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  1. #2701
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    The Court-Martial Of Billy Mitchell (1955)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047956/



    The true story of the U.S. Army General who was first demoted and then court martialed for pushing and arguing in favor for the formation of an independent Air Force in the period after World War I.

    This was at the time when the U.S. Armed Forces was only composed of the Navy, the Army and the Marines.

    The Pentagon didn't exist.

    The Department of Defense was then called the War Department.

    The Navy had all the military and political clout and influence in Washington.

    They still believed that all future wars will be fought and won not by boots on the ground, but by ships and their 6 inch guns.

    Directed by one of the best American directors ever to work during the 1940's to 1960's, Otto Preminger;

    starring Gary Cooper and a cast of little known actors at the time during the early years of their careers: Peter Graves, Rod Steiger, Jack Lord, Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched), Darren McGavin.

    This is a powerful film about the man who is rightfully called the Father of the U.S. Air Force.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell

    A final note:

    In 1924, Mitchell also predicted in a 324 pages report, future war with Japan which included details of attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. Of course he was ignored by his superiors.

    By the way, one of the 12 Army Generals who presided over Mitchell's court martial as judges was Major General (2-stars) Douglas McArthur.

    5/5

  2. #2702
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs down

    The Lifeguard (2013)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2265534/

    29 year old career woman quits her career as a writer in NYC and returns to the town where she left years prior right after graduating high school.

    She gets her old high school job back at the local public swimming pool as a lifeguard where she starts hanging around with a couple of high school teenage boys and then begins a sexual affair with one of them.

    Okay, stuff like this do happen so I don't question the premise.

    But the story just turns into a predictable tale: he is not mature enough for it, there is sex at every other turn, she feels guilty, someone finds out about their illicit and slightly illegal affair and there is drama, someone has to leave town, etc etc...

    you know the usual stuff you would find in a Lifetime movie!!

    This would had been great if the result of their affair wouldn't be written so predictable and by the numbers like;

    if the screenwriters fleshed out the characters to make us care about them - which after everything they gone through by the end of the film - we pretty much still didn't care whether they stayed together or go their separate ways.

    If you want to see a movie about an illicit affair where you end up caring for the characters involved and by the end you were rooting for them to walk off into the sunset and live happily ever after, go watch The Bridges Of Madison County.

    Until then, avoid this borderline made for cable TV movie.

    Oh, the only good part about this movie?

    This!

    The one-sheet poster!!




    2/5

  3. #2703
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    La Residencia (1969)
    aka The House That Screamed
    aka The Boarding School

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064888/





    Version I watched:

    The 2016 Shout! Factory Extended Cut Blu-Ray



    Strange happenings and going-ons at a 19th century France boarding school for wayward and troubled girls.

    There are several subplots:

    from mean girls to corporal punishment by the headmistress who rules the girls with an iron fist to lesbianism to unquenched sexual desires to the girls having illicit sexual affairs with the male help - which is kind of gross considering they only shower on Tuesday while wearing a layer of thin clothing and also because the girls are constantly complaining there is never any toilet paper.

    The girls are also being spied on and stalked by a peeping tom and some have also mysteriously disappeared or murdered.

    The ending you will never guess ahead of time or see it coming.

    When it's revealed, you can't help but say WTF????

    Creepy, atmospheric, frightening and intense but with very little violence and blood, this is one gem that deserves a place among some of the classic horrors of that era long gone by like: The Haunting (1963), The Legend Of Hell House(1973), Psycho (1960), The Innocents (1961) and of course, The Exorcist (1972).

    I am giving it 1/2 a point less from being perfect because the Blu-Ray DVD release contains 10 minutes of scenes that were edited out from the original 1969 Spanish theatrical cut re-inserted into the movie in chronological order.

    But the people at Shout! Factory for some reason chose not to bother to remaster those scenes: the only explanation I can think of is this way the audience will know which scenes were originally cut );

    so when those scenes do appear in the film, they are extremely poor quality and discolored like a work print with very distorted audio.

    The other parts of the movie is beautifully re-mastered as you can see from the screenshot I posted.

