@colonelkilgore I had to read the play in school and I remember liking 12 Angry Men. But I figured a film, especially one from the 1950’s, could never be as good as the play so I never thought to watch it. Good to know it’s actually that good. If I can find it on a streaming service for free or cheap then I’ll watch it.
It’s all too easy to say (& therefore it looses it’s potency) but it is one of the greatest movies of all time. The ensemble cast is perfection, the dynamic between each character (& actor) representing almost every demographic of 50’s society, the direction... I mean it all takes place in one room and generally Lumet allows his stellar cast run away (exquisitely) with the dialogue but when there is the opportunity for a dramatic turn in mood he hits it out the park every time.
I’ve been a film-nerd longer than I’ve been a gamer and the older I get, the higher 12 Angry Men gets in my personal Top 10 Movies of All Time.
I watched big hero 6 for the first time today, it was actually pretty good. It's weird coming from the primarily San Francisco set Dirty Harry films to the fictional San Fransokyo setting of Big Hero 6 and seeing some familiar but reimagined San Francisco locations. I fancied watching Enter the Dragon on Netflix tonight too but looks like it's been taken off, anyway happy new year everyone!
@colonelkilgore same here actually, I started watching the dirty Harrys partly because I wanted to watch them again and partly because I wanted to show them to my partner. She has to go back to work next week (we live in separate counties but she's stayed at mine and worked from home during the pandemic) so I'll probably wait until we are together again before I pop in the Dollars trilogy DVDs
I really liked the coen brothers version of True Grit actually, it really changed my opinion on Matt Damon who I just thought was a Bourne ultimatum lunkhead until that point. I hadn't seen good Will hunting by that point but have seen it since, and also the Martian which are really good Matt Damon films.
Anyway, I just finished The Dead Pool and it was basically how I remembered it. It's still good but it's the worse Dirty Harry movie. He had a lot more dialogue in it which is a bit out of character but there are still some classic moments in the film that I enjoyed. Also good to see an early Jim Carrey and Liam Neeson have roles in the film.
@Arugula I haven't seen once upon a time in the west actually, I'll make a note to get around to it some time in the future!
Well I hope your partner enjoyed the trials of Harry Callahan... I know how difficult it can be for ones partner to ‘get’ what you see in a masterpiece. Sometimes my other half buys in, sometimes she doesn’t... let’s just say she will NEVER buy into the Dollars trilogy and therefore Dirty Harry is an even longer shot.
Minor victory though, she suggested that ‘maybe’ we do a Rocky-thon tomorrow... I’ll have to get the tissues ready but I’m game 👊.
@Arugula
Amen... I am a child of the (very late) 70’s but that never stopped me exploring art from before that time. Kids today though... if it was made before the invention of the i-phone its dead in the water.
@colonelkilgore@nessisonett@Arugula Wow, well that’s 3 for 3. I’m really curious now. And that was another thing, is I remember that the whole thing basically takes place in the jury room and I figured that was the makings of a really slow movie, despite the script, dialogue, and story being quite exceptional. I still remember the fascinating way the one juror held out and gradually turned the whole jury around on their vote, save the one guy, if I recall correctly. It’s not often I remember what I read in school, but that was one of the few. To Kill a Mockingjay ...bored me to death. The Scarlet Letter ...dull as dishwater. Canterbury Tales ...a confusing mess. Most of these classics I have long since forgotten, but I remember a lot about 12 Angry Men. And that’s saying a lot since I can barely remember the plot of Assassin’s Creed Origins, which I played just a few months ago.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@colonelkilgore I think she found the first film a bit difficult but warmed to the series from Magnum Force onwards which is what I based my earlier post on about them not being easily accessible. We did have a long break between the first two films too where we watched Lethal Weapon 1-4 which are much easier films to watch about American cops so I think that helped ease her into it!
Rocky should be a good one, we've watched them together before and I think despite the fact they are about manly boxers; the underdog story, the romance, the melancholy, the humour etc make them appealing across demographics. The hardest part is convincing someone to watch them in the first place but theyre actually good enough to keep most people engrossed or at least interested until the end. Also it helps to cap them off with Creed 1+2 (Rocky 7+8), a modern bookend can make the series more appealing, especially as Creed 2 is basically a direct sequel to Rocky 4!
@ralphdibny glad she enjoyed them... even if you had to strategically insert the whole Lethal Weapon series in between to keep her interested 🤣😂🤣😂.
