What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Worf]

On FF's question of the futility of the anti-war position and anti-war movies. I agree partially. Non-violent resistance to violent peoples and violent acts CAN work, under the correct circumstances. However aggressive military states can rarely be reasoned with, placated nor dissuaded by love nor logic alone. It rarely works. However anti-war sentiment and arguments are vital in keeping militaristic regimes from starting wars, in some circumstances. If not banned outright by the existing regimes an "All Quiet On The Western Front" might convince some folks from rushing headlong in another ******, useless war such as WWI. I know it didn't work with Putin but it could have, and that's a chance worth taking. Perhaps the films, books and television series that come out of the current war might help delay the next would be Tsar from seeking to restore glories of bygone Empire.

Anti-war sentiment kept America out of WW1 for quite some time before Germany's Mexican gambit. Had they not tried to destabilize America via Mexico the US might NEVER have entered the fray. Which outcome would have been best for humanity is anyone's guess but Wilson was skin close to never entering the war. With the current blossoming of true "drone" or "push button" warfare comes an even greater question. What militaristic country would ever tire of "bloodless" victories (bloodless for the aggressor's due to technological superiority). Britain's rise to world ********** suggests that a technologically advanced aggressor country would NEVER tire of victory on the cheap.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

The Coward (1965), an Indian movie


What price one moment of timidity? The Coward asks that question in this short engaging movie from noted Indian director Satyajit Ray. Hallmark, today, says always go all in on love – push all your chips into the pile – but what if one time you don't and it costs you forever?

Amitabha is a successful, young screenwriter who winds up stranded in a remote part of India for the weekend when his car breaks down. He's quickly befriended by a local tea plantation owner, Bimal, who invites him to stay the night.

Like Ilsa walking into Rick's, at the plantation, Amitabha sees that Bimal's wife is his former girlfriend, Karuna, whom we'll learn through flashbacks is the lost love of his life. It's a "you've got to be kidding me" moment, but neither Amitabha nor Karuna tells Bimal about their past.

That night, gnome-like Bimal – loud and just happy for the company – chatters endlessly about himself. Meanwhile, Amitabha tries to suss out impassive Karuna's feelings, but it isn't easy as she's keeping her cards close to her vest.

It is only through those flashbacks that we learn Amitabha and Karuna had a relationship years ago when they were students. It started with a fun meet-cute on a crowded bus – straight out of a modern Hallmark movie – but relationships are more than meet-cutes.

Amitabha was poor then, which had Karuna's middle-class family not approving of their relationship. In a come-to-Jesus moment with her family moving, Karuna offers to forgo her comfortable lifestyle for marriage, but Amitabha demurs out of fear for her, for him, for all of it.

Broken-hearted, Karuna returns to her family and Amitabha suffers, which brings us back now, years later, to the present day. Karuna is married to a wealthy boorish man – he's not mean or cruel, just crude, socially awkward, and inane – but is she happy, unhappy, miserable, content?

The weekend is brutally uncomfortable for the former lovers (and, by proxy, the viewer), but not for unaware Bimal who just blithely goes about the weekend trying to impress and entertain, what he thinks is, their random houseguest.

Throughout, Amitabha tries to draw Karuna out in their private moments, but she gives him very little, except one brutal dig, delivered facilely, about sleeping pills – really a reference to what is, in her opinion, his cowardice. It is more than a sharp elbow, it's a quiet but brutal smackdown.

The movie from here is a series of those moments, drifting along with its okay surface story only to drop emotional bombs like that from the past, time and again.

Each revelation lands quietly but powerfully, charging the house with painful emotional electricity and pulling the viewer deeper into Amitabha and Karuna’s unsettled history.

The story ultimately resolves into an offbeat love triangle where one corner – Bimal – has no idea he’s even in it, while the rest of us are left guessing which man, if any, Karuna truly wants.

That uncertainty, paired with the quiet emotional undercurrents, keeps the tension simmering beneath the film’s understated surface. There’s no neat resolution here – just a final, open-ended moment that can be read literally or metaphorically.

It’s one of those endings that lingers, forcing you to sit with the uncertainty and assemble your own interpretation. The result is less immediately satisfying, but the movie stays with you, gnawing at the edges of your thoughts for days.

Helping to shepherd all this angst, the actor playing Bimal, Haradhan Han, is perfect as the mildly annoying host – sometimes all you want is for him to shut up. Soumitra Chatterjee, as Amitabha, is also quite good as a young man obviously struggling with a big past regret.

