What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Street Scene (1931) - an enjoyable antique, based on a hit play, about 24 hours in front of a crowded NYC tenement, with a host of familiar character actors as its denizens. It's your basic New York melting pot story: Italian, Jewish, and Irish (etc.) families all bouncing off each other. Pre-Code, so it's got adultery too. A typically classy Sam Goldwyn production with an awesome NYC street set that looks forward to Dead End. And the hats, oh, the hats...

I really like this movie - it's very honest IMO. If you care, my comments on it here: https://www.thefedoralounge.com/thr...ovie-you-watched.20830/page-1260#post-2420013

 

[Doctor Strange]

Yeah, you - and Lizzie - are right on. An awful lot in this play/film (still) rings true, and it was obviously very influential. This flick has been on my radar forever, I don't know why it took me so long to finally see it. (Thanks, TCM!)

I didn't bother to mention that it was stagey because... well, show me a play adapted to film in 1931 that WASN'T stagey. I found it interesting that Sylvia Sidney, who was Jewish, was playing the Irish-American girl in this one - though she was still doing her signature part of "the rose of the slums" (here literally named Rose!) It must be a shock to see her so young and beautiful in this if you only know her as the chain-smoking afterlife officer in Beetlejuice. And apparently Beulah Bondi, who came to Hollywood for this film after being in the play, was NEVER young; she was already playing the strong-willed mothers/grandmothers she'd play for fifty years. It's interesting that this was a groundbreaking contemporary story of life in the big city when it was new... and now it's a time capsule from a vanished era.

And yes, while many of its big city tensions and immigrant stereotypes seem overwrought now, its "why can't we all get along and just help one another?" message is (unfortunately) still timely.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Up until it became an issue in, around the '80s I think, Hollywood had no compunctions about the actual ethnicity of the actor playing a specific ethnicity. And my God, look at Luise Rainer of Jewish-German descent playing O-lan in "The Good Earth" or, maybe even more incongruous, Alec Guinness playing the Japanese man Koichi Asono in "A Majority of One."

My entry in "the actor who always looked old" category is William Frawley. I think he was born looking about what he would look like when he played Fred Mertz (had to be a bit jarring for his parents when Fred popped out holding a pocket watch in one hand and a cigar in the other). Even in his movies from the '30s, when he is - and you can tell he is - a younger man, he still pretty much looked like Fred Mertz.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The other guy who goes into that category is William Demarest, who looked the same as Uncle Charley in the 60s and 70s as he looked in all those Preston Sturges pictures twenty-five years before.

The ultimate bit of unconvincing movie yellowface has to be Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young in a Warner Bros. potboiiler called "The Hatchet Man."

The only thing separating this bit of celluloid from a Fred Allen "One Long Pan" sketch is that One Long Pan was more convincing.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Don't forget Walter Brennan. He was never young either. He already looks around 40 in Meet John Doe!

Addendum: Lizzie, what about John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror?!? That one's right up there too.

 

[3fingers]

I've watched Street Scene but it has been a long time ago. I will try to find it again.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the only other role in which Brother Wayne was more miscast than he was in The Conqueror was his bit as a Roman centurion in "The Greatest Story Ever Told." "Truuuly, this mayan was tha Son a' Gawd." I expected him to add "Pilgrim."

Hollywood Bible movies of The Fifties are a genre ripe with miscasting, which I think is one thing that killed the genre.

 

[Fading Fast]

One of Fading Fast's axioms is that everyone looks their age, but almost everyone believes they look younger than they are. That said, there are the exceptions and Frawley, Demarest and Brennan are examples.

I hired a kid who was in his mid-twenties in the early '90s who looked about 40 at the time (bald except for the ring of hair, decent amount of wrinkles, a thicker body and deep voice). He looked about 45 when he was 40; 50 when he was 50 and now as he approaches 55, he looks early 50s. In the nearly 30 years I've known him, he has "aged" only about 15 years, but, like Frawley, etc., it was because he had such a head start on looking old.

 

[Zombie_61]

...My entry in "the actor who always looked old" category is William Frawley...

The other guy who goes into that category is William Demarest...

Don't forget Walter Brennan...

Let's also not forget Ian Wolfe, and more recently Abe Vigoda.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Abe Vigoda was only 53 years old during the first season of "Barney Miller," which is testimony to the hard life he must have led up to that point.

 

[AmateisGal]

Ocean's 8 with Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. I'm a huge fan of the Ocean's 11 movies and was a little worried about this one, but it exceeded my expectations. I enjoyed it immensely.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Loungers, you inspired me to load my 1994s VHS-cassette "Look Who's Talking", right now on breakfast!!

The Abe Vigoda-MOMENTS!!

And Olympia Dukakis.

And the soundtrack!!

 

[Fading Fast]

"You've Got Mail" 1998 with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks

The last time I saw this movie in full was in the theater and I was underwhelmed because it was such a big hit that, for me, it didn't live up to the hype and because I was comparing it to the wonderful 1940's "The Shop Around the Corner" on which it is loosely based.

But time and changing temperament allows me to look more kindly on it today and, despite its many (many) flaws, I enjoyed it owing mainly to the outsized talent of Tom Hanks and the reasonable talent of Meg Ryan.

