Movies and TV Shows That are Great

[mattingly]

I liked parts of It Came From The Desert, which was a "sequel" to both Them! and Tarantula.

 

I could have done without the drugs & alcohol, but I loved the exposition being presented as a B&W PSA, and the strategy/action was fairly well thought-out.

 

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

16 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Them! (1954) was the first of the "giant mutant insect" sci-fi movies, and arguably still the best. With an intelligent script, talented principle cast, eerie and dramatic score and skillful direction, it's a quality movie irrespective of genre. The film unfolds as a tense mystery thriller, building to an intense action climax. The eponymous giant ants were practical, full-scale mobile puppets; while obviously not as fluid and energetic as modern effects, or even as stop-motion animation, this approach gives them a grotesque detailed tangibility that's imposing and frightening. And their iconic sounds make your neck hairs stand up.

 

This was Warner Brothers Studio's top-grossing film of 1954.

 

https://archive.org/details/THEM1952

 

 

 

 

This film is beautifully made and really does a good job of building tension. Yes...it's not quite as effective for modern audiences as we know what's coming, but for casual movie goers at the time...the pacing and buildup of the story is incredibly effective.  The influence was felt in Japan as well...as 1956's Rodan opens with a similar story of murders being caused by giant insects(though in this case they're just the warmup).

[Dr. MID-Nite]

52 minutes ago, mattingly said:

I liked parts of It Came From The Desert, which was a "sequel" to both Them! and Tarantula.

 

I could have done without the drugs & alcohol, but I loved the exposition being presented as a B&W PSA, and the strategy/action was fairly well thought-out.

 

 

 

 

Too campy for me. I might as well just watch THEM! again....or even Empire of the Ants....

[slikmar]

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

 

I may or may not have watch Big Trouble in Little China every month for the past 30 years...

 

I remember my friends and I all telling another friend how great this movie was and how he needed to see it. So he did and didn't understand why we all thought it was great. Turned out, he thought it was supposed to be a serious action movie and Russel's character was supposed to be the typical badass hero you normally see. We told him that he was exactly wrong, that Jack Burton just thought he was that hero, but that it really was a hong kong action/magic movie with a typical american thinks he is a hero thrown in.

[Spence]

9 hours ago, death tribble said:

Big Trouble in Little China

This film stars Kurt Russell as a trucker who aids his friend in saving the friend's fiancee from bandits in San Francisco's Chinatown. This means fighting the evil David Lo Pan and his chief followers The Three Storms. Russell cheerfully plays the sidekick without realising it

One of those movies that never gets old...

[Sundog]

I've always loved Big Trouble in Little China. If for no other reason than Kurt Russel's character thinking he's the big hero - when he's actually the sidekick! It's just that level of meta film-making that makes the film work.

 

[Lord Liaden]

Jack Burton in Hero System.

(And follow the links at the bottom of the page to write-ups for the rest of the characters.)

[Michael Hopcroft]

I think we can agree that John Carpenter is an underappreciated genius. Escape from New York works as adventure, satire, and cautionary tale. And I love the introduction: "There are no guards -- only prisoners and the worlds they have made".

 

Any world that even thinks turning the largest city in America into a vast prison, or that is willing to drop off new prisoners into an unknown situation and leave them to their fate, is a dystopia by any standard.

 

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

The Fly (1986)

 

David Cronenberg's most popular horror film (at least at the box office) powerfully tells the story of a Seth Brundle -- a scinetist/engineer who, in his hubris, finds that he is transforming into -- something. His inertial enthusiasm about the change (which seems initially beneficial as his health seems to improve) turns into terror as it advances and begins to rob him of his humanity. All the while, he had launched a new relationship, and his partner attempts to stand by and deliver what aid she can in the crisis.

 

There are so many levels on which this film just works.

[death tribble]

I'm picking something British

 

Porridge

This is the tale of Norman Stanley Fletcher who is sent to Britain for 5 years for theft. This is Ronnie Barker at his best. This is about small victories rather than a grim look at prison life.

 

Open All Hours

This is another Ronnie Barker comedy where he plays a shopkeeper called Arkwright. He looks after his (grown) nephew while lusting after nurse Gladys Emmanuel. The till is malicious. It retains its appeal 40 years oon.

