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Within Our Gates (1920)
Within Our Gates (1920)
1920 | Classics, Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Because that’s what I’ve got on my mind, at the top of the list is an Oscar Micheaux film. Oscar Micheaux was just a legendary figure, especially among African-Americans. And fortunately, because we’ve been able to recover his silent films, he now has a place in general film history. Within Our Gates, like many of his films, really deliberately and explicitly takes up questions of racial politics in America. The film is about a woman named Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) who is a teacher and she goes up north to try to raise money for this small black school, the Piney Woods School, which was an actual full black school that still exists. We experience what she does in terms of the feeling of isolation that many people who moved from the south to the north felt. She’s escaping a really traumatic family history of violence in the south. The film represents lynching and the attempted rape of black women. Micheaux was just really out there in terms of showing the ugliest aspects of racism in America. He had very clear ideas about the way forward and how education uplifts the right living. These are the things that he felt were keys to black success. He’s a filmmaker whose films still spark really powerful debates today. Amazingly, this film had been lost for decades, and it was found in an archive in Spain. It had been there for decades. It was a title that just wasn’t recognizable to scholars who know Micheaux’s work. In the 1990s, the film was repatriated to the United States and restored. The inner titles had to be translated back from Spanish into English. In addition, it’s just the visual and the narrative power of film itself. It’s a real lesson for us to work hard to try to recover these lost works."

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    8mm Vintage Camera

    8mm Vintage Camera

    Photo & Video and Lifestyle

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    AN OSCAR WORTHY APP - 8mm was used by director Malik Bendjelloul in his Oscar-winning film...

The Outlaw and his Wife (1918)
The Outlaw and his Wife (1918)
1918 | Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Interrupted by the arrival of the talkies, the oeuvre of Victor Sjöström remains one of the summits of silent cinema. Even if we no longer pay too close attention to The Wind, despite it having been regarded for so long as one of the masterpieces of film history; as also the lesser known The Phantom Carriage, despite it having been a foundational inspiration to Ingmar Bergman, who watched it ritually every year; and even if he is most often remembered for his role in Wild Strawberries; Victor Sjöström is the auteur of a visionary and profound body of work, that makes him equal to his great contemporaries Dreyer and Murnau. For my part, it is The Outlaw and His Wife, inspired by the true story of an 18th-century Icelandic outlaw played in the film by Sjöström himself, which has left the most indelible mark on me."

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The Great Race (1965)
The Great Race (1965)
1965 | Action, Classics, Comedy
8
8.5 (6 Ratings)
Movie Rating
A fun throwback to 1920's Silent Film Farces
In a tribute to films of a bygone era, Director Blake Edwards pays homage to silent film farces of the 1920's - even dedicating this film to "Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy" - with the slapstick comedy THE GREAT RACE - and succeeds, mostly.

Reteaming Tony Curtis (as the brave, virtuous and good "The Great Leslie") and Jack Lemmon (as the sinister, dastardly and evil "Professor Fate"), The Great Race is great fun watching these two cartoon characters spar and parry with each other throughout the course of this 2 hour and 40 minute farce.

Lemmon, in particular, relishes in dual roles as the menacing Fate, always dressed in black, twirling his mustache and coming up with scheme after scheme to derail Leslie (think the Coyote in the RoadRunner cartoons). His overacting and hammyness in the character is perfect for the tone that this film has set. And his maniacal laugh is one to remember - unless you are remembering the childlike guffaws of the other character Lemmon portrays, the doppelganger of Fate, Crown Prince Frederick. Both these characters are fun to watch and Fate, especially, plays well against his bumbling assistant and foil, "Max", played in utter buffoonishness by the great Peter Falk.

Joining Curtis for the "good guys" is Natalie Wood as Suffragette and Newspaper
Reporter Maggie DuBois (obviously tailored after real life Suffragette and Newspaper Reporter Nellie Bly). It is said that Curtis and Wood did not get along on set (they had worked together in 2 other films and grew to dislike each other), but their on-screen chemistry cannot be ignored and they are fun together. As is the great Keenan Wynn as Leslie's mechanic and friend Hezekiah Sturdy.

But it is not the characters that makes this film go it is the set pieces and frenetic pacing that Director Edwards put before us. From thrilling chase scenes to a Western barroom brawl, to a trip through a blizzard with a polar bear to the "largest pie fight ever put on screen", this film delivers the goods in a wholesome, 1960's way that makes me truly say...

"They don't make 'em like this anymore".

8 out 10 stars and you can take that to the Bank (ofMarquis)
  
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Steve Fearon (84 KP) rated Ruin Me (2017) in Movies

Sep 9, 2018 (Updated Sep 9, 2018)  
Ruin Me (2017)
Ruin Me (2017)
2017 | Horror
6
6.5 (2 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Campy, cheesy fun (1 more)
Good pacing
Predictable (1 more)
Some iffy acting
Low budget meta horror
Contains spoilers, click to show
Shudder exclusive 'ruin me' runs a similar line to 'Fear Inc' or 'Hellhouse LLC', with a meta horror experience blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

The cast is a mix of early 2000s tropes, the goth couple, the chubby film nerd, the silent loner etc on a slasher themed survival weekend where events take a turn for the bloody.

They twist and turn a few times, toying with the viewer using an unreliable narrator, our protagonist Alex, whom you aren't ever really sure is in the real world.

Not much will surprise you, but it is a fun trope laden film with no real pretence of being anything other than it is...a low budget meta slasher.

Not a bad 90 mins though, and it's watchable enough so long as you don't mind the sometimes clunky humour and meta elements getting front and centre.