Seen any good films lately? [3]

Mrs Figg wrote:as its too hot to go outside I have been on a sci-fi and dystopian world movie run,
I am Legend
Oblivion
Contact
Gravity
Interstellar
Cell
Pitch Black
Cloud Atlas
Arrival
War of the Worlds
Promethius Alien Covenant

I liked Gravity, Arrival and Pitch Black the best, I am legend made me cry, and strangely quite like Tom Cruise in Oblivion and War of the Worlds.

I recommend Minority Report and Edge Of Tomorrow (aka Live Die Repeat) if you fancy watching another two Tom Cruise sci-fi films, both action packed, solidly made and thought provoking blockbusters (watched both the other week with my GF actually...).

I thought Arrival was a very well directed/acted movie, but I dunno it just left me a bit cold...

{{Wasnt quite sure where to put this- its kind of like a short 15 minute pilot for a series based on the ps4 Uncharted games. Its not official, its not licensed, its basically a fan film- difference is Nathon Fillion made it and stars in this particular fan film- dont know if he is pitching himself here or if he is just a huge fan or something- but as always he is effortless charmingly entertaining to watch.
Ive never played the games, they are ps4 exclusives, but fans seem pleased with his portrayal of the main character. }}

malickfan wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:as its too hot to go outside I have been on a sci-fi and dystopian world movie run,
I am Legend
Oblivion
Contact
Gravity
Interstellar
Cell
Pitch Black
Cloud Atlas
Arrival
War of the Worlds
Promethius Alien Covenant

I liked Gravity, Arrival and Pitch Black the best, I am legend made me cry, and strangely quite like Tom Cruise in Oblivion and War of the Worlds.

I recommend Minority Report and Edge Of Tomorrow (aka Live Die Repeat) if you fancy watching another two Tom Cruise sci-fi films, both action packed, solidly made and thought provoking blockbusters (watched both the other week with my GF actually...).

I thought Arrival was a very well directed/acted movie, but I dunno it just left me a bit cold...

you are right about Arrival, it was well made and I enjoyed it but it lacked something, not sure what. Minority Report is great too.

Tonight its the big one, my favourite, The Thing, John carpenter.

Another of my all time faves is Soylent Green ,but they never show it on tv for some reason. I have been watching out for it for years.

The Thing. One of my all-time favorites.

Named my first son Kurt, after watching it. (Kurt Russel)

I tell him how lucky he is that Lord of the Rings wasn't out when he was born.
Frodo could have been a real possibility. He thinks i'm joking.

{{as the official Nathan Fillion Uncharted vid got pulled heres a replacement catch it before it gets copyrighted!! }}

Saw the new Jurassic World. Hadn't seen the previous one, but it doesn't matter. Enjoyed it quite a bit as the brainless roller coaster it was designed to be: manipulative in the fun sort of way. Great kid. Chris Pratt is the new Harrison Ford. The critics hated it but they must be expecting depth for some odd reason.

I also disliked it, for its brainless goof-isms.

Some movies you have to be in the right mood for. I had no expectations and Jurassic World fulfilled them.

I watched the King Arthur film by Guy Ritchie. hmmmm cockney geezers everywhere, and special effects that I have seen a million times before. it was ok, quite nice to watch but nowt special.

It's too bad, Guy Ritchie has proven ability to write and direct quality films, but this ability seems to switch off and on and get away from him at times.

{{This is a film review of Forbidden Planet, but I want to be crabbit about something else first so if you just want the review bit you can ignore this rambling and skip to it further down the page.

What I wanted to be crabbit about was why I had to download a pirated copy of Forbidden Planet rather than legally purchase it, and why I think if you have a pc that's good enough VR is worth it just for the virtual cinema alone.

The first point though, why I had to download it illegally. This one is simple, the ability to watch it in a VR cinema means I can watch it in all its full widescreen (in this case Cinemascope!!) glory. But amazingly, whilst the Blu-ray versions of films include this information- they dont display it in ultra widescreen in its original aspect ration- its cropped usually to 16.9 to it fills modern screens, or at best its slightly letter-boxed in 16.9 to get more of the original width. But you cant get at the full-width version legally- why? I have no idea, its mindbogglingly stupid to me.

Fortunately there are dedicated souls out there who are film purists and wont stand for this sort of thing, one such purist is Von Richt who converts films to also play in their original full widescreen formats.
To this end the version of Forbidden Planet I watched is in glorious ultra wide cinemascope (2.39:1) and the only way I could watch it in that format is to get it illegally. Which is stupid, but there you go.

The upshot of doing this means that I got to watch it in a virtual cinema in as close an experience as to seeing it in all its glory in an actual cinema as possible with nothing lost frrm the frame.