    4.5/5

  4. #2704
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    Marie-Octobre (1959) aka Secret Meeting

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053050/





    Version watched - the 2016 Blu-Ray DVD:



    From IMDB:
    fifteen years after WWII, a group of ex-resistance fighters are brought together by Marie-Octobre, so that the former members of the network can finally relive one fateful night and find out who betrayed their murdered leader, Castille.
    This is a good movie except the characters, all 10 of them, spent the entire film in a mansion talking and recollecting and reminiscing about their war experiences and the events that lead up to the murder of their leader by the Nazi SS, just a few days before the liberation of Paris by the Allies.

    There are no flashback scenes set during the war: none!! As the viewer, you will just have to pay attention to what is being said and use your own imagination to visualize the past events as described by the 10 characters.

    By the time they speak of how their leader was murdered, you don't feel the same emotion and loss as the characters felt because there is nothing visual for us to see it happening.

    The film could had used some flashback scenes to powerful convey what this group of French resistance fighters went through during the war.

    Alas we don't get any and that by itself is the only fault this movie has. So instead of it being a Great movie, it's only a Good movie.

    Maybe the producers were trying to keep the budget low?

    The strongest character is the movie title lead character, played by Danielle Darrieux, who by the way is now 100 years old and she is still alive and working in movies and TV as recently as last year.

    I hope I will still be able to do what I want when I am 100. :p

    4/5

  5. #2705
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    Atomic Blonde (2017)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2406566/






    In the closing days of West and East Germany, on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, top level MI-6 spy operative Broughton is sent to Berlin to retrieve the List:

    a microfilm which contains the names of every field agent in Europe.

    Agent Broughton is a woman and she has already been set up from the start to fail but sometimes you just need a woman's touch and killer body to get the job done.

    Statuesque South African Goddess Charlize Theron is MI-6 Agent Lorraine Broughton



    and she kicks some major men's asses in several exciting, intense, no holds barred, bloody action sequences!!

    Broughton makes James Bond look like a pussy, Jason Bourne look like a boy scout, Ethan Hunt look like a punk and Lara Croft look like a nun.

    Add a rousing soundtrack featuring the who's who of 70's-80's music: Depeche Mode, New Order, David Bowie, Peter Schilling, Nena, Re-Flex, After The Fire, The Clash, etc, etc, ...

    ... and you have the perfect ingredients for the Estrogen filled action movie of this Summer!

    Will there be a sequel or a spin off movie with Charlize Theron returning as Agent Broughton to kick more male asses ?

    I sincerely sure do hope so!



    5/5

  6. #2706
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
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    Canada
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    15,062
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    @j7wild

    Sound or look familiar?

    Quote
    So we had a feminist version of Mad Max.
    Now this.
    What's next?
    A feminist version of James Bond or Jason Bourne or M: I- or Indiana Jones?
    Unquote

    Doubt if there's a sequel anyway, 30M to make with 47M worldwide.

    http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...oldestcity.htm



    I can't see through walls, but I can kick your ass.

  7. #2707
    j7wild Guest

    Exclamation

    6 Days (2017)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4703048/



    Dramatization of the Iranian Embassy siege in London from 30 April to 5 May 1980,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Embassy_siege

    which ended after the British Special Air Service stormed the building, killed 5 of the 6 terrorists and freed all the hostages.

    This movie had good intention and it was somewhat historically accurate but the acting and story and direction was very weak.

    If this was shown on the History channel as a renactment documentary - you'd wouldn't think it was a multi-million dollars budgeted movie.

    3/5

    By the way, the only surviving terrorist was captured, served time in prison and he is still alive and living as a free man in England, collecting welfare.

    Code:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4463946/Terrorist-enjoys-playboy-lifestyle-UK-benefits.html
    How's that for F*ed up?

