CineTigers

I love Barnaby Jones, we're addicted, binge watching.

It's so delightful that whenever anyone gets shot there is no blood on their clothes, on the floor, in the car, and no splatter on the wall either. You can drag the body without leaving fingerprints, but always leave fiber.

And everyone dies instantly, even from a fall, or karate chop. Sometimes they first shake their legs. It takes two seconds to confirm on the corrated artery.

And Barnaby can shoot (yet only wound) the suspect (only in the final 3 min) at 100 yds, freehand with a 22, while they run away zig-zag through woods. What a lovely, simpler time.

What's in a name / Le Prénom

An incredible movie! Tight dialogue and insightful character study from start to end. A room full of people you have met in real life, or wish you had. Mercurical moods captured in dialog, farcical surprises, fast pacing, embarrassment & anger, family bonds & family feuds.

How many awards did this masterpiece recieve? It deserved more. Obviously direct from a stage play, set within a single room, entirely character & dialog driven. But it is delivered like a fine French meal, in several courses, and with a delicious dessert. Unwrapped slowly, the plot is simply the backstory of each character; their fears, dreams, and unspoken history. Such incredible authorship!

It is a shame few americans will sit thru subtitles to enjoy this marvelous gem. Any remake into english (for their refusal) simply must be done line for line, step for step, and not audience tested for their flat american palatte, and not cast with distracting familiar faces.

It is now readily available on multiple internet sites.

I agree with all the other comments that the premise was bizarre, the plot was beyond thin, the acting hammy, and the filming and budget woefully low quality.

However, I am walking through 1960's & 1970's movies in an effort to remember and better understand how much our world has changed. The Montgomery Wards? Cars without safety bumpers, banks without safety glass, strip malls without Wal-Mart or Home Depot . . . hippies (the cinema interpretation).

But mostly the blatant sexual harassment by Jack Cassidy's character that is eventually met with nympho encouragement, an evil grin, an eye twinkle, and an implied roll in the sheets. That a writer could script and a director could film such scenes reminds me just how far we have come in some 40+ years. The jokes about "A real cop ... a man" were predictable, for guffaws. And while a low brow comedy is not reality; to a much lesser degree, not that long ago, this was.

Surreal does not capture the characters, setting, and plot of Brewster McCloud. Will you please pass me whatever they were smoking when they wrote and revised this script. It was either the work of genius or insanity.

I have waited over 5 years to see it, as I work through the AFI catalog. Altman's early film is hard to find here; not in my library, netflix, rarely shown. It was finally on TCM as a visiting programmers choice, SNL comedian Bill Hader.

A great time capsule of 1970 Houston, with period cars and so many familiar faces. But a film of bizarre surrealism that exceeds anything I've personally seen from France or Italy.

This was shown 7/2010 on IFC "Short Film Showcase".

A very intriguing (if somewhat surreal) slice of life, from Romania, of a young unmarried professional woman finding out she is expecting triplets. As she tries to make sense of her situation, and ponders her future, she goes from one odd experience to another.

In any life changing event, each of us read extra significance into the random occurrences of that moment as a providential "sign", and look to others to reveal insight from inside ourselves.

Marriage? Abortion? Single Motherhood? What will happen to the children? What will happen to herself? How can she make such a tremendous decision in such a short period of time?

Watching this as an exercise in historical cinema (1931) was worth it, and TCM had a wonderfully restored print with excellent contrast and sound.

Half of the scenes were great: well acted, tight dialog, tightly edited. But nearly half were unbearable. Overly long dialog, stiffly delivered, characters just standing and talking, scene allowed to run on and on. All conversations were shot with stationary long-shots followed by a pan when the character exits. This is still in the technical transition from stage delivery. It was obviously an early attempt at the genre of screwball comedy.

I was reminded of references to "early talkie" disasters made in later films (ex:Singin in the Rain). Too much talking, characters just dropped in a room together.

Again, half of the film was well paced, well edited, and well acted. And it was wonderful to see the Jean Harlow and Loretta Young, Robert Williams, and the many character actors as the newsmen and the snobby rich.

I love movies from the 40's, enjoy Ginger Rogers in both musical and straight roles (Kitty Foyle, Bachelor Mother), and romantic comedies are a favorite way to relax in the evening. This movie was bad. I am working through the AFI list, and had looked forward to this light hearted comedy.

