What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Bushman]

Evil Dead (1981) - My friends all rave about this one, and while the effects are pretty good, just about everything else was hokey 80s horror. Some have called it a dark comedy, but it produced nothing even close to a chuckle to me. A couple times I was tempted to turn it off, and ended up finishing it only because I wanted to know how it ended. I couldn't bring myself to watch any of the sequels. Evil Dead 2 sounded like a straight remake with a smaller cast, and Army of Darkness does not sound appealing.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha - The shadow of the warrior (1980).

Boy, this look!! Like bleach-bypass(?)!!

 

[Worf]

Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha - The shadow of the warrior (1980).

Boy, this look!! Like bleach-bypass(?)!!

Saw it in the movies... Loved it. Only Kurrosawa film I ever saw in color on the big screen. Don't know about the "Bleach" reference though... Please explain.

Worf

 

[Trenchfriend]

Don't know about the "Bleach" reference though... Please explain.

Worf

Easy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach_bypass

But I found no informations about the movie filmed this way.

 

[Zombie_61]

Evil Dead (1981) - My friends all rave about this one, and while the effects are pretty good, just about everything else was hokey 80s horror. Some have called it a dark comedy, but it produced nothing even close to a chuckle to me. A couple times I was tempted to turn it off, and ended up finishing it only because I wanted to know how it ended. I couldn't bring myself to watch any of the sequels. Evil Dead 2 sounded like a straight remake with a smaller cast, and Army of Darkness does not sound appealing.

Army of Darkness was the first movie I saw from this franchise, and I still think it's the most entertaining purely for the added humor and larger budget. I saw The Evil Dead a few years later and was rather disappointed because it, by comparison to Army of Darkness, was slow moving and more than a bit boring. I had heard from friends that Evil Dead II is similar to both the first and third movies; not quite as slow as the first, not quite as much slapstick humor as the third. I found The Evil Dead so uninteresting that I never bothered with Evil Dead II.

 

[Edward]

Evil Dead (1981) - My friends all rave about this one, and while the effects are pretty good, just about everything else was hokey 80s horror. Some have called it a dark comedy, but it produced nothing even close to a chuckle to me. A couple times I was tempted to turn it off, and ended up finishing it only because I wanted to know how it ended. I couldn't bring myself to watch any of the sequels. Evil Dead 2 sounded like a straight remake with a smaller cast, and Army of Darkness does not sound appealing.

Army of Darkness was the first movie I saw from this franchise, and I still think it's the most entertaining purely for the added humor and larger budget. I saw The Evil Dead a few years later and was rather disappointed because it, by comparison to Army of Darkness, was slow moving and more than a bit boring. I had heard from friends that Evil Dead II is similar to both the first and third movies; not quite as slow as the first, not quite as much slapstick humor as the third. I found The Evil Dead so uninteresting that I never bothered with Evil Dead II.

I'm a long time fan of both. The First one was made as a fairly straight horror; despite the low budget, it was very inventive for the genre at the time, much cleverer than a lot of the so-called "video nasties" in which moral panic it got caught up. Evil Dead II has an element of remake. There are about twenty minutes at the start which overlap the story of the original film, but with the group of five cut down to two. The Raimi brothers had originally intended to use clips from the first film to create a bit of a montaged and then pick up the story where the first film left off, but as I recall there were complications with ownership and copyright, so they reverted to reworking it. The added layer behind the need for this 'recap' was that they were working, as memory serves, with a new distribution deal giving them markets that would not have seen the first film, so they wanted to avoid in some places the notion of being a part II as that often limits the market where people haven't seen the part I. It was sold as "Evil Dead: Dead By Dawn" in those places (c/f Mad Max II / Mad Max: The Road Warrior). After the first 20 minutes, it's all new storyline.

II is usually considered among genre fans to be the best, not least as it's where the franchise introduces the really key elements that made it distinctive- Ash has a more knowing sense of humour, catchphrases like "Groovy", and - of course - the saw-hand arrive. It is of all of them the most even-handed balance of humour and genre-horror. The third film of course goes full on for the comedy effect.

