Movies - Take Two. Action!

[hippypants]

My foreign film list would include:

The Girl That Played with Fire trilogy
Diva--overlooked generally for some reason, but a good Italian mafia film. I think it's the opera plot of it.
Green Slime--fun SF Italian
Eastwood Man with No Name westerns
Akira
The Chaser
I Saw the Devil
among some others already listed

[NogbadTheBad]

The Girl That Played with Fire trilogy

That's a favorite of mine.

[GuitarGeek]

Diva--overlooked generally for some reason, but a good Italian mafia film. I think it's the opera plot of it.

You're talking about the movie about the postal worker who makes the audience tape of the opera singer who refuses to make records? Then he ends up coming into possession of a tape of a mob guy's girlfriend spilling the beans on everything she knows about the scumbag's business, so the postal worker ends up being chased not only by mobsters, but also by Korean bootleggers who want the tape of the opera singer.

If so, that movie's actually French. BUt yeah, it's a good picture. I should have included it in my list. Bump out one of the Argento pictures and put it in it's place.

[Lou]

I Saw the Devil

[nosebone]

Watched Vampire Circus (1972) on Amazon Prime .

Perhaps the wackiest Hammer film ever made!

Worth a watch for super hot Domini Blythe and Lynne Frederick . Yikes!

[moecurlythanu]

^ I saw that one in the theater as a kid. Have fond enough memories of it that I bought the DVD.

[hippypants]

Diva--Hah, yeah, that's the one. I meant French, my fingers and brain weren't playing well together.


Last night watched, Sicario: Day of the Soldado. I liked it, really a bit better than the original, which I could probably stand to watch again.

[Lou]

[QUOTE=Klonk;852329]The Devil's Candy

Not a bad, very short little horror about a possesed house and metalhead painter

You were right. This was pretty good!

[moecurlythanu]

^ I saw that one in the theater as a kid. Have fond enough memories of it that I bought the DVD.

I recall Carnival Of Souls as another one I saw in the theater back then that was pretty good.

[NogbadTheBad]

Watched Solo again tonight fun movie, and The Firm last night, I like early Cruise.

[dropforge]

Cruise's best movie remains Risky Business. That is all.*

*Okay, Cocktail is a good time, too.

[GuitarGeek]

I recall Carnival Of Souls as another one I saw in the theater back then that was pretty good.

Carnival Of Souls is without doubt one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen. Intense picture. I've seen a couple times in the last 10 or so years. A movie so good, Kiss named an album after it (I believe one of the Marillion side projects from the mid 90's was named after it also). Love the atonal organ playing.

[GuitarGeek]

Cruise's best movie remains Risky Business. That is all.*

*Okay, Cocktail is a good time, too.

Never saw Cocktail. That's the movie that awful Kokomo song that Mike Love had the nerve to pass off as a Beach Boys track, in'it?

But I would contend that Tom Cruise's best movie is Rain Man. Well, more so because of Dustin Hoffman than Mr. I-Couldn't-Hang-Onto-Nicole-Kidman. One tears up thinking about the scene where the movie's title is finally explained.

And I'd also bring Legend into the mix, but there again, more so because of Mia Sara, Tim Curry, the Tangerine Dream score, and the Bryan Ferry/David Gilmour song that plays over the closing credits, than Katie Holmes' future ex-husband.

I haven't bothered with any of the Mission: Impossible movies. They may be good movies in their own right, but sorry, Tom Cruise is no Peter Graves. He's no Martin Landau, either! And I never forgave whoever it was* who shoehorned the iconic Lalo Schfrin theme into 4/4 for the initial movie.

* Yes, I know, it was a couple of the guys from U2, the two who don't have cutesy stage names.

[NogbadTheBad]

Damn Chris, you got issues with Mr Cruise?

[GuitarGeek]

Damn Chris, you got issues with Mr Cruise?

No, not really. Not anymore than, say, Jessica Alba's husband, or Edie Brickell's*, or any other guy who married any of the actresses or songstresses I had crushes on years ago.

*But I give him a break because he wrote Bridge Over Troubled Water, and a couple other good songs (I'm being facetious, of course I know he's written considerably more than "a couple good songs").

All seriousness aside, I really don't care one way or another about Tom Cruise. He's been in a few movies I like, he's been in a lot of movies that I've never seen but I suspect I wouldn't like. So he's really different than Sylvester Stallone, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, or most other action movie stars.