Madhavi Mukherjee, conversely, plays Karuna wound very tight as you feel her seething emotions, but see very little of them. It’s a smartly subtle performance that has you excited when, in the flashbacks, she lets a little emotion sneak out.

Ray's character-driven picture is shot in black-and-white on a modest budget, but his eye for visual storytelling shines through. It's most evident in the open-ended climax at the train station, where a stark visual mirrors the scene’s cold narrative and distant emotional undercurrents.

The Coward plays like a short story with its focus on one storyline and a few characters to create tension through the use of flashbacks to explore a long-unresolved relationship.

Centered on the universal theme of lost love – of romantic regrets – it's engaging today because it's timeless. It might be set in India in the 1960s, but a tragic romance is familiar to all cultures and all eras.

 

[Trenchfriend]

If you want to see one the best german movies aside of "Boot", here it is:

Deathmaker - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I still got my old DVD from 2002.
The cast, my loungers, the cast! Jürgen Hentsch!!

But no englisch synchro.

 

[Edward]

On FF's question of the futility of the anti-war position and anti-war movies. I agree partially. Non-violent resistance to violent peoples and violent acts CAN work, under the correct circumstances. However aggressive military states can rarely be reasoned with, placated nor dissuaded by love nor logic alone. It rarely works. However anti-war sentiment and arguments are vital in keeping militaristic regimes from starting wars, in some circumstances. If not banned outright by the existing regimes an "All Quiet On The Western Front" might convince some folks from rushing headlong in another ******, useless war such as WWI. I know it didn't work with Putin but it could have, and that's a chance worth taking. Perhaps the films, books and television series that come out of the current war might help delay the next would be Tsar from seeking to restore glories of bygone Empire.

Anti-war sentiment kept America out of WW1 for quite some time before Germany's Mexican gambit. Had they not tried to destabilize America via Mexico the US might NEVER have entered the fray. Which outcome would have been best for humanity is anyone's guess but Wilson was skin close to never entering the war. With the current blossoming of true "drone" or "push button" warfare comes an even greater question. What militaristic country would ever tire of "bloodless" victories (bloodless for the aggressor's due to technological superiority). Britain's rise to world ********** suggests that a technologically advanced aggressor country would NEVER tire of victory on the cheap.

Worf

All Quiet on the Western Front - both Remarque's original novel and the subsequent film - was banned by Goebbels in 1933 around the same time Remarque and his wife fled to Switzerland. The Germany's WWII-era leaderships clearly did fear Remarque's work would have an impact on the German public's attitude to their militarism. Enough to, among other things, fabricate for propaganda purposes the falsehood that Remarque - an older family name spelling he adopted for All Quiet, his previous novel published under the then-current spelling 'Remark' was an anagram of what they claimed to be his real name - Kramer, a Jewish name. Although an opponent of the Germany's WWII-era leadership's antisemitism, Remarque was not Jewish and had no Jewish heritage at all. The sequel novel (filmed by Hollywood in 1937, a picture, like the novel, much less known than the original story), The Way Back (also styled as The Road Back in some English language editions) is in many ways even darker than the first novel. I think to understand both of them, much more so the sequel, fully, you need at least an outline grasp of the Great War and German history in its immediate aftermath. This later novel was initially published episodically in December 1930 and January 1931, before being first published in novel form during 1931. Less well known than the original, if arguably the superior book. There's a chilling sequence towards the end where the old schoolfriends and comrades who somehow survived the trenches encounter what is clearly described as one of the many far right youth groups, forerunners to the Germany's WWII-era leader Jugend of later years. This set in the early 20s; Remarque writing at the turn of the 30s clearly saw the way things were going.

An interesting writer, I sort of think of him as an opposite number to what Wilfred Owen might have written had he both survived the war and turned to prose. Remarque had been conscripted, severely wounded at the from in 1917, recovered, and sent back to the front in October 1918; he wrote directly from experience.

 

[jimboyogi]

RELAY - viewed at the cinema last night, thoroughly enjoyed. A 2024 (currently on release here in Australia) suspense thriller touching on corporate malfeasance and efforts to suppress exposure. Filmed in New York. Director - David Mackenzie. Starring - Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Sam Worthington.
Low budget, small cast, gritty, very interesting premise, well written and acted, recommended.
If you do decide to see it I suggest not reading reviews first - there are spoilers out there!

