What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Bigger Don]

... spiral into crazy town.

I don't believe any of it was shot outside of the city limits Dysfunction Junction.

 

[2jakes]

We got sucked into "Casablanca" last night on TCM. As this is the eight-hundredth time I've seen it, I continue to be amazed that it fully engages me (proving it is either an outstanding movie or my small brain is easily engaged).

Three things struck me this time: (1) the movie has almost a breakneck pace, (2) Sydney Greenstreet is an outstanding foil to Rick and (3) while Ingrid Bergman is beautiful - her skin seems to be lit from beneath - that little corner of the earth had more that its fair share of truly gorgeous woman in '42 with Yvonne and Annina being no second choices to Bergman.

The last dozen movies mentioned here on the forum whether it's Christmas related
or not.
I have recently recorded them on the DVR.

Plus, six films from last month when I received a new cable box.
And I'm only at 40% before I run out of space.

Like you, I've watched these classics countless times and never gets old.

New for me this year was watching "A Christmas Story" while "Ralphie"
(Peter Billingsley) and director Bob Clark commented on who,why,when,
and where with regards to the making of this movie.

Warning:
For me, it's all positive & I enjoy knowing what they found interesting.
Others may not care for this, preferring to watch as is without the
commentary.
It wasn't distracting because they allowed for Jean
Shepard to have his say and would add to it.

(I have both original & this version)


I'm beginning to realize that I'm recording more them watching.
Just knowing that I can enjoy them when I have some spare
time is great!

 

[Worf]

"Passage to Marseille" - Not Casablanca, despite having all the same leads ceptin' Ingrid and her hubby Paul, but rousing all the same. The air battle between the ship and the Luftwaffe bomber is a fave of mine. The captain shaking his fist at the plane with shells landing all around him! Vive La France!

"The Naked and the Dead" - A decent film but no where near as good as Mailer's book which I read in High School, probably cause it had the word "Naked" in it (I was a piece of work back then). Still the film, shot in Panama, was a pretty good war picture with a pretty good message at the end about the difference between love and fear as a motivator of fighting men and women. My one gripe is that according to this film all the women back home were lyin', cheatin', convin' low lifes not worth fightin' or dying for... kinda sad.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

"Florence Foster Jenkins"

This movie, like the real life story it is based on, is a high wire act that could have fallen to the ground and gone splat at any moment. It didn't, but it did get very close several times. Outstanding acting by Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant kept the story balanced, if teetering, on that very narrow wire.

The quick-and-dirty summary is FFJ was a uber-wealthy older woman in '20 - '40s NYC who - with the help of an enabling staff and husband and her massive funds - deluded herself into believing she was a talented soprano. That she performs in venues whose audience and reviewers are closely controlled by her husband allowed the charade to continue.

A bunch of side stories - her husband's long-time affair, her accompanist's career concerns, etc,- play out, but the central drama is whether a sick (with long-term syphilis), deluded older woman's fantasy world - and her sense of self - can be sustained amidst a highly publicized (and reviewed - unfavorably for the first time) performance at Carnegie Hall.

I'll leave it there for those who haven't seen it. We nearly turned the movie off a couple of times, but Streep's portrayal was so empathetic and Grant's so engaging that we kept on and, overall, are glad we did. That said, I can't recommend it as this movie is off in so many ways, that it will either strike a chord with you or you'll be cutting out early.

 

[Doctor Strange]

A Royal Night Out, in which Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret escape their chaperones and have adventures amidst the celebrating crowds in London on VE Day. (A very fictionalized account of what was apparently a far more controlled, less exciting event.)

Reasonably diverting with a good cast and production... but it should have been better. The film eventually shows how the experience of being an ordinary citizen for a night is an important formative learning experience for the future queen, but it gets too bogged down in near-misses-in-scary-settings plot details and comic scenes featuring the incompetent chaperone officers that utterly fall flat. With a more focused script that concentrated on what the princesses learned rather than their wacky adventures, it could have been a much better film.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Florence Foster Jenkins"

This movie, like the real life story it is based on, is a high wire act that could have fallen to the ground and gone splat at any moment. It didn't, but it did get very close several times. Outstanding acting by Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant kept the story balanced, if teetering, on that very narrow wire.

