Movie/film suggestions.


 

While this is of course a forum for the discussion of all things audio/hi-fi and music, pretty much all of us are also lovers of movies, the enjoyment of which is effected by the reproduction of the sound they contain (with the exception of silent movies wink).

I've been focused on David Lynch movies since his death, but with current events so much a part of our lives at the moment, I plan on re-watching a movie I’ve seen only once, and years ago. That movie is:

The Madness Of King George. Apropos, no?

 

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@ezwind I am not a huge fan of Gross Point Blank, charming but the script a bit lazy, relying too much on the stars. 

@immatthewj The Favor is a delightful comedy with Brad Pitt.

 

Going back to Albert Brooks in Lost in America, I love the scene at the casino where Albert tries to talk the casino boss into giving back the "nest egg" his wife had lost. Classic.

If you like classic comedies but have seen the "usual suspects," my wife and I really enjoyed "The Devil and Miss Jones" with Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn.  I thought I'd seen them all but not this one.  As far as that goes, *any* Jean Arthur movie is worth watching. ;-)

If you have a hankering for vintage musicals, don't miss "Romance on the High Seas."  I know, I know--Doris Day?!?  It was her first movie, extremely well directed by Michal Curitz, who discovered Day and could direct just about anything, including "Casablanca" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy."  Day is charming and sings like an angel, and Oscar Levant delivers some terrific one-liners.  It's quite fun.

@grislybutter ...Midnight Run is a classic. Might have been DeNiro’s first comedic role and he surprised the shit out of me he was so good at it. Another great DeNiro romantic comedy was Mad Dog and Glory with Bill Murray and Uma Thurman.

Trading Places is an all timer too....Terrific cast with Ackroyd, Murphy, Curtis, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. I also loved Jamie Lee in A Fish Called Wanda with Michael Palin, John Cleese and a wacky Kevin Kline.

Also a John Cusack fan. His best role may have been in the underrated Grosse Point Blank where he played a hitman.

I mentioned The Quick and the Dead earlier, another top notch Western was Silverado. A few other good modern Westerns: 3:10 to Yuma, Hell or High Water, Hateful Eight.

Steve Martin in Roxanne! And don't get me started on The Princess Bride.

@immatthewj No, I am not ashamed to love Steve Martin either. (aside from Father of the Bride stuff)

I love a lot of comedies. John Cusack too. 

some romcom/comedy stuff

27 dresses
All Relative
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
Blame It On Rio
Bowfinger
CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
ENOUGH SAID
FRENCH Kiss
Good Luck Chuck
HOW DO YOU KNOW
HOW TO STEAL A MILLION
JUST FRIENDS
LAGGIES
MUST LOVE DOGS
MY BEST FRIENDS GIRL
MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING
NOTTING HILL
SAY ANYTHING... 
SOMETHING BORROWED
THE FAVOR
THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT
THE HEARTBREAK KID
THE PILL
THE SURE THING
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY
Trading Places
WAITRESS
 

Something About Mary is a great comedy. Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz.

And don't forget Matt Dillon!

Something About Mary is a great comedy. Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz.

Young Frankenstein. 

Strange Brew. 

Mouse Hunt.

All comedies.  Beer makes them better.  😅

@mksun , I am not putting Electra Glide In Blue on my suggested list . . . it was just that some of your picks from that era made me think of it and at one time it had an impact on me.

But Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid!  Yeah!  The fact that Bob Dylan wrote Knocking On Heaven's Door for it all by itself makes it great!  What a classic!  I love the duel at ten paces  that Kristofferson (Billy The Kid) has with Jack Elam:  Kistofferson turns around at pace one and when Elam turns around at six or seven Kristofferson shoots him and then says, "That wasn't ten, hoss."  

Anyway, I remember my middle sister (I was the youngest) took me to see that when it came out.  I think she wanted to see Bob Dylan, but my oldest sister was out of town and my middle sister was an introvert and didn't want to go alone so she took me.  The violence, which was graphic for its time, made an impact on me.

I have not seen Lost Highway, but I'll look for it and see if it is a rental on 'on demand.'

@grislybutter , I thought Planes, Trains And Automobiles was hilarious! A great movie! However I am not ashamed to admit I have been a Steve Martin fan for a long time. And Steve Earle got some acclaim for his cover of Six Days On The Road. There is a good youtube of him doing it on someone’s TV show, and this was back when Earle was in his heyday of drug abuse, and judging by the gleam in his eyes he was lit up then. I remember when that came out I had a job in southern Illinois and my niece who was more like a little sister to me back then got to come down and spend the X-mas holidays with us and we all went to the theater to see that movie.

@immatthewj Gotta love Sam Peckinpah and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid was recently released on Blu-Ray by Criterion. Drugstore Cowboy will also be released by Criterion on Blu-Ray within the next few months. Have not seen Electra Glide In Blue but I will check it out. Have you seen Lost Highway by David Lynch? Robert Blake has an incredibly creepy role in it.

