What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

Rewatched a bit of Detour last nite. A hard boiled cup of very strong coffee featuring Ann Savage,
vixen extraordinaire; yet equally endearing and vulnerable. Tubercular, cynical, and very vulnerable
as a woman but more as a human being. This film was post code 1945, got away with some stuff,
stopped artistically and its ending was all wrong. Still, in between these inevitabilities there lies a
gemstone classic noir tale well worth the thought that lingers afterward.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rewatched a bit of Detour last nite. A hard boiled cup of very strong coffee featuring Ann Savage,
vixen extraordinaire; yet equally endearing and vulnerable. Tubercular, cynical, and very vulnerable
as a woman but more as a human being. This film was post code 1945, got away with some stuff,
stopped artistically and its ending was all wrong. Still, in between these inevitabilities there lies a
gemstone classic noir tale well worth the thought that lingers afterward.

I agree with all this. While it has its issues as you note, it has stayed with me since I saw it. Savage created one of the not-horror-movie scariest characters I've ever seen on film. I also love, just love, when Tom Neal and she are held up in that stuffy and claustrophobic hotel room with him as her prisoner, she, drunk one night, basically asked him to have hate sex with her. You could see it happening - she was bored, drunk, horny and going out of her mind and he's not bad looking.

 

[Harp]

A film-and most definitely a woman-that A. Is gorgeous, B. a film that makes you think.

All the moral complexity and coital lust wrapped inside the heart, a hotel room, and the barring of soul
right down to the floor. And Cupid hovers all over this flick, his dart and its effect mind boggle stays
long after the movie ends.

And Ms Savage's portraiture include bewitching witch pix, while suggestive of OZ, are secondary to
her loveliness and devastating femininity. La Savage forces her charms in a most singular subtlety.

 

[Fading Fast]

Ever Since Eve from 1937 with Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Allen Jenkins, Patsy Kelly and Frank McHugh

Every once in a while, even during the code era, studios snuck stuff past the sensors, surprisingly, right out in the open. Ever Since Eve is chockablock with gender-bending scenes and characters, including a lesbian-like reference to "motorcycle girls of the Everglades," a man named Mabel and woman name Mr. Bellldam dressed in traditionally masculine-ish clothing.

It's so out there and obvious to us today, that maybe it came across more as farce than sexual fluidity back then, at least to the sensors. Though, I'd bet in the underground gay and lesbian communities of the time, this movie was well known.

And while all the above is there, the story itself is one Hollywood has told since there was a Hollywood. A pretty woman, Marion Davies (in her last career role), is a secretary who keeps getting propositioned by her bosses and, then, fired when she rejects their advances or she isn't offered a position at all as the companies don't want to hire attractive secretaries for just that reason.

So, in order to get a secretarial job with a handsome novelist, Robert Montgomery, who has run through his share of pretty secretaries, Davies makes herself over into a dowdy-looking woman.

It all plays to the standard Hollywood formula as, after initially being turned off by plain Davies, Montgomery begins to see the pretty girl camouflaged beneath the big-framed glasses, mousy hair and drab clothing. And since he's a lazy playboy who is running up against his publisher's deadline (or he'll have to give back an advance he's already spent), Davies' efficiency is just what he needs and proves attractive in a way that surprises him.

The rest of the movie is also off-the-shelf stuff for this type of story as Montgomery's greedy society girlfriend high hats Davies, but becomes jealous of her as she sees the connection Davies has with Montgomery. Then, Davis falls for Montgomery while he accidentally meets and falls for pretty, not-camouflaged Davies, but doesn't recognize that she is also his secretary (it's a movie, you just go with it). Finally more confusion and hijinks ensue.

You know practically from the first scene how it will all work out, but it's still a fun-enough hour and twenty minutes as Davies and Montgomery seem to be enjoying themselves. Plus, there's all that incredible-for-the-time gender-bending stuff hiding in plain sight.

