CM&C:XCIX Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent. Alfred Hitchcock. 1940. ★★★★☆☆

I think I’ve seen most of Hitchcock’s post WWII movies, but very few of the earlier ones. I had forgotten I had bought a couple of box sets of the early ones, but I found them today. Just in time for the penultimate CM&C.

But it was a bit disappointing. It has lots of nice technical stuff going on, but the tension collapses all the time. Hitchcock reused some of the plot elements to great effect in the 50s.

Frozen Banana Daquiri: 😃

CM&C:XCVI A History of Violence

A History of Violence. David Cronenberg. 2005. ★★★☆☆☆

Look at this list of movies: Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, Crash, eXistenZ.

Not only are they all excellent and fascinating — they’re also thematically consistent, sort of. Cronenberg had some obsessions, and he wasn’t shy about putting them on the screen.

And then what happened? I haven’t seen all of his post-eXistenZ movies, but the ones I’ve seen have basically been competent and somewhat boring. And they have nothing in common with all of his previous movies.

What happened? Did he just get over it? Go for the money? What?

This movie has a surprising budget of $33M. And you can see exactly none of it on the screen.

Rum Smash: 😃

CM&C:XCV Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino. 2009. ★★★☆☆☆

Not so much a movie as a collection of “cool scenes”. If the scenes that didn’t work (the cellar scene, for instance, which went on for 253 minutes (I timed it!)) had been edited out, it might have been a good movie. But how many “does the Nazi know!11!!ONE!!!” scenes can you sit through?

But the ending was pretty good.

Bourbon Crusta: 😃

Brandy Crusta: 😃