Goodfellas +1
I know we have gone very high brow/low budget (relatively), let me take it down:

Bowfinger

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Trading Places

My most watched movie, I can annoyingly quote most lines from:

Midnight Run

I am a sucker for cross-country movies.

@mksun , good deal--another vote for Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid! And Apocalypse Now! And Goodfellas too! And I’ll go along with Deliverance, I was never a fan of Burt Reynold’s movies before that though. I also like your pick of Drugstore Cowboy with Matt Dillon, but perhaps because I used to know someone that often got his product from someone else who broke into pharmacies.

How about Electra Glide In Blue with Robert Blake? There was a time when I think I would have put it on my list. That time has passed.

Here are some of my favorites. I have too many to name them all.

(Kubrick)

Dr. Strangelove

2001 A Space Odyssey 

A Clockwork Orange 

The Shining 

(Lynch)

Blue Velvet 

Lost Highway 

Mulholland Drive

(Film Noir)

The Asphalt Jungle

Nightmare Alley

The Maltese Falcon

(Everything Else in rough chronological order)

Modern Times

Citizen Kane

The Seven Samurai 

The Seventh Seal

The Apartment 

Lawrence of Arabia

High and Low

Seconds

Midnight Cowboy

Five Easy Pieces

Deliverance

The Parallax View

The Conversation 

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Apocalypse Now

Alien

Blade Runner

Once Upon A Time In America 

Drugstore Cowboy 

Goodfellas

Barton Fink

Pulp Fiction 

Dead Man

The Usual Suspects 

The Big Lebowski

Spirited Away

The Life of Pi

 

 

Ah, 'Legends of the Fall.'

A feel good romp if there ever was one...!

Well, @thecarpathian , I guess maybe, but didn't it take some suicide, murder, sickness, death, brutality of war, and betrayal to get there?

Has Goodfellas been mentioned yet?  If it has, I missed it, but with my eyesight that's quite possible.  A classic!

I found the movie Crash to be a very watchable movie with a strong cast.  Besides Matt Dillon as a bigoted police officer, the movie, which was intersecting stories of various characters with their own prejudices and biases,  featured Don Cheadle, Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Ludacris, Michael Pena, Keith David, Tony Danza.  It also featured Sandra Bullock and William Fichtner whose acting I particularly enjoy when cast in the right roles.

William Fichtner made me think of his brief appearance as a coke dealer in Hot Summer Nights which was set in the north east in the summer of '91 (a heat wave) which just happened to be the year we moved from NC to Pittsburgh and I was wondering, "Is it always this hot here?  The realtor told us we wouldn't need air conditioning!"   

A couple of Sandra Bullock movies I enjoyed were the comedy Heat with Melissa McCarthy  and Our Brand Is Chaos.  with Billy Bob Thornton.

 

I actually had to google Seven, @ezwind , to remind myself whether I had seen it or not. I’d have to say that I don’t think I’ve seen it. I did see Legends Of The Fall when it came out on VHS and initially I thought it was a pretty good movie, but I wouldn’t watch it again.

As far as The Road, I think that may have been the first Cormack McCarthy book I ever read (I never did see the movie) and McCarthy books seem generally dark to me with very little redemption for the characters. I enjoyed the movie No Country For Old Men more than the book actually, but this was because the movie followed the book almost to a ’T’ if I remember, including the great dialogue. Dark, and if anyone was waiting for everyone to live happily ever after, it didn’t happen.

As far as Brad Pitt, I know he played a serial killer in Kalifornia which I thought was an intriguing movie, but generally doesn’t he play confident nonchalant swaggering alpha males? Which I guess he played in his (three?) short appearances in The Counselor, but it was the lines that McCarthy wrote for that character and the way he delivered them that make me say he played his part perfectly.

 

@ezwind Lost in America … CLASSIC ! as well as, Defending Your Life 

Albert Brooks definitely 👍 

Speaking of Brooks, Lost in America with Albert Brooks is an all time great comedy!

Always liked The Hot Spot. Has a great soundtrack. I believe Chad has just released it.

 

Ooh yeah @ezwind, love Seven. Though I have to agree with @grislybutter that Pitt’s not a great actor, he’s pretty good in it. I think even better in Inglorious Bastards.

I think I’ll get myself a copy of The Road novel, which I was unaware of. Grim.

 

@bdp24 

If you think the film version of The Road was dark, the Cormac McCarthy book is even darker.

@immatthewj 

Have you seen Brad Pitt in Seven? Maybe his best role. He's also good in lighter fare like the Oceans 11 series. Also liked him in Legends of the Fall  and the underrated thriller Killing Them Softly. 

Surprised no one suggested

2001 A Space Odyssey

Great movie, great sound track, no CGI, everything you see is real.

 

re Brad Pitt, I don't think he is a great actor. He seems to be a modest and charming person, who works hard to become one and it shows. Authenticity goes a a long way. 

One of my favorite movies is Dinner with Schmucks. Carrell is a dynamite! 

 

The darkest film I've ever seen is The Road, a 2009 post-apocalyptic tale with Viggo Mortensen in the lead role of a father wandering the land with his young son.