It's pretty fantastic that, somehow or other, despite a strongly enforced Motion Picture Production Code, Warner Bros. produced an A-list movie with gay and lesbian characters and innuendos that made it right passed the censors. And, oddly, the gay and lesbian stuff isn't even important to the overall story. Somebody at Warner Bros. was looking to make a point...and made it.


And if you are wondering what "dowdy" Marian Davies, as seen in the top pic, looks like out of her alter-ego getup, see below.

 

[Touchofevil]

Bits and pieces of Killer’s Kiss on TCM’s Noir Alley. I enjoyed what I saw and will have to watch it in its entirety at some point. The cinematography and exterior shots were what really stuck out as top notch and the most entertaining aspects of this film; they made me stop what I was doing for the moment and think, “wow!”

 

[Fading Fast]

Bits and pieces of Killer’s Kiss on TCM’s Noir Alley. I enjoyed what I saw and will have to watch it in its entirety at some point. The cinematography and exterior shots were what really stuck out as top notch and the most entertaining aspects of this film; they made me stop what I was doing for the moment and think, “wow!”

Agreed, I saw bits and pieces of it in the background too and, like you, now want to watch the full movie. The NYC location footage looks incredible.

 

[Touchofevil]

Agreed, I saw bits and pieces of it in the background too and, like you, now want to watch the full movie. The NYC location footage looks incredible.

It was so sharp and crisply filmed. It is nice look at the real world back in 1955. As a New Yorker, it must be pretty neat to on occasion to recognize a location or two and notice the change.

 

[Harp]

It was so sharp and crisply filmed. It is nice look at the real world back in 1955. As a New Yorker, it must be pretty neat to on occasion to recognize a location or two and notice the change.

When I was in college, I stopped at this now long-gone bookstore after classes just to wander around
the stacks and see anything interesting. The shop usually was steady book biz, but nothing even near
a crowd but this afternoon a sizeable contingent of guys in their late 20s-early thirties clustered around
and they were from LA, shooting a film downtown Chicago atop a roof across the street. I got to small
talk with several and it turned out that they had done this particular Chitown street scene the previous week,
got back to LA, discovered that the camera lens cap had not been removed, had to return Chicago and reshoot.
The following week I was headed to LaSalle Street Station and near the corner of Van Buren, a film street
scene with coffee and sandwiches had been set up. I recognized one of the gaffer types from the bookshop
and we talked for a few minutes after he offered a Styrofoam coffee cup. De Niro and I believe the Irish
cop from NYPD Blue were doing a scene across the street inside a local pawn shop. I asked about the
camera caps. Double-checked. De Niro, he said was a very meticulous, down to the last detail type of actor.

 

[Fading Fast]

It was so sharp and crisply filmed. It is nice look at the real world back in 1955. As a New Yorker, it must be pretty neat to on occasion to recognize a location or two and notice the change.

It really is. And while a lot changes, a lot of the same buildings are still here. So, I can see something in a movie from, say, 1950 and, then, later that week, walk by the same location and see the same building just with a new storefront or fresh coat of paint. There's a long scene in 1966's "Mr Buddwing" that took place in an area near the 59th street bridge which isn't far from where I used to live. It was very cool to see the movie and then walk out in the mid '00s and see the same location which really hadn't change much at all.

Edit add: I live in a 1927 apartment building that I know, one day, I'm going to see in an old movie, but it hasn't happened yet. One building I lived in was in the background of a long scene in a Woody Allen movie, I think it was "Manhattan."

 

[Harp]

^^^I love NYC. A few years back National Geographic did a cover story about Manhattan from
Hudson's time to now; including British Army surveyor mapping, geographic configure, downtown
street scenes and surrounding areas dating several hundred years distant with modern depiction.
Absolutely fascinating study of the Big Apple.

 

[Zombie_61]

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019). 2 hours and 15 minutes of cgi crapfest.

