month. Which have you viewed?

THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019760/ - Great little silent film from Russia. The film shows life in the Soviet Union just years after the revolution.  Lots of fancy camera work here. These images with keep your attention all the way through.
 
(8 out of 10 Stars) For a Silent film it's better than most.
 

 
THE BYCYCLE THIEF (1948) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040522/ - Great Italian film about a poor man who gets a job pasting up film posters in the city, but he needs a bicycle if he wants the job. His first day on the job someone steals his newly purchased used bike which sets him on a desperate search to recover his bike along with his son. It also makes an emotional assumption on the subject of mankind and crime.
 
(9 out of 10 Stars) See the inspiration for Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
 

 
SOLARIS (2002) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/   - This one stars George Clooney as a man who is sent to a space station to figure out what is going on. When he gets there he finds the crew either dead or on the verge of insanity. They are near some kind of intelligence which is manifesting Clooney dead wife. It kinda had a SPACE ODDESSY 2001 feel to it. The film starts out interesting and then the film kinda fizzles out.
 
(6 out of 10 Stars) I'll try to find the original.
 

 
Small | Large


LUTHER (1973) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070346/ - Very well made monastic film about the story of Martin Luther played by Stacy Keach at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. It really shows you how Luther was confused. Both his father and mother didn't want him to enter religious life. The mother wouldn't even come when he gave his first communion and when the swinish father comes he argues amongst the other monks about the whole thing. Later after breaking away from the church he is caught up in the Peasants Revolt in Germany and Luther tells the king to crush the law breaking peasants who he partially himself inspired killing many in the land. As we know to well from history that Luther was a antisemitic, marries a nun according to his new freedom, becomes like his biological father in mannerism, and some of his immediate monks who followed Luther wished for the old days back at the monastery. Luther was one of the predecessor that lead towards German nationalism of the 20th Century. All in all I feel what he did was integral to the whole scheme of things even if Luther was strangely confused. Good or bad he served his purpose and place in history.

(8 out of 10 Stars) Maybe a 9 out of 10

« Last Edit: April 30, 2008, 07:17:07 AM by Conan » Logged

ulthar
Frightening Fanatic of Horrible Cinema
****

Karma: 368
Posts: 4168


I AM serious, and stop calling me Shirley


WWW
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2008, 03:10:19 PM »

I have not seen the 2002 SOLARIS, but I really, really ilked the 1972 version.  It was very slow paced, but man was in enthralling.  I think "understated intensity" is a phrase I would use to describe my experience watching it.
Logged

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Hathaway:  I noticed you stopped stuttering.
Bodie:      I've been giving myself shock treatments.
Professor Hathaway: Up the voltage.

--Real Genius
Scott
Frightening Fanatic of Horrible Cinema
****

Karma: 186
Posts: 5785


Hey, I'm in the situation room ! ! !


WWW
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2008, 08:04:07 PM »

The original has to be better than the one I saw. Sounds interesting and I'll keep my movie radar up for it.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2008, 07:18:13 AM by Conan » Logged

soylentgreen
Bad Movie Lover
***

Karma: 36
Posts: 254



« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2008, 10:48:58 PM »

I'm not too fond of SOLARIS(The original is a different story).  If I want George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh to put me to sleep I'll just wait for the inevitable OCEAN'S FOURTEEN.  They've done better work together.

I've recommended LUTHER to people plenty of times.  Aside from being a huge Keach fan, it makes a good double feature with the 2003 film starring Joseph Fiennes(that is, of course, provided you can handle ten pounds of Martin Luther in a five pound evening!  Wink ).  The two films are great examples of the reasoning that historical films(like memorials) say just as much, if not more, about the time in which they were made than about their principal subject.

Keach's LUTHER seems to use it's calm(some say languorous) pace to underline the depth of reflection and thought involved.  There are some really great performance in the film....plus Judi Dench and perennial Brit baddie Julian Glover.  The film's earnest efforts to remain faithful(no pun intended) to history pay off.

(The Fiennes film also has a great cast and, naturally, benefits from a somewhat serious budget.  Almost assuredly, though, you'll find it plays a bit like a Cliffs Notes version of the Luther story.  But, if you're like me, you'll enjoy just having another take on it all to mull over.)

I'm glad you enjoyed THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA.  Personally, Soviet silent film has always been the most fascinating of the period.  One of my first film professors was gaga for kino-pravda and I'm positive that had that not been the case, I would probably have never gained the crucial exposure to and strong affection for those busy little russian filmmakers and their inexhaustible efforts to use cinema to get further under the skin of things.  Unfortunately, most peoples exposure to Russian film, silent or otherwise, begins and ends at BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN.
Logged

That's my driver's license picture....I hate that picture!"
Scott
Frightening Fanatic of Horrible Cinema
****

Karma: 186
Posts: 5785


Hey, I'm in the situation room ! ! !


WWW
« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2008, 07:12:45 AM »

Keach's LUTHER seems to use it's calm(some say languorous) pace to underline the depth of reflection and thought involved.  There are some really great performance in the film....plus Judi Dench and perennial Brit baddie Julian Glover.  The film's earnest efforts to remain faithful(no pun intended) to history pay off.


If your able can you tell me which do you think in your opinion is more historically accurate as to events and the personal character of Martin Luther? Still looking for the 2003 film.

