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Agreed. I never liked Chris Durand as Michael in H20. Just wasn't threatening at all. Lol and don't get me started on the masks.
I can’t believe that one really blank one was even a consideration. I remember the old trailer that showed him wearing that in the famous ‘face to face for the first time’ scene:
The ‘main’ mask was decent, although I would have gone with darker eyes.
Agreed. Being able to see Mikey's pretty blue eyes takes away from it. The mask used during the opening scene is actually a Halloween 6 mask. It looked great and should have been used throughout the film IMO.
One of my main issues with H20. The balls up with the mask is symptomatic of the cheap approach and look of the film, which itself is otherwise pretty decent.
It really lacks the Halloween feel, sound, and look. This has been said to death but it really feels like a Scream ripoff.
Ok so we start 2019 with this bland action film. So I am at my wife’s friends house and I didn’t want to count this as between them talking and her kids running around screaming I could of had the tv on mute and subtitles and it would of been fine but I could hear enough of it to make me realize it’s likely not going to be a film I am gonna wanna watch again it’s a fair enough movie the action is good but the film feels I dunno lost a bit plus I only played one game but agent 47 feels a bit to sci-fi in my opinion
Films I saw in 2019
1. Hitman agent 47
Ironically the best one was used in the first few minutes of the movie:
a recast part 6 mask painted basic white.
Love that mask.
Great scene too. My favourite of the film.
Agreed. I actually didn't mind what Zombie did with his first film. It was a different take on the story but he had a clear goal with it and I appreciated that, despite some of his overly clichéd "Hillbilly" style sexual dialogue. Though, as with H2, the theatrical cut is probably my preferred version on account of the infamous rape scene being absent.
But H2? Damn. What a bastardisation of characters. Laurie as you say, but also Loomis. I found it very hard to feel any sympathy for them in the slightest. I was actually rooting for Michael towards the end.
Incidently, Tyler Mane was a great Michael when he had the mask on. He wasn't exactly 'The Shape' but he was bloody intimidating nonetheless.
I actually prefer H2 over H1. While H2, like you said, shits all over the characters we know and love, it's at least an original story with some compelling elements to it. H1 has a pretty decent third act but everything before it is a chore to get through.
A masterpiece.
I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree there, again. :P
I had all intention of buying the Criterion edition of this but luck would have it that a Region B version, an exclusive through HMV appeared on the UK market.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971
John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in the town Presbyterian Church, named after its only substantial building, a tall but mostly unused chapel. McCabe then takes advantage of the simple-minded inhabitants mostly miners.
He is able to do this due to a rumour he's a gunfighter and has quite a large and at times aggressive personality. McCabe then establishes a business, a saloon and a brothel. When Constance Miller (Julie Christie) arrives in town and offers him a partnership, suggesting her expertise to run the brothel, he reluctantly accepts, as well as making a success of it they both begin a romantic attachment.
As the prosperity of the town grows and grows, Sears and Hollander, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company in Bearpaw arrive. They offer to buy out McCabe as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Shaughnessy has a reputation of using violence if their initial offers are not accepted and despite Miller warning McCabe of this, he challenges this and both men leave. McCabe is somewhat pigheaded and feels he'll get his own way and rejects their $5000,500 offer.
Though as per warning from Miller and others, 3 bounty hunters arrive in town not long after, it is only then that McCabe realizes his error and tries to make amends. By this time it's too late and negotiation is not on the table which the chief bounty hunter Butler makes all too clear.
They then begin a program of intimidation with McCabe toying with him. He then attempts to get legal representation but ends up realizing he must deal with the matter alone. As McCabe comes to realize his fate, the film moves towards all together inevitable climax.
A beautifully brutal revisionist western from Robert Altman, shot in West Vancouver and in Squamish, almost in sequential order. Vilmos Zsigmond's vivid cinematography perfectly capturing the location and period with assistance from Leon Ericksen production design, conveying authentically the time.
Easily one of the most original and realistic westerns of all time. Altman elicits terrific performances from his cast. Beatty seems adept at capturing this type of character and although initially establishing John McCabe as someone who sympathy might not be your first thought. As the story develops there is a shift to empathizing with his McCabe by the end of the story. Something that is all credit to Beatty's reading of the protagonist.