And this is why I say if films are your thing then VR is worth it for that aspect alone. There are many films, like Forbidden Planet, which really need to be seen up there on the big screen to truly appreciate what they created. But which the chances of me finding it playing in a real cinema are almost zero. And that's where VR comes in.

So for the purposes of this review this is not a review of the official Blu-ray or DVD releases or the experience of watching those at home on your tv. Take this as a review of seeing it in a cinema, as that's what the experience was for me, virtual or not.


Forbidden Planet the Review bit.

Forbidden Planet was something new, or at least new to cinema in its heyday, Fritz Lang had done something similarly mind-boggling with Metropolis in 1927 but it never reached a huge audience because cinema was in its infancy and didn't have one yet to reach.
By the 1950's sci-fi was generally made on the cheap as b-movies and were most of the time just creature-features and every time the alien/monster would turn out to be either a huge puppet insect, a badly back projected small everyday lizard blown up to look big, or a bloke in a not very convincing rubber suit.

But then MGM decided to make a sci-fi film. And not a B-Movie. MGM was the beating heart of Hollywood in the 50's and had a reputation for a sort of expensive opulent glossiness to their films such as Singing in the Rain or The Wizard of Oz. And Forbidden Planet was to be their first sci-fi and they wanted to do it on the same sort of scale as all their other big productions.

And this meant doing something with sci-fi on film that had not been done since Fritz Lang- to take it seriously. And the end result of MGM gloss and talent with a desire to treat the genre with respect led to something very special indeed.

Plot wise Forbidden Planet is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare the Tempest. In which a great magician and ego, Prospero, is betrayed by his brother and marooned on an island with nothing but his books of magic and his young daughter. They are there twelve years and his daughter, Miranda, is on the verge of womanhood and Prospero has learned to use the magic of the island and discovered an evil creature there, Caliban, and a spirit of the air Ariel whom he makes his servant. A ship arrives on the island after a storm caused by Prospero and over the course of events Miranda meets and falls in love with one of them and Prospero has to deal with the moral conundrum of if you have essentially the power of a god and all your enemies gathered before you, what would you do?

Now the plot of Forbidden Planet is this- a spaceship from earth is going to the Altair system, to Altair IV where twelve years ago a colony of earth scientists were set up- then never hear from them again.
Upon arrival they find one scientist left alive, Morbius, and his young daughter on the cusp of womanhood and entirely innocent in every way, and a robot Morbius built that acts as his servant.
Morbius however does not want them there or even to land, claiming all the scientists were killed by a great natural force that lives on the planet, but from which he and his daughter seem immune.

Spoiler:

Plotwise its pretty good for 50's sci-fi- its in fact exactly the sort of plot Star Trek would go onto explore in its sci-fi over ten years later.

Cast wise we have Walter Pidgeon as Morbius, he reminds me of Vincent Price in his performance, though in my view and for the better, less hammy. Its a performance with a great deal of weight and gravitas but never veering into being over the top.
A very young Leslie Nielson is our lead male, Commander Adams of the earth ship as well as being the main romantic lead. His crew is fleshed out with 'Doc' played by Warren Stevens, the second in Command Lt. Farman played by Jack Kelly and Earl Hoffman as Cook, the ships cook and resident alcoholic, he is the films only real comic relief.

The love interest and the 'Miranda' role is played by Anne Francis as Altaira, Mobius daughter.

And finally we have Robbie the Robot, built by Mobius, Robbie sticks to Asimovs Laws of Robotics and so cant harm anyone but he is also immensely strong and in its own way naive (Robbie is essentially Ariel in the orignal Tempest acting as Morbius servant).

There isn't a bad performance in there though outside the main leads there is not a huge deal asked of the other actors.
But I should I feel touch on the love story here. The journey Altaira goes on is to have grown up only with her father and to never have seen another human, let alone a male human. She is then introduced to some earth customs like kissing through a randy crew member who convinces her its good for her health. Before eventually falling for the Commander.

Spoiler:

Now this is the 1950's and 50's attitude do prevail in certain scenes around this subject.

When we first meet her she is the epitome of virginal innocence and she looks ridiculously hot, there is no other way to describe it. The actress is beautiful and they dress her in figure hugging outfits, and nearly always in a miniskirt which would not be fashionable in the real world for another decade. In short she looks incredible and moves like a dancer, which makes the reaction of an all male crew who have been in travelling for two years to get there a bit more plausible.

But there is in 50's cinema what I like to call the 'Understanding'. That is the audience know there are certian subjects and activities the films makers can't openly show you or say. Because of this the film makers put in small nods to certain things they cannot openly say, with the Understanding the audience will get the point without them having to.
Altaria's story has a lot of these 'Understanding' moments between audience and film makers.