 

[Fading Fast]

Shane from 1953 with Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Jack Palance and Brandon De Wilde

Somehow, before now, I had never seen anything other than clips of this movie despite its reputation as one of the best Westerns ever - a heavy burden on a first-time viewer.

It is very good, but maybe it's because my expectations were set so high that I only liked, but didn't love it. Also, I didn't feel any need to bounce a movie out of my top-three-Westerns list (of this admittedly not huge fan of Westerns): High Noon, The Big Country and, a more modern one, Open Range (with an honorable mention to The Gunfighter).

Shane is a darn good movie of archetypes: the religious-and-family-oriented homesteaders being pushed off their land by arrogant cattle ranchers (free rangers, I think, but never said, so maybe not) that requires the iconic "reluctant gunman," Alan Ladd as Shane, to settle the score in favor of the homesteaders.

That framework provides a too-simple-for-my-taste good-versus-evil narrative that is pounded home by director George Stevens who seems to be making love to his movie with all its sweeping shots, heroic speeches, meaningful closeups and Capraesque-moments of underdog declamations and victories.

It all works fine for what it is, but it feels over constructed as I could see the seams and director-driven emotional manipulation, most of which I usually don't pick up until the second or third viewing of a movie. Also, I couldn't stand Jean Arthur's obviously fake blonde curly haired wig. That said, she delivers an outstanding performance as the female lead and woman at the center of an understated love triangle at the age of, good for her, fifty-three.

The strong cast also includes Elisha Cook Jr., as a hotheaded but well-meaning settler whose accent sounds less "Old West" and more like his tongue has swollen up from a bee sting. And making an early career appearance, Jack Palance might have set a new standard for evil gunmen at the time, but today his rendering in Shane feels two dimensional (yet, I admit, I was still glad when he got his).

Even the outstanding acting by Brandon De Wilde as little Joey is so clearly directed to be a paradigm of youthful innocence and wonder (right down to the obligatory loyal dog) that he feels less like a kid than an ideal.

Shane is a good epic Western with many fine scenes and performances, including Van Heflin as the settlers' leader who has to cede the heroic moment to Shane, but I couldn't help being put off by the stark good-guys-versus-bad-guys construct that only occasionally let some real-life grey sneak in. Maybe the next time I see it, with my expectations set back down to earth, I'll just be swept up by its fairytale story.

 

[MisterCairo]

True Grit (2010 Cohen Bros. version).

I have not seen the original in yonks, but this is on Netflix (in Canada at least) and had never seen it. A good fun romp, a different tack from most Cohen offerings which is not to slight their off-beat take on things, but a change on occasion is good.

 

[Bushman]

Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019). 2 hours and 15 minutes of cgi crapfest.

I'd be interested to hear what you disliked about it. It felt very much like a modern Showa Era Goji movie to me.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and introducing Susan Harrison. The Missus had never seen it and didn't quite know what to make of it. The dialogue is unbelievable - "You're dead, son. Get yourself buried," "That's fish four days old. I won't buy it." and my personal favorite, "I love this dirty town."
Followed by God is My Co-Pilot (1945) with Dennis Morgan. A mixture of religion and patriotic morale building, very much a product of wartime Hollywood.

 

[Harp]

^^^
My English master assigned Shane to read and focused on the underlying sexual tension as the triangle
notched the story's soul, chaste though it seemed, and this struck all the more odd since Brother Sloan
was a religious celibate. The good and bad stark contrast folded out the story map but the understated
geometry was so apparent that the husband himself recognized it and spoke directly to his wife about
his comprehension and acceptance. The film draw for me was Shane's pistol, a .36 caliber Colt revolver,
a Civil War standard, not the chunky later model cowboy Peacemaker .45. And the scene where Shane
demonstrated its effectiveness and later his deft handling of the weapon after besting his rival gunslinger.
The finale with a wounded Shane riding off to the sunset put the final perfect touch to this tale.