One of the best films I've seen from Russia is Eisenstein's ALEXANDER NEVSKY  (1938). You'll notice elements of some great films in this one from both STAR WARS and CONAN THE BARBARIAN.

Small | Large
« Last Edit: April 30, 2008, 07:15:37 AM by Conan » Logged

peter johnson
Frightening Fanatic of Horrible Cinema
****

Karma: 107
Posts: 1489



« Reply #5 on: May 02, 2008, 11:56:55 AM »

I believe "Earth" is a Russian picture -- a sort of surrealist examination of a farmer's dreams.  I do enjoy that one. I also really like Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" --

Where I fall off from Russian cinema in general, and here I'm including both silent and sound, is how quickly things fell apart on the artistic front after the Revolution.  You really only have a window of opportunity of about 5 years before Lenin, and moreso after him Stalin, condemns the whole imagery/surrealist/artistic thing as being anti-worker and counterrevolutionary, and starts insisting on a cinema of Socialist Realism that is virtually indistinguishable from the Aryan Cinema of Joseph Goebbels.  What gets into a film of an artistic nature, or even a watchable one, after this decree is marvelous moreso for the fact it exists at all than for any other achievement, sort of like Dr. Johnson's walking dog.

I watched "Alexander Nevsky" with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and a full choir performing live in a concert hall & found it ultimately shallow and disappointing.  Yes, the famous battle on the ice sequence was very good, but both my wife and I found the rest of the film to be cold, shallow, flat, and underwhelming.  Yes, the faceless Nazi hordes are very wicked indeed and they need to be repelled, along with their bourgeouse capitalist fellow travelers, who seem vaguely Jewish, but 3 hours of that can feel like 10 after a bit.
All in all it put me in mind of Hamlet's tale told by an idiot:  Full of sound and fury, but signifying almost nothing.  Change it to a German film about Russians, and you would have to change almost nothing.

I also found the Soviet "Solaris" to be a bit of a slog.  I got the part about a living planet, trying to give comfort to and reacting to the men aboard the ships, but to me it just dragged on far too long.  I did like the bit where the "wife" comes through the wall of the spaceship after her "husband".
peter johnson/denny lev segeyevich termen
Logged

I have no idea what this means.
Scott
Frightening Fanatic of Horrible Cinema
****

Karma: 186
Posts: 5785


Hey, I'm in the situation room ! ! !


WWW
« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2008, 05:43:59 PM »

I liked the film ALEXANDER NEVSKY for the images. Another film that has some interesting things is an American film called LOST HORIZON. It's mostly a Russian historical film against the Teutonic Knights, but it's the images that are what make it.
Logged

Jack
B-Movie Kraken
*****

Karma: 1141
Posts: 10327



« Reply #7 on: May 05, 2008, 07:42:12 AM »

I tried watching Solaris a couple of times, but never made it longer than about 5 minutes.  Something about George Clooney makes me really drowsy.

Speaking of Russian films, I saw a very powerful one a long time ago, maybe somebody can tell me what the name of it was.  It was in B&W, the story of life in small and extremely remote village.  The people are farmers, and the movie begins with a snowfall, far earlier than expected.  They frantically try to save whatever wheat they can.  Then they show the people separating the wheat from the chafe, using a turntable thing hooked up to a horse.  Later somebody dies, and they have a priest come to do the services.  The people have no money at all, but they give the priest the few coins they have as payment.  Someone takes a horse and rides it at a gallop until its heart explodes, apparently a Russian tradition at a funeral.  Later some men set off across the mountains to get salt, but few if any return.  It's winter and they apparently froze.  The narrator keeps repeating "And the work was hard" over quite a few scenes.
Logged

The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

- Paulo Coelho
Pages: [1]
Badmovies.org Forum  |  Movies  |  Good Movies  |  April Viewings « previous next »
    Jump to:  


    RSS Feed Subscribe Subscribe by RSS
    Email Subscribe Subscribe by Email


    Popular Articles
    How To Find A Bad Movie

    The Champions of Justice

    Plan 9 from Outer Space

    Manos, The Hands of Fate

    Podcast: Todd the Convenience Store Clerk

    Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

    Dragonball: The Magic Begins

    Cool As Ice

    The Educational Archives: Driver's Ed

    Godzilla vs. Monster Zero

    Do you have a zombie plan?

    FROM THE BADMOVIES.ORG ARCHIVES
    ImageThe Giant Claw - Slime drop

    Earth is visited by a GIANT ANTIMATTER SPACE BUZZARD! Gawk at the amazingly bad bird puppet, or chuckle over the silly dialog. This is one of the greatest b-movies ever made.

    Lesson Learned:
    • Osmosis: os·mo·sis (oz-mo'sis, os-) n., 1. When a bird eats something.

    Subscribe to Badmovies.org and get updates by email:

    HOME B-Movie Reviews Reader Reviews Forum Interviews TV Shows Advertising Information Sideshows Links Contact

    Badmovies.org is owned and operated by Andrew Borntreger. All original content is © 1998 - 2014 by its respective author(s). Image, video, and audio files are used in accordance with the Fair Use Law, and are property of the film copyright holders. You may freely link to any page (.html or .php) on this website, but reproduction in any other form must be authorized by the copyright holder.