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Old films that are tremendous

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    When I was a kid I used to like Shirley Temple movies. My mum tried to tease me with..

    'Oooh, she's your girlfriend..etc..etc!'

    'Fuck off Ma, she must be 50 by now!' I'd reply.

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      Feels a bit weird to discuss old films as if they were a genre, like those people who say they don't like black and white films, but hey-ho.

      Etienne – going back a bit, my experience with Renoir was precisely as yours was. I like his La Bęte Humaine a lot also.

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        Originally posted by adams house cat View Post
        Also a mention for "Duel". Still my favorite Spielberg film.
        Same here - hands down.

        My dad worked offshore in the North Sea and came home for his week onshore telling us about this movie he saw on the drilling rig "called DUEL starring 'Chester' from Gunsmoke where he's being chased by a trucker..." My dad was never that animated, but he was very worked up describing this film. That was good enough for me.

        When we moved back to the states I finally saw it, complete w/ commercial breaks and loved it - had no idea that Spielberg directed it or that it was a TV movie. I later got the DVD that had an interview w/ SS explaining all that went into the film and the two weeks or so that he had to shoot and that made me appreciate it all the more.

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          Made me want to buy a Plymouth Valiant. I got over it.

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            My mother had that Valiant. Two door, though.

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              We had an early 70s Valiant Scamp during the 80s that my parents somehow acquired from a Belgian couple who themselves had bought it from a military family who'd imported it to an airbase somewhere in Germany. It was pretty much the biggest car in Oxford - embarrassingly so - and we almost never drove anywhere so it sat in the car park in the University's science area for months on end, growing moss on the vinyl roof.

              edit: now I'm not sure if it was 4 door, nor the year, so I've deleted those parts of the post. Looking online, I can't be sure what I actually recall and what I'm inventing in my head. It was definitely shit-brown. That much I do remember.
              Last edited by San Bernardhinault; 31-07-2018, 20:51.

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                I had a two-door '66. Learned to drive over here in it. Lovely car.

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                  Mom's was our family's first 'second car', and had power nothing. I can still picture her pursing her lips as she hauled mightily on the manual steering to turn into our driveway.

                  It also had the vinyl roof (black), under which percolated rust after a few years. Years later, my dad sold it to my cousin for a pittance as his first car.

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                    Did it have A/C? On most Chryslers from that era the vinyl roof was an external giveaway so you could impress the neighbours.

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                      "Where The Sidewalk Ends" showed up on TCM a little while ago. Brilliant. The b&w photography is wonderful.

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                        Yeah, TCM is the last channel I could live without. A week or two back they screened The Phenix City Story (1955). It's an odd duck of a film, not especially good but very interesting, an odd combination of news documentary and early docu-drama. Phenix City Alabama, was widely known for about 100 years as "Sin City USA." With only 20,000 residents, it featured gambling, boozing and brothels. Everyone who worked for the city was on the gangsters' payroll as were many at the state level. After various citizens groups failed to clean the place up — violence and intimidation took care of reform movements — a respected local lawyer ran for state Attorney General, and amazingly, won. He was shot down in the street before he could take office however (he'd predicted it would happen a couple nights before.)

                        The film consists of about fifteen minutes of interviews with residents, followed by a feature length dramatization filmed on the streets of Phenix City about a year after the events portrayed, using actual locations. The result is a B-movie melodrama in situ. Strange but compelling.

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                          Yes Amor. Seen it. My mother-in-law actually lived there for a while in the early 50s. She said the place was crazy. It was (still is) on the Georgia state line and, back then, people would cross from Georgia for booze, prostitution and gambling. Good film.

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                            Wow, did she grow up there? It must have been wild. I guess Fort Benning on the Georgia side made the place "work" economically.

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                              There are a number of places in the US that operated under a similar "business model".

                              Newport, Kentucky (across the Ohio from Cincinnati) was another one.

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                                She didn't grow up there. She moved there with her husband and moved away again in sometime around 1957, 1958. She grew up in rural Kansas.

                                Another couple ursus. Covington KY, Stateline NV and Bunker Hill WV. To a lesser extent Chatlestown and Harpers Ferry WV.

