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Watch a chunk of it last night on TCM - Stanwyck is just that good.
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What Was The Last Movie You Watched?
- Thread starter Amy Jeanne
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Watch a chunk of it last night on TCM - Stanwyck is just that good.
Harp
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Tonight's The Night^^^^ Eddie Munster's mom makes this flick for me boyo. What a fetching colleen.
LizzieMaine
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Re the Lady Eve -- when I was a kid I wanted to be, when I grew up, Barbara Stanwyck in this movie. And then I grew up and realized what a genius Preston Sturges was, and I wished I could be half the writer he was. Life is full of frustrated ambitions.
1967Cougar390
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Today I watched the 1946 police drama, Behind Green Lights. The movie stars Carole Landis and William Gargan. The plot was fairly solid and centered around a private detective that was a blackmailer. The private detective was killed and his body was discovered right in front of the police headquarters steps. The police station is chaotic with police officers, suspects, and news reporters all looking to find out how the murder took place.
Behind Green Lights works well because of a very likable cast. Gargan is extremely likable as a police Lieutenant who almost seems to be in over his head, and he’s matched by Landis the glamorous suspect who, thankfully, isn’t what she appears to be.
This fast paced film also contains bits of comedy which help add to its classic charm.
Steven
Behind Green Lights works well because of a very likable cast. Gargan is extremely likable as a police Lieutenant who almost seems to be in over his head, and he’s matched by Landis the glamorous suspect who, thankfully, isn’t what she appears to be.
This fast paced film also contains bits of comedy which help add to its classic charm.
Steven
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AmateisGal
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Ava on Netflix with Jessica Chastain and John Malkovich, about a female assassin. I liked it, but it was a typical movie about a female assassin.
Harp
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^^^Tonight's the Night^^^
I read Niven's The Moon's A Balloon; and Bring On the Empty Horses in college and his Hollywood
memoir; while interesting and well written raconteur, leaves out a few gaps, noticeable in part, more
between the lines mortar to the bricks otherwise. Money is the grist for mill evasion over a career span
that saw its share of dog, and, his departure to the south of France a tacit admit to a decline of a first
generation film career. Second rate comedy flick paid gigs dwindled, and he fizzled. Niven might reasonably
have given directing a try or turned his hand to film corporate suite; undoubtedly a man of some intellect
and experience but seemingly straitjacketed to acting either by choice or circumstance.
I read Niven's The Moon's A Balloon; and Bring On the Empty Horses in college and his Hollywood
memoir; while interesting and well written raconteur, leaves out a few gaps, noticeable in part, more
between the lines mortar to the bricks otherwise. Money is the grist for mill evasion over a career span
that saw its share of dog, and, his departure to the south of France a tacit admit to a decline of a first
generation film career. Second rate comedy flick paid gigs dwindled, and he fizzled. Niven might reasonably
have given directing a try or turned his hand to film corporate suite; undoubtedly a man of some intellect
and experience but seemingly straitjacketed to acting either by choice or circumstance.
Harp
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Frederick Forsythe's Day of The Jackal is a splendid book and well directed film.
Read the book first if you haven't already, then watch the film. A methodical analysis of a psychopathic
professional. All the more chilling because he obviously failed.
Edward
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At the weekend we watched A Room with a View. I'd never seen it (nor read the book), the wife is a fan of both. Diverting enough little picture. Lovely clothes. Bittersweet ending knowing that - as it's set circa 1912 - most of the young men will probably be dead in a trench a year or two later.
Harp
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I missed this. Mental note to read Forster, Lawrence. Catch a flick more often. New Year resolve.
MisterCairo
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Highlander. Had not seen it since probably 1988.
Better than I recalled it! Worth it to see Sean Connery playing a Spaniard from Egypt, or whatever he was supposed to have been...
Better than I recalled it! Worth it to see Sean Connery playing a Spaniard from Egypt, or whatever he was supposed to have been...
Edward
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Connery not knowing what a haggis is - expressed in his thick, Edinburgh brogue, was particularly funny. His performance, though - and the film itself - still holds up. I watched it again myself just a few years ago, and it really is fun. As I recall, the second film isn't as bad as was popularly held and the third is fun enough. I'd quite like to see someone take on the TV show version and give it the Netflix /Prime treatment, like the new version of The Stand. Perhaps a ten part series covering the first film's story, or a prequel series, or..... For me, these things never stay long enough in the past before hitting the present day. I wanted to see more Captain America fighting the Nazis, more Hellboy in the fifties saving Elvis from demons, more, more, more! To actually see Connor McLeod's life in the Highlands and beyond, up to and during the 20th century, how he realises when he has to move on because he can't hide his age any longer, dealing not only with other immortals but also nosey investigators, experiencing monumental, historical events (The Highland Clearances, the Titanic, the Great War, the st Valentine's Day massacre....). Surely scope for that. It's a film that for all its cult classic status I'm surprised hasn't been remade for a new audience.
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The Big Heat from 1953 with Glen Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin and Jocelyn Brando
This movie is further proof that people living in the fifties knew that the fifties weren't the wholesome nirvana that later generations would tag it with as a shorthand.