[death tribble]

Blue Velvet

A college student returning home discovers a severed ear which leads him into the underworld and a relationship with a nightclub singer. This is a David Lynch film with Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper

Hopper is really villainous and Rossellini was never better. Dean Stockwell also appears singing.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

While we're on the subject of Carpenter, I have to mention the criminally underrated Prince of Darkness from 1987. I love the premise. A college professor and his students investigate a "mystical" artifact in the basement of an old church. Like a lot of Carpenter's work, this film builds tension beautifully and has some really effective moments. Pleasance has a great moment near the end of the film where it just looks as if he has lost all of his faith. The possessed student typing the words of the "Anti Christ" on the computer was also creepy. Dennis Dun's character freaking our as he's trapped in a room with demonic forces is also a standout...as his character was the classic "uses humor to overcome his insecurity" type. The shared dream....the downbeat score....the clash of science/faith....there's just a lot to love here. It suffers from a few horror movie troupes, but in general Carpenter gets good use out of his cast of mostly regulars(like BTILC vets Wong and Dun).

[Steve]

I saw Get Smart mentioned on here, but no one has offered up Hogan's Heroes? Led by Colonel Robert Hogan, a ragtag bunch of Allied POWs run a special operations group from within the prison camp, Stalag 13. Yeah, it was campy and cheesy as anything, but a lot of the episodes were fun and there were some great characters.

 

Magnum P.I., the original show, _not_ the remake. A Vietnam veteran and ex-Navy SEAL, Thomas Magnum lives in Hawaii in a guest house of famed novelist, Robin Masters. Each week, he deals with a new case, aided by his friends Rick and TC, and sometimes his nemesis, Higgins, an ex-British Army Sergeant-Major who runs the estate for the ever-absent Robin Masters (voiced by Orson Welles in a handful of episodes). It was fun but had some noir elements to it despite the setting, such as Magnum's inner monologue.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

I saw Get Smart mentioned on here, but no one has offered up Hogan's Heroes? Led by Colonel Robert Hogan, a ragtag bunch of Allied POWs run a special operations group from within the prison camp, Stalag 13. Yeah, it was campy and cheesy as anything, but a lot of the episodes were fun and there were some great characters.

 

Hogan's Heroes developed an air of controversy that has made it an uncomfortable subject for discussion for some people. For one, there have been persistent complaints that the series trivialized the experiences of POWs during WW II, and portrayed Nazis as comical buffoons rather than monsters. For another, revelations about star Bob Crane's sexual improprieties, and his brutal and mysterious murder, have tarnished the series' image by association.

 

Personally, while I do have empathy for those who hold such views, I doubt that they're wholly warranted. The regular cast members playing German officers were not members of the Nazi party (neither were the great majority of the German armed forces). When someone playing an actual Nazi, like officers of the SS, appeared on the show they were treated as much more serious and menacing. Crane's personal life was also never reflected in his character, so drawing a distinction between them isn't unreasonable. He's also been dead over forty years, hence draws no benefits from syndication of the series.

[Bazza]

Also the Nazi's on the show were not sympathetic to that cause or ideology. Wikipedia explains the casting choices:

 

Quote

The actors who played the four major German roles—Werner Klemperer (Klink),[14] John Banner (Schultz), Leon Askin (Burkhalter), and Howard Caine (Hochstetter)—were Jewish. Furthermore, Klemperer, Banner, Askin, and Robert Clary (LeBeau) were Jews who had fled the Nazis during World War II. Clary says in the recorded commentary on the DVD version of episode "Art for Hogan's Sake" that he spent three years in a concentration camp, that his parents and other family members were killed there, and that he has an identity tattoo from the camp on his arm ("A-5714"). Likewise, John Banner had been held in a (pre-war) concentration camp and his family was killed during the war. Leon Askin was also in pre-war France internment camp and his parents were killed at Treblinka. Howard Caine, who was also Jewish (his birth name was Cohen), was American, and Jewish actors Harold Gould and Harold J. Stone made multiple appearances playing German generals. As a teenager, Klemperer fled Hitler's Germany with his family in 1933. During the show's production, he insisted that Hogan always win against his Nazi captors, or else he would not take the part of Klink. He defended his playing a Luftwaffe officer by claiming, "I am an actor. If I can play Richard III, I can play a Nazi." Banner attempted to sum up the paradox of his role by saying, "Who can play Nazis better than us Jews?" Klemperer, Banner, Caine, Gould, and Askin play stereotypical World War II Germans, and all had served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II—Banner[15] and Askin in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Caine in the U.S. Navy, Gould with the U.S. Army, and Klemperer in a U.S. Army Entertainment Unit. Werner Klemperer had in 1961 starred as the title character in the serious drama Operation Eichmann, which also featured John Banner in a supporting role as a committed Nazi. Ruta Lee, Theodore Marcuse, and Oscar Beregi, Jr. also appeared in the film, each went on to make several guest appearances on Hogan’s Heroes.