    From WIKI:

    Fowzi Nejad was the only gunman to survive the SAS assault. He became eligible for parole in 2005. As a foreign national, he would normally have been immediately deported to his home country but Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act 1998, has been held by the European Court of Human Rights to prohibit deportation in cases where the person concerned would be likely to be tortured or executed in his home country. Nejad was eventually paroled in 2008 and granted leave to remain in the UK, but was not given political asylum.The Home Office released a statement, saying "We do not give refugee status to convicted terrorists. Our aim is to deport people as quickly as possible but the law requires us to first obtain assurances that the person being returned will not face certain death"
    I could had saved 1 hours and 30 min of my time and just watch these:




  8. #2708
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs down

    Rough Night (2017)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4799050



    I tried to watch this movie about 4 women, all best friends from college, headed to Miami for a bachelorette party because one of them is getting married (Scarlett Johansson).

    Right from the beginning, from the first scene where they are still in college, it doesn't bode well.

    You would think because a woman wrote this and directed this, a woman will try to avoid all the stereotypes and stigmas society puts on women but nope, not only is all that in there, these women act like a bunch of guys in a locker room talking trash about the opposite sex and putting down everything else.

    You have the popular beauty queen (Scarlett Johansson), who 10 years after college is running for public office and she is trying to be a goody goody, of course.

    You have the heavy set girl (Jillian Bell) who is obnoxious and constantly talking about penises because after all, that's what heavy set girls do. Talk about penises and act obnoxious, right?

    You have the light skinned African American girl (Zoë Kravitz) who tries very hard to pass for white. She is in a custody battle over her child with her ex because after all, all light skinned African American girls wishes they were white and none of them are good mothers, right?

    You have the boyish looking tomboy girl (Ilana Glazer) who is also a lesbian, a political activist, an ex felon, a drug dealer and a drug addict because after all, tomboys are all trouble makers, right?

    Then you have the girl from Australia (Kate McKinnon) who Johansson character met when she spent a semester in Australia; she invited her to her bachelorette party and of course the heavy set girl doesn't like it that her best friend has a new friend.

    I got 30 minutes into the movie where the girls invite a guy over to strip for Johansson and due to the heavy set girl's poor judgement, he is killed in a freak accident.

    Now what would you do?

    I would call the Police.

    Of course these girls will not call the Police due to many reasons: they are drunk, they are high, Johansson character is running for public office, the tomboy girl is on her strike 2 with the criminal justice system and she left the state to go to Miami, the guy stripper was from a Craigslist ad so he is automatically labeled as a prostitute and the girls don't want to be the Police to know they hired a prostitute, etc., etc.

    So what do they do? Keep on getting high and drunk and keep on partying.

    It's sad that a woman wrote this and directed this! Instead of making a women comedy that can be positive for all women, she made a women comedy that cater to the recent trend of tasteless male audiences oriented comedies like The Hungover.

    This trend of stupid women's dark comedies all started because of Melissa McCarthy's Bridesmaids, which was then followed by Best Night Ever, Bad Moms and this year's Girls Trip.

    There is even a name for this genre: Ladette Comedy.

    Enough is enough!! Women can be funny without needing to resort to the grossness, the obnoxiousness, the locker room trash talk.

    Movies like these do nothing positive for women in a Hollywood still very much dominated by men. It's a shame that women need to stoop down to the low level of men just so they can be recognized in Hollywood and get a project greenlighted.

    Shame on Johansson for even accepting a role in this film and she is the only reason I watched this.

    I won't rate this because I walked out after 30 minutes but if I were to, I would give it a BIG FAT ZERO!!

    Stay away from this movie.


  9. #2709
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs down

    What Happened To Monday (2017) (USA title) aka Seven Sisters (European Title)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536537/





    In a not so distant future, where overpopulation and famine have forced governments to undertake a drastic One-Child Policy, seven identical sisters (all of them portrayed by Noomi Rapace) live a hide-and-seek existence pursued by the Child Allocation Bureau. The Bureau, directed by the fierce Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close), enforces a strict family-planning agenda that the sisters outwit by taking turns assuming the identity of one person: Karen Settman. Taught by their grandfather (Willem Dafoe) who raised and named them - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday - each can go outside once a week as their common identity, but are only free to be themselves in the prison of their own apartment. That is until, one day, Monday does not come home. (IMDB)
    This is a joint UK/France/USA production that started out well with a very interesting premise and becomes a predictable messy movie borrowing and lifting everything from just about every dystopian and utopian sci-fi movie made before it.