Spoiler:

In general the whole romance aspect is done in a very 50's fashion, but there are moments where her naivety actually plays well. For example when they first meet her an over eager crewman is insistent on getting her coffee for her- which just outright confuses her as she cant fathom why someone else would want to do that when she is perfectly capable of doing it herself.
Altaria herself is played in a fairly typical 50's damsel manner, but credit to the actress that she manages to imbue the character with a slight steeliness as her eyes slowly open to  a wider world of possibilities than just her her father and Robbie.
And Leslie Nielson, though not common for a modern audience to think of him in a straight leading romantic man role plays his part with aplomb. Conveying both enough steel to be a convincing Commander and enough of the chiselled jaw look to be the romantic hero.

But I've left until last the thing about Forbidden Planet that is its most striking feature- its visualisation. It is simply stunning, and even now its hard to believe watching it that it was made in the 1950's.

It employs not one single new trick that was not already a stable of the effects business of its a day, but it does them all in new combinations ans on a scale that had before simply not been seen and probably uses every single one of them. It was the 50's Star Wars in that terms.
And every aspect of the effects work is as good as the time allows for, whether its the massive sets props like the forty foot across saucer dish that with some excellent camera work looks even vaster, or the impressive matte painting work seamlessly blending studio and background. There are some stand out sequences in this film for special effects most notable the ship landing (and beautiful idea in the 50's to reverse the usual notion  of aliens in flying saucers and make it humans in flying saucers), the interior of the underground alien machinery and the Id Monster itself.

Unlike most 50's sci-fi the monster of this piece is not a badly overlayed blob, or some bloke limping about in a restrictive full body rubber suit. No, instead they painstakingly animated their monster onto every frame of the film and it works great.

Spoiler:

The monster is used sparingly, you only see it fully in one scene

Spoiler:

but given how extraordinary difficult and time consuming that one scene must have been to make its not surprising it only gets one full outing. But what an outing it is!

Spoiler:

Robbie is also used well, he is iconic looking (you might recognise him from his recycled use in Lost in Space slightly modified) has some humorous lines deriving from his character and nature as a robot providing some of the films few lighter moments, and he aids in the plot where he is needed. But he is never over used, he never feels like a gimmick and in many ways he is forerunner of the Star Wards droids.

Likewise the lighting, editing and direction are all top notch and keep the story clear and the action focused. Some modern directors could do with taking tips on how let your viewer soak in a scene, so that when the shit hits the fan and it moves about the characters the viewer always has spacial awareness of where in relation to other characters or the monster they are.

Spoiler:

There are very good reasons this film is a classic of the genre and a ground breaking film, and they are all evident and right up on there on the screen to see when you watch it. Which I heartily recommend you do.
If you can see it in a real cinema do that for definite, its a big screen film in every way. If you cant see it in VR cinema instead, next best thing and you get the whole frame experience. Failing that still watch it on your TV, it might not quite have the wow factor on scale it has on the big screen, but you'll still have a good time.  }}}

Thanks for the review Petty. I was lucky enough to see Forbidden Planet on the big screen in a small college theater a few months after Star Wars had played in the downtown theater, so probably 1978. I seem to remember they showed 2001: A Space Odyssey the next month.

I remember thinking how much Star Trek had been influenced by FP. At that time it had become sort of a game to spot Robby the Robot as he popped up in dozens cheap TV Sci Fi shows from Twilight Zone to Addams Family, and of course as the evil android in Lost in Space, so it was a little harder to take him seriously in his original role at that time. (That was before Leslie N had become just as cheesy )
Even with that and the other 50's cheesiness, I remember it was a very impressive film. I'd love to see it again sometime

Petty wrote:But its the second bit of the conversation, the something 'new that's been added'- is that meant to simply be ......? Or, and some of the ways the Doc responds physically to what the Commander says seems to hint at that....? I am honestly not sure on this one. You will have to decide for yourself.

I've often suspected in these films that the original edits intentionally pushed across the line set by the ratings board with the plan of seeing what they could get away with, and later dialing it back during negotiations if necessary Then by intentionally leaving the edit a bit rough they could suggest things they could never have showed or said.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/videoplayer/vi463995161?ref_=tt_ov_vi


The clip begins like a Star Wars film, Leslie Nielson calls himself JJ Adams , ( similar to JJ Abrahams who had a go at Star Trek )

Then by intentionally leaving the edit a bit rough they could suggest things they could never have showed or said.- David

