What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

I used to work with a guy who claimed to be a big Errol Flynn fan -- but he refused to watch movies "where Errol Flynn writes with a feather." Kinda limiting yourself there, pal.

Pacific Rendezvous (1942) w/ Lee Bowman, Jean Rogers, and a host of others. Very much a programmer, with Bowman as combat-hungry Naval lieutenant who is also s top-drawer cryptologist. Rogers, whom I remember almost exclusively from the Flash Gordon serials, plays a childish ingenue who sets her cap for Bowman. A pleasant way in 1942 to while away a matinee while the world is at war. Spotted in minor roles were Hans Conried and Milburn Stone (who I thought was Ben Johnson). Off the TCM streaming app

Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror continued last night with The Fog.

When Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis appeared in the Blu-ray menu screen, my youngest daughter said of Barbeau "Who's that man"?

Oh, sweetie, that's not a man...

The wife and I went to a Joker matinee.
SPOILER FREE review:
Thought Joaquin did a great job and that it was an interesting movie too. It has a massive dose of character development, a classic part of storytelling all but abandoned by most of the lazy stupid movies made today. And for cultural relevance it raises questions about personal vs societal responsibility dealing with mental illness and related violence. I think it serves (perhaps unwittingly) as commentary on the effects of existential nihilism in our culture too.


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jonah hex.

GJ nord said:

jonah hex.

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Saw that one pop up on Netflix recently and figured I must give it a rewatch. I remember enjoying it a few years back, and feeling that the character / world had enough to itg to form the basis of a TV show.

GJ nord said:

jonah hex.

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worst....film...ever

Lady Chatterley (2005), right now on "arte".

M Brown said:

worst....film...ever

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Worse than The Royal Tanenbaums? Man, it must suck canal water in that case...

As the Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror continues, The Addams Family movie (1991).

Girl Scout - "Is your lemonade made from real lemons"?
Wednesday Addams "Yes".
Girl Scout - "Tell you what. I'll buy a cup, if you buy a box of my Girl Scout cookies".
Wednesday - "Are they made from real Girl Scouts"?

Bhowani Junction from 1956 with Ava Gardner and Stewart Ranger

• It took a long time, but I finally found a movie where Ava Gardner is an actress - and a darn good one - first and "Ava Gardner!" sex symbol second
• It's a good "Sunday Afternoon epic," Garner - as an Anglo-Indian trying to find her place in a post-Colonial India - carries the movie as her beauty attracts men, but not always true love
• With a plot pivoting on the plight of the Anglo-Indians - accepted by neither the English nor Indians - it serves as a contrast and comment on today's rigid view of race - every generation will have its prejudices and forward thinkers, none will get it all right or all wrong
  
• It's hard not to lament the optimism India felt back then at the English leaving with the struggles we now know were to follow
• George Cukor is one of the great directors, but this attempted sweeping epic of England's final days in India needed David Lean, master of this genre, to give it its full cinematic impact

It Came from Outer Space from 1953

• Perhaps one needs to see it, as originally shown, in 3-D, because in 2-D, it's a pretty flat copycat movie of several other sci-fi '50 efforts
• The, by-far, best of the lot is The Day the Earth Stood Still
• A better copycat is Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
• The few pluses are an opportunity to see a pre-Gilligan's Island professor (Russell Johnson). Barbara Rush as the female leads tries hard and it's good time travel to the '50s
• I get why you'd take a gun to fight an alien invasion - it's the weapon you have - but I don't get why you'd be at all confident it would be effective, but most '50s sci-fi movies, characters seem to start out quite confident in their guns' alien-killing potential

Dead Ringer from 1964 with Bette Davis, Karl Malden and Peter Lawford

• Feels more like an 1950's Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV episode with a movie star cast than a first-release movie
• But that movie star cast makes it worthwhile as Davis lost none of her acting chops as she aged and Malden delivers his usual professional performance
• It's a variation on the theme of several earlier-in-her-career Davis movies, where, in this one, she kills her richer twin sister and attempts to take her place
• Yup, that's the plot - throw in an incredible number of coincidences and unbelievable moments and you'd have a bad movie except for the aforementioned acting talent, crisp directing from former-Davis-costar Paul Henreid and, for us today, some great time travel to 1960's LA

Today I watched Hitchcocks classic Vertigo with James Stewart and Kim Novak. I must have seen this film six or seven times over the years but it is a great film and Stewart is one of my favourite actors.

Dante’s Peak and Creed 2. Both pretty good flicks. I had never seen Dante’s Peak before, and I was surprised by how good the special effects were.


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Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror week two - my introduction to the world and mind of director/screenwriter Rob Zombie - House of 1000 Corpses.w

My goodness, how does one describe this. Part Deliverance with a hint of Halloween and just a dollop of Big Top PeeWee.

I was surprised by some of the cast, including Rainn Wilson (American The Office) and Chris Hardwick (Talking Dead), along with Karen Black, and I go and learn that character actor Sid Haid, Captain Spaulding in House, just died last month.

