What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[greatestescaper]

It's not a good film, but I kinda like it too, for it's cool concept rather than its lame execution. No doubt the Alan Moore comics it's based on are vastly better. I gotta read them sometime.

As Connery's Alan Quatermain observes, "I'm waiting to be impressed."

I think Penny Dreadful did the Victorian monster mash a lot better, but of course it's not fair to compare a three-season cable series with an older standalone film.

The League is a film I want to enjoy but it's just not that good. It's starts well, but ultimately flounders and fails. The comics are interesting, to say the least, with some excellent artwork.

As for myself the wife finally got me to set down and watch, My Fair Lady it was excellent.

 

[Bushman]

It Happened on 5th Avenue

 

[green papaya]

HELL'S ANGELS (1930)

Billionaire Howard Hughes produced and directed Hell's Angels, the most expensive film ever made in its time. Hughes spared no expense in capturing an exciting dogfight between R.A.F. and German fighter planes, using 137 pilots in all. Hell's Angels is perhaps more notable for introducing Jean Harlow to the screen in her first major film role. Set during World War I, Hell's Angels is the story of three Oxford buddies: two brothers (Ben Lyon and James Hall) and one German (John Darrow). When all three are conscripted to fight on opposing sides of the war, each is torn between obedience to his country and that of his conscience. Jean Harlow is the woman who comes between the three men in this lavish period adventure.

 

[Stearmen]

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" - Panned by critics and not well received by audiences but I still love the film. This is one comic book adaptation I DIDN'T read... I just like it for the story itself. Full of holes and often silly, I still watch it when I can...

Worf

Perhaps this belongs in the guilty pleasures thread....

I did like "Matilda", even if they tarted her up with stupid barrel extensions! The rest of the movie should be thrown into an active volcano.

 

[Stearmen]

Allies Jessie James. I forgot what a terrible movie this was! Still, I stuck it out just to see all the cameos.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

To Kill a Mockingbird

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

It Happened on 5th Avenue

One of my wife's all-time favorites.

 

[greatestescaper]

I did like "Matilda", even if they tarted her up with stupid barrel extensions! The rest of the movie should be thrown into an active volcano.

That pretty well sums up my feelings on the film. That was such a great start, and it quickly unravels after that. I especially love the line about automatic rifles:
Quatermain: Automatic rifles. Who in God's name has automatic rifles?
Hunter: Dashed unsporting. Probably Belgian.

 

[Fading Fast]

"That Certain Woman" 1937 staring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda

• They took the brakes and believability off a soap opera and crammed as much melodrama as they could into a hour-and-thirty minute movie
  • Without giving too much away, you have: a gangster's widow trying to redeem herself, a playboy scion marrying against his father's wishes, a legitimate baby believed by most to be illegitimate, an annulment, a quickie marriage, a crippling car-crash, a deathbed profession of long-suppressed love, a child custody battle, a mother willingly giving up her child -phew! - and that's not even all of it

• Despite the cat's cradle story - it all kinda works as a Bette Davis vehicle because, well, she's Bette Davis
  • Young, cute and at full power, she pulls the material along using all her talent to make it as believable as possible. She is in complete command of her skills here; whereas, a young Henry Fonda is still learning his craft

• Good Fedora Lounge 1930s' eye candy highlighted by an outstanding Art Deco wealthy lawyer's office with a Deco bar hidden behind a swinging bookcase

• Donald Crisp, once again, plays a hard-*ss dad, but he does it so well you don't mind

• A good Sunday morning '30s movie to enjoy for what it is and nothing more

 

[Worf]

Been catching up on some recent Oscar Nominee's. Last night we watched "The Imitation Game" with Mr. Cumberbatch.... Good if not great movie. I already knew a lot about Enigma and the "Ultra" secret program. Nice to see the faces behind the story. Didn't know that a prototype computer was involved. I thoroughly enjoyed it, of course I didn't like the outcome... but that was the world he lived in...

