1959 Miami mob series centered around a fictional Miami Beach Hotel resembling Fontainebleau/Edenroc. Mentions Wolfie's Deli RIP.
On oldie but a goodie. Same director who did Agora, which should be less obscure IMO, and is particularly relevant for our times.
I liked it, the ending was a little conventional, but I liked the misdirection and jumping around in the build up. Some good laugh out loud parts too, Justin Long always plays an excellent douche bag.
Ending was pretty cheesy but I loved the song they chose as the credits rolled. Very cool three part movie set up and unique plot for horror.
In the theater after the credits, there was a short documentary on how Peter Jackson made the movie, which is really fascinating. Don’t know if it’s on the prime version. One humorous thing is they came down to the deadline to finish and realized they didn’t have music for the credits. They wanted to sing a World War I song, but didn’t want New Zealand voices singing it. They only had one day to finish. Jackson called the British ambassador to New Zealand who put out an emergency email to all staff recruiting men with good voices for an urgent mission. So the guys singing Mademoiselle from Armentieres in the final credits were British embassy employees.
Saw Whale last night on one of the movie platforms. Really liked it. Was about real humans. I second the recommendation on They Shall not Grow Old. The fortitude of those guys was amazing.
Going back through this thread to see movies to watch, I saw your recommendation here. If you haven’t seen it, you also might like the Russian movie Dersu Uzala (1975 version). It is the story of a Russian captain of an expedition, who was rescued by a Siberian hunter. It is based on the captain’s writings and was directed by the great Japanese director Kurosawa (Seven Samurai and Rashomon). Fabulous scenery and a compelling story. It’s not available on prime, but I think you can watch it on YouTube.
A Finnish film: Cuckoo is one of my faves. Russia invaded Finland. A woman takes in a wounded soldier from each side. A Russian film: Burnt by the Sun is great. What happens when you believe in something too much - the Revolution. Those two may be hard to find - I have a Finnish friend who loaned them to me. Also, thought The Lives of Others was great. Cold War and E. German security officer who leads a bleak existence is assigned to spy on dissidents who read banned books, have prohibited conversations, drink wine, make love and generally have a hell of a good time and its effects on him. More recent film and you have a chance of finding it.
My son and I stumbled across a Norwegian World War II movie last week: The 12th Man. It’s based on a true story of a Norwegian resistance team who went from London to carry out sabotage on the Nazis in Norway. The story is really the saga of the leader of the squad being helped by locals as he crossed from one side of Norway to the other to reach neutral Sweden. A Finnish movie I saw decades ago was The Winter War. It was about the Finns holding off the Russians in WWII for an unbelievable amount of time. I happened to see the movie while I lived in Belgium, which meant the subtitles were in Dutch and not English. I was surprised how much what was on the screen spoke for itself in following the story. The Dawns Here Are Quiet is a story of a squadron of Russian women soldiers manning an anti-aircraft unit in World War II, when German saboteurs parachute in. I liked both versions: 1972 and 2015. IMDB rates the 1972 version higher. Edit: corrected Finnish to Norwegian for The 12th Man.
I recently watched The Death of Stalin. It’s a hilarious satire with some well known actors in it. It’s kind of campy in parts, but as bazaar as life in the political world of the Soviet Union was back then, it also seems believable.
Other country's WWII movies are always interesting, and they often pop up on Netflix or Prime. I remember watching a Danish one (April 9th) about what was one of the first "battles" of WWII in the West, very different than an American movie. There was a Norwegian one called Narvik too that was pretty similar. When you have to mine drama out of defeat and resistance, I suppose that makes things different than American movies about total victory. 12th man is good, but I believe it was also Norwegian, not Finnish.