 

When Seinfeld was being shown in Germany during its run, it stopped and Hogan's Heroes replaced it, much to their preference.  

 

[Starlord]

2 hours ago, Bazza said:

 

When Seinfeld was being shown in Germany during its run, it stopped and Hogan's Heroes replaced it, much to their preference.  

 

 

Not surprising to me, but then I'm deeply entrenched in the 'Seinfeld is incredibly overrated' category.

 

PS:  I actually enjoy Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up though.  Also, a fan of his 'cars, coffee, comedians' Netflix show.

[mattingly]

12 hours ago, Steve said:

I saw Get Smart mentioned on here, but no one has offered up Hogan's Heroes?

 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Bazza said:

Also the Nazi's on the show were not sympathetic to that cause or ideology. Wikipedia explains the casting choices:

Quote

The actors who played the four major German roles—Werner Klemperer (Klink),[14] John Banner (Schultz), Leon Askin (Burkhalter), and Howard Caine (Hochstetter)—were Jewish.

 

 

I never realized that. Very cool.

 

[slikmar]

On 4/18/2020 at 7:39 PM, Dr. MID-Nite said:

While we're on the subject of Carpenter, I have to mention the criminally underrated Prince of Darkness from 1987. I love the premise. A college professor and his students investigate a "mystical" artifact in the basement of an old church. Like a lot of Carpenter's work, this film builds tension beautifully and has some really effective moments. Pleasance has a great moment near the end of the film where it just looks as if he has lost all of his faith. The possessed student typing the words of the "Anti Christ" on the computer was also creepy. Dennis Dun's character freaking our as he's trapped in a room with demonic forces is also a standout...as his character was the classic "uses humor to overcome his insecurity" type. The shared dream....the downbeat score....the clash of science/faith....there's just a lot to love here. if suffers from a few horror movie troupes, but in general Carpenter gets good use out of his cast of mostly regulars(like BTILC vets Wong and Dun).

Only Carpenter movie I was annoyed with was Ghosts of Mars, mostly because up to a certain point it was really a good movie then that moment happens and every person I know who watched it went "WHAT!!!?", then the movie turned stupid. We told a friend of ours to watch it up to a point and then turn it off assuming the movie ended. He watched it, wondered what we meant so kept watching and had same reaction. If you have seen it, you know exactly what I am talking about, if you haven't,, stop when they first get on the train after fighting their way there.

[Michael Hopcroft]

One final word about Hogan's Heroes: Klemperer was the son of Otto Klemperer, one of the great conductors of the early 20th century. Werner had substantial musical training and was a virtuoso violinist. Klink was also a violinist -- a terrible one, which gave us a hook into why he kept on failing. That said, Klink was not entirely an idiot.

 

He was just placed in an unsuitable position and was easily manipulable. He would have been much better suited to commanding a fighter squadron, as he had substantial experience as a combat pilot. But deep down he must have known the war was lost, and that a posting to the Eastern Front to fight the Soviets would have been suicide.

[Tjack]

On 4/17/2020 at 7:25 PM, slikmar said:

I remember my friends and I all telling another friend how great this movie was and how he needed to see it. So he did and didn't understand why we all thought it was great. Turned out, he thought it was supposed to be a serious action movie and Russel's character was supposed to be the typical badass hero you normally see. We told him that he was exactly wrong, that Jack Burton just thought he was that hero, but that it really was a hong kong action/magic movie with a typical american thinks he is a hero thrown in.

    
   John Carpenter originally set the movie in the old west.  San Francisco 1880’s. Jack Burton drove a wagon load of supplies while boring the hell out of a shotgun rider who never spoke, the meeting of the girl was at the docks instead of the airport as she got of the boat from China etc.  

   When the studio said they wouldn’t go for a western he re-did all for the modern day.   Brilliant!

[mattingly]

[Spence]

2 hours ago, mattingly said:

 

I'd watch this.

 

 

[Tjack]

6 hours ago, mattingly said:

    Co-Starring  Bruce Lee.

          Do you think Gordon Liu was supposed to play Egg Shen, Lo Pan or maybe both?