What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Zombie_61]

In some ways I enjoy The Big Sleep more than I enjoy The Maltese Falcon just because it's fun to watch the cast do whatever they do with their respective characters regardless of the wandering story. One of these days I'd like to read the book, but I'm concerned that doing so might somehow spoil my enjoyment of the movie.

 

[Fading Fast]

In some ways I enjoy The Big Sleep more than I enjoy The Maltese Falcon just because it's fun to watch the cast do whatever they do with their respective characters regardless of the wandering story. One of these days I'd like to read the book, but I'm concerned that doing so might somehow spoil my enjoyment of the movie.

Everyone will have his or her own experience, but I found reading the book increased my enjoyment of the movie because it was nice to finally know what the heck was going on. That said, half the time, I still get a bit confused and just enjoy it, as I always did, for its style and, as you note, watching the actors do their thing.

 

[AmateisGal]

Everyone will have his or her own experience, but I found reading the book increased my enjoyment of the movie because it was nice to finally know what the heck was going on. That said, half the time, I still get a bit confused and just enjoy it, as I always did, for its style and, as you note, watching the actors do their thing.

I ordered the book and will read it soon. Looking forward to it!

 

[AmateisGal]

The Exception (2016) starring Christopher Plummer, Jai Courtney, and Lily James (of Downton Abbey fame).

This is a fictional story set in Holland during WW2 about a Dutch resistance spy who lives in the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II's house and the German officer who falls in love with her and discovers her real identity. It's a good movie (warning: full frontal nudity in some scenes) but of course, not based on fact. Christopher Plummer does an excellent job as the Kaiser who keeps thinking the Fuhrer will come to his senses and invite him back to Berlin to be king again.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Key to the City" from 1950 starring Clark Gable, Loretta Young and Frank Morgan (his last role)

During a Mayors Conference in San Francisco, Young, the lady-like mayor of small-town Winona Maine, meets Gable, the former longshoreman and now fist-throwing mayor of corrupt Puget City (he's trying to "clean it up") and - despite initially rubbing each other the wrong way and having several misunderstandings and contretemps - fall in love while still disagreeing about almost everything. Thrown into this off-the-shelf story are several stereotypical characters - Morgan destroying an Irish accent as Gable's fire chief - and the aforementioned and two-dimensional politically corrupt machine and its cardboard villain (played by a young Raymond Burr) in Puget City.

"Key's to the City" was made a decade too late. The screwball comedy hit its peak in the late '30s with "His Gal Friday" from '40, IMO, being, by far, the best of this, many times, too-silly-and-too-unbelievable genre. By 1950, the formula was all but spent with "Keys..." not being helped out of its tiredness by an aging Clark Gable at nearly 50 playing it as though he was still the young shinny pretty boy of his youth where a smile could make every woman swoon.

And this undermines the love-at-first sight nonsense he and thirty seven year-old Young are suppose to experience. Both are still good looking - but in a middle-aged way with all the bumps and bruises life brings. You can (maybe) buy two kids in their early twenties falling in love at first sight, but Young and Gable have too much life behind them for that nonsense. Once their love story doesn't hold together, all the rest of the silliness - the nightclub fight and police raid, the time spent in jail, the costume party mix ups - feels forced and awkward. It all culminates in even more ridiculousness as Gable and his political rival, Burr, fight with longshoreman hooks over a spending bill - all fun and games except that those hooks are murderous weapons out of place with the lighthearted vibe of the movie and that scene.

Gable, Young, Morgan and Burr (and the always elegant Lewis Stone - as Young's uncle - adding gravitas) are such outsized talents and personalities that they carry you along a bit, but the nonsense of it all overwhelms even their skills and you end up watching it for the actors and time travel - some great shots of 1950 San Francisco - with the story being an irritant.


N.B., I never noticed it before, but a young Raymond Burr (born in '17) looks similar to my Dad (born in '24) from pictures of my dad at that time - both were big men very much of that period.

 

[belfastboy]

The Exception (2016) starring Christopher Plummer, Jai Courtney, and Lily James (of Downton Abbey fame).

This is a fictional story set in Holland during WW2 about a Dutch resistance spy who lives in the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II's house and the German officer who falls in love with her and discovers her real identity. It's a good movie (warning: full frontal nudity in some scenes) but of course, not based on fact. Christopher Plummer does an excellent job as the Kaiser who keeps thinking the Fuhrer will come to his senses and invite him back to Berlin to be king again.

Is the full frontal of Plummer or Allen? Your answer, while perhaps sexist, will influence my decision to watch!

 

[belfastboy]

Watched a Brit/Irish production, "Cardboard Gangsters" Not a bad film, worth the 90+ minutes but not stellar. Acting is the usual Brit great but the plot predictable. The funny part is we had to use the close caption option in order to understand what the hell they were saying.

 

[Worf]

"Terminus" - Another Netflix original. It's a bit of fluff involving a down on his luck working man and his daughter. The America they're living in has been at war in Iran for years. The country is broke, starving and calling up draftees. The world is also on the brink of nuclear war. Suddenly these "pods" start dropping from the sky. If touched they have the ability to heal ANY kind of wound including returning the recently deceased to life. Of course a desperate Govt. is after them. You can figure it out from there...

Worf

 

[MissMittens]

"His Girl Friday" with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The dialog in this movie, especially the interactions between Hildy and Walter, is simply delightful.

Movies today just don't do dialog anymore. It's all seemingly in the action. I miss the wittiness of 30's and 40's cinema.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just finished a pre-screening of BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee's latest, and one of his most gripping pieces of work.

