Well its that time of the week again, time for me to give you all just a short list of films that hopefully you all will enjoy, or atleast give a look at, and maybe come to understand why they are so beloved, or atleast not feel like you waisted 2 hours of your day watching, which really seems to be about the best anyone can ask for when dealing with a movie these days...
anyway, lets get right into it shall we?
21 Grams: "21 Grams" is shown in a series of out-of-order scenes. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) is devastated when her husband and two daughters are killed after being hit by a car. She begins using cocaine and struggles to get her life in order. Later, she learns that her husband's heart has been donated to Paul Rivers (Sean Penn). She meets Paul and begins a relationship with him. At the same time, she becomes obsessed with getting revenge on the man who killed her family, Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro), a Jesus freak and ex-convict. Jack is overwhelmed with guilt; he was never legally punished for the crime, which his wife helped him hide. now I'll be the first to admit, the film is slightly draggy and confusing at times, but it all comes together in the end, and I think thats about as much as you can get from this kind of story, sure its powerful and poignant and all those things a major dramatic work should be, but the downside is, like most epics, it can be seen as boring by many after one viewing. But i think thats alot of its charm honestly, its a film you only need to see once and you will forever know just how powerful it was, and the story will be sketched in your mind for years to come.
All About Eve: At first Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is amused at the admiration of her fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), but enjoying the attention, hires her as her personal assistant. Margo is a great stage actress and her success blinds her to the fact that Eve us using Margo to advance her own career dreams to become an actress, too. Eve first makes plans for Margo's personal engagements, but always makes herself look like the one who was thoughtful and kind. By winning over Margo's friends, they dismiss Margo's concerns that Eve is up trying to undermine her. Then, Eve works on Margo's professional life, showing manager, directors and playwrights that she is very sharp and a quick study. By the time Margo is trying to get Eve out of her life, she is hired as her understudy for the most important part in a play she has ever had. Now the competition is on to see who is the greater actress and who will fail. This is one of those massively old school hollywood films that you hear about all your time studying film, and then you watch it and you see that it truly is one of those perfect films, where the casting is perfect, the acting is so perfect, the direction, the lighting, the cinematics, all of it the whole thing is just perfect, one of those things that makes you yearn for the old days of Hollywood, where they knew how to make a film, but with out all the closed door sex for roles and fame and all the murder and other creepy stuff.
Creature From The Black Lagoon: “Creature from the Black Lagoon” is a classic black and white film about a group of Archaeologists; Richard Carlson (David Reed), Kay Lawrence (Julia Adams), Mark Williams (Richard Denning) and Dr. Thompson (Whit Bissell) four who are traveling down along the Amazon River. When they stop to rest for the night, a mysterious sea creature rises from the ancient black lagoon. This Gill-Man (Ben Chapman) tries to defend it’s territory. The scientist fend off the creature but it returns the next night and kidnaps Kay whom it has grown a savage attraction too and carries her off into the swamp. Now it’s up to the archaeological team to find her and kill the creature. This is one of the very first films that drew me to The Grindhouse in the first place, I remember my childhood watching the old Creature Double Feature weekend movies on Boston's WLVI back in the day, this was one of the very first movies in this field I had ever seen, so as you can guess, its got alot of special meaning to me in that respect. And sure I know its bad, but as I've said so many times, and hope if nothing else, you all can learn to love a movie for how bad it is, as well as how good it is.
Fire In The Sky: The story starts in the woods in the town Snowflake, Arizona. A group of men working as loggers in the woods worked for the Government to clear the bush. On November 5th, 1975, something weird and unbelievable happens. After the day's works were over, the loggers were driving back home and suddenly an UFO appeared in front of their vehicles and kidnapped one of those loggers, Travis Walton(D. B. Sweeney). The appalled workers went back to the town and explained everyone what happened. No one seemed to believe them and cops put the workers behind bars alleging the workers had killed Travis since he was not seen by anyone even once in the last 5 days. When Travis reappears, all that came to his mind was a terrible shock and everything that happened alarmed him when memories started coming back to his mind. This one of those films that is seen by many as a hidden gem even among cult movie goers and alien film lovers, its often forgotten and mostly only mentioned when someone tries to explain or debunk the actual case its based on, which these days doesn't happen much, its till a pretty compelling story regardless, even though the movie takes afew liberties that the actual case the the book written about it afterwards didn't do, but thats not really enough to be a bother to anyone, atleast i don't think it would be, its still a film most should atleast check out once.
Frankenstein: The story of a mad scientist who believes that he can play god by harnessing the very power of the heavens themselves, and how so many tell him he is insane for the very notion of the idea. To play god would be the invoke the wraith of the very being they wish to emulate. The doctor cares not for these warnings and protests, and decides to go through with his plan anyway, using recently dead body parts, he patchworks together a human body, which with the help of his disfigured, and possibly retarded assistant, he goes through with his experiment and actually brings his piecemeal human to life. Much to the rage of the local villagers who are of the lynching and burning things they don't understand variety, who felt that instead of understanding the wonder and marveling at the fact this one man has discovered that humans can infact do what god can do, or realizing the creature isn't even a monster so much as a miracle of creation, they like many villagers do, get their lynchmob on, and in the end, instead of embracing this creature, they fear and mistreat it. Ironically doing what many have always said would happen if we as a race ever got a "true gift from god" or discovered an alien race, we wouldn't admire it, we'd try to bash its head in. This movie is here, simply because I was recently talking with my friend Mike, an avid follower of the blog, and we were talking about how James Whale gets no respect, when he is infact every bit as good as DeMill or any of the other early hollywood directors, and that his masterworks shouldn't just be dismissed as early horrorwood work, because they truly are beautiful.
Anyway thats all for this week, hopefully you all will enjoy these as much as i enjoyed finding them for you all...
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BC
I enjoyyed reading your post
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