I think they should’ve had Ludmila Tchérina in the whole movie, lol. And mostly wearing that cream-coloured skirt suit she wears in her train station departure scene. XD
I’ve seen The Red Shoes, and Black Narcissus has been on my list for a while. Never heard of I Know Where I’m Going! though. I’ll have to check it out!
The reason that cake-eating scene in Magnificent Ambersons hits me so strongly is because it feels like that “beauty of boring daily life” approach to cinema wouldn’t come around for decades. Even once it does come around, most directors still won’t hold a shot for that long. And even if they do, it’ll actually be a “boring daily life” moment. Those moments are rarely – I want to say never – infused with the drama of this Ambersons scene. Directors will get hung up on just depicting daily life, without pushing it the final ten yards to become a narrative revelation. In another director’s hands, a scene like this wouldn’t drive the plot with the gas pedal slammed down. And the composition! The visual beauty of the scene – of the whole movie, really (outside the butchery). It’s executed with such confidence. You don’t get scenes like this today. Orson Welles is still beaming stuff from the future.
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There’s a German silent film from 1930 called “People on Sunday”
It’s partially a documentary and partially a scripted movie with amateur actors. Either way, it’s mostly people doing normal stuff in the 1930s, like picnicking and swimming. There is a bit of a plot around relationships, but it’s mostly driven by the incidental daily life stuff.
What I find most interesting is that parts of the movie take place away from an urban setting — especially around the beach and the water. This means you don’t always see the actors in the clothes, hairstyles, and silent film makeup that makes old movies seem old.
For example, this still image could come from any movie made today.
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Is it one of those city symphony films? A lot of those seemed to appear in the 1920s-1930s. I even watched Man with a Movie Camera - it’s the oldest film I’ve ever seen.
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Hmm, I wasn’t aware of the term.
Googling it, I see a Criterion article and a BFI article suggesting that People On Sunday is part of the genre. In fact, they compare it to Man With a Movie Camera in parts.
However, I haven’t seen any evidence that People On Sunday’s directors were deliberately working with the city symphony genre.
I’m not sure the label “city symphonies” was ever self-applied by early directors at all. It seems like city symphonies would emerge naturally from common restrictions that early directors might have had (silent film + music score as the only thing to structure a film around + filming locations/architecture to reduce the need for actors).
This isn’t a movie, but continuing my Orson Welles kick, I finally listened to his (in)famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. And I was struck by a succinct summary of why he appeals to me: His stuff is so fake that it comes back around to being real.
Other directors, they’ll bypass the “fake” part and aim straight at reality (and often miss the mark, in my opinion). Martin Scorsese comes to mind. Or they’ll embrace the “fake” part so much that they set up camp there. Wes Anderson is a good example. (I’m more sympathetic to this approach.) But with Orson Welles, there’s some magical alchemy where fiction becomes fact while remaining fiction. He’s not the only director or artist to do this, not by a long shot, but he’s so good at it!
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I’ve recommended it earlier in this thread, but I wholeheartedly encourage lovers of old movies to give Shadow Magic (2000) a go.
There are two interesting aspects to the film. The first is that it explores early western movie making technology being introduced to China for the first time in 1902, and the wonderment and skepticism surrounding it. The second is that the movie was shot in China (and funded by the Chinese government) with Ann Hu making her directorial debut.
It’s so carefully crafted to great effect. I love this movie.
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I watched a bunch of older movies recently so you don’t have to.
First off was Highlander (1986) with Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery and Mr. Krabs. They sure liked having Queen’s music throughout… though I must admit, Princes of the Universe does rock. The scenes where it goes back to his past in Scotland are the movie’s saving grace. All the character development and interesting parts lie in his past. Bottom line: it wasn’t as cool as I remembered, but it was still campy fun.
The second was The People Under the Stairs (1991) with great performances by Wendy Robbie and Everett McGill. Those two are absolute psychos, perfect antagonists. It’s a super fun Halloween movie. I’d argue that it’s almost a family movie (13 and up) despite the 18A rating (check IMDb’s parents guide, if you’re curious). The coolest part are the intricate passageways that wind throughout the house. If you’ve ever had vermin in your home and can’t figure out where they’re coming from… imagine that feeling with the victims you’ve been collecting in your house over the years. 
Lastly, I watched No Escape (1994) with Ray Liotta and Ernie Hudson (from Ghostbusters!). This is one of my favourite movies. It’s set in the distant future, the year 2022*, and a corporation is illegally sending prisoners to a lawless island and it’s Lord of the Flies with guns! If you like survival movies, then this one’s for you. Notable performance by Bishop (from Aliens) and Stuart Wilson (who has been in a bunch of movies that you just can’t remember). Actually, it’s Wilson’s portrayal of Marek that elevates the movie. He steals scenes left and right throughout the film.
11/10 for No Escape!
Not to be confused by No Escape (2015) with Owen Wilson. Fuck that movie.
* Note: Coincidentally, 2022 was the year Ray Liotta passed away. RIP, Ray.
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Oh! You mean… Escape From Absolom! If it’s one of your favourite movies, you’ll probably prefer to keep calling it by “No Escape” 
There was a real jag of sci-fi / jailbreak / exploding-collars movies in the early 90s. Wedlock 1991, then our pal friend Christopher Lambert in Fortress (1992), the only Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator) movie I ever saw in a cinema.
