What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

Spontaneus rewatching Star Trek: Nemesis, the old DVD.

Doesn't of course change the stupid plot.

Monster House, one of our Hallowe'en favourites!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_House_(film)

Yeah, that white savior narrative is getting REALLY old. And the whole chosen-one and/or superior bloodlines thing too.

I will see Dune eventually, but it's a low priority. I read the book in my teenage SF fervor... and it didn't especially thrill me; I never read the sequels. I saw Lynch's film on opening day in NYC and have always thought it's a mess, but a darn interesting one. I HATED Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (though I was thrilled that Roger Deakins got the cinematography Oscar). And after seeing a half-dozen of his performances, I still don't see what all the excitement's about with Timothee Chalomet.

So this one's a definite wait-for-cable/streaming for me. Sorry, Worf! (However, I will finally be venturing back to a theater to see Eternals in a couple of weeks.)

Shadow on the Wall (1950), with Ann Sothern, Zachary Scott, and Gigi Perreau, dir. Pat Jackson. A really dark story, with Ann Sothern playing the villain and Scott a sympathetic character. There's a murder, an innocent man framed, and a traumatized child as potentially the only witness who could overturn injustice. Unlike most Sothern vehicles we've seen.

Hadn't been to a movie theater in probably 5 years. Took in No Time To Die a few weeks ago. I like the Daniel Craig Bond movies. Will miss him, though he was getting long in the tooth to keep doing Bond.

Bullets or Ballots form 1936 with Edward G. Robinson, Barton MacLane, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Blondell, Louise Beavers and Frank McHugh


Warners Bros. studio squeezed every possible plot variation it could out of the gangster business in the 1930s. It mixed and matched up its formidable stable of stars and character actors - Cagney, Robinson, Bogart, O'Brien, Sheridan, Blondell, McHugh, Raft and many others - in the roles of gangsters, cops (crooked and the other kind), gun molls, politicians (crooked and the other kind) over and over again - and it worked.

Warner Bros. had a few clunkers along the way, but also it made several classics. Many more were simply good serviceable gangster pictures such as Bullets or Ballots. Even under the goody two-shoes Motion Picture Production Code, these movies often showed the corrupt sinews amongst the mob, police and politicians that allowed "the rackets" to thrive.

Bullets or Ballots does a good job of revealing the inner workings of the mob as we see how the street thugs push pinball machines on resisting shop owners or how the mob controls the wholesale food markets, taking a cut on every single item sold. Resist and your business is wrecked and, possibly, you'd be killed.

Equally revealing is Bullets or Ballots' look into the actual handling and accounting of the mob's physical money, which is done at the "garage." On the second floor of a large parking garage, behind thick locking metal doors, a small army of gangsters, looking more like accountants than mobsters, sit at desks and tables adding up the day's receipts ($310,000 per week for the pinball-machine racket alone, ~$6,000,000 in 2021 dollars).

Tally sheets are checked, cash is bundled, managers review the work and the big bosses stop by for "the daily count." Having worked in a Wall Street back office in the 1980s, when a lot of transactions were still physical, you see many similarities to an honest business.

But honest businesses don't have large furnaces in the accounting department to burn the day's records and they don't ship the money out in nondescript suitcases bound for safe deposit boxes in and out of the country.

Bullets and Ballots' variation on the gangster story is the police plan to have honest high-profile detective, Edward G. Robinson, publicly kicked off the force, which leads to him switching sides and working for the mob. His word is so well respected by both sides, the mob accepts him into its top brass based on his claim to be ready "to start looking out for number one."

The head mob guy, Barton Maclane, who reports into a small cabal of the mob's true top bosses, embraces his old friend Robinson, but number-two guy, Humphrey Bogart, is suspicious that Robinson has really turned.

Robinson, of course, didn't turn, but is working undercover to smoke out the cabal members. Hint, the cabal comprises a few very top businessmen, police and politicians who, effectively, run the mob by providing protection, at the highest levels, for its illegal activities.

