What was the last film you watched?

[Willie Oleson]

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)



After my surprisingly successful rewatch of The Dark Knight (2008) I felt hesitant to continue with last instalment in the Batman Trilogy. Sort of like "what if I'm pushing my luck?"
However, prime made it known that it was going to be removed from their free-to-watch catalogue and it would be silly of me to keep dawdling only to end up paying for the rental anyway.
Well, now that I've watched it I can understand why so many fans consider this trilogy the peak in the superhero blockbuster genre.
It's not a better Batman film than the previous one but they sure made the right choices for the ensemble cast.
Commissioner Gordon is a favourite returnee from The Dark Knight and we also get a sub-hero in the form of police officer John Blake.
Anne Hathaway is delightful as the catty femme fatale, and Tom Hardy is impressive as a Hellboy type of villain, stomping around and causing epic choas.
It also features villain John Daggett who is actually the most responsible for everything that happens, and characters like Miranda Tate usually don't show up in a casual, inconsequential way. I didn't know what the plot twist was going to be, but I knew it was coming.

Apart from the mix of characters and motivations there's also the non-stop urgency and spectacle on "disaster movie" scale.
It's a lot, and almost to the extent that it starts to clutter the story. I'm not familiar with the League Of Shadows therefore I had to take it at face value, and while that doesn't affect the story developments I feel it somewhat lessens the impact thereof.
I mean, the Joker doesn't even need a motive, he's just extremely vile and sometimes the beauty is in the simplicity of it all.

Alfred Pennyworth's behaviour in this sequel is uncharacteristically straightforward and sentimental, and all that blubbery "I only live for your happiness" made me cringe.
Props and set pieces are amazing even if it continues the colour-shy tone chosen for these Batman films. It seems that the money was spent wisely - if we'd consider that spending 300 million dollars on the production of a film is a sane thing to do - and it's the kind of blockbuster thrill that's hard to surpass. In many ways as entertaining as The Dark Knight but I like to make a distinction for the reasons mentioned.

 

[Willie Oleson]

The Italian Job (1969)



I knew the great theme song by Matt Monro (music by Quincy Jones, which I find interesting) and I've always thought "I should watch that film sometime" but somehow that never happened.
Stop. Wrong introduction, let's rewind. deneppahreventahtwohemostub"emitemosmliftahtdlouhsi"thgouhtsyawlaevIdnamewmewmewmewmew *click*
So, I was saying that I was in a Ryan O'Neal mood and added Love Story starring Lady Ashley to my prime watchlist. Instead of simply watching that I searched for the other Ryan O'Neal film I hadn't seen, The Driver.
They don't have it, but then my eyes clocked the thumbnail for The Italian Job which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the remake. Luckily they also have the original and that's what I watched instantly without any more searching and overthinking.

I didn't know anything about this film but I assumed it was some kind of crime story, maybe in an assassin sort of way. It's a good thing I went in blind because this was a truly bedazzling experience. I did have a "eh..?" moment when I noticed Benny Hill's name in the opening credits but that also worked out just fine.
The film is incredibly funny with lots of laugh-out-loud moments although I can't say that there were many big gags and jokes in it. I don't how to explain it, they just made it look funny while most of story plays out like the real thing.
The British spirit comes off as both daft and cool while the poor Italian police is brutally portrayed as totally incompetent. Of course, you'll find that failing police squad in many films but this is not hicksville heroes vs. hicksville sheriff, no, in the Italian Job it's an insult on Eurovision level.

