You haven't seen King of the Road?

I could live without the part where the guy shits, but that's a pretty good one. I think I liked it a little more than Alice in the Cities.

No I don't know why.

Maybe the shit???
 

crumbsroom wrote:

You haven't seen King of the Road?

I could live without the part where the guy shits, but that's a pretty good one. I think I liked it a little more than Alice in the Cities.

No I don't know why.

Maybe the shit???
 

lol

yeah, good movie, but probably won't be going back to it anytime soon

Arguably, Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla was the last great Godzilla film of the original Toho Showa era, and a marked improvement from several of its preceding entiries (Hedorah, Gigan, Megalon).  It spawned a sequel, Terror of Mechagodzilla, which was truly the last of the original run of Godzilla films, and which may be a decent film, but it was butchered beyond repair for all but the most recent English releases, hence I have not yet seen it in restored form.




From Jun Fukuda, the director of the above Godzilla film, this is a fun parody of James Bond and 60s spy and sci-fi tropes, it involves an assassin involved in international telepathic intrigue.  It isn't always entirely coherent, but I don't think that's the fault of the youtube automated English generated subtitles that I used while watching.  I honestly think the film's plot was intended to be a bit bat-shit.  Very stylish and briskly paced, and, I mentioned it before in my proper review, Kaoru Yumi is something very special.




This is the only one of the three Battles Without Honor or Humanity installments released in 1974 that I've caught, and anyone familiar with Kinji Fukasaku's hard-boiled police and yakuza dramas will know and be satisfied by what they're in for.  Special shout out to Fukasaku's loyal cinematographer, Sadaji Yoshida, for capturing urban night lights worthy of Taxi Driver.





I've already mentioned Sonny Chiba's Street Fighter, and 1974 would see four more Street Fighter films released.  The above two, Return of the Street Fighter and Sister Street Fighter, came out within six months of the original, and each received two more sequels by years end.  I've only seen the above two in addition to the original, and I know that many of people prefer these to the original.  I find it hard to discern, imho.  They're all fun though.


The year also saw franchise sequels for Lone Wolf and Cub, Lady Snowblood and Hanzo the Razor that I also haven't seen.
 

Where are we?  We must be getting towards the end here, at least for those films I've seen. 

The Beatles' Apple Films enterprise never got much further than theri own projects of interest, and this was even further complicated by their manager, Allen Klein, funnelling away much of the intended charity revenue from the theatrical release of Concert For Bangladesh.  Although an attempted expansion into more serious cinema would stall, with Lennon recruiting Alexandro Jodorowsky under Klein's wing to produce Holy Mountain, Klein instead would release the film under his own ABKCO Films rather than Apple (and would subsequently hold the film in hostage purgatory for over 30 years after Jodorowsky refused the request to make Story of O).

In the end, Apple Films only produced two narrative features, both released in 1974, and neither one particularly successful, as Apple was then at the culmination of the years-long lawsuit between the Beatles' members, and the entire operation was subject to neglect. 



This cult item would become as obscure yet notorious as Jodorowsky's unavailable films.  At the time, it received only a limited release, largely confined to festivals, but received enormous critical acclaim.  George Harrison, in particular, took a hands-on active role with the production, and this would preclude his further film interest in Handmade Films, which would result in several excellent British independent features through the 1980s.  Little Malcolm, a very British satire of political virility, could be considered a proto-Handmade classic, an orphan perhaps, but a film which was, along with the Jodorowsky catalogue, a welcome rediscovery for modern preservation media.




This film is more of a cult item for worse reasons.  We've all heard about John Lennon's "lost weekend", and here's all of his party pals from the time - Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Leon Russell - making a rather indulgent farce directed by Hammer veteran Freddie Francis, who eventually allowed Ringo to edit the final cut himself.  The film is essentially in bootleg territory, although the soundtrack (with additions of George Harrison, Peter Frampton, Nicky Hopkins and the Rolling Stones brass section) has been more successful.
 

In terms of heist pictures of the time, this might be enjoyable enough but settles somewhere beneath its peers like Brinks Job or Hot Rock.  Certainly we're not getting any Dog Day Afternoon here.  Is it even as clever as 11 Harrowhouse?  How much did leaded gasoline really have to do with these schemes?




This critically reviled film is at least admirably provocative.  George C. Scott self-directing with his real-life wife, using a stranded family situation for an Oedipal conceit.  I'm not sure how much of the critical pushback was based on puritan reflexes, but clearly the problem lies with the casting of the young actor John David Carson, who is ill-equipped for the material.  I'm sure someone like Jeff Bridges or Timothy Bottoms may have been more successful.




Speaking of this recent Speak No Evil bullshit, where some people find incisive social commentary in the goading and torture of the naive or overly polite people among us, exposing our bourgeois something or other that some liberals like to masochistically gaslight themselves into believing so they can live with their secret sadistic urges, we don't even need to go all the way back to Straw Dogs to fundamentally root out that lame atavistic hangup.  Right cheer. we got a solid exploitation flick which unspools the entire thread of vicarious antagonism which these newbie critics don't seem to want to understand.  I may not be a catcher in the rye, folks, but here I'm riding with my man God Damn Holden (don't ask him about Kuala Lumpur).  Deliverance, Death Wish and Deer Hunter rolled into one nasty little apparently necessary package.
 

Rock wrote:

Didn’t realize Scott and Van Devere were married. Must have been right after The Last Run. That one is worth a look if you haven’t seen it. Richard Fleischer doing a sort of existential European crime film.

Apparently they fell in love while making the film.  Wild behind the scenes stories for that one.  John Huston walked off the set and so did the original actress.  Scott wanted Bonnie Bedelia and got Van Devere instead.

I thought the film was OK, but better than the critics at the time apparently.

How many films are left?



There's a pretty good reason why this film tends to show up at the bottom of most people's list of favorite James Bond films.




Watched this as some kind of in-class consolation for those who didn't bother to read the god-awful book.  Whatever.  It is what it is.  An Appalachain tale of root-farmers and herb-sheperds.  I was bored by both mediums.




Best known these days as the film which Madonna decided to remake as a vanity project.  The original is obviously much better, a pretty good comedy, but for my money, still my favorite "couple on a stranded isle" film has to be Nicolas Roeg's Castaway.




One of those films that's much more impressive before you're old enough to understand the point of production values.




A man died believing in this.




Honestly a pretty entertaining picture, as old-fashioned as it is.




Act like you didn't cry.




Good movie somewhat overshadowed now because Henry Winkler would become the "Fonz" based on this, and Sylvester Stallone famously had Richard Gere fired from the production for spilling chicken grease/mustard on Sly's pants, and leading Stallone, if he is to be believed, to start a rumor concerning Gere's prediliction for a certain small vermin.