Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Spent most of the week playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (this game is huge). Watched a little Star Trek, but we're stalled out at the moment. As classic as the show is, some of the individual episodes are not good.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

North by Northwest (1959)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Double Indemnity (1945)

Life with sol_se is good! We're getting adjusted to living in each others' space, but we fit very well, so it works out.

I'm going to stop noting when I watch something with her because it would just get extremely repetitive.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Swordsman II (1992)
Swordsman III: The East is Red (1993)
The Birds (1963)
Rear Window (1954)
Little Monsters (2019)

For some reason I wanted to show sol_se Swordsman II, which is a lot more incoherent than I remember it being. There has to be a good gender studies paper on Invincible Asia somewhere...

We followed that with the sequel, which was all about Invincible Asia (here named Invincible Dawn). Really wacky stuff. Somebody rides a swordfish at one point.

We had a double feature of Hitchcock for reasons I don't quite recall, but which I enjoyed thoroughly.

Little Monsters is a lot of fun, even though the male lead is super cringey to start. I love Lupita Nyong'o. They could've turned Josh Gad's character down a notch or three, though.

An eclectic mix, most of which is from Criterion Channel.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

The Four Musketeers (1974)
Night Nurse (1931)
New Tale of Zatoichi (1963)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Illicit (1931)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Forbidden (1932)
Ladies of Leisure (1930)
Witchboard (1986) w/sol_se 
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Most of the films in this list are from Criterion Channel's look at the pre-Code works of Barbara Stanwyck. I kind of love her. Her characters might make some terrible choices (especially in Forbidden, which is about a woman who basically sacrifices everything -- including her own child -- to prop up the career of her married lover), but she's always a winner. I believe, and I may be wrong, that Ladies of Leisure is the first time I ever saw a movie from 1930.

The Four Musketeers was as good as its predecessor, except that the same goofy comedic notes are maintained up until some brutal and tragic moments, which seem wildly out of place.

The Manchurian Candidate is great. Its reputation precedes it, of course, but luckily it wasn't a film that relied on twists to convey information. Everything was pretty plainly laid out, so I wasn't "spoiled." Angela Lansbury is magnificent. There's a weird scene in the middle where Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh speak in non sequitirs. I've seen reading of the scene that suppose that Leigh is also an agent of the Chinese-Russian conspiracy, which I don't not believe.

Jamaica Inn was Hitchcock's last British feature film until, I believe, Frenzy. It's also really hard to see as a Hitchcock film. With a few exceptions here and there, it's a workmanlike thriller with very little remarkable about it. It also drags on, which is impressive since the whole thing takes place over the course of just two days.

Witchboard is terrible and boring, but it has some slash potential. It completely lacks, oh what's that thing that horror films want... right, tension.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout was ridiculous fun the way that all of the M:I movies have been since the fourth. Like the Fast and the Furious, this is definitely a franchise that found its footing later in the game. There was one distracting element, in that the major helicopter chase scene was shot in IMAX at 1.78:1, while the rest of the film was, I believe, 2.35:1. The movie would sometimes switch back and forth quickly between the two. Pick one for the entire sequence, I say.

Accidentally started a small tradition last night. You see, I recently made a list of all the movies in my collection that I've never seen. The list came to about 250 films (this includes individual films in box sets) -- or roughly half to a third of my collection (depending on how you're counting). Given the huge number of films unexperienced and the large number of DVDs I buy in a month, it seemed best for me to start working through that list.
( Thunderball, The Adventures of Robin Hood, It Happened One Night, and The Lady Vanishes )

Stay tuned for even more Cinema Blog hijinks. I'm sure I'll have some.

Today was Bela Lugosi day on TCM. But I've already missed most of the ones I haven't seen. Crap crap crap.

ETA: For your amusement -- The original Psycho trailer. It's actually quite funny.