 

[Fading Fast]

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and introducing Susan Harrison. The Missus had never seen it and didn't quite know what to make of it. The dialogue is unbelievable - "You're dead, son. Get yourself buried," "That's fish four days old. I won't buy it." and my personal favorite, "I love this dirty town."
Followed by God is My Co-Pilot (1945) with Dennis Morgan. A mixture of religion and patriotic morale building, very much a product of wartime Hollywood.

I love "The Sweet Smell of Success," (comments here: #22949). It's such a New York movie with such awful people in it that I don't want to look too deeply into why I enjoy it so much.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Two quick Shane-related comments.

In Billy Crystal's one-man show, he describes how in his childhood he was always surrounded by jazz musicians because his father and uncle ran a jazz record label. He tells of being taken to see Shane when he was a little kid... by Billie Holiday! When Shane rides off at the end and the kid's yelling "Come back, Shane!", Billie leaned over to little Billy and - with her vast experience of men - declared decisively, "He ain't never comin' back!"

Shane's director, the great George Stevens, is an interesting study. Before the war, he was a master of comedies and musicals (Swing Time, anyone?); after the war, he only made dead-serious films. The difference was that his war service included filming the liberation of concentration camps, and he went through serious depression after returning, not making another film until A Place in the Sun in 1951. (For more detail, see the outstanding Netflix documentary miniseries Five Came Back, about the war service and before/after of Stevens... and Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, and John Huston.)

 

[Edward]

Followed by God is My Co-Pilot (1945) with Dennis Morgan. A mixture of religion and patriotic morale building, very much a product of wartime Hollywood.

It's interesting to me seeing how films from different eras "do God", whether it's simple religion, edgy denouement, or religion as a cipher for patriotism, whether against Hitler or "godless Communism". Gives a real flavour for the era. Interesting too to compare the old Biblical epics like Ben Hur or The Robe to modern takes on things like the Moses picture Christian Bale did a few years ago.

Sunday, I turned to some pulpy fun, firstly in the form of Death Trench: WW1, Canadian engineer supreme is pulled off leave well behind the lines to go and explore a secret, Imperial German bunker, deep below trenches, well behind enemy lines. Meanwhile, a crack German team are on the way with a mission to destroy secrets that - knowing they are now losing the war (it's early 1918) and can at best hope for an "honourable peace" - they can't risk falling into Allied hands. It's very much a piece that could easily have been set in WW2, but (like the Wonderwoman film) presumably was shifted to WW1 for a point of difference in the market. There are a lot of fun tropes here - the hard-drinking hero, pulled out to go on a top secret mission, the issues with authority, the guy with rank but limited experience, the enemy-ally, a noble not-so-villain who works with our hero and is prepared to sacrifice himself to stop what he has discovered someone on his own side is really up to.... and Imperial German zombies. It's not exactly high art, but if you like that sort of thing, a lot of fun.

I also then chanced across (on Prime) Iron Sky: The Coming Race, a sequel to 2012's Iron Sky. Set some decades after a nuclear war between Earth and the Moon Nazis, Earth is now uninhabitable, with the last of humanity living in the remainder of the moonbase, the stragglers of earth and the Nazi regime all together. Then a ship arrives with previously unknown survivors from earth, which in a roundabout way leads to a mission to find equipment necessary to survival - in the Hollow Earth where the lizard people (many of whom are recognisable world leaders of the past, Hitler in particular, who had previously masqueraded as human). It's not one for those who didn't care for the first film, but if you did there are a lot of lovely little gags here, many of them subtle visual jokes you could miss if not paying attention. The Steve-Jobs based religious cult is nicely done ,and very funny, especially when they meet Steve...

 

[Zombie_61]

I'd be interested to hear what you disliked about it. It felt very much like a modern Showa Era Goji movie to me.

Please remind me to do that in a couple of weeks. My laptop is currently in the shop for repairs and trying to "type" all of this on my cellphone is a huge pain in the backside.