What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

Harp said:

Greyhound. Second World War diamond focused Atlantic convoy duel with German wolfpacks.
Tom Hanks stars as lead commander of an American destroyer, good taut thriller-diller that
easily matches the Robert Mitchum 1950s The Enemy Below if not bests it.

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Worf said:

I saw it at a friends a few months ago. While I enjoyed it CGI and all, it left me kind of flat. We're given a snippet of interaction between Hanks and his lady love at the start but that's where it begins and ends. We're given little to nothing of his background. When did he join? Was he in Merchant Marine first? Was he passed over before? Why did it take so long for him to get his first command? Why is his religion so central in his life? Is he Quaker, Catholic etc? Did he come from a sea faring or military family? None of these questions were either asked or answered near as I can tell. He also comes across as completely wooden 90 percent of the time. I enjoyed the "hunt" etc.. but I didn't FEEL for any of the characters. "The Enemy Below" strikes me as a much deeper film. Also as a rivet head, someone would have to provide proof that U-bohip will be conducting tainingcould only send and receive on the surface EVER radioed an Allied ship of war to taunt them in the midst of battle. If that'd ever happened I'd have heard or read about that before now.

Worf

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Doctor Strange said:

Of Human Hearts (1938) a period piece directed by MGM house director Clarence Brown...

Strange film about a preacher (Walter Huston) and his family (Beulah Bondi and a kid who will grow up to be Jimmy Stewart) who move to the Ohio frontier in the 1850s to take over the congregation of a poor village inhabited by a bunch of familiar character actors. The leading citizen and miserly general store owner (Guy Kibbee) underpays the preacher and his family with unsalable produce and worn-out clothing, which Huston accepts as part of his calling, but Bondi and the son resent. Huston is stern, and his relationship with his son is difficult, especially after the son shows an interest in becoming a doctor under the wing of the village's disgraced-drunk physician (Charles Coburn.)

It comes to a head years later, when now nearly adult Stewart accompanies Huston on a circuit ride to the hills, to visit those in his flock that live too far away to come to church. Spending the night with an elderly widow, Stewart refuses to eat her humble fare, and when she gifts him with her deceased husband's coat - which Huston explains is a huge act of heartfelt charity - he calls it a rag, they fight, and he returns home in disgust. He says farewell to his mother (note that Bondi played Stewart's mother in FOUR different films, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life!) and goes to a medical school in Baltimore that had been founded years earlier by Coburn...

Cut to the Civil War. Stewart is now an officer-doctor making a name for himself at saving limbs rather than immediately amputating them. For years, he's repeatedly asked Bondi to sell whatever she could to help pay his way through school and the army, even their beloved horse. Huston has died, and she's living in abject poverty; Stewart is so busy at the field hospitals that he doesn't write to her for two years. And now it gets really weird...

Stewart is summoned to Washington to see President Lincoln (John Carradine!), who essentially lambasts him for ignoring his mother, who thinks he's dead and has written Lincoln asking for help finding out what happened to him! Chastised, he rushes home (on their beloved horse, which conveniently just came back his way as he treats its dying owner) and all is forgiven.

It's odd to see young Stewart playing such an angry, short-sighted, unkind, selfish character (though it looks forward to his performances in George Bailey's dark night of the soul, those fifties Anthony Mann westerns, and Vertigo). Huston is indeed rough on him, but he's not wrong in many cases and Stewart won't see it. And Beulah Bondi is the film's MVP, getting way more screen time than typical for her; she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

An interesting semi-classic.

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Fading Fast said:

View attachment 388991
Flesh and Fury from 1952 with Tony Curtis, Jan Sterling, Mona Freeman and Wallace Ford


Have you ever wondered what a noir boxing movie would look like mashed up with a 1970s After School Special? Well, neither had I, but Flesh and Fury answers that never-asked-by-anyone question.

Tony Curtis is a deaf boxer (sadly referred to, by many in that age, as being "dumb") who meets and begins dating rapacious, blonde gold-digger Jan Sterling. Sterling sees Curtis' handicap as a way to manipulate and steal from him, which is just what she does.

Curtis is a very shy man embarrassed by his handicap - he knows how, but is ashamed to sign - who, away from the boxing ring, has all but withdrawn from a world that frightens him. He was ripe pickings for evil Sterling.

After signing a good manager for Curtis - Sterling has her talents if it advances her goals - his career improves. On the way up, Curtis meets a nice upper-class woman, Mona Freeman, whose father was deaf.

Curtis was initially attracted to Sterling as she was the first woman to ever show him some attention, but slowly, he begins to see the difference between a truly kind woman, Freeman, and his feral-animal (not kidding with that description at all) girlfriend, Sterling.