Christie was nominated for an Academy award for Best Actress gives a great performance as the opium addicted Constance Miller. The supporting cast are also great, with the Deep Space Nine's Rene Auberjonois in an early role as the morally ambiguous Sheehan and Keith Carradine as a young cowboy amongst it's ranks
The film is a stark affair with no frilly trappings and music is kept spare with only three Leonard Cohen songs, "The Stranger Song", "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady". Taken from Cohen's album Songs of Leonard Cohen, which he got his label Columbia Records to licence out for the film.
Cohen's music gives the film an added air of melancholy although there is humour to be found within it's duration. In 2010 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" Easily one of the best films of the 1970s and one of Altman's finest in a hugely impressive filmography.
5/5
The remake is not a patch on the original! Great cast, Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw are brilliant, but it has a host of wonderful minor characters (love the Lord Mayor) and, yes that main theme is very hummable!
A great return to form for Carpenter.....but be wary, if Alice Cooper approaches you with a broken bike...run!!
I know they are not everyone's cup of tea or how they have been done? But I do like these films just for the pure madness and fun of them. Next up pretty soon will be the fifth film.
I was surprised that I loved DARK OF THE MOON.
This is one of those films that no matter how long it's been since I last saw it, I somehow forget JUST how great it is until I watch it again, and this viewing was no exception. Equal parts funny and exciting, this thrilling and twisty noir mystery with a brilliant cast that almost feels like a long lost Hitchcock film is always a pleasure to watch. Again, the twists make for a real proper mystery, going down every 15 or 20 minutes to constantly shake up what you think is really going on.
Also, a little detail I picked up on this time that I loved: when Dyle and Reggie are on the boat, despite it obviously all being rear projection/green screen, their voices become echoed when you see them passing underneath a bridge and through a tunnel. I love this film.
Oh absolutely, he's yet another one of his era that is effortlessly cool in literally everything he does. All three of these are brilliant examples of that, I'm really not sure which one I'd pick as my favorite, they're all phenomenal.
@Torgeirtrap, it felt about that long since I had last seen it, so I knew a rewatch was in order.
A rewatch is probably in order for me too! Maybe I'll make it a double (or triple) feature with those two other titles as well. Grant was as cool as it gets in North By Northwest:
First viewing for me of this Sidney Lumet directed courtroom drama starring Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, James Mason and Jack Warden. I really enjoyed this one. It’s a film which unfolds slowly with limited fanfare & a sparse score. Despite this it’s very engrossing and that’s down to the tight screenplay, the wonderful characterizations and the top notch acting performances on display. Newman is quite outstanding in an Oscar nominated turn as a down on his luck alcoholic lawyer, Frank Galvin, who takes a case which could set him up for life if only he'd take a settlement offered by a well heeled defendent – instead he finds his conscience and decides to go all the way to trial despite resistance from all around him. In a way, he uses the case as a tool to assist his own redemption and salvation. As obstacles continue to be thrown his way, Galvin perseveres.
Newman shows the desperation, frustration, fear, faith and weariness of his character so well that I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Mason is equally convincing in a smaller role as his adversary, a hot shot defense lawyer. Warden inhabits a role I’m sure I’ve seen him play before (although I can’t remember in which film), as sidekick legal assistant. Rampling radiates her usual icy coolness but is also compelling in a small but pivotal role & Milo O’Shea is memorable as a judge who may have a thumb on the scale. If you can accept the slow pace, this is a film which rewards. It’s reminiscent of some of the John Grisham legal dramas which came after, but is smaller in scale, less dramatic and more character focused.
I agree. It's a very quiet and "delicate" film, but very engrossing. I find Newman especially good in the scene in which he says he can't bring himself to accept the settlement. One also feels for him when his own client berates him for refusing the money. He's trying to redeem himself and everything's against him. The ending with the ringing phone is pleasantly understated as well.
The "limited fanfare" also extends to the cinematography. Long shots with strategically placed camera. They become like paintings. Muted, wintery colors. Very nice.
Regarding Jack Warden, you might be thinking of ...And Justice for All.
Edit: My experience has been somewhat mixed with Sidney Lumet-directed films. This is very good, as is The Hill. But The Anderson Tapes is just okay, and Network is a grating film.
I haven't seen that one. It just came to me a few minutes ago - it's Guilty As Sin, which is also a Lumet directed film. Warden plays a very similar character.
I'm not altogether familiar with his output and haven't seen The Hill or The Anderson Tapes. I did like Network a lot although the characters are very ambitious. Murder On The Orient Express is one of my favourite films from the 70s and I also really like Deathtrap, which was also released in 1982.