The Last Steps - 7/10 For a romance, I found the scenes outside of the relationship just as good, and part of the reason is that after the first bit, there is too much small-talk, redundancy, traveling, but again, it's the face, and she had it
This is another droll, deadpan, elegant and deceptively simple comedy from Aki Kaurismaki that explores if love can bloom in Helsinki's working-class fringes. He sure gives leads Nikander (Pellonoaa), a garbageman, and Ilona (Outinen), a cashier, reason to believe otherwise, what with the former's despondence over his plans to join a new business venture vanishing into thin air. As for Ilona, her tolerance for men is justifiably wearing thin after yet another clueless male boss fires her for reasons unrelated to performance. Money, i.e. the actual stuff or the pursuit of it, indeed makes their lives more complicated and in unexpected and funny ways. Their first date at a bingo hall goes badly, and then there's Ilona's revenge theft from her employer, which as you can imagine gets out of hand. Whether due to inexperience or not wanting another good thing to go bad, hesitancy pervades their courtship, which has its cringe moments, but there are funny ones as well. Have you ever stayed in separate rooms while vacationing with a partner, for instance? In turn, this means the moments where they show affection for each other are all the more adorable, and in Kaurismaki fashion, rarely conventional. If you also enjoy hanging out in the dive bars and tiny apartments that make up Kaurismaki's Helsinki, you will get your fill here, especially for how colorful they are. His predilection for blues and old-time rock & roll all but enhances the working-class vibes.
Life is not easy when your job has long shifts and low pay, especially when you're in a place where attempting to improve your situation just makes life harder. This movie charms in its optimism that the possibility of something beautiful happening in this situation is possible anyway. Alternatively, and hopefully without spoiling anything, you can just run off to a place with a more level playing field! This is an '80s movie, but its appeal is timeless and not just because the Helsinki of 2023's Fallen Leaves does not seem that different. On that note, despite being a very Finnish movie, I think anyone - well, especially Midwesterners, but I digress - would enjoy it or at least relate to it.
One of my favorite movies. Pellonpaa was such a great actor.
This is another droll, deadpan, elegant and deceptively simple comedy from Aki Kaurismaki that explores if love can bloom in Helsinki's working-class fringes. He sure gives leads Nikander (Pellonoaa), a garbageman, and Ilona (Outinen), a cashier, reason to believe otherwise, what with the former's despondence over his plans to join a new business venture vanishing into thin air. As for Ilona, her tolerance for men is justifiably wearing thin after yet another clueless male boss fires her for reasons unrelated to performance. Money, i.e. the actual stuff or the pursuit of it, indeed makes their lives more complicated and in unexpected and funny ways. Their first date at a bingo hall goes badly, and then there's Ilona's revenge theft from her employer, which as you can imagine gets out of hand. Whether due to inexperience or not wanting another good thing to go bad, hesitancy pervades their courtship, which has its cringe moments, but there are funny ones as well. Have you ever stayed in separate rooms while vacationing with a partner, for instance? In turn, this means the moments where they show affection for each other are all the more adorable, and in Kaurismaki fashion, rarely conventional. If you also enjoy hanging out in the dive bars and tiny apartments that make up Kaurismaki's Helsinki, you will get your fill here, especially for how colorful they are. His predilection for blues and old-time rock & roll all but enhances the working-class vibes.
Life is not easy when your job has long shifts and low pay, especially when you're in a place where attempting to improve your situation just makes life harder. This movie charms in its optimism that the possibility of something beautiful happening in this situation is possible anyway. Alternatively, and hopefully without spoiling anything, you can just run off to a place with a more level playing field! This is an '80s movie, but its appeal is timeless and not just because the Helsinki of 2023's Fallen Leaves does not seem that different. On that note, despite being a very Finnish movie, I think anyone - well, especially Midwesterners, but I digress - would enjoy it or at least relate to it.
Great post. I had a Kaurismaki kick recently and this was one of my favourites that I watched, although I liked them all.
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1st Rewatch...Another teen comedy that doesn't really live up to its reputation. Freddie Prinze Jr plays the big man on campus who has just been dumped by his girlfriend and takes a bet that he can get the campus plain jane, Laney Boggs (Rachel Leigh Cook) to go to prom with him. Nothing here we haven't seen before. The best thing about the movie is a very funny performance by Matthew Lilliard as reality TV star who starts dating Freddie's ex. The plot of this film is the primary plot for the teen movie spoof Not Another Teen Movie and was filmed at the same high school where that film was made.
3rd Rewatch...Just like Fatal Attraction scared married men out of cheating on their wives, this movie scared the hell out of motorists picking up hitchhikers. There's a dangling plot point here and there, but this is a first rate action thriller with a bone-chilling performance by the late Rutger Hauer. The film was remade in 2007. I've never seen it, but I seriously doubt it even touches this.
5th rewatch...Director and co-screenwriter Harold Ramis and star Bill Murray knock it out of the park with this near brilliant comic fantasy where Murray plays Phil Conners, an arrogant weatherman who travels to Puxatawny, PA for the annual Ground Hog ceremony where he finds himself caught in a time warp where he keeps waking up and it's still February 2nd. Don't try, to figure it out, just relax and revel in the near brilliant screenplay that keeps recreating Groundhog Day and the slick and sexy performance by Bill Murray that ranks among his very best.