 

[Fading Fast]

Divorce in the Family from 1932 with Jackie Cooper, Conrad Nagel, Lewis Stone, Maurice Murphy, and Lois Wilson


As odd a mashup as it sounds, Divorce in the Family is a precode-meets-Hallmark family drama featuring child star Jackie Cooper that shows divorce – then, now, and always – forces a hard adjustment on everyone, but no one more so than the children.

Cooper, an early adolescent, plays the youngest son of an archaeologist. Early in, he returns from his "summer month" with his dad, played by Lewis Stone, to find his mother, played by Lois Wilson, has remarried, and they now live in her new husband's house.

The new husband is a doctor, played by Conrad Nagel, whom Wilson wants Cooper to accept as his dad, but of course, no boy – especially one who just spent a fun month with his real dad – is going to accept a "strange" man instantaneously becoming his father by fiat.

That, effectively, is the plot, with everything else being 1930s-style versions of things we've come to expect from these types of movies: the child can be obstreperous, the new parent tries too hard to be both nice and a disciplinarian – getting neither right – and the "old" dad feels left out.

Mom, too, is unhappy as her new family isn't gelling, so she tries to make everyone happy, but of course, she makes no one happy. Watch for the forced family dinners – just one of the many cringeworthy attempts to quickly create a family feel that can only sincerely come in time.

Cooper's older brother, played by Maurice Murphy, a late adolescent, gets involved trying to be both a peacemaker like his mom, but also a messenger between Stone and Cooper, as divorce law at that time, at least as presented here, severely limited a father's access to his son.

This, though, is primarily Cooper's movie. There are fights, make-ups, more fights, and more make-ups between Cooper and, mainly, his "new dad –" but also between Cooper and almost everyone else at some point as Cooper is no easy child when he doesn't get his way.

There is also plenty of Cooper's trademark crying and emoting – which made him a sensation for a time – plus too much screaming and a lot of obnoxious behavior by Cooper that has you often losing your sympathy for the boy.

If you care about the plot – and it's almost the least important thing here – Cooper, in the climax and after the doctor punishes him, runs away from home to be with Stone. Then, a contrived emergency shows Nagel in a good light, which brings about a 1930s Hallmark-style ending.

Cooper's "act," by this point in his career, was sliding from being cute to irritating, which undermines the picture but makes everyone else in it look good. Murphy is likable as the older brother as, eventually, is Nagel, who's stubborn but also seems more sincere than Cooper.

Stone, the most talented actor in the movie, lifts every scene he's in and even seems to calm Cooper's acting down a bit. Unfortunately, though, Stone is not on screen for large parts of the picture.

If an actor disappears in this one, it is Wilson, as she seems like just the clichéd "mom" trying to make her new marriage work and everyone happy. She's a fine actress and had a long career, but here she never gives her character a depth or screen presence beyond the stereotype.

For modern audiences, pictures like this – of "normal" family life (seen through the distortion of a Tinseltown lens) – provide some time-capsule value today, as everything from the cars, clothes, appliances, and home decor gives us a peek into the 1930s.

Movies like Divorce in the Family aren't supposed to be great movies – and they aren't. They are supposed to be mildly entertaining "heartwarming" message movies to help people in these situations feel better about their problems, while making society at large more understanding.

By that standard, Divorce in the Family is reasonably successful. Adjusted for 1930s norms, its heart is in the right place as it basically says, "hey, everyone needs to be more compassionate."

The real challenge – showing the real work of building a "blended" family, a day-by-day grind that takes time and patience – is hard to capture in a movie. It's hinted at here – just as it's hinted at in Hallmark movies today – making it a worthy albeit incomplete effort.

 

[Fading Fast]

So Little Time (1952) with Maria Schell and Marius Goring


It's easy to make Germany's WWII-era leaderships evil, resistance fighters heroic, and lovers romantic, but it's not so easy to rearrange those parts into a wartime Romeo and Juliet tale. That, however, is the task So Little Time takes on in this gripping story of occupation, forbidden love, and conflicted loyalties.

Maria Schell, never looking lovelier or more fragile, plays a young Belgian woman who, after losing almost all her male relatives during World War II, sees her family's estate partially commandeered by the German officer in charge of the Belgian occupation.

Schell, with good reason, hates Germans and hates on sight the officer, played by Marius Goring, now living in her house. Goring, to his credit, understands her feelings, but he has a country to run.