Also - shockingly - movies, even rom-coms, have become so much more coarser, gratuitous and cynical in the ensuing twenty years, that this movie felt genteel - even, old-fashioned - by comparison. I don't think there was one graphic sex scene (no couple who've just met banging away in a bar bathroom "'cause they just can't wait," which seems to be the rom-com film-and-TV-show tick of the moment) and every third word and thought wasn't a vulgar sex reference.

That said, every other character (with the exception of Jean Stapleton) could have lifted out as they were all forced, superfluous and underdeveloped - a mistake the 1940's version didn't make. Heck, you could shorten the movie thirty minutes by taking out every single scene with Hank's family of unattractive horny older men and the movie gets meaningfully better.

But where it shines is when Hanks is on screen using all his talents to make the unbelievable, believable. You're convinced his transition from unaware and slightly hard businessman to pining lover trying to re-win a cute and somewhat disheveled Meg Ryan whom he, well, put out of business is real. It's all still contrived - so was the '40 version - but Hanks and Ryan have enough chemistry (as did James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan) to keep it all enjoyably afloat. My vote (and re-watching time) will still go to the original, but this one did make for a fun few hours of watching a, thankfully, not-angry movie.

 

[AmateisGal]

"You've Got Mail" 1998 with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks

The last time I saw this movie in full was in the theater and I was underwhelmed because it was such a big hit that, for me, it didn't live up to the hype and because I was comparing it to the wonderful 1940's "The Shop Around the Corner" on which it is loosely based.

But time and changing temperament allows me to look more kindly on it today and, despite its many (many) flaws, I enjoyed it owing mainly to the outsized talent of Tom Hanks and the reasonable talent of Meg Ryan.

Also - shockingly - movies, even rom-coms, have become so much more coarser, gratuitous and cynical in the ensuing twenty years, that this movie felt genteel - even, old-fashioned - by comparison. I don't think there was one graphic sex scene (no couple who've just met banging away in a bar bathroom "'cause they just can't wait," which seems to be the rom-com film-and-TV-show tick of the moment) and every third word and thought wasn't a vulgar sex reference.

That said, every other character (with the exception of Jean Stapleton) could have lifted out as they were all forced, superfluous and underdeveloped - a mistake the 1940's version didn't make. Heck, you could shorten the movie thirty minutes by taking out every single scene with Hank's family of unattractive horny older men and the movie gets meaningfully better.

But where it shines is when Hanks is on screen using all his talents to make the unbelievable, believable. You're convinced his transition from unaware and slightly hard businessman to pining lover trying to re-win a cute and somewhat disheveled Meg Ryan whom he, well, put out of business is real. It's all still contrived - so was the '40 version - but Hanks and Ryan have enough chemistry (as did James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan) to keep it all enjoyably afloat. My vote (and re-watching time) will still go to the original, but this one did make for a fun few hours of watching a, thankfully, not-angry movie.

I love this movie. It's absolutely delightful.

 

[Zombie_61]

Currently watching 3:10 to Yuma from 2007 starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. I saw this version before I saw the 1957 version starring Van Heflin and Glenn Ford, and I like this one a bit more; better pacing, and as much as I like Van Heflin I didn't quite find his performance believable.

 

[Seb Lucas]

I think the only other role in which Brother Wayne was more miscast than he was in The Conqueror was his bit as a Roman centurion in "The Greatest Story Ever Told." "Truuuly, this mayan was tha Son a' Gawd." I expected him to add "Pilgrim."

Hollywood Bible movies of The Fifties are a genre ripe with miscasting, which I think is one thing that killed the genre.

Yes, I remember making this joke about Wayne 40 years ago. But then again in Australia we had to get used to Biblical figures with strong American accents. But I often wondered how many people really noticed this. It's not like Biblical epics are highbrow - they are old school populist melodramas with crowd-pleasing spectacle.

 

[Edward]

Rewatched Gangs of New York last week; much better than I remembered it being, actually.

 

[jacketjunkie]

Rewatched Gangs of New York last week; much better than I remembered it being, actually.

While the movie itself wouldn't make my top 10, the ending certainly makes it into the top 3 (of movie endings).

 

[Doctor Strange]

I thought Gangs of New York was darn good when it first came out (despite a few minor problems), and it I think it plays even better now. I'd never argue that it's one of Marty's best films... but it's a fascinating window into a largely unexplored time and place, stuffed with interesting writing, production design, and performances. Daniel Day-Lewis gets all the attention as Bill the Butcher, but Jim Broadbent's Boss Tweed is also awesome:

"The appearance of the law must be maintained, especially when it's being broken."

 

[Fading Fast]

I also think Gangs of New York" has aged well. I was not a big fan of it at first - thought it unnecessarily violent and a little too, either, sure of itself, or sure it was "a classic in the making," but now I see the violence as (hard to take) but (I assume) a fair representation of the time and, since it clearly isn't a true classic in the "Jaws" or "Godfather" sense, I see it's presumptuousness as no big deal. I feel about the same regarding Day-Lewis performance - an actor I love - but in this one, like the movie, I think he thought he was acting in a "Godfather-" level role and over did it in parts.