I didn’t have much luck with the movies I saw in theaters this week and that’s including skipping Pixels. I caught screenings of Southpaw (read the review here), Paper Towns (read the review here) and Vacation (review coming next week), but at home I had a little better luck, though I only watched one “new” film… new to me that is.
In preparation for tomorrow night’s screening of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, my wife and I watched Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible II, two films I like and yes, that even means I enjoy M:I 2 on some level, mainly on a level that I take enjoyment out of John Woo’s ridiculous direction while, at the same time, I’m able to recognize it’s a pretty bad movie. We watched Mission: Impossible III rather recently so tonight might be Ghost Protocol… we’ll see.
The other film I watched was Nicholas Ray‘s In a Lonely Place (1950) starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. I recently received Criterion’s new Blu-ray release of Night and the City and felt in the mood to watch a few film noir features. I started with Eddie Muller’s list of top 25 film noir features and In a Lonely Place topped the list… I’m not sure it would top my own personal list, especially given several of the other selections even on Muller’s from Sweet Smell of Success, Out of the Past, Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, not to mention the fact there are several others I’ve yet to see.