Living under the same large roof, though, brings the two antagonists into contact, especially after Goring helps Schell's invalid mother. Even more importantly, Schell and Goring discover a shared love of music: "If he plays Mozart, he can't be without feelings."

Schell, a highly talented music student, can't help being drawn to Goring's beautiful nightly playing, so much so that a de facto student (Schell)-teacher (Goring) relationship develops that, for a time, exists in a kind of suspended animation apart from the war.

For that brief shining moment, middle-aged Goring gets to experience love anew and young Schell gets to experience it for the first time. The war, though, has no respect for music lovers – despite themselves – becoming real lovers.

Eventually, Schell's fellow students, who are also resistance fighters, blackmail her into betraying Goring. War really is hell: "we'll disgrace you and your mother if you don't sell your lover out."

Schell and Goring knew their romance was doomed; knew the WWII Montagues and Capulets would never let their love survive – unless they could wait out the war. But war is an impatient, all-consuming beast.

Goring, an English actor with a German-sounding name and appearance, is excellent as the Germany's WWII-era leadership officer. He shows a tender side, especially to Schell, but with German characteristics of practicality and demands – he's no cuddly teddy bear.

Look for those scenes and brief flashes when he shows his kindness to Schell. You won't like yourself for thinking this way, but you see him as a man in full: a German officer of the old school trying to navigate a new order that has little room for his officer-and-a-gentleman values.

But this is Schell's movie from the first frame to the last. Even when she's not in a scene, her delicate, ethereal presence is felt. The occupation, though, offers no redoubt for a young, sensitive music student with the physical strength of a feather and little warrior spirit.

She fights for her love when necessary and with everything she has, but it's like watching Bambi battle roaring lions. Schell was put on this earth for something beautiful – music, love, kindness – but events overtook her.

Schell the actress had a long and successful career, however, walking out of the theater in 1952, one would have predicted an even more successful cinematic future for this talented young woman whom the camera simply loves.

Director Compton Bennett creates a smart balance by never letting the Germany's WWII-era leadership evil overwhelm or slip away – it's there stalking Schell and Goring all the time. And like so many English productions in the post-war era, the black-and-white cinematography is crisp and beautiful.

Also like so many English films of this era, So Little Time offers a counterpoint to Hollywood's big-budget, blast-of-color, and special-effects extravaganzas. Instead, it's a modest-budget picture driven by smart storytelling and complex characters that challenge your assumptions.

So Little Time is what good movies are supposed to be: intelligent and thought-provoking entertainment.

 

[Jon Crow]

Stalingrad again hd

 

[Trenchfriend]

I'm the only one, who likes to see a Jurassic Park I remake??
Never liked the first one that much. Too goofy for me.

 

[Fading Fast]

Six of a Kind from 1934 with Charles Ruggles, Mary Boland, George Burns, Gracie Allen, W. C. Fields, and Alison Skipworth.


The title Six of a Kind is a wordplay on the three comedic teams featured in the movie – a movie that is really just a bunch of skits loosely strung together by a plot of sorts, all to showcase the talents of these six comedy stars.

The three comedic pairs are Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and W. C. Fields and Alison Skipworth. Each pair had its distinct style, but each was very successful in its day.

The "in its day" part of that sentence does the heavy lifting as very little of any of these comedic styles is still popular today, which makes this movie an artifact of sorts. Modern audiences need that perspective to understand the movie, or it will just come across as, well, stupid.

Burns and Allen's style was her loud, oblivious stupidity played against his sardonic straight-man exasperation. Fields, a true comedic genius, plays a sort of snarky, farcical character with much physical humor against Skipworth's intelligent exhaustion with his shenanigans.

Finally, Ruggles was a sui generis comic who somehow played the same characters all the time – a man who is nervous and befuddled to the point of inarticulateness. Boland, with a daffy dignity – she's clueless but often assumes a social snobbery – only adds to his nervous confusion.

All three pairs are tossed together here with very mixed results. The "plot," in quotes for a reason, has bank employee Ruggles and his wife Boland embarking on a second honeymoon, with Burns and Allen along for the long car ride to share the expenses.

The trip is enlivened by the fact that no one knows an embezzler at the bank where Ruggles works has temporarily hidden stolen funds in Ruggles' car. So when the four stop at a town where Skipworth and Fields are, eventually the embezzler and police follow.