Great fun, not for the kids!

Grand Hotel is on TCM right now. I'm doing some other stuff, so I have it muted. One, it's a visually beautiful movie - if you never saw it before, you could tell just from the incredible sets, clothes and professional cinematography that it was a full-budget affair. The fact that there are six or more famous names in it would be the other clue.

Two, from the twenty other times I've seen it, its multiple plots - tied together in various fashion - are smart and engaging. There's a reason it has been copied a billion times since. And those many famous actors do not go to waste as can sometimes happen in all-star casts.

Three, with no sound, Greta Garbo looks happy and pretty in an easy way that is lost when you hear her heavy Swedish accent. I'm a fan either way, but with sound, she almost always seems a bit brooding, a bit morose - like a sad Eva Braun - but without sound, you see her youth and beauty in a lighter way.

Safe in Hell from 1931 with Dorothy MacKaill

There's a lot to like in this dated pre-code, but it suffers from occasional clunkiness as Hollywood was still figuring out how to do "talkies."

It also suffers from a thin script where atmosphere, tension and palpable lacentiousness - not plot - try to hold the viewer's attention. But if you adjust to it, you'll see a twisted morality tale set in the muck of humanity where a few still manage to maintain some dignity and integrity.

MacKaill plays a New Orleans prostitute - forced into it by circumstances (it beats starving), but still judged harshly by the societal norms of the time - who believes she accidentally killed a man. She flees with her fiancé, a ship's officer, to a Caribbean island that doesn't extradite criminals - hence, it's a haven for sketchy characters also hiding out.

Once there, the movie shifts fully into atmospheric- and psycological-tension mode as MacKaill, with her husband at sea, is left in a seedy hotel with only herself for company, except for the heat, bugs, loneliness, boredom and a bunch of ex-pat criminals lurking in the lobby - all aggressively wanting carnal knowledge of MacKaill. This is no island retreat, but a dank, oppressive town with MacKail almost a prisoner in a decrepit hotel with filthy water and animalistic and creepy men lurking about.

The movie drags a bit here, but is also impressive as you feel all that MacKaill feels and understands how she desperately tries to remain faithful to the one good man in her life - her, now, husband - as everything and nearly everyone works against her. After a period of isolation, MacKaill - just in need of some human interaction - engages with the sketchy men in the hotel lobby.

This is a woman that has been kicked hard by life, has sold her body to survive, is considered dirt by the "respectable" people and, now, finds herself isolated in a criminal redoubt, but she fights with all she has to keep faith with the one man that has treated her with respect and compassion in her life.

With willpower, passion and grit, she fends off one after another subtle and not subtle assault on her integrity, but just as her life is looking up because (spoiler alert) she finds she did not kill the man in New Orleans and her husband is heading back from sea, a mendacious local sheriff puts her morality to the ultimate test. You want to see the subsequent courtroom scene, verdict twist and anguishing decision facing MacKaill to fully appreciate her moral conundrum - and the harrowing way she maintains her integrity. It's not a stretch to say its ending would do justice to a Greek Tragedy.

And there's also this, why didn't MacKaill - beautiful with her wan blonde timelessness - who had a strong career in the '20s and seemed to transition successfully to the talkies all but drop out of acting by the second half of the '30s?

From what I remember reading in the fan press of the time, she had family issues in the late '30s that required her attention, and by the time she had that situation under control she had aged out of leading-lady status. Rather than transition into character-actress status, she stayed retired.

For a surprising number of people, being a movie star wasn't much fun, and when they found a good reason to quit, they did. Some went into radio, where the work was less phyiscally demanding (hah!) and some just drifted off into other things.

As for me, I watched a chunk of "The Life of Emile Zola" last night, and was distracted by Paul Muni's nose glasses, which didn't seem to fit his face, and his habit of saying "DRAY-fus" instead of "DRY-fus". Have I been pronouncing it wrong all these years?

LizzieMaine said:

From what I remember reading in the fan press of the time, she had family issues in the late '30s that required her attention, and by the time she had that situation under control she had aged out of leading-lady status. Rather than transition into character-actress status, she stayed retired.

For a surprising number of people, being a movie star wasn't much fun, and when they found a good reason to quit, they did. Some went into radio, where the work was less phyiscally demanding (hah!) and some just drifted off into other things.

As for me, I watched a chunk of "The Life of Emile Zola" last night, and was distracted by Paul Muni's nose glasses, which didn't seem to fit his face, and his habit of saying "DRAY-fus" instead of "DRY-fus". Have I been pronouncing it wrong all these years?

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In Germany, it's Dreifuß/Dreifuss, so I think Dryfus is right.

A compilation of railroad promotional films from the 1940s, off of Amazon Prime. A great deal of patriotic narration about how we can travel our country at will, and how many natural resources we enjoy. I watched it for the time capsule about passenger travel: folks dressed like they going to meet Queen Elizabeth, linen table cloths, meals served on dining plates, not plasticware, and so on.