The quick-and-dirty summary is FFJ was a uber-wealthy older woman in '20 - '40s NYC who - with the help of an enabling staff and husband and her massive funds - deluded herself into believing she was a talented soprano. That she performs in venues whose audience and reviewers are closely controlled by her husband allowed the charade to continue.

A bunch of side stories - her husband's long-time affair, her accompanist's career concerns, etc,- play out, but the central drama is whether a sick (with long-term syphilis), deluded older woman's fantasy world - and her sense of self - can be sustained amidst a highly publicized (and reviewed - unfavorably for the first time) performance at Carnegie Hall.

I'll leave it there for those who haven't seen it. We nearly turned the movie off a couple of times, but Streep's portrayal was so empathetic and Grant's so engaging that we kept on and, overall, are glad we did. That said, I can't recommend it as this movie is off in so many ways, that it will either strike a chord with you or you'll be cutting out early.

We didn't get this this summer, having had the French film that dealt with a fictionalized version of the same subject already, but you confirm what I suspected from seeing the trailer.

The whole FFJ story has always made me very uncomfortable. The woman was clearly mentally ill -- syphillis will do that -- and I've always found the way she was commercialized after she died to be quite distasteful. She made a private recording of one of her recitals in 1938, which was released on an RCA Victor LP after her death, packaged in a nudge-nudge-lookit-the-crazy-woman sort of way that out-smugironies the smuggest and most ironic of modern hipsters, and that's dominated the way her image has been hustled ever since...

Satire is only funny when it attacks the powerful and oppressive, not when it attacks the harmless and the damaged.

 

[MisterCairo]

I saw Star Wars: Rogue One with my nephew during our Christmas visit to my sister's. We'd planned a movie day, with my wife taking our two girls and our younger nephew to see "Sing". This was just hours after hearing Carrie Fisher had died.

Bitter sweet, but it was a great film, and I enjoyed it more than Force Awakens, and I thought that was awesome.

 

[Fading Fast]

We didn't get this this summer, having had the French film that dealt with a fictionalized version of the same subject already, but you confirm what I suspected from seeing the trailer.

The whole FFJ story has always made me very uncomfortable. The woman was clearly mentally ill -- syphillis will do that -- and I've always found the way she was commercialized after she died to be quite distasteful. She made a private recording of one of her recitals in 1938, which was released on an RCA Victor LP after her death, packaged in a nudge-nudge-lookit-the-crazy-woman sort of way that out-smugironies the smuggest and most ironic of modern hipsters, and that's dominated the way her image has been hustled ever since...

Satire is only funny when it attacks the powerful and oppressive, not when it attacks the harmless and the damaged.

I agree with every single word you wrote and can only emphasize the wisdom, kindness and decency in your last line "Satire is only funny when it attacks the powerful and oppressive, not when it attacks the harmless and the damaged."

Bullying is only a cruder and more obvious form of satire of the "harmless and damaged." Once the facts of who she was and why became apparent in the movie, my heart ached for her sad life. She was mentally broken and picking on the mentally infirm is as bad as picking on the physically infirm.

The movie shines a light on this in a powerful way by having a stereotypical of-the-period blonde "floozy" initially laugh out loud when she hears FFJ as everyone around her is taking FFJ seriously (as FFJ's audience had been handpicked for just such a purpose). But, later, when this "floozy" grasps the full picture, she defends FFJ and denounces "her betters" who laugh at FFJ when the audience isn't hand picked.

While a bit heavy handed, it showed both the stupidity of labeling people by their appearance - the "floozy" has more heart and decency than the putative "good" people who look down on her - and the potential meanness of crowd behavior.

 

[Touchofevil]

Bad Day at Black Rock
Bullitt and
Cool Hand Luke
All on TCM today.
Darn it, I had things to get done.

 

[ChiTownScion]

We didn't get this this summer, having had the French film that dealt with a fictionalized version of the same subject already, but you confirm what I suspected from seeing the trailer.

The whole FFJ story has always made me very uncomfortable. The woman was clearly mentally ill -- syphillis will do that -- and I've always found the way she was commercialized after she died to be quite distasteful. She made a private recording of one of her recitals in 1938, which was released on an RCA Victor LP after her death, packaged in a nudge-nudge-lookit-the-crazy-woman sort of way that out-smugironies the smuggest and most ironic of modern hipsters, and that's dominated the way her image has been hustled ever since...

Satire is only funny when it attacks the powerful and oppressive, not when it attacks the harmless and the damaged.