A political machine, in bed with the mob, controls a city almost as an open and accepted-by-the-police secret. When a senior police officer, living in a pretty-darn-nice house for even a senior officer in those days, commits suicide, the word is sent down to investigate this one "lightly." Basically, "investigate," accept that it's a suicide, close the case quickly and move on.
When honest detective Glenn Ford tries to conduct a real investigation, he uncovers some "unpleasant" information and is all but told from above to stand down. But that's not Ford, so he barrels forward causing both the city's political leaders and local mob to come down hard on him: his wife, Jocelyn Brando, is murdered in a mob hit (Ford was the intended victim) and he is fired from the force.
But in an early cop-as-vigilante-justice-warrior effort, Ford, now off the force, keeps pushing hard and following every clue to avenge his wife's murder. This leads him directly to the mob and indirectly to the mob's political connections.
Eventually aided by an abused top-level gangster's girlfriend, Gloria Graham, he keeps shoving everyone out of the way and turning over every clue while playing by no rulebook but his own. (Spoiler alert) After a lot of fist fights and gun fights, a high body count and a beautiful woman's face (Graham's) horribly scarred - he exposes and brings down the political-mob nexus of corruption.
It's a solid anti-wholesome fifties story that director Fritz Lang tells by mashing the accelerator pedal down early and only letting his foot off a bit now and then. And at that speed, the city's arrant corruption and Ford's revenge-driven passion smash into each other time and again until all that's left is a lot of wreckage. A final scene of a cleaned-up police department feels snapped on to make the censors happy.
Equally impressive and engaging in this one are the performances by Ford, Lee Marvin and Gloria Graham. Ford is intense as the rogue former cop hell bent on revenge and Marvin is frighteningly oleaginous and despicable as the girlfriend-beating, smart-in-a-conniving way, dandily dressed gangster, but Graham is the real treasure in this one.
She is the vain, greedy and stupid (probably because she's never tried to think) girlfriend of Marvin whose unaware-but-provocative personality rolls in and owns scene after scene. But when disfigured by Marvin, Graham begins to think about the world and about right and wrong and, proving a quick study, becomes Ford's ally in his quest for revenge masquerading as justice. It's not an easy transition from idiot gun moll to scarred righteous crusader, but Graham is up for the challenge briefly providing a spark of hope to this grim tale.
Away from the aforementioned forced ending, this is a tight and dispiriting story of political corruption as a way of life where honesty and integrity truckle to malfeasance and graft in the institutions that are suppose to protect us. If an innocent life or two have to get heaved overboard now and then to defend the political machine, so be it. This is not a nostalgic-redolent happy picture of the fifties. But like so many noir movies, The Big Heat argues that the fifties never really looked that happy, especially to many who lived through them.
Gloria Graham rolls into a scene in The Big Heat.
Rats Rateye
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The Thin Man. With William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Skippy. AKA: Rick Charles, Nora Charles, and Astra.
Worf
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I watch this one whenever I can. Gritty and raw are the two terms that come to my mind often. I LOVE the scene where Ford discovers that his daughter is being watched over by some WWII vets related to his ex-wife. He stumbles up the stairs to find out that they're more'n willing AND ready to tackle the cops, the mob or ANYONE foolish enough to threaten the life of that child. I also love how his immediate superior eventually stands with him because his wife shamed him into it! Classic mob flick with great acting and a taught, well told story.
Worf
Rats Rateye
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I'm surprised to say that I've never seen this. The only Glen Ford movie that I can think of is the tv western movie "The Sackets" with Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot. But this looks sharp!
AmateisGal
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Ohhhh, you need to watch this one AND watch Glen Ford in Gilda! That is the definitive Glen Ford movie, IMO, with the beautiful Rita Hayworth!
Harp
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^^^Gloria Graham^^^Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool with Annette Bening is a semi biographical
study of an expatriate American actress with cancer....another missed flick.
study of an expatriate American actress with cancer....another missed flick.
Edward
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I saw that by chance on television a couple of years ago. Nice little picture. I particularly liked how it dealt with the 'worlds collide' aspect, i.e. the gulf of difference in lived experience between working class, Northern England and Hollywood (or, indeed, the US much more broadly) of the period. In this era when, to paraphrase Douglas Coupland, everywhere is the same because we have the same chainstores - and the internet - it's easy to forget just how distinctly different the postwar-1990ish period was for the US and Britain, or how commonly our media-infused notion of the 50s especially is an Americanised-via-Hollywood notion, rather than how it really was 'here'.
Doctor Strange
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I liked Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool too.
Last night, The Dig on Netflix. Interesting period piece (1939) with good stylization and solid performances by Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes. But it didn't do a great job on the secondary and tertiary characters, they were either underwritten/underplayed or telegraphed so broadly (e.g., Lily James's husband being gay, whether he knew it or not) that it hurt the story. And like nearly all Netflix "content" I've seen, it would have benefitted from dropping one of its red herring plot threads and being a half-hour shorter.
Last night, The Dig on Netflix. Interesting period piece (1939) with good stylization and solid performances by Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes. But it didn't do a great job on the secondary and tertiary characters, they were either underwritten/underplayed or telegraphed so broadly (e.g., Lily James's husband being gay, whether he knew it or not) that it hurt the story. And like nearly all Netflix "content" I've seen, it would have benefitted from dropping one of its red herring plot threads and being a half-hour shorter.
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