Hollywood Movie Reviews......... Options

[Reeth]

Please review and express your feelings about the Hollywood movies old and new ,that you have watched,liked & would recommend to the other members ......

I start off with an all time favourite film of my entire family....i have lost count of the number of times
i have watched this since the time.....

The Ten Commandments (1956)






It is one of the Greatest movies ever made in the history of World Cinema...
The film covers the life of Moses from his discovery in a basket floating on the Nile as a baby by
Bithiah, a childless young widow and daughter of the then-Pharaoh, Rameses I, to his eventual
departure from Israel in the wake of God's judgment that he not be allowed to enter the Promised
Land. In between, the film depicts the early adulthood of Moses as a beloved foster son of
Pharaoh Seti I (successor of Rameses I and brother of Bithiah) and general of his armies, his
romance with Throne Princess Nefertari and rivalry with the Pharaoh's own son,
Prince RamesesII.

Critics have argued that considerable liberties were taken with the Biblical story, affecting the film's
claim to authenticity, but this has had little effect on its popularity.....

Aside from winning the Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects, it was also nominated for
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color, Best Cinematography, Color, Best Costume Design,
Color (Edith Head, Ralph Jester, John Jensen, Dorothy Jeakins and Arnold Friberg), Best Film Editing,
Best Picture and Best Sound, Recording







Cecil B DeMille’s swan song is a movie for the ages. At 75 the legendary director was at the
peak of his fame, his name a house-hold word and his voice recognized by millions. He probably
knew The Ten Commandments would be his last film it almost killed him. He certainly knew it
would be his most important.

Shot in widescreen Technicolor, The Ten Commandments remains the standard by which
Biblical epics -- and many epics in general -- are measured
When Moses turns his staff into a snake and back again, the effect is seamless. His turning of the Nile
into blood is an impressive camera trick, but his parting of the Red Sea is one of Hollywood's most
famous stunts. It's worth sitting through the 220 minutes of movie for this alone....

MAIN CAST

#Charlton Heston as Moses
# Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Rameses II
# Anne Baxter as Nefertari
# Edward G. Robinson as Dathan
# Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora
# Debra Paget as Lilia
# John Derek as Joshua
# Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Seti I

But the Ten Commandments isn’t about God alone.... It’s about a woman, Neferteri the beauty of
Egypt, and whom she marries will become Pharoe and rule the Earth...she prefers Moses who races
chariots and saves old women from being crushed under the monumental obilisk he is raising in honor
of Neferteri’s father — and helped by the fact he’s played by manly-man Charlton Heston who looks
great,She does not want Ramses, the delicious Yul Brenner who wants Neferteri because of the
wealth and power that comes with her.
Moses is banished and Neferteri is forced to marry Ramses instead.
History might know about Moses and Ramses, but DeMille knew about
scorned women.....




It remains one of the five most successful films of all time.It is Cecil B. DeMille’s last and arguably
greatest film.....Definitely worth watching....

[Reeth]

Sorry Reeth, about the slightly out of context post. A brief reminder about Ingmar Bergman. Not Hollywood certainly, but enough of Hollywood (to its credit) has been influenced by him.

Madhavi just add evrything here, dont worry about method and order, this is more fun

Finally the grand old man died...and that too on the same day as Antonioni. Had been dreading the day it would happen, having watched a number of his films, I have always been amazed at how personally a number of his films touched me, considering how distinctly different his lived experience was from mine.

One cannot help but mention his Seventh Seal in an occasion such as this. Heavily and ostentatiously symbolic, it is about a knight who comes back from the crusades and finds that his country has been ravaged by the plague. Death comes for him too, and in his desperation he challenges him to a game of chess. He knows the outcome but plays for time...

Here is the famous scene:


And Here is the trailer:


A film about faith and belief, Ingmar's knight opts for a wry, wavering, disappointing, and constantly questioned belief rather than accept the bleak alternative that there is no meaning in life. And that, btw is a terribly reductive reading of Bergman's richly layered film. And this is not even my favorite Bergman film (if you like Bergman, you will always have your treasured favorites among his repetoire of about fifty films...). For me, his most stunning films were Wild Strawberries and Persona, and a cherished light one is Smiles of a Summer Night.

And what can film noir be without Bogey...I promise not to impose any more noirs after these two:

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Don't worry about the plot in The Maltese Falcon (actually that is true of most Noirs), note the style, the tough talking hero and the mood. The film made a legend out of Bogart. Consider this dialogue with which the hero sends the woman to the gallows after she pleads with him not to give her over to the law:

''I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. . . . The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you.''

Here's an excerpt from Ebert:

Some film histories consider ''The Maltese Falcon'' the first film noir. It put down the foundations for that native American genre of mean streets, knife-edged heroes, dark shadows and tough dames.

Of course film noir was waiting to be born. It was already there in the novels of Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Maltese Falcon, and the work of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, John O'Hara and the other boys in the back room. ''Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean,'' wrote Chandler, and that was true of his hero Philip Marlowe (another Bogart character). But it wasn't true of Hammett's Sam Spade, who was mean, and who set the stage for a decade in which unsentimental heroes talked tough and cracked wise.

Cold. Spade is cold and hard, like his name. When he gets the news that his partner has been murdered, he doesn't blink an eye. Didn't like the guy. Kisses his widow the moment they're alone together. Beats up Joel Cairo (Lorre) not just because he has to, but because he carries a perfumed handkerchief, and you know what that meant in a 1941 movie. Turns the rough stuff on and off. Loses patience with Greenstreet, throws his cigar into the fire, smashes his glass, barks out a threat, slams the door and then grins to himself in the hallway, amused by his own act.

If he didn't like his partner, Spade nevertheless observes a sort of code involving his death. ''When a man's partner is killed,'' he tells Brigid, ''he's supposed to do something about it.'' He doesn't like the cops, either; the only person he really seems to like is his secretary, Effie (Lee Patrick), who sits on his desk, lights his cigarettes, knows his sins and accepts them. How do Bogart and Huston get away with making such a dark guy the hero of a film? Because he does his job according to the rules he lives by, and because we sense (as we always would with Bogart after this role) that the toughness conceals old wounds and broken dreams.

Alas, the mood and the mode won't work today ...but the darkness inherent in human motivations tainting all and possibilities of desperate heroism still might find echoes in this age.

And then there is [b]The Big Sleep(1946) which is credited with having one of the most confusing storylines in Hollywood film history. Based on the popular novel by Raymond Chandler that was published in 1939, it introduced the the first of the series of the Philip Marlowe novels. The plot, again, is the "McGuffin", to borrow Hitchcock's phrase, it does not matter. What matters is the on and off screen chemistry of the Bacall-Bogart pair, the double-edged dialogues and the atmosphere. And there is plenty of it in the film.
[/b]
You're not very tall are you?
I try to be... says Bogie....

Check out this compilation by a buff who has titled it "The Babes of the Big Sleep" with the following comment: The biggest mystery in Howard Hawks's THE BIG SLEEP is why almost every beautiful woman finds Bogie irresistible

Great stuff Madhavi.....Thanks a lot, keep adding...