That is most of the plot, and it doesn't matter at all. You're here for the comedy teams to do their things, which each one does with spirit – albeit a modern viewer will have to decide what he or she thinks of this very 1930s humor.

Burns and Allen, to a modern viewer, could easily come across as insulting. Not because she's stupid – that will bother the PC police because they're always bothered – but because he acts smugly superior and rudely condescending to her.

If you find that funny – 1930s audiences did – that's all that matters, but another take on their schtick is that he's an insecure man who puffs himself up by being with someone he can mock. A kind man would help her; a nasty man looks down on her.

Fields and Skipworth work best for modern viewers, as his physical comedy – look for his pool-table skit – is still pretty funny, but it's really Skipworth's world-weary intelligent take on his puffery that lands well even today. Her comedy has aged the best of all the comedians here.

Ruggles and Boland are harder for modern audiences to appreciate as, after a few scenes of Ruggles being unable to form complete sentences, you've seen his act. Boland's awkward attempt at social snobbery is a little bit funny, but like Ruggles, it wears out quickly.

The climax – the six comedians, plus the police, plus the embezzler are in one hotel sorting all the misunderstandings out – argues that these comedic styles don't really blend well. Three separate but modestly linked vignettes might have worked better.

Yet in 1934, Six of a Kind was a box office success. It gave audiences three of their favorite comedic pairs on screen for one twenty-five-cent movie ticket. Whatever we think of them today, in their day, these were some of the top stars in America.

Hollywood did what it always did: it found a way to package popular comedians into a movie. Fans of Eddie Murphy's movies will recognize a similar effort as most of his pictures were just vehicles to showcase his comedic talents – movies that some now criticize as insensitive.

Six of a Kind, if nothing else, is a time capsule not so much of 1930s America or even 1930s Hollywood, but of 1930s comedic styles in America. For that reason alone, the movie still has a certain cultural or historic currency. You might or might not enjoy it, but it's good it exists.


N.B. Fans of Art Carney's character Ed Norton in The Honeymooners will recognize Carney's famous long "warm up" sequences – say before playing a piano, taking a golf swing, or working an appliance – in Field's pool-table skit in this one. Almost everything is derivative of something earlier.

 

[Edward]

View attachment 726238
So Little Time (1952) with Maria Schell and Marius Goring


It's easy to make Germany's WWII-era leaderships evil, resistance fighters heroic, and lovers romantic, but it's not so easy to rearrange those parts into a wartime Romeo and Juliet tale. That, however, is the task So Little Time takes on in this gripping story of occupation, forbidden love, and conflicted loyalties.

Maria Schell, never looking lovelier or more fragile, plays a young Belgian woman who, after losing almost all her male relatives during World War II, sees her family's estate partially commandeered by the German officer in charge of the Belgian occupation.

Schell, with good reason, hates Germans and hates on sight the officer, played by Marius Goring, now living in her house. Goring, to his credit, understands her feelings, but he has a country to run.

Living under the same large roof, though, brings the two antagonists into contact, especially after Goring helps Schell's invalid mother. Even more importantly, Schell and Goring discover a shared love of music: "If he plays Mozart, he can't be without feelings."

Schell, a highly talented music student, can't help being drawn to Goring's beautiful nightly playing, so much so that a de facto student (Schell)-teacher (Goring) relationship develops that, for a time, exists in a kind of suspended animation apart from the war.

For that brief shining moment, middle-aged Goring gets to experience love anew and young Schell gets to experience it for the first time. The war, though, has no respect for music lovers – despite themselves – becoming real lovers.

Eventually, Schell's fellow students, who are also resistance fighters, blackmail her into betraying Goring. War really is hell: "we'll disgrace you and your mother if you don't sell your lover out."

Schell and Goring knew their romance was doomed; knew the WWII Montagues and Capulets would never let their love survive – unless they could wait out the war. But war is an impatient, all-consuming beast.

Goring, an English actor with a German-sounding name and appearance, is excellent as the Germany's WWII-era leadership officer. He shows a tender side, especially to Schell, but with German characteristics of practicality and demands – he's no cuddly teddy bear.

Look for those scenes and brief flashes when he shows his kindness to Schell. You won't like yourself for thinking this way, but you see him as a man in full: a German officer of the old school trying to navigate a new order that has little room for his officer-and-a-gentleman values.

But this is Schell's movie from the first frame to the last. Even when she's not in a scene, her delicate, ethereal presence is felt. The occupation, though, offers no redoubt for a young, sensitive music student with the physical strength of a feather and little warrior spirit.