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                                  So, back to the OP on this. This year I've seen three "cult classics" for the first time, the youngest of which was 20 years old.

                                  First up, Escape From New York. I know this is Snake's favourite film and probably loved by other people on her as well. I thought it was an odd movie. Interesting premise, interesting shots and so on. But there were a few bits that seemed highly unlikely. Why would you still have cabs? Where did they get food from? The special effects haven't aged very well. But overall, it was a decent watch.

                                  Then I watched The Big Lebowski. Again, I can see why people really like it. Unlike Escape From New York, it felt more like this was deliberately aiming for quirky. Sometimes it hit the mark, sometimes it didn't. I enjoyed it quite a bit and there were a few bits that really made me laugh.

                                  Last night I watched The Princess Bride. I'm not sure if this has the same OTF love but it gets quoted in other online places I frequent. Bit of a slow start, but it picked up about a third of the way through. I thought the Princess was a bit drippy tbh - if this film was made today she would be a bit more of an action heroine. Some quotable lines and also slightly incongruous to see Mel Smith and Peter Cook pop up in cameo roles.

                                  Anyway, I feel like I am ticking off important films that I ought to have seen already, and enjoying them in the process.

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                                    Reversing the OP, I recently watched Being There, breaking my no late Peter Sellars rule, on the grounds that it was suggested by Cinema Paradiso and had extremely high critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Big mistake. It's terrible. No laughs, extremely laboured message, and on top of that rather problematic.
                                    Last edited by Ginger Yellow; 06-06-2019, 12:27.

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                                      Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                      But there were a few bits that seemed highly unlikely.
                                      Not sure that's the right metric to judge the film on, TBH.

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                                        Going to try to watch "The Longest Day" sometime over the next few days (I think it's on Film4 several times).

                                        Seen it before, such an incredible cast but, true to its name, it's quite an investment in time as it's about 3.5 hours long.
                                        Last edited by tracteurgarcon; 06-06-2019, 12:23.

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                                          I watched The Longest Day several times as a kid. It's a fantastic movie.

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                                            Originally posted by Ginger Yellow View Post
                                            Not sure that's the right metric to judge the film on, TBH.
                                            Fair point.

                                            Perhaps to put it another way, I found myself questioning the world the film was set in while watching it.

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                                              Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                              First up, Escape From New York. I know this is Snake's favourite film and probably loved by other people on her as well. I thought it was an odd movie. Interesting premise, interesting shots and so on. But there were a few bits that seemed highly unlikely. Why would you still have cabs? Where did they get food from? The special effects haven't aged very well. But overall, it was a decent watch.
                                              1. There isn't actual cab service, Cabbie was an NYC cab driver who stayed behind when it was turned into a prison. He was linked to his cab at all times and simply didn't want to leave it (symbolically when the cab is blown up, Cabbie is killed).

                                              2. Food parcels are dropped in once a month. There is a line of background dialog when the soldiers helicopter into the prison. (*Googles*) "We have a visual sighting on it. It's a crowd of prisoners in Central Park. They're waving at us. Signaling us in the food drop area." See also https://theofficialjohncarpenter.com...from-new-york/

                                              In this maximum security prison-city, escape has been made impossible – every bridge is mined and walled, the surrounding waters are filled with deadly electricity and the Statue of Liberty has become just another guard tower from which officers in infra-red goggles blast, on sight, any prisoners desperate enough to try to get out. Radar scanners revolve and helicopters circle the island of Manhattan endlessly. Other than the monthly food drops made by air into Central Park these outcasts are left completely on their own to prey on each other.
                                              3. The film was incredibly low budget. The "wireframe computer graphics" of the city was actually a model painted black and white tape, then bathed in a green light (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/423338433710900301/)

                                              A lot of the SFX was done by James Cameron, who took what he learned and used it when making The Terminator.
                                              Last edited by Snake Plissken; 06-06-2019, 12:55.

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                                                I still can't get my head round the breadth of the topic in the thread title. About 75% of all the films I watch are "old" to most people. Where the hell to start?

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                                                  Apply your own version of old. For me it's mid-60s back, and even that's being a bit generous I feel.

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                                                    'Reach for the Sky ' is on for another half hour on BBC2.

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