I need to rewatch People Under The Stairs. It made no impression on me at the time, but now it’s three decades later.
-Wade
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Never knew it had another name. Very cool! Maybe that’s why I can’t seem to find a copy of it anywhere. 
Fortress is so good! Yeah, Lambert is my second man crush (after Peter Weller). Though he’ll always be Lord Raiden to me.
If you like Lambert, I hope you saw Beowulf (1999). It’s not perfect, but it’s fun and the steam punk aesthetic is really refreshing to see. I liked it a lot!
A while back on Netflix, I watched a Spanish movie that gave me slight Fortress vibes called The Platform (2019). That was a truly excellent movie. Very clever horror, along the lines of Cube (1997) type creepiness. If you haven’t seen it, check out the trailer on IMDb. The Platform 2 just came out, but I haven’t watched it yet.
I have to check out Wedlock now. Thanks for the recommendation!
Extra points for the Re-Animator mention! 
Edit: Wedlock is also known as Deadlock, apparently.
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I’ve been watching Spy Kids with my kid. Awesome!
Except 3. 3 is barf. I blame the CGI.
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I thought it was okay at the time, but I saw it in 3D. I might still have the jazzed-up glasses.
-Wade
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CGI is notorious for aging poorly, but I can imagine that’s only amplified for 2-d versions of CGI intended for 3D glasses.
That said, 3-D was always lost on me since I’ve never had binocular vision, and I suppose if there’s a silver lining to going blind, it’s not being distracted when an old movie’s visuals are immersion shattering… the flip side is I can’t be distracted by awe-inspiring visuals when the story and characters are dull or annoying. and dramatic silence makes me wonder if my playback device has glitched out or the file is corrupt.
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When I was in elementary school, NASA published the photos from the Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity in 3D anaglyph.
It was around 2004 and the pictures were broadcast on live TV and published on the internet. IIRC, either NASA or the broadcasters weren’t sure whether it would work for everyone due to differences in screens and variations in the 3D glasses that people might have laying around.
I don’t think it worked especially well, but I think I made the glasses myself from cellophane, which wasn’t ideal.
Since my school only had offline computers in classrooms (only the computer lab was wired for internet), I brought the pictures on a floppy disk for show and tell.
Apparently, NASA employees started using the same red-and-blue 3D glasses from home during COVID instead of the more advanced ones.
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It just came on streaming and I saw it today. I agree with your take on it-- it was one of the better recent Alien movies, but characterization was terribly weak. Also, what happened to constructing a tight thriller? Why do they have to throw in all this ridiculous stuff? There’s a hopeless muddle of science-y BS that no one is very worried about in the movie despite being pretty worrisome (human upgrade with alien DNA!), that doesn’t make any sense, and while it does serve an important plot point, is just a mess.
I did appreciate the explicit connection between the aliens and normal human pregnancy and birth, since the aliens always seemed to me to be playing off that. And I thought there were some genuinely new moments. I also appreciated the general set-up. But it had very weak writing, combined with weak acting by uninteresting characters. I enjoyed it immensely and was sorry they hadn’t made the effort to really play to its strengths.
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That scene in Prometheus where Noomi Rapace basically gives herself a C-section to remove and kill the xenomorph from her was impressive.
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I’d forgotten about that! Honestly, I found that movie altogether pretty forgettable. Also, I was high when I saw it.
One of the big problems with franchises like this is that their heroes are so iconic. What is any alien movie without Ripley? Who else could ever play Ripley? She’s the ultimate badass final girl, for me I think because she started out tough, smart, and competent and just got badasser.
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Damn right, Ripley’s awesome.
As far as I’m concerned, she escaped with Newt and Hicks at the end of Aliens and ended up retiring to some place. XD
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You reminded me of one of my favourite Bill Paxton scenes…
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Well, I saw Megalopolis a few weeks back. It’s certainly not boring. It just doesn’t seem to cohere to anything. It doesn’t even seem to be about what Francis Ford Coppola has said in interviews it might be about (ruinous capitalism wasting all our time and lives by selling us garbage – an idea close to my heart). Anything it seems potentially interested in making a point about, it makes an incredibly wafty and flawed point, or just doesn’t. It’s a blancmange of ideas that aren’t juicing each other up.
A few instances – incredibly late in the film, when someone cries ‘abolish debt’, this is one of the few direct references to capitalist theory/practices the film makes, even though you feel most of the film wanted to be concerned with this kind of thing.
There’s a time travel mechanism (no spoiler – it’s the first thing in the first scene) that adds nothing and doesn’t even make sense on its own terms.
I can say this; the crowd scenes feel like Coppola. Tons of characters doing and expressing different things, and interacting, all at once. He has reins on this chaos that I always think of as his thing.
What I think of, with stuff like the really lax time travel schtick, is that it seems to be one of those things that wants tight rules, like everyone knows from genre films these days. But Coppola predates all that and I expect he has little interest in it.
Aubrey Plaza plays a character called Wow Platinum, which is a great name.
I’m going to call it early and say that, unlike other Coppola films that have grown in reputation with time, this can’t grow. There’s just not enough solidity in it to begin with, no matter what your taste is.
-Wade
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