I definitely think Son of Frankenstein (the third movie in the frankenstein series) is a great movie and very underrated. It is the last time Boris plays the Frankenstein Monster and Lionel Atwill is amazing & amusing as the artificial armed town constable. Basil Rathbone takes over as the Son Dr. Frankenstein. The actor who played Dr. frankenstein previously, Colin Clive, died of tuberculosis the year this came out. (There is a cool camera shot of a distraught Basil Rathbone standing by an eerie painting of Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein)The Monster actually speaks audible lines in this movie which Boris was vehememntly against. There is also a cameo by Dwight Frye who played Fritz the dwarf in Frankenstein and the creepy Renfield in Lugosi's Dracula (1931) He also had parts in Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible man, Gost of frankenstein, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. Unfortunatley he died in 1943 of a heart attack.

House of Frankenstein (1944) welcomes back Boris to the series as a vengeful mad doctor who swears revenge on the men who had imprisoned. Of course he does this with a collection of monsters. J. Carrol Naish is very good as the hunchback who falls in love with a gypsy girl. Of course the gypsy girl is in love with accursed Larry Talbot (aka the Wolfman) very entertaining watch, the only thing I didn't like was John Carradine's Dracula who doesn't last long.

Lionel Atwil was great, and I didn't expect the darts scene with him & Frankenstein, Jr., to parallel the Young Frankenstein scene so closely.

Agreed! I forgot about that scene! I really like the Universal Legacy Collections. They did a really good job on them. I recommend the Wolfman and Dracula Collections also.

Solid, reasonably affecting if fairly-linear-and-obvious. All parties do an exceptional job, acting-wise, but it's a measure of the lack of women's roles available industry-wide that Theron and McDormand got most of the attention for this, because the Oscar-worthy performance belongs to Richard Jenkins. Absolute tour de force from the man best known and being the dead Fisher patriarch on Six Feet Under. Not big on entertainment value, but worthwhile nonetheless.

i may just be a Romanticism nerd (and Mary Shelley avocate), but i want to see a remake of Frankenstein that actually is true to the original 1818 text. the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his doppelganger is so intriguing, and if told properly it could be incredible. or have i missed out on a retelling that is (even somewhat) accurate?

I'm about to watch this:




I have high hopes.

I am guessing that the closest you can get to Mary Shelley's vision is Kenneth Branaugh's sometimes laughable "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."

Check out the review of of that film in Leonard Maltin's Guide. His complaints 'What's with that framing device on the ship?' reveal that he hasn't read the novel.

Best film of 2005.

When did it become acceptable to be blatantly obvious with CGI?

I don't know why I bothered to sit there watching this.. but I did..just to say I did... sad isn't it.

i think the general opinion of that movie would reveal it's NOT acceptable to be blatantly obvious with CGI

"Three little letters strike fear into the hearts of genre movies fan over the age of 30: CGI."
-John Kenneth Muir

If my German is still up to scratch that says "Supernatural! Catwoman rescues the action film"

Frankenstein Unbound. Roger Corman came back after 20 years to directing and made this, which is good and funny at the same time.

it feels like an afternoon for "The Empire Strikes Back"...

Jean-Luc Godard's "Une Femme Est Une Femme".

A wacky experiment. You may know of the classic French film, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", in which the entire film is a musical production number? Well, "Une Femme Est Une Femme" is a musical film that has NO production numbers...unconventional film, music and sound editing twist this film into a bizarre, post-modern spoof of Hollywood cliches. I haven't finished watching yet, but what I have seen so far gives me the giggles.

Broken Flowers

Almost everyone in the movie seemed uncomfortable all the time. Loved the way it ended.


Walk The Line

I already knew most of the story, but this filled in a few blank spots. Jauquin did a pretty good job singing, but he just made me want to listen to the real Johnny Cash

well if thats not a reason for me to get off my ass and put it in the dvd player then i don't know what is. i've had the damn thing for close to two weeks now and haven't checked it out.

Lolita says, "Get off your ass".

Dein Kinomagazin sagt Flossen ein anderes Bild

So after watching the re-ru of the new Sopranos again last night I saw
'The Curse of Debbie Does Dallas' which was this made for TV doc. It very much was kinda screwy and not particularly well made but the oddest part of all was the interview with this one retired FBI guy. The director pretty much took a page from Errol Morris or something cause for that whole segment it was really much better than the rest of the flick. More to the point, the guy is kinda freaky in a sense. I mean he spent a better part of his career chasing pornographers and he's got these photo albums full of porn! Then he's talking about which stuff he can stand versus what is really gross. He aeven described being in court where a juror barfs on his neck cause of the stuff he's showing them. I just found it odd to see this old retired guy hanging onto all his 'work' so to speak. Beyond that there's not much else to be gained in looking at this. Many out of focus blown up shots of porn which is supposed to be arty but comes off as just pointless.