The acting was fine, as each character was played perfectly, right down to the irritating ice cream man and little sister. But there was barely enough plot to fill out a 30 minute TV episode. The premise was OK, but it took me 3 fidgety nights to just sit through it. And what were surely attempts at zany plot twists in the 40's seemed to be just unending repetition. This is definitely not "bringing up baby" or even in the same league.

Sorry.

TCM included War Hunt in their Memorial Day festival (maybe a little inappropriate for a tribute to our servicemen?). I found the subject, as a screen play, intriguing, but not the delivery. To me, it would have been better to read, hear it as a reading, or see it in community theater.

The movie resembled an episode of "Combat!", for props and scenery, film quality, and acting. And frankly, the "before they were famous" actors shown here had a reason for their anonymity, they still lacked confidence and training and delivered what was at best a TV movie quality product, in my opinion.

Contrast this to the realistic acting and tight cutting in "Hell is for Heroes". Again, to me a great concept, a good screenplay, but "movie of the week" product.

This 1948 LA Fire Department documentary was just shown on TCM as a filler and was fantastic! To see those 1950's firehouses and firetrucks in action, being buffed, cleaned and maintained, that are now only seen in parades and classic car shows. Of course much of the film is still the same, the demands and discipline of the job, and how so many fires are caused by simple carelessness. I wonder if showing this film helped people clean and organize their homes. I was fascinated by the "state of the art" technology employed to locate and ring the right fire station from that frantic phone caller, employing a tremendous Rolodex file and crazy patch board. And I always love seeing those 1950's vibrant neighborhood shopping streets full of cars and shoppers. Fantastic visual images take your right back in time. Thank you TCM!

Thanks again to TCM and Silent Sunday for a clean print and quality soundtrack. This movie let us escape for 2 hours to 1920, the years between the two world wars. I found the early images wonderful, whether Valentino's famous tango, the famous horsemen, or the special effects for the apocalypse and the grim reaper. Of course, it is a fantastic antiwar theme film.

However, I was exhausted by the amount of detail. This early Hollywood effort seemed to want every page, every character, every twist of plot from the original book to kiss the screen. In the 1940's, movies were "inspired by the book". Modern screenwriters now have the skill of lifting one usable plot thread from a complex book. In this film, I felt the inclusion of so many plot details, moving at a rapid clip to fit them all in, involved too many characters, and was overly ambitious for a two hour story. Today, we would see such lengthly and numerous scenes only in a multi-day mini-series like "Shogun" or "Jesus of Nazareth".

This was just shown on TCM "one reel wonder" and it caught me off guard. It was completely dramatized, as if bits of scenes (often 2 seconds long) were clipped from an actual western movie and spliced together at the typical lightning speed of newsreels and "passing parade". It was, of course, accompanied by the deadpan, loud, authoritative newsreel announcer with no actors' voices heard.

What is strange is that I cannot cross-reference the director, writer, or actors to any original film on Murrieta. So I'm guessing a "B" western film was begun and not completed, and these snippets of scenes, instead of going to waste, were pulled together into this "historical short". If not, it might have been a training exercise to test new actors and crew with scenes shot on existing scenery and equipment. In either case, it was an interesting story and 10 minutes long.

"A Moonraker is a smuggler. One who dumps his contraband in the bottom of a lake then rakes it out by moonlight." (Definitely not to be confused with the James Bond escapade).

I believe this film is now in the public domain as I saw it as an "afternoon matinée" on my local school cable channel, where I usually see titles from the $1 bin.

While the movie was historically interesting, the action less enjoyable than Errol Flynn's Robin Hood and the staging and dialog delivery seemed slow and mechanical to me. If you are a fan of Elizabethan costume dramas, this will be a pleasant diversion for you.

I received this movie in a pack called "50 all-star Movies" for $18 (45 cents each). This classic farce was a vehicle for a stable of TV sitcom stars to score some summer work. What a DELIGHT! Ken Berry (F-Troop / Mayberry RFD) as the Hapless American. Eva Gabor (Green Acres) as the scheming baroness. Werner Klemperer (Hogan's Heroes) as the jealous mayor. And a fine supporting TV cast including Hans Conried (Snidley Whiplash) and Jim Backus (Gilligans Island / Mr Magoo). OK, so the screwball twists don't reach the comic mastery of BLAZING SADDLES or BRINGING UP BABY, and the sets are definitely TV budget, but I said its a CUTE little movie, not Oscar material. If you find it in a dollar bin or a friend's DVD pile, by all means enjoy yourself some evening.

