Casablanca

[HalfMercy]

So I finally got around to watching this cinematic legend and, while I think it was a good movie and would recommend it to any silver screen fans, I don't think Casablanca is quite the timeless classic its been made out to be. Has anyone else seen this? I'm really interested to hear what other people's opinions are on this movie. I love watching Bogie just because he was so obnoxious. I enjoy seeing how other actors and actresses interacted with and played off him. Besides that, I just enjoy older movies in general. To be honest though, I have no idea how "Here's lookin at you, kid." became a decades-long quotable quote. I know lingo was different back then but IMO this line sounded awful even coming from Bogart's mouth (ditto for when he kept calling Lauren Bacall "Slim" in To Have And Have Not"). What grown woman wants to be called "kid" by her man? Lol...

[TrailMyx]

I have this problem with many older movies.  I guess "cheese" and poor dialog was more acceptable back in the day.  I can't get through most of the older ones anymore without rolling my eyes at least a couple times per movie.  Honestly, I haven't been thrilled with much of anything old and new lately.  I can't remember the last movie that I'd call a "favorite" these days.  I look back on the reviews here and can't seem to find what I found before.  Probably just my state of mind these days.

[HalfMercy]

I hear you! A lot of movies these days are either obvious remakes or the sneakier kind that don't actually give credit to the original they've stolen from. I watch a lot of films with my wife that I can identify as stolen from an older film but they're often ones she never heard of or watched. And new films for a variety of reasons don't often please me, though the details of that statement are too long to discuss here.

When I read what you said about older movies (and you're spot on about poor dialogue being rampant) I first thought of some Vincent Price films as good classics. Have you ever seen Diary of a Madman? It's an excellent horror movie based on the short story "The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant.

For newer movies (and by newer I only mean not silver screen, because my concept and tracking of time is very bad ) let me recommend Once Were Warriors to you. It's a foreign film, offbeat for an American audience but very powerful.

I'm not certain how much our taste in movies align, TrailMyx, so I'll leave my recommendations at that for now. Hopefully we can revive that lost love of films, haha

[TrailMyx]

I'll take a look at your recommendations.  I find anymore that I only attract to movies that go above and beyond expectations, or are surprises.  So that right there limits me because everything is so formulated or comes out of the Holywood cloning process.  Probably the last surprise for me was Hot Fuzz.  It's a silly movie, but I found it really entertaining.  I've always hugely enjoyed the friendship chemistry of Pegg/Frost, plus I've been a fan of the BBC series "Spaced".  But gems like this one are few/far between now.

[HalfMercy]

You're right... that's true in film, games, any industry really... The up - and - coming companies just want to get rich and they do that by modeling themselves after previous successes so originality suffers. Then again, original crap is still crap lol... it has to be GOOD too. The Matrix blew my mind. So did Identity and Crash. I thought that Tobey Maguire's first Spiderman elevated superhero movies exponentially. You do start to crave that "Wow, I never could have seen that coming" feeling.... I've never seen Hot Fuzz or Spaced but I'll check them out on your recommendation, thanks!