The car chase sequences look kinda bonkers but never at the expense of the action-packed thrills. Not quite as fast and wild as James Bond, but the whole thing looks wonderfully orchestrated. I mean, it's a miracle that someone had figured out the logistics to make it work. I find it so impressive, and what a fabulous ending.
Oddly enough, the only actor I recognised (apart from Michael Caine and Benny Hill, obviously) was Italian actor Raf Vallone. Not that I could mention any of his other films but the face was familiar.
It wasn't Love Story but I love this film so that evens out the score, I think.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Lord Of The Flies (1990)



It's a well-known title but I had never seen the film or read the book and therefore I had no idea what kind of story I was about to watch.
The all-child cast in a mature story is enough to make it special and the performances are good enough to buy into the drama.
Gosh, some of the kids are so tiny and it's a bit difficult to watch them in that sad & hungry scenario, sometimes punished by the older boys.
Although...at the end of the story I wish Ralph (the good kid) had told the soldier that he was the only survivor. "Take me away, please, quick".
I like that the tone of the film is consistently from the children's point of view. The horrors are not dramatised in a mature fashion, which is a bit frustrating but it's the only way to make it work.
I did have some questions like, how does a seven-year-old boy end up in a military academy? Are they all orphans, I don't think parents are ever mentioned.
Regardless, the academy doesn't seem like a much better place than the hypothesis of the Russian Olympics.
The only adult survivor - a pilot or a steward - is largely ignored. Not that I would expect them to know how to take care of the badly injured man, but it's not unreasonable to think that the boys would pin their hopes on the only adult "who knows stuff and knows what to do" - even if he doesn't.
There's something bizarrely independent about it all, except for the lack of independence within that child's world as we see them getting bullied and blackmailed into tribalism. The most Machiavellian character looks like a mini-David Bowie.
The story has no beginning or end which, I guess, makes it easier to tell the story in isolation. Perhaps we're meant to feel part of the group instead of spectators.

After the film had ended I hopped over to youtube to see if there was a Reunion Special interview documentary thing. It's there, but - dammit - they're the kids from the original 1960s film! I didn't even know that the 1990s film was a remake and now it turns out that a brand new version has been made this year.
It's a lot happening at the same time. The day before yesterday I was completely oblivous to the Lord Of The Flies franchise.

 

[Willie Oleson]

The Maltese Falcon (1941)



I was thinking, what previously unseen classic should I watch? Film noir is not my favourite genre, it's usually very dry stuff and apart from the more ambitious productions like the Billy Wilder or Orson Welles classics they're not very visually appealing.
Of course these days all B&W films are labelled as "film noir" but that's a different topic altogether.
Furthermore, I wasn't sure if I had ever seen a film starring Humphrey Bogart, at least I'm sure I've never watched Casablanca (*loud gasps of disapproval*), therefore it was also a matter of killing two falcons with one stone.

The film looks good and the actors are fabulous especially Peter Lorre, but story-wise this was a truly bizarre experience. There's all this hoo-ha about a precious artefact but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the question "who killed Sam Spade's partner?"
Every now and then I had to rewind a part of a scene because I was zoning out and I didn't want to miss any important details. But this kept happening over and over again and I thought, wait a minute. There's something funny going on here.
It's almost as if they deliberately made it impossible to follow the dialogue. Instead of using dialogue to progress the story (or just a scene) there's a lot of talking about what other characters are saying, and within those heaps of lines they may or may not have hidden a piece of important information.
There's also a surprisingly self-aware approach to the femme fatale trope, including a comment about the way these characters sometimes distract or try to avoid an unpleasant situation.

Bogart (chuckles): You're not going to straighten things and poking the fire again, are you?

Sam Spade as the fast-talking hard-boiled detective borders on caricature, surely that wasn't coincidental? Not to mention Gladys George as the veiled widow who's playing in her own noir storyline.
In the final act - which is one long boring scene - they explain the whole situation in chronological order but it's so extremely convoluted that I couldn't even bother to understand how-when-why happened, and I started to laugh.
To be fair, there is some genuine dramatic tension regarding the character of Wilmer Cook and the plan to make him the fall guy (don't ask me to explain how) and I even felt a bit sorry for him. That was the biggest emotion I felt while watching this film.

And that's the whole thing about The Maltese Falcon, it's not a film noir, it's a film about film noir, a straight-faced parody. I wish I had understood this from the very beginning. And since it's all so very tongue in cheek it kinda looks as if it was made by Billy Wilder.