Until now, Flesh and Fury is mainly a noir boxing movie - seedy fights, seedy promoters, seedy gyms, seedy girlfriend - but it abruptly shifts gears to a public-service-message-style movie about the advances made in helping the deaf learn to sign, speak and integrate into mainstream society.

After surgery restores some modest hearing for Curtis and after he takes classes in speech, he is signed for a title bout. This only amps up the tension between the two women in his life. Sterling now wants to get married, a move she had been putting off as she only wanted to fleece Curtis of his money, but now sees marriage as a way to keep him from Freeman.

Curtis realizes Freeman is the better woman, but he is still shy around and intimidated by her upper-class world. In one of the movie's better scenes, Curtis, now able to hear a bit and speak, accidentally shows up at a "sophisticated" party at Freeman's house.

New to all of this, he is overwhelmed by the high-brow gathering. His simple decency is no match for the superficiality and pretentiousness of this upper-class soiree where pompous ideas and dismissive cynicism are currency.

Fortunately, Freeman sees all this too and tries to steer Curtis away. (Spoiler alert) After a few more contretemps and misunderstandings and a last-ditch attempt by Sterling to profit by hurting Curtis, all turns out After-School-Special perfect.

Curtis learns being frightened at times is okay as everyone - the deaf and the not-deaf - get frightened. And we all learn the lesson that the deaf aren't "dumb." While that second message needed to be told at the time, its treacly delivery diminishes its effectiveness

Flesh and Fury could have been a decent noir boxing movie or an okay public-service movie, but the two together don't work. The move from noir darkness to upbeat message is a bridge too far. Yet, at an hour and twenty minutes, Flesh and Fury has enough good in it to make it worth the effort if you happen to stumble upon it.


N.B., As always, the view of deaf people in the 1950s, as shown in this movie, is neither aligned to our modern view nor as singularly close-minded as a cursory or condemning lookback would argue. To be sure, these movies were made, in part, to fight some of those negative prevailing views, but that this movie was made also shows more open-minded ideas were out there at that time.

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MisterCairo said:

Cairo Cavalcade of Christmas continues with one of our favourites, Arthur Christmas...

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Zombie_61 said:

After reading your post and looking up this movie on IMDb, I'm wondering how I've never heard of it until today. Is it worth seeking out, or...oh, never mind. I'll just add it to my list of "one of these days...maybe" purchases and give it a shot.

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Fading Fast said:

View attachment 389923
Perfect Strangers from 1950 with Ginger Rodgers, Dennis Morgan and Thelma Ritter


Perfect Strangers tries to do more things than its script, directing and acting can accomplish. It's a small-budget effort that wants to punch above its weight, but doesn't really succeed.

Narrated in a somewhat crime-drama manner, this jury trial wrapped around an illicit love story also attempts to be a commentary on the social and class structure in America. Let's unpack that.

The movie starts as a sort of crime drama where a resonating narrator takes us through the formation of a jury: notices are sent out, people grumble, candidates are called into the courtroom, the judge makes a stirring speech about the importance of jury duty and attorneys yell "dismissed." Finally, twelve are seated on a jury for a murder case of a husband accused of killing his wife so he can be with his lover.

The movie then shifts gears to a love story between two jurors: unhappily married Dennis Morgan and divorced Ginger Rogers. Also in motion is how this now-sequestered jury of people from various classes and backgrounds will get along.

Any one or two of these stories would be okay, but it's just too much here, especially, as the main story - Morgan and Rodgers falling in love - is flat. You just never feel the spark between them and you never see their joy as these middle-aged lovers immediately start angsting about Morgan's wife. Good for both of them for having a conscience, but heck, all good love stories start with passionate love (or lust), not fretting about this or that.

While that's dragging on, the murder trial heats up and provides a good twenty minutes of entertainment, especially when the jury visits the murder scene - the cliff where the cheatin' hubby supposedly pushed his wife to her death.

But if you want to see a movie about a jury debating a guilty-looking man who may be innocent, 12 Angry Men is the ticket. More so, I'm still waiting for the movie about a guilty man initially believed innocent by all but one lone holdout juror who eventually convinces (correctly) the other eleven jurors that the accused is guilty. Hollywood loves the innocent-man-who-looks-guilty-but-eventually-is-found-innocent story, but never the reverse.

Even the class- and social-divide stuff bows to another Hollywood trope. Character-actress-supreme Thelma Ritter plays the salt-of-the-earth blue-collar woman on the jury who bucks both the smarty pants society matron and the smug businessman with her "feel" and "simple" logic that eventually gains their respect and changes their opinion - yawn.

Top writers and directors can blend all these complex themes into one engaging story, but here it just becomes a slog through too many things that never fully work or integrate, especially as these different storylines are randomly dropped or picked up throughout the picture. Perfect Strangers has a few good moments, but also, too many awkward scenes and transitions as it tries to do too much.

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