    The script needed better writing, more logic, more continuity and quite a great deal of polishing. Maybe if it was written by someone like Spielberg or if it was based on original material by Crichton or Philip K. Dick, it would had turned out better.

    Yet it's better than most movies we've been seeing lately, if you have 2+ hours with nothing better to do and watch.

    Filmed entirely in Romania, this film didn't even receive a North American theatrical release.

    Instead it was released by Netflix for online streaming to U.S. and Canadian audiences.

    3/5

  10. #2710
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs down

    34 months ago I posted my review of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 1:

    Horrible Horrible Horrible film.

    Nothing but set pieces put together to make a nearly 2 hours movie (if you don't include the ending credits).

    Then aside from the unneeded profanity, you had scenes that were out of place that were just put in by the screenwriters as fillers.

    There is nothing in the movie that made me care for those characters or for whatever they were looking for or that held my attention.

    It took me several viewings over 3 nights for me to finish it from beginning to end.

    Also what's the deal with Howard The Duck at the end?

    1/5
    I just watched

    Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3896198



    It has some pretty impressive visuals and special effects but once again, it's bunch of set pieces of action and dramatic narrative put together to make a whole.

    The middle act suffers from too much repetition and slow pacing.

    Just like the first one that was so forgettable where I don't recall much about it, I have to keep asking myself who is this? Who is that?

    Characters from the first movie appear and new characters are introduced and they don't stick around long enough for you to care about them.

    There are several plot devices put into the script to drive an otherwise senseless story forward, a story we are all familiar with and have seen in other movies before.

    By the time you have finish watching this 2 hours and 16 minutes over long film, you will find yourself asking:

    What the hell did I just watch???

    Of course there will be a sequel. Without Marvel and DC comics, the movie business will be out of business.

    2/5

  11. #2711
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    Megan Leavey (2017)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4899370/



    Great moving story with no politics and no preaching!!

    Kate Mara did a great job. Maybe the Academy will recognize her.

    5/5

  12. #2712
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1959563/

    Hot damn!

    I am not a Ryan Reynolds fan - honestly I can't stand the guy:

    but this had more action, stunts and funny quick one liners than the combination of several Bond, Mission Impossible, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Fast and Furious movies.

    Plus the constantly bickering, at each other's throats chemistry between Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds reminded me of Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh.

    Heck! Even the movie poster is funny!





    4.5/5

    p.s. Am I the only one who is tired of seeing Gary Oldman playing a bad guy over and over and over again?

  13. #2713
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    Hang 'Em High (1968)



    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061747

    Clint Eastwood's first post 'Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name trilogy' Western genre film starring role: the first of many American movie studios made Westerns he will end up making during the late 60's to the late 70's.

    This is a strong denounciation of the American justice system during the west or more specifically, the lack of a justice system;

    a system so corrupt and flawed, one man will decide everyone's fate with no appeals.

    A justice system where the accused, whether guilty or innocent, have no rights, and the lawmen enpowered to bring in the accused are doing the Devil's work and bidding.

    The leading actress, Inga Stevens,



    is the woman who makes Eastwood's character realize there is more to a life of hunting fugitives and seeking personal revenge.

    It's a shame Ms. Stevens ended up committing suicide at only 35 years young, about 2 years after this movie was made.

    From reading her IMDB bios, she had a history of falling for co-stars, falling for the wrong men, and pretty much like the saying goes: "looking for love in all the wrong places."

    A very sad and tragic end to an actress whose star was still rising and she was headed toward the peak of her movie career.

    This movie also co-stars a young Dennis Hopper and Bruce Dern.

    4/5

  14. #2714
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    High Plains Drifter (1973)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068699/




    Between the time Clint Eastwood made the last movie in Sergio Leone's No Man's trilogy: 1966's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and the time he made a more contemporary western in 1985 Pale Rider, he also made several other western films.

    They were: starting with Hang' Em High in 1968, Paint Your Wagon, Two Mules For Sister Sara, Joe Kidd, High Plains Drifter, and The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976.

    Man!

    This was a damn good movie.

    An early Eastwood directorial too.

