Cmonnn man.... Dog Day is like a top 50 all time film in history. Pelham is not, although it's very fun to watch and a great movie.. more fun to watch than Dog Day, but that doesn't make it the better film. Btw... incredible to think that Lumet made Dog Day then the very next year Network. Two flawless masterpieces in a row.
Nah I'm a hardcore Pelham fan. Never understood the rating of DDA. Watched it once and that was it. Pelham I can watch any night of the week....in fact I might do tonight.
Pelham is one of my favorites for many reasons but Dog Day is plainly a more substantial work of art ... clearly a better film
Exactly. You gotta stay objective when rating films. I mean... The Poseidon Adenture is more fun to watch than Chinatown... but what's the better film?
Re-watched Taking Of Pelham 123 at the weekend - really good movie, even if the plausibility isn't there (caused by non-compliance of the NY Transit Authority). The pace of it just works perfectly. Why it scores over Dog Day Afternoon, for me - is it's lack of 'social comnmentary' and anti-estabkishment message that the latter bases a lot of its popularity on....
It's a fairly shallow film... excellent suspense and great performances from Shaw and Matthau but it's entertainment more than anything DDA is far more human, an objectively deeper film ... I don't think there's any overarching anti-establishment theme to it ... that's but one facet of Sonny's desperate and conflicted personality ... if anything that's what the film is about, the bank robbers not as crafty, nerveless sociopathic operators but as what such criminals just as often are - desperate, clumsy, terrified, uncertain, completely unsophisticated, human
I love Taking, I've loved it since I was a little kid... it's ridiculously watchable and it's a good movie but I don't think it's a great movie, it doesn't have much weight
Intro, Soundtrack, Characters, Storyline, Ending, all brilliant. The mark of a great movie, like Goodfellas, is, as Bill Burr said, is that the movie in question is just one long line of watchable scenes. Most movies I will record and then watch with the remote in my hand, ready to fast forward a sex scene, or some woke bullshit, or an unbelievably unbelievable scene where some really preposterous bullshit goes down like a cop walking in off the street and throwing his badge at his boss. Like come on. You don't get that with great movies like Serpico, Goodfellas, P123, Raging Bull etc. It doesn't hurt that these are all NYC movies but that's incidental. In Pelham....right from the get go.......your attention is held. The way the music just kicks in, heavy.....you know your time isn't being wasted. This isn't some half-assed production. The bad guys have good points., the good guys are all flawed, nobody is really wrong. Everybody fucks up. Not once scene occurs that you can dismiss or pass over. Garber showing the Jap Metro guys around is a howl in itself. Chico.....says they are going to fly the train to Cuba. The Mayor.....sick in bed. Garber meeting Inspector Daniels whom he says sounded "taller"......the guys on the bikes racing the cash to the subway......Kaz Dolowicz running around swearing people out. There isn't one shitty character, there isn't one wasted scene. Even the Mayors Aide is worth watching. Same with Serpico. There must be 50 identifiable characters with significant scenes and lines. Key Largo is the same. You got a scene with 3 guys and a dame in a dilapidated hotel.....but it holds your attention. Some fat guy is stood there with his shirt open sweating....and as the viewer you are convinced that something epic is about to be said or done and you need to see it. Not everything old and star-laden is good, of course. "The Battle Of the Bulge" was utter shite. It was laden with massive names......Telly Savalas, Robert Shaw, Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson. But it was shit. It wasn't filmed on location, it was filmed in Italy or on some really poor studio sets. The gear was all totally wrong, they had American tanks masquerading as Germans........it was woefully inaccurate from a historical point of view and it tried to be all things to everybody, a fact shamelessly admitted at the end where they say the intention was to honour everyone who took part in the Battle by covering all their stories in a sort of a melting-pot way. A Bridge Too Far got it right. Load of star names, total attention to detail, load of different characters each of them memorable and they had their own scenes. Battle of Britain the same.......Lawrence Olivier should have gotten an Oscar. Today Hugh Dowding would be presented as some sort of a kick-ass, gung-ho, type of dude and not the shy, worried, retiring guy that he really was. I went through tonights TV and eventually just settled for 2 episodes of Family Guy. Everything else was crap.
MUM: "We're ALL GONNA DIE" Kid on Right: "WE'RE GONNA DIE" Kid on Left: ......."OH MY GOD HUT HASN'T SEEN ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME YET!!!"
I used to play this in work via my phone onto my UE Megaboom. There was a black guy called Eugene who looked at me and would smirk because he just found all of my music amusing. What cracked me up was he walked and jived EXACTLY like the black guy that Mr Blue encounters at the very start of the movie. He didn't get why I would always laugh when I saw him laughing. Quality is shit but 6:17 is when the Sun starts to set. :)
The score by David Shire is one of my favorites... a menacing, jazzy, brassy, angular 12-Tone extravaganza... perfectly captures the hustle and bustle and grit
Agreed, Pelham is more of a "fun" film, but DDA is an ATG one. DDA also features one of the single greatest performances in the entire history of cinema from a young Pacino.