Robinson quickly gains power as he introduces the numbers game to the mob. As portrayed here, the numbers racket, to date, is made up of a bunch of small local games not under mob syndicate control.

Robinson takes them all over, which brings in huge revenue and gives him instant mob street cred. At the same time, a police crackdown on other syndicate activity starts cutting into Bogie's parts of the business, which hurts his standing in the mob.

A good morality conundrum tucked inside the larger story has Robinson squeezing out his long-time friend, Joan Blondell, who runs a small numbers racket, with Louise Beavers, up in Harlem.

As a cop, Robinson looked the other way regarding her business - not right for a lawman, but life is messy. Yet when he goes undercover in the mob, he has to push her out to maintain his cover. She feels betrayed and he feels like a fink.

(A few spoiler alerts). After Bogie knocks off top guy MacLane, he has the mano-a-mano showdown with Robinson that's been coming all movie. After that (which doesn't quite go as you'd expect), it's a Motion Picture Production Code approved ending that audiences, even back then, probably understood didn't fit with the rest of the movie's mob-police-government tangle of muddled morality.

Bullets or Ballots isn't a classic, but it's a darn good example of Warner Bros., at the top of its game, churning out a solid mob movie with plenty of real world grit, graft and other illegal shenanigans. Aided by its perfect cast, fast pacing, wonderful 1930s gangster argot and, as always with Warner Bros. a lot of plot and action, its eighty-two minutes of run time speeds by.


N.B. #1 When the government shut down the mob's numbers racket, it rebranded it "the lottery." Ever since, the government has run it for itself with much worse payouts for its, overall, low-income players. Effectively, the government pushed the mob out, took over and kept more of the money for itself - a mob-like move.

N.B. #2 When the government came for the cigarette racket, it just took a giant cut in perpetuity (called "the Settlement"). It still lets the tobacco companies run the racket mainly because the optics of having the government own and run the cigarette business (as it does "the lottery") would be terrible. But in truth, the government is a "silent" partner with Big Tobacco - it's a very Bullets or Ballots partnership.

^Homer. The code interference is regrettable as govt infiltration into commerce, such as it is elsewhere-
like at the track with federal IRS takeout tax but losses still are deductible-anyway, anything with Robinson,
Bogie, and my boyhood fantasy babe Joan (The Cincinnati Kid when in her maturity a very hot gal and opposite
Robinson). I thought in Cincinnati Kid both Joan and Robinson as characters should have been given more
of a script slice than the thin wedges cut in the production; all the more so because past chemistry would have
fitted better than mere essential cameos but with what diaglogue those two were gave they definitely classed
up the overall act. Even without code issues, a lack of directorial imagination can bust a flush.
Had Hitchcock directed The Cincinnati Kid the film, which also starred McQueen and Malden would have made
much more of a mark.

I Married a Witch - 1942

Not the greatest of Halloween movies, but anything with Veronica Lake is worth a watch...

Hadn't it for weeks!

Night of the Living Dead.

Synonymous with George Romero, this was the very definition of a team effort. He was not even the first choice of the team to direct.

The features on our DVD are great. If you are not familiar with its history, do look it up.

earl said:

Hadn't been to a movie theater in probably 5 years. Took in No Time To Die a few weeks ago. I like the Daniel Craig Bond movies. Will miss him, though he was getting long in the tooth to keep doing Bond.

Click to expand...

Craig was 51 when he filmed NTtD.

Roger Moore was 45 when he made his first Bond film.

Craig is a lot of things.

Long in the tooth is not one of them...

MisterCairo said:

Craig was 51 when he filmed NTtD.

Roger Moore was 45 when he made his first Bond film.

Craig is a lot of things.

Long in the tooth is not one of them...

Click to expand...

Craig looked 50's too in that film. I wouldn't expect some 50 year-old to traipse around the world doing his Bond thing, though.

earl said:

Craig looked 50's too in that film. I wouldn't expect some 50 year-old to traipse around the world doing his Bond thing, though.