(wait a minute, I can't remember if I've ever seen a Stallone movie I did like, unless you count Bananas, and he's only in that for like 90 seconds, and has no dialog)

[Jerjo]

I got issues with Cruise too.

[NogbadTheBad]

The Mission Impossible movies are very well done and bubblegum entertainment, you just leave your brain at the door.

[Klonk]

I thought Tom Cruise was very good in American Made

[Klonk]

[QUOTE=Lou;854008]

The Devil's Candy

Not a bad, very short little horror about a possesed house and metalhead painter

You were right. This was pretty good!

Right?! It was one of those I was on the fence on, but decided to give it a whirl because it was just over an hour and it would give me time to watch something else if it sucked lol. Was pleasantly surprised.

[NogbadTheBad]

I thought Tom Cruise was very good in American Made

Yes he was.

[Lou]

[B]In Darkness[/B

A blind girl hears her upstairs neighbor being murdered, which places her in a high stakes cat and mouse game in London.
Lot of twists and turns in this one. A Netflix chance that paid off.

14 Cameras

A family of 5 take a too good to be true vacation in New Mexico off one of those vacation house swap sites. Unbeknownst to them, the house
is owned by a psycho who has hidden surveillance cameras throughout the house. The dude playing the house owner is about as creepy a guy
as you have ever seen. He freaks you out just looking at him! Not a sequel, but has the same freak as the earlier movie 13 Cameras, with the same premise.

[Rogue Mail]

Never saw Cocktail. That's the movie that awful Kokomo song that Mike Love had the nerve to pass off as a Beach Boys track, in'it?

But I would contend that Tom Cruise's best movie is Rain Man. Well, more so because of Dustin Hoffman than Mr. I-Couldn't-Hang-Onto-Nicole-Kidman. One tears up thinking about the scene where the movie's title is finally explained.

And I'd also bring Legend into the mix, but there again, more so because of Mia Sara, Tim Curry, the Tangerine Dream score, and the Bryan Ferry/David Gilmour song that plays over the closing credits, than Katie Holmes' future ex-husband.

I haven't bothered with any of the Mission: Impossible movies. They may be good movies in their own right, but sorry, Tom Cruise is no Peter Graves. He's no Martin Landau, either! And I never forgave whoever it was* who shoehorned the iconic Lalo Schfrin theme into 4/4 for the initial movie.

* Yes, I know, it was a couple of the guys from U2, the two who don't have cutesy stage names.

I think Cruise gets a bad rap in general, but he does not really help himself by playing safe and sticking to big box office and franchise orientated movies.

But my fave Cruise performance is Magnolia, as Frank T J Mackey. And not only for the shock of seeing him as a foul mouthed, self-styled sex guru, but the scene where he is at Jason Robard's bedside is heartbreaking. But yes Rainman was also a great performance.

[GuitarGeek]

The Italian Job: the original, with Michael Caine, Noel Coward, Benny Hill, and Tony Beckley. Good, enjoyable movie. If you're gonna make a picture about "irredeemable people", this is how you do it. I think this might have been the source for a couple of the gags one saw in subsequent movies and TV shows, e.g. the car going up into the moving truck, which was used on a weekly basis on Knight Rider, and a couple others that, if I told them to you, I'd give away the ending of the movie.

One casting note: when Michael Caine says, "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off", the actor he's speaking to is Michael Standing, who later played Ginge in the first series of the Thames Television sci-fi series The Tomorrow People. I believe his character is also the one who grabs the game hen or whatever it was off the serving tray during the getaway.

And Tony Beckley, among many other credits, played the baddie in one of my favorite Doctor Who serials, Seeds Of Doom.

[GuitarGeek]

I think Cruise gets a bad rap in general, but he does not really help himself by playing safe and sticking to big box office and franchise orientated movies.
.

You're probably correct on both counts. Movies like Rain Man demonstrate he's actually a good actor, but as you say, he has a habit of doing stuff that doesn't really require "acting talent".

[Painter]

You're probably correct on both counts. Movies like Rain Man demonstrate he's actually a good actor, but as you say, he has a habit of doing stuff that doesn't really require "acting talent".

Watch Collateral with Jamie Foxx. He plays a contract killer. Directed by Michael Mann. Some of the best (and most accurate) weapons handling I've seen (add in the first John Wick movie) in a film. The scene where Cruise takes out two guys in an alley is perfection.

Not a Cruise fan either, but this one is a keeper for the weapons-work alone.