I just saw Inside Man this past weekend, and I was quite impressed. Spike Lee has created a smart and engaging heist flick that should please fans of Dog Day Afternoon, or other genre favorites. Smart dialogue is aided by strong performances by Clive Owen and Denzel Washington. Most importantly, the racial undertones are thought-provoking while never succombing to banal oversimplification of the issue seen in most other films (see: Crash). Highly recommended.

I was pretty disappointed in this movie when I recently watched the DVD. The acting was good, but the script was just such a cliche of just about every bio film.

This is why I've stayed away from the film as well. It takes a lot for me to be impressed with any bio pic, and I always watch them with a cynical eye (can't help but feel the artist is being exploited).

Hasn't dated very well. The pacing now seems lethargic, and the dramatic plot points are too clichéd. Still, it's interesting to see a Depression-era "comedy" (at least half of the picture is melodrama with no attempt at comedy) that references the Depression within the context of high society. Well-acted, Cukor does a fine job...oddly barren soundtrack typical of early sound films. The final seconds are classic, very amusing.

Much better. The melodrama gets a little heavy-handed towards the end, but excellent stuff.

Maybe the best movie I didn't see in '05.

Good film - strong acting, well directed, and a powerful story. Although, I'm not sure it was deserving of the Academy Award for best foreign film - I can think of several that I enjoyed more. Definitely worth seeing though.

One of the nominated shorts from the Oscars. Cool 20 minute short - very sexy.
You can get it from iTunes for $2.

Man, they know how to advertise...

I'd buy that pic as a poster for $10.


Avanti!
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Late period Billy Wilder/Jack Lemmon, taking advantage of the MPAA rating system of 1972 by treating audiences to the sight of a bare-assed Lemmon and Juliet Mills, among other things. But it's a clever and complicated story where nervy executive Wendell Armbruster Jr. (does Lemmon NEVER play a nervy executive?) takes an emergency trip to Italy to recover the remains of his father after a car crash. He learns things about his father that he never knew and falls in love in the process (too much plotline to give away here). Usually a Wilder movie balances light comedy 50/50 with dark satire. This one comes out more like 60/40 (partially due to the story, taken from a stageplay), but it still works. Nice on-location shooting of an Italy that probably doesn't exist anymore thanks to the tourism that this movie advocates. Check it out.

Sounds good. I accept PayPal.

I love movies!

You can vote for some of them in the 1950-69 Movie poll!

Since the four 50-69 movies I posted are probably a third of the films I have seen from that particular time period and I enjoy them all immensely, then, why, yes, I certainly have no problem voting for them.

WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN, YOUNG MAN?! YOU'VE HAD US ALL WORRIED SICK!

Now you're talking MY language. Head will always be in my top 10 favorite films. Terrible ad campaign aside, it's absolutely brilliant work.

i liked this a lot, downloaded all the shorts right after the oscars, liked this one best.


cinema class, an hour into it... its fucked up.

What did you think of Six Shooter? I was thinking of downloading that as well.

Fishing with John Lurie



the episode in Jamaica with Tom Waits is hilarious.

Watched Good Night, and Good Luck and Howl's Moving Castle over the weekend. Both quite good... both were nominated for Oscars but didn't win.

Netflix brought me Brokeback Mountain today. I'll probably watch that tomorrow.

Fishing with John Lurie, cont'd...
the episode with Willem Dafoe: ice fishing in Maine. even better that the Tom Waits segment.
Lurie gets a little freaked out when Dafoe suggests they zip their sleeping bags together for warmth ("I always get kinda sweet around bedtime").

this should be a real series on basic cable.

"Fishing with John" was a real series on basic cable, I think it was on A&E or Bravo.

IFC- Still haven't watched it... one of these days..

Six Shooter sort of bothered me... I definately prefer Cashback to it.

Chicken Little...the wife bought it, and I wished she hadn't, based on what I had heard about it.

Sure enough, I was right. Disney came back to PIXAR's negotiating table with their tail between their legs after releasing this one. Cheesy references to 70s pop hits; mawkish and cliched plotlines (Son & Father can't "communicate" plotline? check. Happy ending capped by a Hollywood recreation while the characters see the movie? check. Uplifting montage of underdog hero warming up for the big game? check); needlessly cruel schoolchildren behavior that can easily be imitated; nasty obesity stereotype; woefully little use of Don Knotts; and lapses of logic (how can the anthropomorphic animals of this fantasy city watch real-life films like "Raiders"?). Meh, meh and meh.

The deleted scenes were better than the movie itself.

My wife and I are Disney nerds, and we even knew better than to fall for this one.

My five and three year old nephews even gave this the thumbs down.

Wow. That's great.

The poster or the movie, Ben?