I'd submit that the real laughing- up- one's- sleeve in the whole affair should be reserved not for Jenkins, but for the pseudo- sophisticates who kowtowed and went along with the charade that she had singing ability for the sake of pecuniary self interest. Implying that she had the talent of a Mary Garden for the sake of a donation to one's favorite foundation. Hee hawing at Jenkins after she died is mean spirited, but feigning appreciation for the sake of a large check... well, that's dishonest and cynical as well as mean spirited.

 

[Worf]

Satire is only funny when it attacks the powerful and oppressive, not when it attacks the harmless and the damaged.

A line for the ages... Bravo!

Worf

 

[Worf]

Bad Day at Black Rock
Bullitt and
Cool Hand Luke
All on TCM today.
Darn it, I had things to get done.

Mwa ha ha ha ha.... Curses! Foiled again!!!!!

Worf

 

[Touchofevil]

Mwa ha ha ha ha.... Curses! Foiled again!!!!!

Worf

Vacation is a great thing. I can find excuses to not be productive every where I look, TCM is one of my favorite excuses.

 

[Fading Fast]

Bad Day at Black Rock
Bullitt and
Cool Hand Luke
All on TCM today.
Darn it, I had things to get done.

Stupid Steve McQueen in stupid "Bullitt" was on so often this year on TCM that I lost a meaningful amount of time to just that one movie.*


* Note, it is not my fault, but everyone else's that I lack the discipline not to watch it.

 

[basbol13]

Stardust........it came out in 1974, and no I don't mean Stardust (2007). This is a hard one to see let alone get. It stars David Essex as Don MacLaine who with his band the Stray Cats climb the ladder to fame and fortune. It tells a loose history of the Mersey Beat Generation. It's like watching a documentary on the Beatles and Rolling Stones with a little Dave Clark 5 thrown in. It even has a scene depicting a Tommy like Rock Opera. It's got a few rockers from the past like Adam Faith, Dave Edmunds and Keith Moon. It also stars Bad Guy Larry Hagman as a ruthless agent and Edd "Kooky" Byrns as a TV interviewer.
You might also want to catch That'll be the Day (1973) which also stars David Essex and depicts Don Maclaine's life prior success. This one stars Ringo Starr and Keith Moon.
I'd would put both these films in the must watch column if you get the chance.

 

[Stearmen]

True Grit (1969) Looking back at this movie Kim Darby gets a bum rap! Her quirky caricature fit right in with the one eye fat man, arguing with Strother Martin and holding her own against Robert Duvall and his gang of nut cases! It's poor Glen Campbell and his good looks that just doesn't fit in at all.

 

[basbol13]

On the Waterfront (1954)
Terry Malloy : I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money.

 

[MisterCairo]

Hone Alone 2: Alone in New York.

So sad to see Kevin visit the Twin Towers, and even go up to the top knowing what would happen there just nine years later.

We were also gobsmacked by the cameo appearance in the film, given what has recently happened.

I am of course talking about Ally Sheedy showing up as the ticket agent at the airport.

 

[Fading Fast]

True Grit (1969) Looking back at this movie Kim Darby gets a bum rap! Her quirky caricature fit right in with the one eye fat man, arguing with Strother Martin and holding her own against Robert Duvall and his gang of nut cases! It's poor Glen Campbell and his good looks that just doesn't fit in at all.

Could not agree more - she had to be off, way off, like Wayne's character, to survive the total crazy that was their existence. Normalcy would not have been an advantage. Quirky with a bit of crazy mixed in emboldened her true grit.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Big Steal"

- Despite being billed as film noir, it was more early action adventure than noir
--- The movie goes from point A to point B driven forward by a series of fistfights, gunfights and car chases (very action adventure of the day)
--- The male and female leads are, in the end, good guys / there is no femme fatale
--- The good guys win, all the bad guys lose / more typical Hollywood morality tale than noir / no confused or ambiguous ethics
--- While shot in B&W, the style was primarily bright with wide angles; not shadowy, not dark, not narrow angles, not "noir-ish"

- Jane Greer wears clothes ridiculously well; be it body proportion, posture or a touch from above, that women is a clothes designer's dream

- If William Bendix was hit in the head in real life 1/10th the time he was in this and other movies, he'd have been dead by the end of the 1940s

- Kudos to the movie for playing against stereotype and showing the Mexican police captain as smart and ahead of most of the other characters