Open Side Menu Go to the Top
Register
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Talk About Movies: Part 4

09-09-2021 , 04:58 PM
Lolita (1962) in B&W; directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, who is credited with writing the screenplay. The film follows Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged literature lecturer who becomes sexually infatuated with Dolores Haze (nicknamed "Lolita"), a young adolescent girl. Starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and Sue Lyon as the titular character {14 years old}


Thank Heaven for little girls!


Not one sane, emotionally mature main character is represented in this film.

Five Dark and Disturbing car rides and Motel Stays out of Five.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-09-2021 , 05:11 PM
Not sure if Hailey Mills would have done a better job, but she was pressured to turn down the role of Lolita..
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-09-2021 , 05:16 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeno
Lolita (1962) in B&W; directed by Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick initially wanted to interpret Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller ; but, alas, Miller was old at this point and already being censored/going through legal issues with his provocative novel, so unfortunately turned it down I would of absolutely loved to see how Kubric would of brought to the big screen this highly metaphysical and abstract intellectual porn... Anyhow, Kubrick selected the equally censored Lolita.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-09-2021 , 06:15 PM
read Lolita after seeing the movie many years back. IIRC the book was on a whole other level. I can understand why some people would be upset by it.

Really good film.

Didn't we used to have a Claire Quilty in these forums? I wonder whatever happened to him.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-09-2021 , 07:54 PM
I had a ton of amazing psychedelic trips in college almost all of them ended with watching a Kubrick film and I never had a bad trip except when we tried to watch Lolita.

thankfully we managed to save ourselves and turn off the film just as the terror was about to consume us all but it was 100% a result of the film.

good stuff.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-09-2021 , 08:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffRas22
Anyone seen Enemy? Psychological thriller/drama starring Gyllenhaal directed by Denis Villeneuve. This will be tl;dr but I have a number of thoughts, pretty sure I have the gist of it nailed down, but also a few questions. Heavy spoilers ahead.

Spoiler:
Okay so it seems extremely obvious that the two people are one. The clues are everywhere.

-Anthony is a failed actor, he has 3 acting credits, the most recent being 2005, yet he has a nice apartment and a motorcycle.
-When Adam visits his mother she comments on his nice apartment (opening scene she leaves a message berating him for his messy/poor apartment, presumably the one Adam lives in) and tells him to give up his dream of being an actor.
-After Helen sees Adam for the first time Anthony berates her for forgetting to get him blueberries, and when Adam is visiting his mother she offers him blueberries, he responds that he doesn't like blueberries, to which she replies "of course you do".
-When Adam first rents the movie he sees Anthony in, the song "The Cheater" is playing, with the lyrics "look out for the cheater" being sung.
-Both struggle with insatiable urges for women. Anthony has cheated before ("are you seeing her again?"), and when Adam is meeting with Anthony for the first time he can't help but look longingly after the woman walking in front of him in the hotel hallway.
-They have the same scar on their stomach
-Adam's apartment has basically nothing in it. Boxes, a bed, and a couch. There are no pictures or anything on the wall. It looks exactly like that of a 2nd apartment for affairs or one recently moved into after being kicked out.

It also seems clear Anthony is the dominant personality and the "real" one. He created Adam as an escape from his life in which he feels trapped (more on that later).

Okay onto the spiders. The spiders are a metaphor for the way Anthony/Adam perceive the women in his life. He feels trapped in their web. Female spiders have even been known to kill their mates after, or even sometimes during, copulation. This symbolism is overwhelming throughout the movie.

-Opening scene at the sex club, Anthony (and other married men) are aroused at the woman stepping on a spider.
-The wires above the roads in the city they live in resemble a spider web
-In Adam's lecture he teaches about dictatorships and says, "control, it's all about control..."
-After visiting his overbearing mother the very next shot is one of the entire city, and a mother spider standing above it
-When Anthony & Mary crash in the climax of the movie, the broken windshield closely resembles a spider web. Before they crashed Mary berated Anthony for "not being a man".

This brings us to the end. While very surprising, even scary, the first time you see it, this also seems very straightforward. The spider, Helen, despite being much bigger than Anthony, backs against the wall in terror. Why? Because Adam/Anthony had just shed the Anthony personality, the one that felt trapped and felt the need to stray. He and Helen had an amazing night together where she said, "I want you to stay" (talking to the Adam personality). But just when things seem good, Anthony discovers the envelope in his jacket with a new key to the sex club and tells Helen he has somewhere to be tonight. So Helen's fear is due to the re-emergence of the part of Anthony's personality that wants to escape. Once again, there are clues to this.

-During Adam's first teaching lecture, he says, "It's important to remember this, this is a pattern that repeats itself..."
-He also says, "All the greatest world events happen twice. The first time it was a tragedy, the second time it was a farce". So Adam/Anthony has accepted that history is destined to repeat itself.
-To complete that, the movie opens with Adam's mother leaving a voicemail on his machine. The last thing Helen says is "your mother called". It's a loop.