The missus and I have watched all the Rocky’s in the past but not for a long while (maybe 10 years) although we did watch the two Creed movies on release (the first of which blew me away as a long time Apollo fan). I love a good ‘a-thon’ though whether it be all the Rocky’s, all the Lord of the Rings (extended of course), all the Dollars’ (as we discussed earlier)... anything like that really... anyway you get my drift... and seem in much the same boat too.
@colonelkilgore yeah I'm big on the -athons too but I have never called them that before! My partner always tries to knock stuff off the list if it's a huge list but I insist. Like I wanted to show her the MGS series because they are my favourite games and she wanted to skip the game boy colour game for example. Or we were watching through the X-Files-verse including the Lone Gunmen and Millennium and I found out that there was a marginally tangentially related show called Harsh Realm that I managed to find in CEX for 50p. It was much more important to me that we slot that show in there than it was to her 😂
I start off incredulous like "why would we want to skip it?" Then with appeals to reason, "we've come this far, we may as well go the whole hog" and finally we get to watch or play entire series in full. Dirty Harry was almost a non starter because she said we don't have to finish the series if we've only watched one film, I eventually talked her into it though she probably just wanted to shut me up lol
I've definitely been talked out of things though, I wanted to watch every Superman and Batman film from the 60s onwards in preparation for Batman Vs Supermans release, something like 12 films, it didn't happen though!
I really like both Creeds, I think I'm a long time Drago fan so creed 2 was excellent for me! Though I was kind of interested how they might pick up the sort of almost sci fi origin story for him. They didn't though and that was probably for the best haha
You know, I love the lord of the rings films but I never got around to seeing the third Hobbit film. They had great actors in, and I even got on with the addition of Tauriel (afterall Arwen was barely in the LOTR books) but there still something about the Hobbit that didn't engage me enough to watch the third movie.
It definitely seems like we’re into the same things from all the stuff you have mentioned. In regards to Creed 2, I did enjoy it... and the fight at the end was definitely better that the one at the end of the original but for me the original just ‘bottled lightening’! It just worked on so many levels and the sequel was just missing a little sum’n sum’n. I am also a massive Rocky 4 (& therefore Drago) fan and I was devastated that Rocky didn’t take Adonis to Siberia to train for the fight against Drago Jr. I still enjoyed the film though no doubt.
... and I’m totally with you about The Hobbit movies. I love the LotR films and books, I love The Hobbit book but the films are just plain bad and Ali never managed to get to the end of the third either.
Parasite. Fantastic movie. Well worth a watch and you are best not knowing much about it. Despite the shift in the story it manages to keep a similar tone throughout. One of the best crafted movies I've seen recently.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@JohnnyShoulder I'm going to take a break from Demon's Souls to watch Parasite and Tenet today whilst I wait for my beef olives to cook in the slow cooker. Have a good one!
@colonelkilgore I think you're right about Creed 1 actually, in terms of the bottled lightning. It was just so cool to see it as it was basically Rocky 1 (and 2 to an extent) but just adapted, modernised and somewhat "urbanised". The training montage/scene scene where all the bikes follow him in Creed springs to mind as an example of this.
That bottled lightning idea probably applies to Lord of the Rings too, the Hobbit films just didn't have the same stuff going for them.
The films I've mentioned so far, I was a big fan of in my late teens and early twenties so it's nice to revisit them. I've been totally absorbed in the MCU and the Arrowverse for such a long time. Those two series have so much content that is regularly released that I really have so little time for anything else so the 2020 break in production has allowed me to go back and revisit some old stuff that I haven't seen in a while! I think that because my partner now likes Mel Gibson because of Lethal weapon, I might be able to swing a rewatch of the Mad Max series in future!
I had a nice little marathon of Ramis/Reitman/Murray/Aykroyd films a while back when we watched Stripes, Ghostbusters 1-3, Evolution, Blues Brothers 1+2 and Analyse this/that. That was a nice couple of weeks!
I watched Bloodsport on Netflix tonight and it was so good. Terrible but funny acting in places but still such a good film anyway. I dont think I realised how much of Mortal Kombat and street fighter was lifted out of this film
@ralphdibny Bloodsport is incredible. I mean, it’s kinda pants and massively stupid but it’s just plain fun. If ever a film was a successor to Enter the Dragon, it’s Bloodsport.
All this praise for movies like Dirty Harry, Bloodsport, Fistful of Dollars, Rocky... it's like my father joined the forums. If someone says The Eagles are their favorite band I'mma start getting extremely suspicious.
"One of the unloveliest and least enlightening aspects of contemporary discourse is the tendency to presume that whatever one disagrees with must be very simple—not only simple, but also simply wrong." - Elizabeth Bruenig
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