    5/5

    Joe Kidd (1972)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068768/



    In the western territory of future state of New Mexico, a former bounty hunter turned rancher unwillingly gets involved in a land dispute between ruthless, greedy wealthy white men and the Mexican peasants who have legal ownership of the land before it was forcefully taken from them by the white landowners settling west.

    Featuring a cast of familiar actors including Robert Duvall, Don Stroud, John Saxon (he played the town Lieutenant, Nancy's father in A Nightmare On Elm Street and one of the tournament fighters contestants in Enter the Dragon), Dick Van Patten, Gregory Walcott (Plan 9 From Outer Space), I was expecting more action and more fleshing out of the characters and exposition on the land dispute.

    Why?

    The screenplay is written by Elmore Leonard and the film is directed by John Sturges:

    the director of legendary films such as the Great Escape, the Magnificent Seven, the Eagle Has Landed, Bad Day at Black Rock, Ice Station Zebra, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and The Old Man and the Sea.

    Plus the lead in to the climax was dumb. Supposedly a different ending was written and the producer jokingly said "... instead of doing the ending in the script, it would be silly but fun if we change it to this other thing..." and the cast and crew took his joke seriously and went with it.

    3/5

    The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075029



    Josey Wales is a Missouri farmer who joins an elite Confederate guerrilla unit and together, they are responsible for defeating and routing many Union army units in several battles and skirmishes during the American Civil War.

    When the war ended after the Union victory, all Confederate units are required to surrender to the nearest Union outpost and swear allegiance to the United States of America and to the Constitution of the United States.

    Those who don't surrender and swear such allegiance are considered criminals and traitors and they will be hunted down until they are either captured alive or killed.

    Josey Wales is one of those who refuses to surrender, especially when the Union unit he is supposed to surrender to was also the same one who were responsible for the murder of his wife and son a few years earlier at the beginning of the Civil War.

    Wales decides to make his way to Texas or to Mexico, where most outlaws at the time fled to to avoid prosecution.

    Along the way, with bounty hunters and union soldiers still in hot pursuit, he unwillingly picks up an odd group of strangers including a Kansas religious lady and her daughter, an old Cherokee, a Navajo woman, and many others.

    Eastwood himself had said this film is one of the high point of his Western film career and he considers it to be the best Western he has ever made:

    What? Really? Not Unforgiven? Which he won two Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director?

    In 1996, The Outlaw Josey Wales was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was also one of the few Western films to receive critical and commercial success in the 1970s at a time when the Western was thought to be dying as a major genre in Hollywood. (source: wiki)

    The strong cast does a good job at fleshing out the characters and building up their motivations and background stories.

    The only weak link in the cast is Sondra Locke. She doesn't do much with the character she is portrayed.

    5/5

  15. #2715
    j7wild Guest

    Thumbs up

    Two Mules For Sister Sara (1970)

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065134/



    During the French Intervention in Mexico (honestly I never heard of this before):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French...tion_in_Mexico

    Cowboy Hogan (Eastwood) saves a nun from robbers and rapists and he ends up getting more than he bargained for.

    Originally intended for Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine was cast at the last minute to take the title role of Sister Sara.

    She didn't get along with Director Don Siegel, who previously directed Eastwood in Coogan's Bluff and will go on to direct Eastwood in 3 more movies: The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, Escape From Alcatraz.

    There are also rumors that MacLaine also didn't get along with Eastwood during the filming.

    A few years later when MacLaine was writing her autobiography and memoirs, she had nothing to say about Eastwood as if she and Eastwood never starred in a film together.

    Supposedly during the filming of this movie in Mexico, Eastwood had an affair with a girlfriend who visited him on the set, another affair with a lady journalist who was a member of the press hired to tout the forthcoming film,
    an affair with a lady film critic for New York Magazine who was sent to interview him on the set,
    and an affair with actress Susan Saint James who visited the set frequently- and none of it bode well with MacLaine.

    This film marks the first time an A-list actress was Eastwood's leading lady in a film who also gets top credits billing before him:



    and Eastwood made sure it didn't happen again for 25 years until another A-list star was to play his leading lady in The Bridges Of Madison County.

    Exciting, witty, humourous and featuring an energetic musical soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, this movie has quite a few surprises.

    4.5/5

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