1st Rewatch...This brassy film version of the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical is definitely an underrated gem in the history of movie musicals. This is the story of a girl named Mei Li (Oscar winner Miyoshi Umeki) who arrives in San Francisco with her father to be the mail order bride for Sammy Fong (Jack Soo), a nightclub owner and gambler, sort of an Asian take on Nathan Detroit. Unfortunately, Mei Li has arrived late and Sammy has fallen hard for Linda Low (Nancy Kwan), so he tries to pawn Mei Lin off on a pampered rich college student named Tha (James Shigeta).. The story is a little more complicated than it needs to be but this one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's most melodic scores and it is presented with care, including two dream ballets, choreographed by Hermes Pan, who choreographed a lot of Fred Astaire's work. Jack Soo steals every scene he's in, some of you might remember him as Detective Nick Yemana on Barney Miler.
I watched 71 Into the Fire for the third time this afternoon. It holds up perfectly. The film is based on student soldiers fighting for the South in 1950 in the Korean War in Ponhang I think (I'm not good at remembering Korean names). It embellishes the history a little bit while keeping the essence of the student soldiers' harrowing deeds intact. I love the battle sequences and the young men's performances and the other men's performances as well in addition to the one female with lines. The look is also excellent. It's such an amazing film.
I downloaded a copy on Apple TV. I don't know if it's on the streaming service vis I bought a digital copy. This is for those who are keen to watch it, so I am telling you how I watched it. I don't know of any other way because I haven't looked for one. Are there other ways? I would expect so. I just don't know what they are.
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The Last Steps - 7/10
For a romance, I found the scenes outside of the relationship just as good, and part of the reason is that after the first bit, there is too much small-talk, redundancy, traveling, but again, it's the face, and she had it
Saaay, a Michčle Morgan film I haven't seen! I like Michčle, and have a Michčle list at 'boxd, so I know what I'm watching tonight.
Oh, and that Jean-Louis Trintignant guy is pretty neat, too.
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Coherence - This scifi puzzler/thriller was made on a reported budget of 50,000 dollars and, to be honest, it shows. Not in a bad way though. There's no big FX or set pieces that would normally indicate a low budget. It's mostly hand held video shots and filmed in one location, the interior and exterior of a single house. The small cast features only eight people and they're confined to one room of the house for the most part. And yet despite these parameters the story moves along at a good clip. Four couples gather for a dinner party on the same night that a comet is passing overhead. There's an introductory scene that sets up all the players and their histories with one another. A lot of unspoken resentments and whatnot. All the better to hint at the drama that's about to transpire.
Without giving too much away the comet is passing so close to the earth that it triggers some sort of dimensional anomaly. The notion might have been used before but it's the way that the events are laid out that is so absorbing. The four couples are young(ish) professionals so they approach the cryptic incidents in a logical manner. There is none of the irrational or panicky idiocy usually shown by characters in these situations. And when there is that sort of behavior exhibited it is unerringly clarified. So much so that you'll spend a lot of time saying, "Ohhhh, so that's why that happened." It doesn't hold your hand so this isn't one of those films where multitasking is recommended. But your undivided attention will be rewarded by this smart and provocative brain-teaser.
80/100
My first "Road to" movie, and it was a blast. At first I was a little concerned - but by the time I'd finished the movie however, I'd come to realise that the "Road to" movies have a Tom Green-level lack of serious dedication to anything remotely real. They're sheer anarchy, and basically get away with everything by entertaining and not taking anything seriously. Some of the jokes are "inside" ones that hardly anyone would get in 1952 - let alone today - but somehow that all just adds to the feeling that this is all good-natured fun (the funny stuff comes at such a rate it's hard to keep up) - with Bob Hope in good form. The three stars are having a great time. Something akin to the Beatles and Help!
7/10
This is really cool to see. I'm a huge Bob Hope fan. I love his quick witticisms, word play, breaking the fourth wall, and constant self-deprecating humor. I went on a Bob Hope binge maybe a couple of years ago now and I think you described his films perfectly as anarchy that's rapid pace. His stuff also borderlines of the surreal to with those wild situations. His films are just madness and even though he uses some of Groucho Marx's style in the wordplay, combined with a bit of the physical insanity of a Buster Keaton film, and even some of the vaudeville type singing and stage stuff from yesteryear, Bob Hope is really his own beast and he's difficult to really pin down, but I do love the descriptor anarchy, because that really nails it.
Also, from what I've read he was a very generous and giving person, while being extremely smart and frugal with his money. And of course the USO Military shows he put on for the troops for years and years from World War II I believe all the way up to the Gulf War.
He would be on my top 10 list of comedians if I ever were to sit down and make one along with Lenny Bruce, Norm Macdonald, Groucho Marx, Dave Chappelle, and others. He's one of the best.
I haven't watched the PBS American Masters program on him, but I should at some point:
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instead of putting a goat's brain in the bad guy's body, they could have saved the doctors' life by putting his brain in the bad guys' body. That would have been very much interesting plot twist and logical conclusion to the concept of the movie.
instead of putting a goat's brain in the bad guy's body, they could have saved the doctors' life by putting his brain in the bad guys' body. That would have been very much interesting plot twist and logical conclusion to the concept of the movie.
Alcoholism, bullying, child abuse, religious fanaticism, homophobia, abusive sexual fetishism, hoarding, murder, suicide... I know Adam Elliot likes to tell darkly humorous tales but I wasn't quite prepared for this one even after having noticed its R rating. It does have plenty of charm and features Elliot's signature crudely beautiful stop motion animation, but its themes go far beyond what is touched on in Harvie Krumpet or Mary and Max. I do have to say it didn't quite have the emotional impact for me that Mary and Max did and that's why I'm rating this significantly lower than the other film, but I do think this has a lot of potential to grow on me and it's definitely my favorite movie of 2024 thus far.
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