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Post by Aurelia on Jul 14, 2020 8:51:59 GMT -5
I'm curious as to what films with historical premises/settings you would recommend... and which you would decry! The ranking system is as follows:  = Great! / Highly recommend  = Good! / Worth a watch  = Okay... ish  = A bit of a mixed bag  = Rather painful to watch  = Watching will fill you with rage... Okay, go! |
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Post by Aurelia on Jul 14, 2020 8:57:10 GMT -5
"The Great" - on Hulu. (Based on Catherine the Great's life). Rating: / DON'T DO IT. I decided to watch a couple of episodes to see how the costuming was - they were mostly... uninspiring. The plot / dialogue / divergence from almost all historical fact made it extremely painful to watch. The amount of modern slang used was enraging. The acting was vacuous... almost a bad parody of itself.  |
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Post by Woland on Jul 15, 2020 6:41:03 GMT -5
Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 & 2:
Filmed in Kazakhstan during the Second World War, Joseph Stalin wanted a propaganda piece to justify his autocratic rule, he picked Sergei Eisenstein to film a trilogy on Tsar Ivan IV. Part 2 was initially banned, later released after Stalin's death, Part 3 was never finished. Often considered a film school classic, the opulent costumes, set designs and lighting as reflection of Ivan's paranoia provide stunning images, the exaggerated acting makes the film unintentionally hilarious in places. Part one is more straightfoward biopic from Ivan's coronation, the conquest of Kazan and his temporary abdication. Part two concentrates on a plot to assassinate him, the oprichniki and a glimpse at Ivan's childhood. Works as psychological expressionism, just don't expect subtlety.
Ivan's coronation
Ivan playing chess
The Polish court
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Post by Aurelia on Jul 20, 2020 9:43:28 GMT -5
"The Alienist" - TNT and Hulu. Rating: Warning: some of the themes in this series may be a bit too gruesome for certain viewers, as the series focuses on a series of sexually motivated child killings... The show is amazing - in it's beautifully realized interpretation of New York in the 1980's and while the story is not true, it includes many accurate backstories to historical figures (Theodore Roosevelt makes a cameo). It's a pretty dark, psychological thriller / crime series... It deals with many of the cultural elements that would have been in play at the time, like childhood / lack thereof due to trauma, the reaction to women in workplaces, the reaction of New Yorkers to the influx of immigrants... it also touches on some that we rarely think about today, such as the prevalence and social stigma of syphilis. The costuming is impeccable - not overstated or too modernized. The acting is superb. You feel like you are given window to actually see the past, due to the level of accuracy and integrity involved in creating the series.  |
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Post by Woland on Jul 24, 2020 19:36:34 GMT -5
The Conqueror (1956)
John Wayne as Genghis Khan. One of the most unintentionally hilarious films you'll ever see.
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Post by Woland on Aug 2, 2020 16:08:51 GMT -5
Chinatown (1974): "Chinatown" follows private investigator Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) through a labyrinthine plot connected to water in 1930's Los Angeles. Evoking film noirs of a bygone era, the screenplay is a model of near perfection, a standard in screenwriting classes. Jack Nicholson was so pleased with his performance he wanted J.J Gittes to be the only detective he played, Faye Dunaway and John Huston provide strong supporting roles while Roman Polanski (his last film in America before his conviction) tells the story from Jake's perspective, letting the audience learn clues with the protagonist. Not the most historically accurate movie in the world, it's one of the high points of Hollywood cinema in the 1970s.
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Post by andrew on Sept 22, 2020 15:29:52 GMT -5
Spartacus - Blood and Porn Sand I mean, it's quite silly in that over-the-top "300" kind of way. But.....! The writing is good. The casting was very good - there are very few poor performances among the actors. The sub-plots are great. The frequent violent death is always creative. And there's Lucy (F)Lawless, who gets all kinds of naked on a regular basis. There's nothing not to like really. |
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Post by andrew on Sept 29, 2020 11:18:49 GMT -5
And speaking of ancient Rome, I just stumbled upon the 2002 Made-For-TV "Julius Caesar" with Christopher Walken in the unlikely role of Cato the Younger. Overall, it was pretty good, though it spent a little too much time with Vercingetorix and not enough on the political maneuverings. Good beer and pretzels stuff.
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Post by Woland on Nov 19, 2020 18:28:39 GMT -5
War and Peace (1956)
Truncating a 1,000 page novel into a 3.5 hour long movie is a difficult task, the first major Hollywood version of Tolstoy's epic faced even more obstacles: an American-Italian co-production with 2 sets of producers to please, two directors, no less than 6 screenwriters worked on the script. All those deficiencies taken into consideration, the finished article is still a lousy film, a type of "Gone With The Wind" in Italy complete with poor dubbing and a dull Nino Rota soundtrack.
Out of the three leads Audrey Hepburn is the tallest dwarf, her real-life husband Mel Ferrer is horrifically wooden, Henry Fonda woefully miscast. The supporting actors are a mixed bunch, the only real positive of the movie is Jack Cardiff's cinematography, the Battle of Borodino and the ballroom sequences are dim highlights in what is essentially an emotionally vacant series of scenes from the novel. Very little of the subtleties or sweeping depth of the novel is reflected in this film version, for that Bondarchuk's 6 hour epic is a better bet.
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Post by andrew on Dec 3, 2020 11:39:27 GMT -5
In recent months I've been enjoying a number of European, mostly Russian, war movies and TV series and miniseries. The very different perspective they have of the second world war makes for some original story lines you just don't see in Hollywood offerings. One of the ones I found most engaging was the four-part 2015 miniseries "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" (А зори здесь тихие), itself based on a 1969 novel.
In a backwater zone in Karelia, Sgt Major Vaskov is posted to command an anti-aircraft battery in a village where all the men have gone off to war. When his soldiers with too much time and too much vodka continue to make trouble he has them shipped to the front and requests a new draft - preferably of non-drinking eunuchs. Command sends him a replacement draft of women instead, but when German saboteurs are spotted in the woods he must take an ad hoc patrol of five girls to hunt them down... Some very good acting all around.
There is also a 1972 movie which was nominated for a Best Foreign Picture Oscar, but I haven't tracked that one down yet.
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= Great! / Highly recommend
= Good! / Worth a watch
= Okay... ish
= A bit of a mixed bag
= Rather painful to watch
= Watching will fill you with rage...