She fights for her love when necessary and with everything she has, but it's like watching Bambi battle roaring lions. Schell was put on this earth for something beautiful – music, love, kindness – but events overtook her.

Schell the actress had a long and successful career, however, walking out of the theater in 1952, one would have predicted an even more successful cinematic future for this talented young woman whom the camera simply loves.

Director Compton Bennett creates a smart balance by never letting the Germany's WWII-era leadership evil overwhelm or slip away – it's there stalking Schell and Goring all the time. And like so many English productions in the post-war era, the black-and-white cinematography is crisp and beautiful.

Also like so many English films of this era, So Little Time offers a counterpoint to Hollywood's big-budget, blast-of-color, and special-effects extravaganzas. Instead, it's a modest-budget picture driven by smart storytelling and complex characters that challenge your assumptions.

So Little Time is what good movies are supposed to be: intelligent and thought-provoking entertainment.

Sounds very interesting indeed. Clearly not a picture that could have been made during the war years. It's interesting that in 1952 we start to see this distinction between a 'decent German man sucked into this awfulness' and the Germany's WWII-era leaderships, whereas ten years earlier there would have doubtless been uproar had a film suggesting any such thing was possible in allied country cinema. How perspectives change over time.

I'm the only one, who likes to see a Jurassic Park I remake??
Never liked the first one that much. Too goofy for me.

You could fairly say the first one is of its time. I like the franchise broadly, though it has always had a tendency towards featuring annoying kids. Maybe I was an odd child, but I never felt the need for films to have lots of children inserted into them to keep me engaged. As an adult, I spend a lot of my time being deeply disappointed that they don't get eaten when they're being irritating. I'd like to see a reboot of the whole Jurassic Park / World franchise in a more serious fashion, told in a longer-form format. Something like Westworld, but with dinosaurs.

 

[Zombie_61]

I'm the only one, who likes to see a Jurassic Park I remake??
Never liked the first one that much. Too goofy for me.

I can sum up the reason for that in two words: "Steven Spielberg". Sometimes I'm convinced that he only makes movies for children, but after they're completed tries to sell them to adult audiences and fails. The last movie he made that I can still watch and enjoy is Jaws, and that was released in 1975. No, wait, I almost forgot about 1941. So, okay, Spielberg has two movies I can still watch and enjoy. The rest are just...meh.

 

[Edward]

I can sum up the reason for that in two words: "Steven Spielberg". Sometimes I'm convinced that he only makes movies for children, but after they're completed tries to sell them to adult audiences and fails. The last movie he made that I can still watch and enjoy is Jaws, and that was released in 1975. No, wait, I almost forgot about 1941. So, okay, Spielberg has two movies I can still watch and enjoy. The rest are just...meh.

To be fair, I think Schindler's List was a masterpiece. The problem I've always had with Spielberg is his fixation with sentimental schmaltz. Vast majority of his pictures I'm left thinking there was a good story in there that would have been far better told by a French director without the obsession with sentimentality and a "happy" ending. If Spielberg had directed Casablanca it would have had some convoluted and utterly unbelievable wrinkle that left Bogie and Bergman gonig off together at the end. And probably three **** sequels too.

This evening I've been watching The Road Back, Jame's Whale's 1937 run at transferring Erich Remarque's sequel novel to All Quiet on the Western Front to the screen. It's available for free on Youtube:

Worth seeing as a companion piece to the original. On the whole, it's fairly faithful to the original novel. It simplifies some of the plots a little, obviously, though the most significant scene it cuts is of a far right youth group some of the demobilised men encounter - one of those which existed in Germany as forerunner of the Germany's WWII-era leader Youth much later on. It does end with the characters expressing the hope of permanent piece in 1920 or so, followed by a montage of American newspaper headlines of the 1930s emphasising a global rise in military spend and the looming shadow of the war then yet to come, the picture having been released in 1937. The production is a little of its time, most particularly in that the score is rather intrusive in a number of places, a hangover doubtless from the silent pictures in those still relatively early days of talkies (just a decade on from The Jazz Singer). I'm somewhat surprised that there hasn't been another attempt to bring the story to the big screen, particularly after Netflix had such a big hit with their version of All Quiet... in recent years (flawed, yes, but a big commercial success). Perhaps The Way Back / The Road Back (The former is the more direct translation from Remarque's German title, but various English language editions have been produced using both titles) isn't seen as having the same 'action' appeal, being set in the aftermath of the war rather than during it, perhaps it's because filmmakers think it requires more exposition than the trenches. I think they're missing a big trick. Still, the original remains seeing for the strengths of Remarque's material that it carries, and as a now relatively rare picture that comments on that war involving Germany without seemingly inevitably being viewed in light of the Germany's WWII-era leadership menace that later arose.

