As I've aged, I'm preferring more and more a movie that can engage my mind more with dialogue - good dialogue - to entertain me versus a movie with just non-stop shoot'em up action.
There's a place for action movies in my life, but I'll take the likes of Casablanca or the Maltese Falcon over The Avengers or whatever the next superhero flavor movie of the month is out.
Amen to that, and I agree completely.
I'll add The Third Man (a stunning movie) to your excellent list.
Trying to watch
Tulip Fever (2017). Obsession, corruption, deception... what's not to like and there's even more ahead I guess since I've not finished watching it yet.
Well it has its moments, some of them fairly acrobatic and not about tulips at all, hence the R rating I suppose, and some quite comical moments as well, but it has given me more than a few episodes of something that feels a lot like attention deficit disorder. In fact I have more than a slight feeling I should have thrown caution to the winds and read some reviews first. Oh well.
The film does convey the insanity of the tulip craze in the Holland of the late 1630s, and the flowers, when we get to focus on them, are sumptuous. Judi Dench is wonderful and hilarious as the Abbess of a convent caught up in the escalating gains and risks of tulip mania. I'm not really spoiling anything at all when I note in passing the remarks exchanged by two guys scaling the walls of the convent at night to get into the courtyard gardens in order to try to lift some valuable tulip bulbs. The bit was fun and was enough to carry me to the next scenes anyway.
"What is this place anyway?"
"A convent."
"We're stealing from nuns?"
"The tulips don't belong to them."
"Whose are they then?"
"Well... they belong to the pope I suppose."
"Ah well then, I don't mind stealing from the pope."
Sounds fascinating.
If this topic interests you, might I take the liberty of recommending Mike Dash's brilliant book Tulipomania for a very well written and most enjoyable history of that era, a book that deals with this topic, (and one that is blessed with beautiful illustrations as well).
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Brilliant.
I hope you can forgive me quoting myself but I mention this post because the DVD set I bought was flawed! bah! 1st world problems. So my copy of Kind Hearts and Coronets is damaged and won't completely play the whole film. I rented it from iTunes.
In a word, brilliant!
Last night, I went hunting for my own DVD of Kind Hearts and Coronets, as that was exactly what I craved, clever, biting, bitter, brilliant, cynical and hilarious; I couldn't find it and have a horrid sinking feeling I gave it to someone and it has never been returned.
Oh, well; I have ordered a fresh set of Ealing Comedies - timeless and brilliant.
Re Quentin Tarantino, I thought Pulp Fiction clever and savagely funny, cynically amoral, but brilliantly well made, with a superb cast, stunning soundtrack, and breath-taking dialogue.
I loved Jackie Brown - it is still probably my favourite QT movie (by a considerable margin), a superb story brilliantly told with an amazing cast, great dialogue and - again - an awesome soundtrack.
A middle-aged lead, a middle-aged female lead, a middle-aged black female lead - what is there not to like? - and a lovely take on middle-aged - understated and unspoken - bittersweet, but lovely - attraction and romance.
And yes, I enjoyed Django Unchained.
Much of the rest of the oeuvre, I can take or leave, but I am with
@kazmac in my reverence for classic spaghetti westerns and their venerable Asian ancestors.
