wot, any film, or just the popular mainstream ones? and are you setting a time limit, like within the last month, last 3 months, this year?

Any film you like, just make sure your post does not contain inapropriat content.

well now, I've already posted here about the best film I've seen this year, Der Untergang (Downfall) so I won't discuss that again. All the mainstream films I've seen this year have been uniformly crud, including Pirates of the Caribbean which we also discussed a few weeks ago. And the offerings at the local film theatre have been slim indeed, mostly rubbish about Peruvian goats' cheesemakers or the Nepalese String Makers' Union. All very worthy but dull as dish water.

However, some super fellow at our local multiplex decided earlier to book a whole clutch of superb films for the Wednesday OAPs matinee, including one of my all-time favourites, Wings of Desire (Himmel uber Berlin if you know German) so I went with my mother-in-law to see it. Apart from a grainy VHS copy, i haven't seen it for years, so it was a real joy to see Wim Wenders' masterpiece once again.

This is such a beautiful film, the opening scene alone moves me to tears with the Angel looking wistfully down on West Berlin, longing to be part of people's lives. he moves from life to life, from scenes of mundanity to intimacy to tragedy seamlessly, drifting from house to house, place to place, unseen by everyone except small children, and of course, Peter Falk, in what I consider to be the best role of his career as the former angel turned actor. ok, he doesn't see the angels, he senses their presence, he know they're there, watching over humanity. As for Cassiel falling in love with Marion, well who wouldn't? She's incredibly beautiful.

I never really like the whole business with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and that part hasn't worn well with time, it looks very dated, and in retrospect the ending looks obvious and a little contrived, but the visual beauty and the spectacular composition and editing still make this film a joy to watch, and anyone with an ounce of warmth in their heart would come out believing in angels. Bruno Ganz still stands out as one of the finest actors Germany has ever produced, his performance is utterly believable and compelling, filled with warmth and innocence, and you feel for him in every frame as he tries to make sense of his new mortality and find Marion, the woman he has given up his immortal angelic existence for (he also plays Hitler in Der Untergang and he's totally believable in that role too, he's one of a small group of actors who just become their characters in a chamelon-like way, I suppose the only others I can think of who can do the same are Robert de Niro, Gerard Depardieu, and the late Sir Alec Guinness)

in the same short season I was also fortunate enough to see on the big screen Bridge Over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, El Cid, Spartacus, and Ryan's Daughter, none of which, apart from Spartacus, I'd ever seen at the cinema before, only on telly or recordings.

The Wicker Man (original v remake)

bamboozled by my daughter into going to see this latest Hollywood offering of unoriginality, i didn't expect very much, and I wasn't wrong. Truly, the trailer is the best thing about it. Cage does a competent job although he's very much reprising his roles in (better) films like 8mm, but the film relies on a b*st*rdised style of Japanese supernatural horror (which is fine in its' indigineous genre) and it just doesn't work. Can't fault the production values, well shot certainly, good use of colour, but far too much emphasis placed on the shock-horrror let's make the audience jump out of their seats. Even if I hadn't seen the original many times, I'd still have found this dull fare and utterly predictable. Sadly it's an unsophisticated tale of straighforward good v. evil, lacking any real depth and replacing substance with style and not doing it well enough to make a satisfying experience.

The 1973 original is a truly suspenseful drama which, apart from the fashions of the time, hasn't dated. Woodward and Lee are perfectly cast, with all sorts of delightful little performances from supporting characters. The film contrasts the self-denying puritanism of the policeman with the hedonistic indulgence of the pagan islanders, who, despite their conspiracy, don't come out of it as being necessarily "evil," certainly not by the values they espouse in the film, whilst the policeman, despite representing not just law and order, but civilised "Christian" values, comes across as a prig and equally self-indulgent in his denial of his "baser" nature. As Lord Summerisle declares to him, at the final denoument of the mystery, the islanders have given him a rare gift these days, a martyrdom, and he will sit with the elect at the right-hand of the Lord. The film is full of wonderful symbolism and is perhaps the only musical, if you can call it that, where it seems quite natural for the characters to burst into song spontaneously.

I watched it again when we got back and the only thing I found to dislike in it was Britt Ekland's performance - not that it wasn't necessary for the character she played, but I don't think she really carried it off well. I'd also quite forgotten that Ingrid Pitt and a host of other Hammer stars were in it, ias well as Christopher Lee, all of them putting in quality performances far above their usual Hammer fare.

And I'm quite convinced that the landlord of the Green Man Inn was the inspiration for the mad Scottish hotelier in Little Britain...

the spate of remakes over the last few years has truly been dreadful, I haven't seen a good one yet. Anyone think of one that's been ok?

the dawn of the dead - it's a genre specific phenomenon though and with few exceptions outside of horror movies every remake has been terrible - charlie and the chocolate factory, planet of the apes, 12 angry men, ocean's eleven, godzilla, how the grinch stole christmas, rollerball, poseidon, and on and on- hollywood has demonstrated that they are creatively bankrupt

the hills have eyes is also another great remake - i doubt if the behavior of the characters seemed so cliche when the original was made (back then, horror movie victims were written as the dumbest, most oblivious and defenseless lemmings imaginable - real Jay Leno sidewalk all-stars) but even with the somewhat campy atmosphere it delivers the fright in a well timed and unpredictable fashion, and the end manages to surprise you despite the formulated campy feeling

Edited by - Cold_Void on 9/6/2006 8:11:29 PM

I haven't seen either of those films so I can't really comment, and I have to confess to my shame that I haven't seen the originals either, apart from about 20 minutes of Dawn of the Dead (yeh yeh, i know, I really should and I've no excuse)

Over time I've warmed to the POTA remake, although I still think that the originals stand far above it. The "confusing" ending of the remake, although it makes no sense and was never meant to, is however closer to Pierre Boulle's finale in the original novel, Monkey Planet (where the astronaut returns to Earth and lands at Orly Airport, Paris, to be greeted by a gorilla driving a truck)

I didn't even know that 12 Angry Men had been remade? Now there's a classic that should never have been interfered with - I'm truly appalled.