Seen any good films lately? [3]

I don't consider the modern The Mummy to be a remake- Halfy

{{Do you mean the Brendan Fraser one? As that's not, its just a general Mummy film. I mean the Tom Cruise one, which is supposed to be a remake of the classic Universal Mummy of the 1940's.
But for some reason someone thought making it Mission Impossible during the Iraq War with a Mummy thrown in was a good idea. }}

Oh, I haven't seen the Cruise version. I thought it was just a non-funny continuation of the Brendan Frazer ones, so wasn't interested. Less of a stupid idea if it wasn't a continuation, but still an obviously stupid idea.

My watch was interrupted by the inebriated arrival of my brother and my boss at my house, but hot damn, Mandy is a pretty kick-ass movie. I mean to say, it's a pretty movie, and promises a lot of kicking ass in the second half. The sound-track is powerful and sets a frighteningly eldritch tone, the cinematography comes with neat tricks like sloooowly transitioning between two faces so that they blur into each other, and the lighting is a whole story on its own: shamelessly dramatic and florid, with deep purples and blues bathing certain scenes, or flashing sourcelessly in the woods to announce the arrival of monstrous kidnappers.
Mandy is a sad artist who reads old sword-and-sorcery novels. She's creepily pretty. Her loving and cuddly husband is Nicholas Cage in lumberjack mode. The villain is a petulant, narcissistic cult leader driven only by his fleshy desires. And it's all coming together quite nicely.

A weird movie, definitely, but effective at delivering an eery and thoughtfully dark artistic vision.

When you described Nick Cage as cuddly I had to look back to when it was made. I wouldn't think he could have been called cuddly since maybe Leaving Las Vegas.

He has a bearded sort of cuddliness to him in this movie, at least.

I was warned not to watch The Mummy [Tom Cruise version] due to it's blandness. So with this warning in mind I of course decided to watch this. Now at first am thinking it's a pretty run of the mill Holywood monster film with bad scripting or weirdly set up scenes or really obvious CGI mummy-lings. It wasn't until watching a certain scene and gigging out loud at it, that it began to dawn on me. I wasn't sure to begin with but with more scenes like the one with the mummy and the car, and then the trains.

It all made sense.

It was a Zombie movie. Change the music and pacing just a little. Change the way some lines are delivered, maybe a few lines changed too. Think Shaun of the Dead, all the silly monster fight scenes are now brilliant comedic horror scenes.

I actually watched the Brendan Frasier version recently, and it didn't come off as funny as I remembered it; not that the basic ideas weren't good, it just felt slightly inept and contrived. I don't know if my standards have risen in the last 20 years or if maybe it works better on the big screen.

{{ I'm not a fan of either version- Nagual's ability to find something entertaining where I can find nothing at all is a long standing point of, interesting, debate!

I found the Cruise version to be largely unwatchable, and devoid of a good reason to watch it or recommend anyone else does. Nagual only watched it because I told him not too and instead of putting him off it just made him curious to see it .

I found the Brendan version to be harmless fluff. A family take on the Mummy. Noting special, not even as a blockbuster, but nothing offensive either. Just meh for me.

But I knew going into the Cruise version is was supposed to be a part of the rebooting of the classical Universal monster films,of which I am a fan. But its got nothing beyond a few minor plot points and some names in common, and in style, substance and purpose, nothing in common. }}

I felt compelled to watch the 1930's version of The Mummy.  The first thing I was struck by was how fast it got into firing up the mummy himself - less than 10 minutes in I think.  Not nearly as much build-up as we get in modern horror movies. But the imagery is wonderful.

The film critic narration was largely forgettable, except for the link to H. Rider Haggard's She.  It turns out the main writer for The Mummy was also working on adapting SHE, and many points of comparison are evident: the love story between the deathless and the undead mirrored in the present; the burning of the old lover's mummy, even seeing images in the pool of water (the obvious basis for the Mirror of Galadriel among many other things).  It's possible that seeing so many parallels compelled Universal to sell off the rights and script to RKO who eventually made She.

I'm surprised I didn't see the links myself, since I'm a huge fan of She and am fascinated by its influence on Tolkien, especially with regard to the Numenoreans.

BTW, I also did this back to back with the Brendan Frasier version, where the flm-makers claimed that they were trying to get away from the bandage-wrapped creatures featured in the sequels to the original Mummy as opposed to the original's powerful being that inhabits the modern world.  Another interesting tidbit - those unforgettable scenes of the priestess/lover Ankh wearing a near-nude form-fitting string dress .... well, that wasn't a dress.  It was body paint.  Wowzer.

Halfwise wrote:where the flm-makers claimed that they were trying to get away from the bandage-wrapped creatures featured in the sequels to the original Mummy as opposed to the original's powerful being that inhabits the modern world.

What in Egypt did I just read?

I keep trying to rewrite that sentence so it scan effortlessly, but no luck yet apparently.

Just watched Alita. Loved it cant wait for the next one. Seems James Cameron was either going to do an Avatar franchise or an Alita one.
He chose Avatar.

I'd rather watch blue-people than giant-eye people, I think.

The Smurfs are pretty good.

Forest Shepherd wrote:I'd rather watch blue-people than giant-eye people, I think.

