The Gauntlet

Oh, directed by Clint!

This isn’t a movie I would have chosen in a million years, but if she says it’s good, I’ll give it a go.

It is a confusing movie. I mean, it’s not “serious”, but it’s not overtly a comedy, either. And Clint plays a guy that both seems extremely competent and who is also a complete moron.

He has the other characters be really vile — at length — and it’s not quite clear what Clint is going for. Does he want the audience to laugh at the guys running off their mouths? Laugh with them? It’s just odd.

OK, he’s the dumbo and she’s the smart cookie.

Yeah, this isn’t a well-liked movie. I mean, by the common people. I don’t think the movie quite works…

I mean, it’s basically a parody on this kind of movie, but it’s also very much this kind of movie at the same time.

The character development scenes are brutally boring.

(And Clint has the cinematographer do some really awkward scenes, like here.)

It’s just such an odd and awkward movie. Clint had directed several movies by this point — he should have been able to make a movie that made more sense than this.

The last ten minutes is just this bus driving very slowly while cops shoot at it. I guess it’s meant to be funny? But but but it’s not.

And then the cops just let him do whatever he wants because cops are good at heart, or something.

It doesn’t work as a comedy, and it doesn’t work as an action movie.

The Gauntlet. Clint Eastwood. 1977. ⚁

Hester Street

I’m not totally sure why I bought this movie… it might be because I quite liked Crossing Delancey (by the same director).

Because it can’t be because of this tweet from March, because I didn’t follow Hazel Flagg back then.

This Blu-ray has been over-restored, perhaps, by the Cohen Film Group. It kinda feels like everything is a bit too sharp? Sharper than it should be?

All the sound is flown in. That is, it doesn’t seem like Micklin Silver had any microphones while filming, so all the voices are dubbed in, and the other sounds a foley. Over-foleyed, really — you can just picture the guys in the sound dept crunching things and moving shoes around.

Man, immigration those days was lax.

Well, that explains the wig; I was wondering. Did they really have wigs that big in those days? (I mean, I know about the Orthodox thing…)

Oh… is that Carol Kane!?

Oh yeah! I guess it is!?

She’s great here. The other actors, though… very variable.

Wise words.

But… er… I’m not really feeling this movie? There’s too many hokey performances and while the plot seems pretty interesting, really, the execution just isn’t that riveting.

I mean, I love Carol Kane here, and it’s kinda interesting. But it’s just hard to keep paying attention, because it’s just … altogether successful.

Hester Street. Joan Micklin Silver. 1975. ⚂

Foul Play

This is very dark… I just upgraded the TV computer, and it’s now using the nouveau driver instead of the proprietary Nvidia driver. And this is a 4K movie. Is it doing the mapping wrong?

It looks OK when it’s lighter…

That definitely has more colour than what I’m watching… Let’s try to go back to the Nvidia driver…

YES! COLOURS!!!

Geez; it’s really the year of Linux on the TV, isn’t it?

I’ve missed Goldie Hawn without knowing it.

I guess I don’t watch many, er, more commercial movies from the 70s? I’m born in 1968, so I didn’t see movies like this the first time around, and by the time I was old enough, I guess they seemed kinda outdated and slightly embarrassing? (While 50s movies were cool.)

And I’ve never really fixed that… I mean, I’ve seen all the “serious” 70s movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched this, for instance. And Hazel Flagg is big on 70s, so that’s fun — I’m catching up on things I didn’t even know I wanted to watch.

Because this is a really fun movie.

See? She agrees with me, too!

That’s the 70s, alright!

NOO A BATHROOM MIRROR

Heh heh, as teenagers while watching movies, we’d always start holding our hands in front of our faces whenever a bathroom mirror showed up, because we knew that there’d be a jump scare.

And there was one here, too!

I’m glad I had my hands up in time.

Oh, villains!

Oh, the director has only done three movies. There were all really successful commercially, I think? OK, the last one didn’t do fantastic, but…

This was very funny for the first half, but then it get a bit more bogged down into the plot and goes for a romance thing between Hawn and Chase, and I’m not sure that’s totally convincing?

But I mean, it’s still fun.

I tried out my new LLM-powered actor identification thing… I guess that’s right?

That looks correct, too! Wow.

Hey! No engravings! No “Anti-POPE”?!

OK, I didn’t watch this in the most optimal way — I was distracted by testing out various technical things here…

But I enjoyed watching this a lot. But I’m guessing this will never have a revival — it relies on clichés (both overt and not) to an unprecedented degree. Sure, the albino evil guy — that’s them having fun with clichés. But then there’s the strident feminist, the small person abuse played for laughs only, the (admittedly very exciting) car chase in San Francisco, the blonde being extremely ditzy… Every little thing.

But it’s funny.

Foul Play. Colin Higgins. 1978. ⚄