So here are a few of my questions:

1) What's the deal with the picture? When Adam first sees Anthony in the movie, he digs a picture out of one of his boxes. The picture is cut in half and only his himself. Later in the movie, Adam once again sees the picture at Anthony/Helen's apartment. But this time it's the entire picture. The torn part is Helen. I feel like Occam's razor---two of the same picture---would be kind of lame and a cop-out. Part of me thinks this means that the story of the movie is being told non-linearly.

2) This brings us to Mary. Was she the one Helen had caught Anthony with prior? Did they get caught because of that car accident? This makes sense to me because of the way that sequence of events is edited. They intertwine Anthony & Mary having sex (Mary discovering the wedding ring tan on his finger) with Adam in bed with Helen. He wakes up and then cries apologetically on the couch as she consoles him. It is almost as if he is apologizing for that. The film opens with the quote "chaos is order yet undeciphered". This leads me to wonder what the true timeline of events in the movie is. I believe it all happened. It just seems likely to me that some of it (specifically the Adam/Mary relationship) did not occur in order with how we as viewers saw it.


I think that's all I got. It's a tremendous movie, one that's gripping the entire way through but also leaves you wanting more. Two things about the movie stand out to me. First, Gyllenhaal is fantastic. The Adam and Anthony characters are nothing alike, and you can tell immediately by his mannerisms when he is who. Secondly, as I allude to in spoilers, nothing in the entire movie is an accident. The numbers on the wall where he parks, the poster or song being played in the video store. It is one of the intricately crafted films I have ever seen. Such attention to detail is refreshing.
amazing film! Love it.

****

Lolita the novel is one of the top 5 English language novels of the 20th century...just astounding...and it was the first time Nabakov wrote in English. I never really warmed to the movie, for some reason...the Peter Sellars character is unnecessary.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 04:15 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dominic
Lolita the novel is one of the top 5 English language novels of the 20th century...just astounding...and it was the first time Nabakov wrote in English. I never really warmed to the movie, for some reason...the Peter Sellars character is unnecessary.
I agree about the novel's greatness, but I don't understand why you think a character from the novel was unnecessary in the movie. His part was blown up a bit too much, but since Sellers is as amazing as always, I don't think it harmed the film.

Really the only thing about it I disliked is that the girl looks far too old to be 14. Wikipedia says Sue Lyon was 16 when it came out, but I think I remember other sources saying she was 18, which is about the age she looked to me.

The 1997 film with Jeremy Irons was not quite as good, but more faithful to the novel, and the girl looked much closer to the right age, although Wikipedia says she was 17 when that film was released. It doesn't say when it was actually filmed though, so I think it is possible that it took a few years to be released.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 07:17 AM
Saw The Card Counter last night on Metrograph. It's a Paul Schrader film starring Oscar Issac. Big disappointment.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 10:18 AM
Wise Blood A guy returns from the war (not sure which war) and decided to start a church with no Jesus. Along the way he encounters an assortment of quirky characters.

I couldn't quite get my arms around this one. At first it seemed like it was going to be some sort of commentary on religion. But ultimately I think it was just a weird attempt at a quirky comedy. I found it pretty meh.

On a personal note, I kept thinking I might have seen this before but I can't imagine not remembering it any better. And if I had remembered it I can't imagine why I would sit through it again.

The Courier A British businessman is coerced into transporting top secret documents out of the Soviet Union during the cold war.

The movie concentrates more on the personalities involved than the actual espionage. It's a bit slow but it picks up towards the end. Watchable but not outstanding.

One minor nitpick. I just couldn't buy Mrs. Maisel as a top CIA officer.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 11:44 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeno
Lolita (1962) in B&W; directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, who is credited with writing the screenplay. The film follows Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged literature lecturer who becomes sexually infatuated with Dolores Haze (nicknamed "Lolita"), a young adolescent girl. Starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and Sue Lyon as the titular character {14 years old}


Thank Heaven for little girls!


Not one sane, emotionally mature main character is represented in this film.

Five Dark and Disturbing car rides and Motel Stays out of Five.