 

[Biff42]

Dune 2 it was badass!

 

[Fading Fast]

Teacher's Pet (1958) with Clark Gable, Doris Day, and Gig Young


The 1950s were chockablock with battle-of-the-***es romcoms, oddly oriented toward people in their thirties and forties, at a time when most people got married in their twenties. Still, these silly, fun romps were a staple of mid-century movies.

Teacher's Pet wraps its May-September romance – thirty-six-year-old Doris Day "battles" with fifty-seven-year-old Clark Gable – inside one of the culture's larger fault lines at the time: learning by doing versus learning by studying, or the school of hard knocks versus real school.

Until the post-war GI Bill, college had been an elite affair for the rich and richer, but with the Bill, the unwashed masses began getting a higher education. This ruffled plenty of feathers among the men and women, at the time in their thirties and older, who hadn't gone to college.

Many in the older generation in the 1950s believed in learning by doing and looked down – either honestly or defensively – at college education: "I learned the (fill-in-the-blank) business by working my way up from the mailroom, not by reading a book about it."

College eventually won, as today you need a college degree for almost every quasi-white-collar job (a framework finally getting a much needed reappraisal), but it was a genuine point of cultural friction back then, which brings us to Gable and Day.

He plays the older city editor of a newspaper who learned his trade by doing; she plays the young college teacher who believes journalism can be taught in a classroom. None of that would matter until Gable's boss forces him into Day's orbit, which leads to a movie-contrived setup.

After sprinkling some movie-magic-confusion dust, Gable, under a pseudonym and pretending not to be an editor, enrolls in Day's night-school course simply because she's cute. She recognizes his talent, which draws them together as she's impressed with her new student. Good grief.

That's really just Romcom 101 stuff, and it's well done. The scene where Gable bangs out a five-hundred-word news story effortlessly and flawlessly in class, which leaves Day agog at his – a top newspaperman – journalistic "potential," is a highlight.

The movie's plot then follows the genre's template: the two fight, flirt, get close, fight again, and then another guy or girl – mainly a guy in this one – plays a romantic foil, with hope for a "happily ever after" looking lost until all the truths and deceptions spill out in a cathartic climax.

The fighting is where the school-of-hard-knocks-versus-higher-education battle plays out and it's fun to see today because it was taken very seriously back then. Even as late as the 1980s, college new hires would be mocked, "college boys," by the veterans in many companies.

The male romantic foil role falls to Gig Young. He made a career playing the other guy in romcoms, in part because he's good at it, and in part because he got typecast. Here, he's very good at it. You want to see his "hangover" scene with Gable – their chemistry is pitch perfect.

Gable's chemistry with Day is also good, but you have to get over the he-is-too-old-for-her (which he is) hurdle to really enjoy it. Four years later, Day would star opposite Cary Grant in another romcom, That Touch of Mink, and he's only three years younger than Gable.

Grant, though, had one thing no one else in Hollywood ever had – he aged in a way that left him in a sort of ageless stasis for two-plus decades, until his age finally showed in his seventies. For his movie with Day, he was still in his suspended-age-animation phase.

On the distaff romantic-foil side, Mamie Van Doren – one of the many bargain-basement Marilyn Monroes in Hollywood at the time – plays Gable's sort-of girlfriend. Kudos to her, though, as she's likeable and talented enough for the not-demanded role.

Director George Seaton, who knows the genre well, moved through the formula skillfully. He, thankfully, filmed in black and white at a time when too many of these romcoms were shot in blinding Technicolor. Still, Seaton should have trimmed twenty minutes from his story.

Teacher's Pet is a likable, harmless battle-of-the-***es romcom with two very appealing stars, a good supporting cast, and a time capsule look at that era's cultural conflict over a college education. It's a light but enjoyable way to spend a few hours.

 

[Soulmaker1]

The Life of Chuck

Great movie, I liked it. Based on a Stephen King story, but not his typical horror theme.

 

[Trenchfriend]

No, wait, I almost forgot about 1941.