 

Just a few of my favorites from my collection 🍿

 

Apocalypto

BLOW

THX1138 (The Original)

Derailed

Donnie Brasco

Hard Times

Scarface 

The Sting

The Illusionist

The Blue Max

Leon The Professional

Brewster’s Millions (Richard Pryor)

Cadillac Records

The Life & Times of Judge Roy Bean

The Godfather (Pts. 1. & 2)

The Boys in Company C

Vanishing Point (The Original)

Papillon

Crossroads

8MM

Inglorious Bastards

Kelly’s Heroes

Cat Ballou

Back to School

Fight Club

Robo Cop (2014)

Just a few of my favs … 🎥 🎞️

@thecarpathian 

@immatthewj , not a huge Brad Pitt fan??! He's dreamy!

I think that the reason that I am usually not crazy about him is due to the roles that he usually seems to be cast in.  

I thought that the movie Everest was intense and the recreation it attempted of an ill fated Mount Everest Expedition came off as realistic to me. It featured a strong cast: Jake Glyllenthaal, Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Sam Worthington.

Binge watching The Office turned me into a Steve Carell fan. I particularly enjoyed his role portraying John Du Pont in Foxcatcher where he played the eccentric heir to the Du Pont empire who became increasingly divorced from reality and unhinged. I felt that Tatum Channing and Mark Ruffalo had good chemistry in their portrayal (which came off as realistic to me) of the Olympic wrestlers Mark and David Schultz. I just did a google to see who played David Schultz’s wife (it was Sienna Miller) and evidently (unbeknownst to me when I watched it) the real Mark Schultz (the surviving brother) had a small part as a weigh in official. (Vanessa Redgrave played the role of John Du Point’s aging mother.)

I could watch either of these movies more than once.

On the lighter side, and speaking of good chemistry, I loved and found hilarious what Tatum Channing and Jonah Hill did in 21 Jump Street. I never once watched the original series, but evidently that is why Johnny Depp had a role in the movie, and I loved the part in the movie that they stole (if that’s the right word) from a scene with Johnny Depp in another movie he starred in, Donnie Brasco.

 

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Odds and ends:

Dazed and Confused (I'm too old to enjoy it but I do)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (see Dazed and Confused)

Raising Arizona

Memento

The Fifth Element

Strange Days

Big Fish

The Professional

Stand By Me

Inherent Vice (guilty pleasure)

For Gene Hackman fans:
The Conversation

Enemy of the State

Bonnie and Clyde

French Connection

Royal Tenenbaums

The Quick and the Dead (underrated Western)

Shattered Glass was about the downfall of Stephen Glass's career as a "journalist" at The New Republic.   starring Hayden Christiansen as Glass.  I thought the dialogue and acting were  good and the script moved along.   

I get a real kick out of Larry David's stuff, and Clear History had me laughing a lot.

@grislybutter ,  Weirdo??! Next thing you're gonna tell me is 'From Justin to Kelly' wasn't any good. I'll never understand that Oscar snub.

@immatthewj , not a huge Brad Pitt fan??! He's dreamy!

 

A Complete Unknown. Just saw the movie, and Timothée Chalamet does an amazing job with both guitar and singing. If you like Dylan this movie really provides an immersive view of the times (1961-1965) and a powerful representation of Dylan's response. Very enjoyable and I will be looking for the soundtrack.

Ok, in no particular order, 5 more serious movies, not yet mentioned

Time of the Gypsies (great soundtrack)

Until the End of the World

Solaris

Babel

Rocco and His Brothers

 

I used to love Jean de Florette & Manon of the Spring but crazy rapist Russia loving Depardieu turned me off

For me it's Blade Runner.  There isn't a wasted frame.  I'm torn between with narration or without but I've seen it so many times I still hear the narration in my head even on the directors cut.

My guilty pleasure is "One From the Heart"  Tom Waits, Terry Garr and and cinematography at its finest.  (story on the hand....)

Also great to see The Counselor, an unfairly maligned masterpiece written by the great Cormac McCarthy, his only screenwriting effort.

I’ll say it again: a great movie! I am not a huge Brad Pitt fan, but he played his part and delivered his lines perfectly. There are certain aspects of this movie I gave up trying to figure out, but I figure that’s just McCarthy being McCarthy, and I can enjoy it without figuring out and understanding the ’why’ for everything.

 

Beside watching music reviews on videos posted on YouTube by amateurs (the term used without pejorative implication), I also watch film/movie reviews. The quality of the reviews varies wildly, and I have discovered an unusually good reviewer---a youngish woman---who named her channel Deep Focus Lens (a good name, don’t you agree?). She may be an amateur (though she has a Patreon account), but she gets David Lynch to a degree Siskel & Ebert---for instance---were incapable of

I just watched her review of David Lynches final full length film, Inland Empire. Here it is:

 

https://youtu.be/smN7_AVrtGg?si=VJpdzL-h6890XWoF

 

on a serious note, Inglorious Basterds. He is an annoying person (in interviews) but he gets some things very right.