What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Zombie_61]

^^^Watched The Adams Family, loved Carolyn Jones. An exquisite beautiful rose.

That makes two of us. I saw John Astin at a convention once, and he said she was just a wonderful person. He said she would regularly "hold court" between takes, entertaining the cast and crew with a joke or a story, knew EVERYONE by name, and she made it easy for him to "act" like he was in love with her.

 

[Fading Fast]

That makes two of us. I saw John Astin at a convention once, and he said she was just a wonderful person. He said she would regularly "hold court" between takes, entertaining the cast and crew with a joke or a story, knew EVERYONE by name, and she made it easy for him to "act" like he was in love with her.

⇧ Good story. She's an enjoyable actress whose unconventional looks have put her in some neat roles. She brings a lot of spark as the "free spirit" girl in an okay Frank Sinatra movie "A Hole in the Head." (Comments here: #23948)

 

[Trenchfriend]

The Dressmaker (2015), yesterday.

What the hell was that??

 

[Trenchfriend]

I'm in the mood for something cold, grim, creepy and freakin' military, so Aliens, right now.

Special Editon/Director's Cut.

 

[belfastboy]

Spent the $7 last night and rented "Nomadland". I love Chloe Zhao's work. Her two previous films were true gems. I feared watching this one as I am invariably disappointed watching a film that receives so much acclaim. Had I 'discovered' this film I think I would have enjoyed it more....as it was I found it wanting. I thought it emotionally diffident, the characters not well formed but just hinted at. Can't really put my finger on it but overall a disappointment but not a total waste of time and $7.

 

[Fading Fast]

I Want to Live! from 1958 with Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent and Theodore Bikel.

This movie is a fictionalized version of real-world events.

I Want to Live! opens in a smokey jazz club where an old, heavy-set man serves his much younger "girlfriend" a boiler maker and then aggressively puts his arm around her. Okay, got it, this is not Rick's Cafe Americana, nor is this a regular Motion Picture Production Code movie.

Movies were changing by the late fifties as filmmakers kept pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. Jazz, too, was making its impact helping instill an edgier and more-stylish look and sound to films like I Want to Live!

Susan Hayward plays a party girl prostitute (at least sometimes) and general grifter who is dishonest, immoral and slatternly. She's a female character rarely shown on screen since the Motion Picture Production Code took hold in the mid thirties and almost never shown this graphically (or, as later in the movie, sympathetically).

After she is charged with committing a violent murder, it's breaking with all we've been taught by motion pictures for the past several decades when we are led to believe she is innocent. (My, admittedly, limited internet research into the real-world version of this case brought this claim into question, but for the sake of the movie, we'll just go with it.)

With a long rap sheet, including perjury, and two other criminals she's run with fingering her, Hayward is found guilty and sentenced to death. From here, the cool "jazzy" style of the movie gives way to a quasi-documentary approach as we see Hayward kinda, sorta mature into a fighter to have her death sentence overturned.

Aided by a surprisingly engaged court-appointed attorney, a crusading psychiatrist and a journalist who's switched to her side mid-story, Hayward mounts a series of appeals that gives her hope even as she slowly grinds through the penal system toward the gas chamber.

All movies are propaganda (not my original thought at all) with I Want To Live's! goal being to put you in the place of someone falsely convicted of murder who's now facing the death penalty. Good for it as people have been falsely convicted and put to death by our judicial system, so it should be challenged.

But movies could also be made showing a guilty person found innocent who then kills again. Or a movie could be made about violent, not-remorseful killers who take multiple lives, are rightfully convicted and whose death sentence brings some solace to the victims' families. Maybe their death even deterred others from killing. Or movies could be made showing a guilty murderer sentenced to "life without parole" who kills again in prison or who is later paroled and kills once released (both have happened).

But the propaganda in this one is - as is Hollywood's wont - to show an putatively innocent person unfairly facing the death penalty. Hayward plays her character consistently inconsistent. Quick to temper and regularly irrational, she can also approach a situation thoughtfully and calmly, but usually only after she's tried, several times, yelling and screaming to get her way.

As the movie climaxes, director Robert Wise brilliantly juxtaposes Hayward's all-over-the-map emotional humanity and desperate desire to live against the almost languid but methodical preparations of the gas chamber attendees.

I Want to Live! is effective and chilling, but other than pushing your emotional buttons, it doesn't solve the eternal justice challenge of how to balance not letting the guilty go free versus not convicting the innocent. Real-life justice isn't found in black-and-white absolutes no matter how much a movie impacts us emotionally.


N.B. In addition to I Want to Live's! beautiful fifties black-and-white cinematography and wonderful time travel, the cast of, mainly, second-tier actors is outstanding even if it's made up of faces you know (often from TV shows a decade later), but names you can't quite remember.