{{{ I think that is highly likely. I also think I've finally worked out what the Understanding was I couldn't get before.
Problem was I was taking the actress age at face value rather than considering the characters supposed age.
The colony was set up 12 years earlier. When Mobius mentions his wife passing away the Commander comments there was no wife on the passenger list. Mobius tells them that they got married on en-route by the ships captain. We also know its a two year journey from earth to Altair. And that the ship has no record of the daughter either.
Assuming Mobius married early in the journey out, and then the daughter was born relatively soon afterwards, within a year say, still in flight to Altair, she would be 13 when the film takes place (I had taken her to be between 16-19 but that simply doesn't fit the films account of events, but it does explain why I never considered the obvious).
Now this is very dodgy from a modern stand point (though same age as Shakespeare's Miranda) regarding the crewman trying to trick her into letting him get a kiss and more if he can, and the Commanders later obvious interest in her.
But it does explain the two scenes, the one with the tiger turning on her and the conversation between the Commander and Doc after it, if at 13 she has just begun during the events of the film to begin her periods. And it was the tiger scenting this which prompted it to attack, and was the 'new thing' that had been 'added' to their problems referenced by the Commander.
I am sure this would have been quite obvious to a 50's audience tuned to these understandings between film makers and audience. Or I'm just slow on the uptake!

Azriel- yup the text crawl is very Star Wars though Forbidden Planet was not the first to use it either but it certainly popularised it for mass audiences. There are quite a few things that are very SW- there is a scene where Mobius uses the alien tech to create a holographic image of his daughter in miniature- the way its shot, the effects style is very like hologram Leia in SW as projected by R2. The interior of the planet is shot using many of the same techniques to give the impression of scale as the Death Star is, especially the huge shafts that seem to go up and down forever.
There's even something Who took as a nod to this film and then it became a Who thing in itself- 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow'.}}}

Sounds way too convoluted, Petty.

{{Its more convoluted to explain than it is t watch in the film! But Im pretty sure that is indeed what is being implied.
But all the info is there- the girl is about 13, her arc is a coming of age, becoming a woman one, her childhood animal friends no longer recognise her after somehtng 'new ' about her happens 'thats been added'..
I think the implication the Commander takes her virginity is too far, her literally becoming a woman physically however does fit all the dialogue, the odd response from Doc,the tiger scene and fits her narrative arc. }}

I'll buy into that explanation to a point Petty, but it seems to me that there are other layers to this particular onion. I agree that "taking her virginity" wouldn't make much sense in the arc of the story as I remember it, but what what about "taking her heart" in a more traditional Miranda/Tempest way? That would feel OK to me from what I remember, and it wouldn't contradict the period theory.

Also it seems to me the tiger has another purpose in foreshadowing forces of nature that may appear friendly but have an underlying danger that may turn on us unexpectedly (id monsters).  

I haven't seen this in a long time so I may be off base, but I remember the movie as multilayered in the best sort of allegorical way.

been watching the Oceans films, 8, 11, ect, very entertaining indeed.

Im in a Terry Pratchett mood so, Im watching "Truckers"

{{ As some of you will be aware I'm a bit of  fan of old movies, and have a particular fascination with early film and early film making techniques.
Anyhow I've been watching when I get the chance some 30's Hollywood films from before the Code was introduced banning all sorts of stuff.
Apart from the fact that these films were very much heading in a similar direction of experimentation and even art house as European cinema would before the Code dragged everything to a halt in Hollywood, what really struck me was how much more diverse the content was in the pre-code films.
By that I mean far more black, asian, latino characters who are not just there as background entertainers but are there as characters. And how much more these films seem to try to capture a side of American life that was full of jazz clubs and the very strong emergent black music scene and accompanying culture or immigrants and their experiences. Women also get far better representation, with it not being unusual for the lead or even multiple lead characters all to be female. They also much more reflected life from the lower ends of society looking up rather than post-Code films which  tended to be about the middle-class or higher (this may however be a result of the Great Depression being within 10-20 years of these films being made and the later films being more reflective of post-war baby-boomers).

I dont know if the Code deliberately curbed this sort of on-screen diversity or if it was just an unfortunate side effect, but its certainly a pity it took American films decades to get back just to the level of representation they had at the start.
If your looking for classic films and tv highly recommend this youtube channel-  }}}

https://www.youtube.com/user/PizzaFlix/playlists

actually the code did deliberately curb diversity: mixing of races on equal terms was forbidden, and all crimes had to be punished.  This largely limits characters to white middle class and above who wouldn't live the shadowy and racier existence seen in pre-code films.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood

Though I originally admired your insight, wikipedia is pretty forthright with similar observations, so this seems to be fairly standard knowledge among film historians.

{{Well my insight didn't come from wiki or a film historian but just my thoughts and observations from watching the films in comparison to the later films I was more used to seeing, just sharing what I thought, not trying to lay claim to any great insight. }}}