I received this movie in a pack called "50 all-star Movies" for $18 (45 cents each). Many are good. This one was terrible. It was a hackneyed retread done 1000 times before and each time better. A crippled ex-jock is dared to coach a team made up of juvenile delinquents. They learn from him that they can make it if they play by the rules. I'm sure the kids and the locals were thrilled to be included in a "real TV movie", but I can't imagine what the folks that launched and produced this project figured they could bring to this already over beaten subject. I kept waiting to see that 'new twist' or 'new angle' but, honest, it doesn't come. Avoid this movie. Forget about the 45 cents, I want the 96 minutes of my life back.

I received this movie in the "50 all-star movie" collection box for $16.99, now avail as low as $10. (20 cents per movie!) A lot of little gems like this one, made for TV on TV budgets in the 1970's. Wonderful time-capsules to show our children and remember ourselves, that otherwise would be locked away.

We have a straightforward plot and characters, and Cosby's were very reminiscent of my grandparents that went through the depression and saved aluminum foil, rubber bands, and Christmas bows to reuse later. Good stories establish believable characters then have them resolve a conflict, but Cosby (the writer) may have pushed too hard in defining archetypes of the goal driven father, the status quo father, the torn mother, and frustrated son. I found the father's repeated gruffness irritating, but was guessing Cosby was playing a caricature of someone from memory. The son's illness may have been a little melodramatic, but the response and resolution in the last 30 minutes (which I won't spoil) was sweet without being saccharine and seemed to me somehow special yet reasonable for the man we had come to know.

This movie would not have won an Oscar, but I enjoyed it just the same.

I was dragged to this movie by my son, knowing of Anime only Totoro, the Cartoon Network Anime shows, and passing things from the web.

I was astounded by the superb quality of the graphics, especial the CGI macro shots, throughout the film. I found myself thinking of people seeing early Disney features in the 1930's. The visuals looking through various magnifying lenses were absolutely incredible!

I was surprised to see how the setting in Victorian England had given me such an easier time visually comprehending familiar scenes, vehicles, etc instead of the usual anime Asian or Space-Age themes I had come to expect. In this way, I feel I was finally able to visually appreciate the quality of the artistry for the first time. Wow! The English dubbing was great, and again helped me appreciate the film. And the storyline was a perfect "Perils of Pauline" tied to a gone-bad "Mad Scientist" tale as seen in Frankenstien, the Invisible Man or any of 1,000 such movies.

I don't understand complaints of the ending "dragging on". *spoiler<?>* If not for the extra-twists in the list 30 min, we would all be complaining that the plot was flat and the ending dragged out of a dustbin. As it was, I burst out laughing at the twist and thought it clever, along with the two more twists including the one just before final credits. If you were taking yourself (as Monday Morning Quarterback) a little less seriously, you would see it was poking fun at the notion of a hero's "heroic moment".

Of course it was a comic book style plot, blowing up the famous historic buildings at the Victorian Exhibition using steam power! I easily accepted and enjoyed the diabolical plot twists for what they were. How can one accept the presence of a 20,000 foot tall steam powered flying rocket (built by a mad scientist and stuffed with secret weapons) and not expect escape bays, rocket packs, secret pods, and trap doors? Lighten up! Doesn't one certainly imply the other?

I just finished watching "Captain Salvation" on Turner Classic Movie's "Silent Sunday". I was greatly impressed by the quality of the print, with great picture clarity, facial expressions, town scenes (we had just watched the "High Noon" DVD that evening, and it was comparable in picture quality). The new soundtrack showed copyright 2005. All of the dialog boards were, of course, new.

The storyline was something else, but still delightful to get a feel for the dramatic overacting required of silent stars in the 1920's. The ending storyboard explained "and that is how the first Gospel Ship came into being". What a great experience, to feel transported back in time.

Thank-you TCM for the efforts and monies to rescue these films, and then for sharing them with us.

I'm a fan of Columbo, especially on a rainy Saturday, and it was fun to see Oskar Werner after Fahrenheit 451, but this episode was very lacking. The original plot and plot twists were obvious and could be guessed way in advance, even years before the modern detective shows of today. But it was amusing to see the crazy couch patterns and "modern" electronics equipment and, of course, the mandatory suburbanite humor poking fun at modern art for sale. The high-tech home is a Jetson's or Disney version of Tomorrowland, and fun to think of writers inventing those "way-out gizmos".

If its sunny outside, go play, as there are much better Columbo episodes. Still, we should be thankful for Cable TV that these episodes are being broadcast.