 

[Harp]

^^^
"Blind Justice holds aloft her left arm grasping scales while at her right leg she nestles the handle of a sword." -- Criminal Law lecture

The concept of Justice itself is elusive. Plato failed to find an exact answer to Thrasymachus in The Republic,
and the question has nagged me since law school days. I remember seeing I Want To Live on CBS when
a kid and this film had an effect, forcing some thought away from mere entertainment to deeper issues
within and without the execution chamber.

 

[MisterCairo]

The first blu-ray film I ever bought, when we got our first big flat screen plasma along with BD player (in 2013 I should add), was the Bladerunner collection (various cuts, the primary being an extended no narration ultimate cut).

We finally watched it Friday night, 11th of June, 2021.

Both girls away at sleepovers...

It hit me, not having seen the film in ages, but with all the theories about replicants, the meaning of life, is Deckard or is he not (not, for the record!), this is a film noir.

The atmosphere, the mood, the tone, the clothing, the hair, the hats, hell, the Vangelis score, this is The Maltese Falcon set in 2019 as seen from 1982 with special effects.

Also, amazing to see Edward James Olmos again, after Battlestar Galactica and Mayans!

 

[belfastboy]

"Minari" Prime offered it as a summer special at $2.99. Wonderful little movie about the American Dream. The Grandmother stole the show.

 

[GHT]

Is there a film that you have a love/hate relationship with? I find musicals rather cheesy, and there's none more cheesy than, "Mama-Mia." Yet there I was, sitting alongside her Ladyship, watching yet another rerun of this predictable movie. Think I might need some therapy.

 

[belfastboy]

Is there a film that you have a love/hate relationship with? I find musicals rather cheesy, and there's none more cheesy than, "Mama-Mia." Yet there I was, sitting alongside her Ladyship, watching yet another rerun of this predictable movie. Think I might need some therapy.

We have a favourite game at our house.....We play a "What fake accent is Meryl Streep going to butcher in this movie"

 

[Trenchfriend]

Sommersby (1993), right now running on arte.

 

[Harp]

Sommersby (1993), right now running on arte.

I've never seen this entire film, start-to-finish, only a few snippets. But the romantic pull it stirs deep
in the heart all the way down to its floor, cuts past all skepticism, through to the depths of the soul,
capturing the magic of love between a man and woman. Love that survives the mere bounds of life
and is eternal.

 

[MisterCairo]

Spent the $7 last night and rented "Nomadland". I love Chloe Zhao's work. Her two previous films were true gems. I feared watching this one as I am invariably disappointed watching a film that receives so much acclaim. Had I 'discovered' this film I think I would have enjoyed it more....as it was I found it wanting. I thought it emotionally diffident, the characters not well formed but just hinted at. Can't really put my finger on it but overall a disappointment but not a total waste of time and $7.

My wife is interested in seeing this. We have Bell satellite, is it worth the fee as a "what the hell" viewing experience? We are fans of McDormand at least, and the CBC did a piece on one of the real van men.

 

[MisterCairo]

Is there a film that you have a love/hate relationship with? I find musicals rather cheesy, and there's none more cheesy than, "Mama-Mia." Yet there I was, sitting alongside her Ladyship, watching yet another rerun of this predictable movie. Think I might need some therapy.

Yes. You need therapy...

 

[MisterCairo]

The first blu-ray film I ever bought, when we got our first big flat screen plasma along with BD player (in 2013 I should add), was the Bladerunner collection (various cuts, the primary being an extended no narration ultimate cut).

We finally watched it Friday night, 11th of June, 2021.

Both girls away at sleepovers...

It hit me, not having seen the film in ages, but with all the theories about replicants, the meaning of life, is Deckard or is he not (not, for the record!), this is a film noir.

The atmosphere, the mood, the tone, the clothing, the hair, the hats, hell, the Vangelis score, this is The Maltese Falcon set in 2019 as seen from 1982 with special effects.

Also, amazing to see Edward James Olmos again, after Battlestar Galactica and Mayans!

This is the set I have:

https://www.amazon.com/Runner-Five-...hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4583726553500438&psc=1

Includes Ridley Scott's "Final Cut".

 

[belfastboy]

My wife is interested in seeing this. We have Bell satellite, is it worth the fee as a "what the hell" viewing experience? We are fans of McDormand at least, and the CBC did a piece on one of the real van men.

As I said I was most disappointed as I love the writer/director's other two movies....really wonderful little movies. I found Nomadland to be emotionally distant as neither of us felt much if anything for the characters and for us that is critical.....we have to care about the characters. I too like McDormand but again we felt little for her character. We continue to chat about the movie today trying to pinpoint just what for us was missing. There definitely was something missing but have yet to really pinpoint it. I am glad we spent the $7 just to satisfy our curiosity about the hype...but for us it was more hype than substance. Now Minari...there was a wonderful little movie.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Rue des prairies (1959), right now on arte.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Jean Gabin is so awesome.

 

[Trenchfriend]

John Carpenter's They live! (1988)