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Caine Mutiny"

• Better than the similar "Mister Roberts"
• Should have been filmed in black and white
• Fred MacMurray is even more of a moral coward in this one than "The Apartment"
• The love story could have lifted out and the movie would have lost nothing (same for the novel it's based on)
• Van Johnson delivered a smartly nuanced performance without any of his usual boy-you-want-your-daughter-to-marry routine at work
• For what I assume was a big-budget or "A" movie, the special effects - from painfully obviously interspersed WWII archive film clips to a model boat bobbing in a tub of water to mimic a naval ship in a typhoon - were amateurish

 

[Doctor Strange]

Not just the love story, but the entire narrator/viewpoint character involved in it could easily have been left out. The guy makes zero impression, yet actively detracts from the main story. This is a common problem with narrators/viewpoint characters dragged in from books in film adaptations, they are almost always less interesting and significant than those surrounding them.

I don't really see the similarity to Mister Roberts. Okay, both films feature conflicts with pseudo-villain captains (I say pseudo because neither is an actual villain, they're just past their prime and their decisions are really poor) aboard WWII ships. Both were made in the fifties based on books/plays that tried to make sense of the war (along with lots of other works). But one boils down to a court martial over a mutiny, the other to the wacky adventures leading up to the idealistic crew's champion leaving to get into the action.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ That's a fair point and those are clear distinctions. For me, the major theme of both movies are how men from a, basically, free democracy that promotes individual rights respond to being put in a dictatorship of sorts (the military) and, then, address a, at minimum, disturbed dictator who issues irrational and / or abusive edicts and orders. That's why the nurses in "Mister Roberts" and the love story in "The Caine Mutiny" could lift right out (of the movie versions of these stories) as they don't stand on their own nor do they add to or enlightened the theme.

 

[AmateisGal]

Marathon movie day yesterday as I was home with a bad rheumatoid arthritis flare. Watched Casanova's Big Night (Bob Hope and Joan Fontaine), They Got Me Covered (Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour), State Fair (Dana Andrews and Jeanne Craine) and North By Northwest because, why not?

 

[Worf]

Went and saw "Meagan Leavey" yesterday. Good solid telling of a heartwarming story of 2 outcasts, a girl and her bomb sniffing dog. Neither was loved, nor respected until they come through the crucible of the Iraq War when it was at it's worst. Truth be told I've never seen (or probably don't remember) any of Kate Mara's other roles. But she's good in this though constantly upstaged by Rex her four legged co-star. Feel good story without veering completely into smaltz, I recommend it for more than just air-conditioning.

Worf

 

[Worf]

"Gentleman's Fate" - A pre-code early talky wherein a "Swell", told all his life that his parents were dead, finds out he's the younger brother of an Italian mob family making big bucks in bootlegging. Summoned by the family lawyer who raised him, John Gilbert finds out the hard truth of his real relations. He finds his father, holed up in a seedy hotel in Jersey, dying of a gunshot wound to the chest. Meanwhile his new found brother, played marvelously by broken nosed character actor Louis Wolheim (best known as Sargent Kat in "All Quiet on the Western Front) quickly gets Gilbert sent up the river to spare his father a death in jail. I started watching this and couldn't stop. Wolheim is a force of nature, his face, broken on the football fields of Cornell, is simply one of the most memorable in all of film.

Worf

 

[AmateisGal]

And Then There Were None, the recent version (starring Aiden Turner) of the Agatha Christie novel. Wow. It was quite good. Kept me guessing until the end.

 

[green papaya]

The HINDENBURG (1975) starring George C. Scott

Nazi Germany's prized airship is threatened with sabotage, so Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott) is charged with its safety. As the massive zeppelin lifts off for a journey to the United States, Ritter investigates the passengers, looking for a potential bomber.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Star Trek Beyond. Like the first two Abramsverse films, I hated it. But I must admit, this one somehow felt a little bit closer to "real" Trek to me. Still... it's undone by WAY too much bad-CGI action, one stupid plot contrivance and coincidence after another, another boring villain, terrible music, totally ignoring science and logic throughout, etc.

 

[Worf]

Star Trek Beyond. Like the first two Abramsverse films, I hated it. But I must admit, this one somehow felt a little bit closer to "real" Trek to me. Still... it's undone by WAY too much bad-CGI action, one stupid plot contrivance and coincidence after another, another boring villain, terrible music, totally ignoring science and logic throughout, etc.

Mwah ha ha ha... tell us how you REALLY feel! Yeah... didn't do much fer me either...

Worf