We get to see why Shelly Winters was a great actress in this flick.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 11:54 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by riverboatking
I had a ton of amazing psychedelic trips in college almost all of them ended with watching a Kubrick film and I never had a bad trip except when we tried to watch Lolita.

thankfully we managed to save ourselves and turn off the film just as the terror was about to consume us all but it was 100% a result of the film.

good stuff.
I saw Clockwork Orange in college on (I think it was) 'shrooms. I couldn't stop laughing. Finally, the guy in front of me, who had grad student written all over him (long dirty hair, tweed jacket with elbow patches, dandruff and bread crumbs all over it), stood up and screamed, Stop laughing! there's nothing funny! this is not a comedy! at which point the the whole theater broke up and the party was on.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 01:42 PM
lol awesome.

we watched all of his films coming down but strangelove barry lyndon n the shining were the most frequently watched.

man those were fun times.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 04:21 PM
Finally saw A Separation. I dunno if there's anyone currently in Hollywood who can do what Asghar Farhadi does at his best - weave a compelling human drama about ordinary people. American dramas always seem to depend on quirkiness. Ken Loach tells stories about working class people, but he's blatantly aiming to stir your sense of outrage and pluck on your heartsrings. A Separation is ostensibly mundane yet almost a thriller in its plotting.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 05:35 PM
Mrs. Miniver Set during WWII, a British family tries to live life to the fullest during the worst of times.

I'm somewhat tempted to describe this as "stiff upper lip" but it is much more. Mrs. Miniver (symbolic of the English people) refuses to let the war, literally at her doorstep, deter her spirit. It is less about overcoming suffering than simply living life to the fullest in spite of the horror of war.

From beginning to end, an absolutely fantastic film in every way.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 05:40 PM
Shelly Winters was definitely the best part of Lolita the movie
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-10-2021 , 10:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by biggerboat
[B]



The Courier A British businessman is coerced into transporting top secret documents out of the Soviet Union during the cold war.



The movie concentrates more on the personalities involved than the actual espionage. It's a bit slow but it picks up towards the end. Watchable but not outstanding.



One minor nitpick. I just couldn't buy Mrs. Maisel as a top CIA officer.
I liked it because it was based on a true story about 2 real people who risked their lives and may have saved the world from nuclear war. They got the periods setting etc right too. But it was under-dramatized so not real entertaining.


Sent from my SM-A505U1 using Tapatalk
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-11-2021 , 03:26 AM
Greer Garson always delivers.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-12-2021 , 09:01 PM
MALIGNANT was a nod to late 70s / early 80s Italian horror. Definitely had a different style and vibe compared to other James Wan movies like The Conjuring & Insidious. Lots of gore and few to no jump scares. But I couldn't help but feel a tad let down walking out of the theater. It was just OK.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-13-2021 , 06:07 AM
________


quite a few really good old school noir movies are free on YT - the whole movies not just trailers

Fritz Lang's "Scarlet Street" and "Detour" are 2 of them

searching will get you more


.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-13-2021 , 09:05 AM
__________

just watched "Out of the Past" with Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas and the very beautiful Jane Greer - was really great - nothing like a hot dame with a 45 and not afraid to use it -


line from the flick - they're playing roulette -

Mitchum - you're going to lose playing that way

Greer: - do you know a way to win

Mitchum - I know how to lose slower______________(-:\


.

Last edited by FallawayJumper; 09-13-2021 at 09:15 AM.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-14-2021 , 01:04 PM
last nights entertainment... brand new The Thing release in 4k UHD.

this release looks absolutely magnificent... Like watching a completely new movie. sure the FX is dated, but I dont watch these films for FX


Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-17-2021 , 12:08 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokerlogist
I liked it because it was based on a true story about 2 real people who risked their lives and may have saved the world from nuclear war. They got the periods setting etc right too. But it was under-dramatized so not real entertaining.


Sent from my SM-A505U1 using Tapatalk
I liked The Courier for the same reasons but I do agree with the other poster that it was a little slow. I’d say it’s a solid 7/10.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-17-2021 , 08:57 AM
Tonight's entertainment... the original Japanese language Ghost in the Shell... in iMax
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-17-2021 , 01:46 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MSchu18
Tonight's entertainment... the original Japanese language Ghost in the Shell... in iMax
Awesome. Are they going to show Innocence too?
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote
09-19-2021 , 02:14 AM
Malignant, James Wan

I'm not a fan if Wan's brand of cheesy horror (Saw, Insidious, etc.), but my GF wanted to see this, so what the hell.

Holy cow, what a completely schizophrenic movie. The first 3/4 of the movie is so bad, ineptly written, and laughable, that at times I thought that maybe it was a satire. Annabelle Wallis plays Madison, a woman who's abusive husband is killed by a creepy home intruder...

But this intruder is apparently killing doctors at a horror-movie medical facility where Madison was as a child but has no real memory of. She starts having visions of the creepy guy's actual murders, and because she tells the cops exactly what happened and where, she becomes the prime suspect.

That's most of the movie.

But then there is a TWIST that is so preposterous, so completely insane, that Malignant turns into an incredibly entertaining movie. My GF and I were screaming with delight and horror at it. And then falling back onto the couch, giggling uncontrollably.

If you do choose to watch this, go in blind - don't read anything about it. It's absolutely bonkers. Like Psycho, Who's Next, and It's Alive all wrapped up in one.

F for the first hour
A for the remaining running time.
Talk About Movies: Part 4 Quote

      
m