Risselada Blog

Under discussion:

Army of Shadows  (1969)

This blog entry is part of my "movie recommendation site suggestions".  Read more about that here.

L'armée des ombres (Army of Shadows)

It took me a while to adjust to the tone of this film.  I was able to reassess it when watching it through the second time with the audio commentary.  It's a film about the French Resistance during WWII where we never actually see the resistance doing any active resistance.  The movie is mostly composed of Resistance members trying to avoid being caught or escaping capture or assassinating each other in the fear that a fellow member is some kind of a risk to the movement.

Certain sequences are drawn out to the point of almost suspenseful realism, while other seemingly important events are not shown at all.  Melville's method here of challenging you by what he chooses to show or not show mostly serves to engage, but at times does have an alienating effect.  Perhaps he indented both of these effects.  I'm sure if I grew up in French society and had more of a connection to it's recent history that my reactions would be more in tune with what Melville had been intending.  Yet apparently many people of my time and place have appreciated the movie well enough since the film was only released in the United States for the first time in 2006 to excessive critical praise.

Rating: 8/10

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

The Intruder  (1961)

This blog entry is part of my "movie year countdown round #2".  Read more about that here.

The Intruder

So I asked my girlfriend, do you want to watch an old movie where William Shatner plays a racist?  Apparently it was her favorite quote out of me for the day.  That's right, Netflix finally sent me The Intruder.

Many people say this is both Roger Corman's greatest directing effort and also William Shatner's greatest lead acting picture.  Now I would necessarily assume either of those qualifications would really make a great movie, but putting them together is at least a movie I certainly wanted to see!  If you are amused by Shatner's oratory, the is certainly a film to see.  I can imagine this film gives a good impression of some of the atmosphere of the parts of the South in the early sixties.  It's hard to say if some of the characters were a bit exaggerated, but there is a surprising amount of complexity to many of the main characters as well.

I don't know if this is Corman's greatest directing work.  I haven't seen too many movies he has actually directed.  He has a very low budget approach, and I feel like the material in this film could have benefited from a slightly more skilled production.  But I think recognition should be giving to Corman for even attempting to put this material up on a screen at the time that he did.

Rating: 7/10

Under discussion:

Sholay  (1975)

This blog entry is part of my "movie recommendation site suggestions".  Read more about that here.

Sholay

This was the first film that I watched from my list compiled from suggestions from various movie recommendation sites.  Actually this may be the first movie from India I have ever seen.  And when I think about it, I find that kind of shocking considering how many films I have seen an the fact that India is in competition with the United States as the country with the most prolific production history of movies.  Maybe despite that not many of them have very universal appeal.  I'm not sure why else I haven't had too many brought to my attention before, but here I go.

Sholay was the top recommended Indian movie to me on Netflix, but now that I look into it I'm not sure how personal of a recommendation it was.  It appears as though this film is one of the most famous and successful to ever come out of the huge world of Bollywood cinema.  My girlfriend had even seen in before in a film class.  It's what they'd call a Curry Western.  I guess after western style movies that were produced in Italy were labeled Spaghetti Westerns, westerns produced in other countries were labeled with popular indigenous foods as well.  Check this link out.

The movie is fun and features a lot of what I kind of expected to be in a Bollywood movie including a long running time, several big musical numbers, lots of melodrama, and a few goofy characters.  There were some strange, sordid moments evocative of the type of thing you'd expect in a Spaghetti Western too like a completely sadistic bad guy, and a battle with an amputee.

I'd say I was just slightly disappointed since Netflix was constantly throwing this in my face under my recommended movies as one of the very top from their entire catalogue.  Still I had fun and am interested to keep checking out what else I can find from Bollywood or India in general.

Rating: 8/10