Based on the true story of an African-American police detective in Colorado who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, the film touches a lot of bases, and all of them well. It plays with the iconography of '70s blaxploitation films at the same time that it comes across as searingly contemporary in its execution of the points being made, and it's a showcase for outstanding performances by stars John David Washington and Adam Driver as the two investigators who work together to pull off the probe. Special note also for Topher Grace -- an utterly perfect casting choice -- as David Duke, living personification of the Banality of Evil, and a surprise bit by Harry Belafonte, who is haunting as an eyewitness to the notorious 1915 lynching of Jesse Washington.

Lee's treatment of female characters has always been a mixed bag for me, but two stand out here -- Laura Harrier is excellent as the intense young campus radical who captures Detective Stallworth's attention early on, although she doesn't have a whole lot to do other than act as his conscience-figure, and Ashlie Atkinson gives an absolutely chilling performance as the jolly, smiling, fiercely-racist wife of a particularly malignant Klansman -- who serves as the bagwoman in an attempted bombing.

This is a long film, but it moves fast -- it's one of the only over-two-hours pictures I've seen in recent years that I've stayed in my seat for without interruption.

I suspect there were some deviations from the book that Stallworth wrote detailing his experience -- some of the scenes were a bit too pat -- but I haven't read the book so I can't say for sure. But I now intend to read it at my earliest opportunity.

 

[Fading Fast]

"His Girl Friday" with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. The dialog in this movie, especially the interactions between Hildy and Walter, is simply delightful.

Movies today just don't do dialog anymore. It's all seemingly in the action. I miss the wittiness of 30's and 40's cinema.

Of this style of movie for the '30s and '40s - "His Gal Friday" is my favorite. As you note the dialogue is insanely good.

The only modern films that do dialogue as well, for me, are several of the Tarantino films.

But, of course, owing to the times and what Tarantino is trying to do - there are many differences, but still, the machine-gun-style delivery that's jammed-packed with witty observations and snarky asides echoes "His Gal Friday."

 

[MissMittens]

The only modern films that do dialogue as well, for me, are several of the Tarantino films.

I agree he does try occasionally, but it's just not the same for me

 

[Fading Fast]

I agree he does try occasionally, but it's just not the same for me

The dialogue in "His Gal Friday" is very modern if you look past the period memes. Grant and Russell volley back and forth like a very modern couple - with a lot of sexual innuendo - with her giving as good (or better) than she gets.

It's so fast and so dense that you have to (or, at least, I had to) see it several times to pick up all the comments.

The dialogue speed and density also serve as an subtle intelligence meter in the movie as Bellamy's character clearly can't keep up, which is an indirect way of saying he's not really right for Russell's character - we all know she'll die of boredom married to Bellamy.

It also has a nice feminist angle as Russell is clearly the best of the reporters in the prison's press room - and the men know and acknowledge it. Today, Every. Single. Thing. related to gender must be perfectly aligned to the "approved" view of identity politics, but if one is less sensitive - less demanding of an always-shifting perfection - then he or she would see this movie as an incredibly modern and pro-woman movie in a code-enforced era when women were normally not given such a favorable and forward-thinking presentation.

 

[AmateisGal]

Is the full frontal of Plummer or Allen? Your answer, while perhaps sexist, will influence my decision to watch!

Ha! Neither. It's of Jai Courtney (who plays the German captain in charge of guarding the Kaiser).

 

[Doctor Strange]

The 1934 adaptation of The Age of Innocence with Irene Dunne and John Boles, DVR'd from TCM.

Compared to Martin Scorsese's excellent 1993 film, it's terrible. John Boles couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Nobody in the cast has any chemistry with anyone else. Even Dunne, whose character is supposed to be earthy and rebellious, seems narcotized. And the costumes for the main portion of the story set in the 1870s are hilariously wrong: e.g., Boles wears a contemporary thirties center-dent fedora throughout!

Only recommended for morbid interest.

 

[Fading Fast]

The 1934 adaptation of The Age of Innocence with Irene Dunne and John Boles, DVR'd from TCM.

Compared to Martin Scorsese's excellent 1993 film, it's terrible. John Boles couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Nobody in the cast has any chemistry with anyone else. Even Dunne, whose character is supposed to be earthy and rebellious, seems narcotized. And the costumes for the main portion of the story set in the 1870s are hilariously wrong: e.g., Boles wears a contemporary thirties center-dent fedora throughout!

Only recommended for morbid interest.

I'm a big Edith Wharton fan (I've read almost every thing she's written) and very much like the '93 movie version of AOI. I saw a small part of the '34 version a long time ago and was turned off by it so I never get it a fair shot, and, now, based on your review, I never will.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Then my work here is done: I watched it so you don't have to!

Obviously, I didn't really expect it to compare to Marty's meticulously opulent and whip-smart 1993 film... but it was pretty much a disaster. It's the worst performance from Dunne I've ever seen.

 

[Worf]

"Upgrade" - I rented this not expecting too much and got more'n I bargained for. A classic tale of A.I. run amok. A paralyzed man gets a chip implanted in his neck to give him movement again. Simple enough but things go south... way south from there. There are just enough twists and turns in this film to keep it from being formulaic and just when you think you've got it pegged you find out that you don't. Worth the rental.

Worf

 

[31 Model A]

"Once Upon a Time in America" great era movie...IMO.

 

[Fading Fast]

"None Shall Escape" 1944

• WWII prop film, set in the, then, post-war future, where a Nazi leader is on trial for crimes against humanity
• Belies the "we didn't know" argument as this, and many other movies, books, articles, expose
• Also, spirited rebuke to the "just following orders" argument
• Anticipates "Judgement At Nuremberg"
• Great to see Henry Travers (Mr. Ballard from "Mrs. Miniver" and many others) get a meaty role
• Too clunky and obvious to be a great film, but still a good historic curio