I read about. Oh my, what a cast!! And Warren Oates! I def. should see it!!

 

[Biff42]

The Life of Chuck

Great movie, I liked it. Based on a Stephen King story, but not his typical horror theme.

View attachment 727185

I want to see the Long Walk coming out next week. It's a King movie.

As a life-long endurance junkie it speaks to me.

 

[Zombie_61]

I read about. Oh my, what a cast!! And Warren Oates! I def. should see it!!

A word of caution--regardless of whether you watch the "theatrical" version which is 1 hour 58 minutes, or the "Director's Cut" which is 2 hours and 26 minutes, Warren Oates is only in one scene that lasts maybe 5-10 minutes.

 

[Fading Fast]

Another Dawn (1937) with Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Ian Hunter, and Frieda Inescort.


Today, audiences couldn't get past the British Empire presented here as a heroic builder of nations in some generic "Arabic" country beset by rival tribes. Yet you can almost put that aside, as it is just a canvas for a typical 1930s romantic melodrama from Warner Bros.

Another Dawn is an A picture in budget, stars, and treatment – general production qualities, soundtrack, cinematography, etc. – but boiled down, it has the plot of a B-movie, which only serves to show what A-picture resources can do for a humble story.

Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, and Ian Hunter play characters forming three corners of a love triangle with a dotted line from Hunter to Frieda Inescort. These talented A-list actors more than make up for the generic material.

Hunter plays the post's commander with Flynn his loyal second in command and best friend. It's all "boys who love soldiering" until Hunter, on vacation, falls in love with Francis, a woman still grieving the death of her dashing aviator fiancé.

She tells Hunter she'll never love again, but he says he loves enough for both of them as long as she has affection for him. The next thing you know, they're married and back at the post with Flynn congratulating them.

Lo and behold, Francis discovers she can love again, but it's the dashing flyboy Flynn and not her kind and honorable husband. Flynn, heretofore a *******, discovers he can love just one woman, but unfortunately, that one woman is his best friend and commanding officer's wife.

Living at the isolated and almost claustrophobic post, British honor (and the Motion Picture Production Code) have rarely done so much heavy lifting. Hence, nobody climbs into bed with anyone they shouldn't, but eventually, everyone knows three lives are misaligned.

After much physical restraint, emotional angst, and honor all around, the scriptwriters solve this one the only way they could: with some good old-fashioned upright British sacrificing for others. The three practically fight to see who will sacrifice the most.

Sure, it's ridiculously idealistic, but so what? A lot of movies have been made; having a few that put honor above hormones is not the worst thing and, who knows, like monkeys typing Shakespeare, maybe it has happened a few times in real life.

This basic story only works because Hunter, Francis, and Flynn – and Inescort, who plays Flynn's sister pining unrequitedly for Hunter – have wonderful chemistry, which makes even the several trite scenes with hackneyed dialogue good.

Not all the scenes are trite, though, as many are quite good. There are even a few action scenes to remind us that this is an outpost in a dangerous land. That helps to establish that Hunter and Flynn are heroes. You'll love their insane carefree British attitude toward danger.

Most of the movie, however, is Hunter convincing Francis to marry him even though she doesn't love him; Flynn and Francis falling in love but not consummating it as they both respect Hunter too much; and Hunter finally figuring out what's going on and blaming no one but himself.

Flynn and Francis are the marquee stars – Flynn on the way up; Francis unfortunately going the other way at this point in her career – but Hunter is the glue who quietly, as he does in many movies, brings a likable seriousness to the love triangle.

Warners used its generic "British military outpost in the sand" look for this one, similar to The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), another Flynn movie. While it won't fool you, it doesn't look cheap but high-end 1930s Hollywood.

Another look worth noting is that the leading man is prettier than the leading woman – it happens occasionally in Tinseltown (see some of the early Brad Pitt movies). Flynn was in his gorgeous prime here and Francis was never more than attractive (and with completely uncontrollable hair).

With Old Warners pro William Dieterle directing and an A-picture budget, everything moves along smoothly, driven by seamless transitions, beautiful sweeping shots, gorgeous closeups, and a wonderful score that makes this basic story seem almost majestic.

"A basic story that seems almost majestic" is as good a summary of Another Dawn as any. The movie isn’t a classic, but its appealing stars and lavish Warner Bros. gloss transform a modest melodrama into a film that still plays as stylish entertainment today.