I've made my feelings known on big-eyed young women. I think I'll have to watch it.

GIANT-eye people. It's unnerving.

Just saw The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford (pause to catch breath) because somebody here recommended it, I think Ringo? Anyway, why did Jesse James deliberately remove his gun belt before dusting the picture? The whole thing was so obviously contrived. Some critic said that he had recruited and groomed Robert Ford from the beginning to be his assassin, to burnish his legacy as a tragic hero. Is that where folks think this was going?

IMHO you'll never untangle the gordian knot of the folklore surrounding Jesse James' death. Better to just embrace it with all the contradictions and do a deep dive into some of the many movies it's spawned.
From Wikipedia:

The James Boys in Missouri (1908)
The Younger Brothers (1908)
Bad Men of Missouri (1941)
The Younger Brothers (1949)
Kansas Raiders (1950)
The Great Missouri Raid (1951)
The True Story of Jesse James (1957)
Young Jesse James (1960)
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972)
The Long Riders (1980)
Frank and Jesse (1994)
American Outlaws (2001)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

I'm particularly fond of "The Long Riders" which tries to capture the family business quality of the James/Younger gang by casting brother actors as brother outlaws (James and Stacy Keach as the James brothers, a whole bunch of Carradine's as the all the Youngers, The Guest's as the Ford's etc.)

Also 'The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid' has Robert Duvall as Jesse. I can watch Duvall in anything!

Good recommendations. Though in this case I was more interested in the film-maker's intent than in historical truth.

OK then.... It's been a long time since I've seen it, but I'll give it a shot (so to speak)

halfwise wrote: Anyway, why did Jesse James deliberately remove his gun belt before dusting the picture?  The whole thing was so obviously contrived.  Some critic said that he had recruited and groomed Robert Ford from the beginning to be his assassin, to burnish his legacy as a tragic hero.   Is that where folks think this was going?

My memory is that TAoJJbtCRF was trying to turn the myth of JJ on its head, viewing it through the lens of a psychological fan stalker murder. I remember thinking of Stephen King's "Misery".

That actual murder scene has been played out so many thousands of times in movies, songs, novels, vaudeville etc. that it's taken on the symbolic quality of a Passion Play with the laying down of the gun before straightening the picture being and essential element to the villification of Bob Ford, as important as the 30 pieces of silver are to the villification of Judas. That's the game I think the director was playing.

(Of course, I suppose your critic could argue that Jesus had actually recruited and groomed Judas to burnish his own legacy, but I'm not ready to go there.)

It's hard to definitively ascribe motive, but from the acting I got the impression that Jesse James had very deliberately laid down his guns. So if he did have a reason to lay them down at that particular moment, the question would be what was his reason?

deliberately laid down his guns.

Guns is plural?? How many guns did they show him carrying?

He certainly wanted to die, that much came across to me in my viewing. I'm not sure we can call him a "Christ figure"  in this case, more like a haunted soul. Something along those lines.

I loved that movie.

Forest Shepherd wrote:I'm not sure we can call him a "Christ figure"  in this case, more like a haunted soul.

Maybe not. It's been a long time since I watched it, but you've got to admit there's a case to be made.  A major populist folk hero who is basically condemned to death by the government, betrayed by a trusted follower, and though his body was buried he was believed by many to have actually survived...

Wikipedia wrote:Rumors of survival

Rumors of Jesse James's survival proliferated almost as soon as the newspapers announced his death. Some said that Robert Ford killed someone other than James, in an elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice.[10] These tales have received little credence, then or since. None of James's biographers accepted them as plausible. The body buried in Kearney, Missouri as Jesse James was exhumed in 1995 and subjected to mitochondrial DNA typing. The report, prepared by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D., James E. Starrs, L.L.M., and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D., stated the mtDNA recovered from the remains was consistent with the mtDNA of one of James's relatives in the female line.[66]

The theme of survival was featured in a 2009 documentary, Jesse James' Hidden Treasure, which aired on the History Channel. The documentary was dismissed as pseudo-history and pseudoscience by historian Nancy Samuelson in a review she wrote for the Winter 2009–2010 edition of The James-Younger Gang Journal.[67]

J. Frank Dalton claimed to be Jesse James; he died August 15, 1951, in Granbury, Texas. Dalton was allegedly 101 years old at the time of his first public appearance, in May 1948. His story did not hold up to questioning from James's surviving relatives.

Forest: that was sort of my take on it, he seemed to be inviting the shot, but I couldn't figure out why.

Dave: he had a couple pistols in the belt if I remember right.  Actually he says he'll "take off my pistols" in the screenplay.

I found the screenplay, and it's interesting.  The line about "taking off my pistols" is stated to seem to be composed just for Bob.  The variation between the screenplay and how it was shot is it doesn't show Jesse reaching for pistols that aren't there, and he's also listed as "authentically surprised".



Seems to me that something happened in the editing room or during shooting.  The script seems to imply that Jesse is trying to show Bob that he trusts him.  But Brad Pitt's performance played out very differently: we even have him seeing the reflection of the gun being raised in the glass over the painting, but his reaction is sad resignation rather than surprise.  

I think the team saw the possibility of something more interesting than was in the script and went for it.

Unfortunately I can't find a clip that shows him taking off the belt and delivering that line.