Click to expand...

Post a photo of Craig at 51.

Post a photo of anyone else at 30 you choose

Tell us which would kick the ass of the other.

I'll wait.

MisterCairo said:

Post a photo of Craig at 51.

Post a photo of anyone else at 30 you choose

Tell us which would kick the ass of the other.

I'll wait.

Click to expand...

Insert Chuck Norris jokes in three...two...one...

earl said:

Craig looked 50's too in that film. I wouldn't expect some 50 year-old to traipse around the world doing his Bond thing, though.

Click to expand...

Sean Connery reflected on the role while interviewed, remarking Bond should not be played by an actor over
thirty-four, thirty-five years of age. This makes sense for a host of reasons, practical and theatric; however Craig
certainly fit the bill and brought some drama back to the 007 franchise which sorely needed a blood transfusion.
Craig and Brosnan were of credible sort. After Connery left his replacements all had a tough follow act but the
two mentioned were notables in my humble opinion.

Night Teeth, a made-for-Netflix vampire film. Little depth, but fun enough. Hilariously, it's billed as a Megan Fox vehicle, but she has all of about two scenes, and is one of the less memorable players in it.

31, from Rob Zombie.

Malcolm McDowell is in it, along with, natch, Sherri Moon Zombie. And one of my 80s faves, E.G. Daily.

Think The Running Man on acid.

You know you are in for some kind of ride when the first killer after our group is a shirtless, Spanish-speaking little person Nazi.

It gets better from there.

Worf said:

"Dune" (2021) - I first read Dune in Junior High or High School. I was just reading Hugo and Nebula award winners then. To say it "blew my mind" was/is an understatement. I own Lynch's film, which I STILL have a soft spot for, the SyFy mini-series et al and so logically I should go see the latest iteration. I saw it in a BTX Theatre which is essentially a poor man's IMAX. The screen is not true IMAX but the speakers have been pumped up etc... Still and all the visuals were amazing. What Villaneuve does best is to use the camera to give the world (ships, worms etc...) an awe inspiring sense of scale. You see what's essentially a shuttle, little more than a speck of dust when it leaves a Guild Highliner land and dwarf the massed ranks of House Atredis. You see that once or twice and you begin to realize the massive scale of things in this world.

All the characters are there. Duncan Idaho, played by Jason Mamoa finally gets the justice he deserves in this film as he was criminally shortchanged by Lynch in his version. As for how the film made me feel.... actually a bit underwhelmed personally. If I were new to the story and had never seen any of the previous iterations I'd probably have felt like I did the first time I saw "Star Wars" (of which the similarities in story are too numerous to mention). But somehow the whole thing left me flat. Also several elements of the story, as cast here... "troubled me" as a person of color. I won't go into that here or now. If you want to see a jaw dropping, visual spectacle see this on the large screen. If you want to want to see a master Director ply his trade.... see this in IMAX. If you're a completist see this in any manner you wish.. Still I recommend that you see it no matter your history with Dune.

Worf

Click to expand...

Thanks for the observations. I haven't seen this yet. I've of course read the book(s) several times, seen the Lynch and Space TV versions several times. Herbert apparently thought favourably of Lynch's visual interpretation, for what it's worth. To riff a bit on your comments about casting, Worf, when I first saw the trailer I immediated notice a few things that worried me on that score. Also, in the trailer they used the word "crusade" instead of Herbert's original "jihad", which if it was maintained in the film, is problematic, since the two terms are not really interchangeable or equivalent. Anyways, they've officially announced the second movie will be made, apparently, which is good since Villeneuve(sp) expressed concern earlier this year that if this instalment didn't do well the second movie---i.e. the second half of the story---wouldn't get made.

Children of the Corn. Linda Hamilton looking 19 years old, and a classic 80s creepy flick.

I creep out my eldest daughter at night year round by whispering "Malachi"... at her...