For my money, the absolute perfect blend is Evil Dead: The Musical, which combines the plot of the first two films with all the best catchphrases from the final one. With some great songs, especially my favourite, the doo-wop number All the men in my life have been killed by Candarian demons. Probably one for the fans, though.

 

[Fading Fast]

Bullitt from 1968 with Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn and Simon Oakland


"You're living in a sewer Frank, day after day."

- Jacqueline Bisset to boyfriend detective Steve McQueen


It's taken me into the double digits of viewings to just about put all the pieces of Bullitt's plot together. I'm almost there; I only have one or two plot loose ends to tie up in the next couple of viewings. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Bisset summarized the movie's theme nicely for us in all of nine words.

In the thirties, pre-code movies introduced audiences to the seedy side of life, then the forties and fifties leverage film noir to showed us society's dirty laundry, but by the second half of the sixties, films like Bullitt put it out there directly for us to wallow in.

Bullitt's plot folds in on itself a bunch, but goes something like this: a self-aggrandizing politician's key mob informant is killed while in protective custody, putting high-level pressure on police detective McQueen to explain what supposedly went wrong on his team's watch. But nothing is as it appears.

We then see McQueen methodically follow small clues to hunt the killers down while ignoring intense political strong-arming to "just play along," even when he's repeatedly offered career advancement and protection if he'll simply sweep up as told.

The entire plot, though, is a Hitchcock Macguffin (a device to advance the story so you can see characters you care about do a bunch of interesting stuff) to highlight one man - detective Frank Bullitt, whom McQueen brilliantly portrays as excruciatingly laconic.

It's often said McQueen set the pattern for the taciturn, mission-driven detectives that would follow in his wake for the next fifty years (although, Glen Ford did an earlier version of it in 1953's The Big Heat, comments here: #28473), but McQueen really did it better than every single one of them.

McQueen isn't sparing in words because he's just "that cool" or he is singularly focused on his goal - as most of the subsequent "McQueen-style" detectives play it. He's sparing in words because he's broken in some deeply human way.

When McQueen doesn't respond to questions or emotional pleas, his non-response comes across as that of a man who simply doesn't know how to respond, how to express what he feels or how to connect to other human beings. His eyes convey hurt, sadness and confusion with his inability to express those emotions averring that something broke this good man in a bad world. It's an impressive display of subtle-yet-powerful acting.

Despite being the star, it feels as if McQueen says the fewest words of any of the major characters, which only diminishes what they say as all the gravitational pull in this one comes from McQueen's presence. It doesn't hurt that this is a strikingly stylish movie with no one more nonchalantly stylish than McQueen.

The attempted copycatting is embarrassingly obvious in descendent movies like Sylvester Stallone's vanity project Cobra, where his clothes and car wear and drive him. But in Bullitt, McQueen is so comfortable in his ridiculously cool turtleneck, sport coat and chukkas, while driving his fastback Mustang, you only really notice all those details in the second or third viewing.

Smartly, McQueen (also the producer) isn't afraid to show his character as a normal, vulnerable person, a point often lost in those later copycat movies. Right after the opening scene, McQueen is all but pulled out of bed by a very early in the day visit from his work partner. Here, in an unguarded moment, we see him not as an aloof cop, but as a man who is cold in the morning and simply trying to wake up.

When we later see McQueen ready to go, his cool doesn't feel forced as we understand this guy: He, like all of us, puts his public armor on simply to survive the day.

Yes, Bullitt has the greatest movie-car-chase scene ever - where the hunter-prey dynamic brilliantly shifts early on - but the rest of the movie is almost cheated by the near perfectness of that scene as Jacqueline Bisset is correct, the real story here is Frank Bullitt living in a sewer-like world.

Maybe the only way to survive in a sewer is to be a bit broken. It's McQueen's perfect portrayal of broken Frank Bullitt, not one fast car chasing another fast car, that makes this movie a classic. Heck, McQueen's portrayal is so perfect, we often believe McQueen was that cool in real life, and maybe he was.


N.B. Not printable here, but Google "star star lyrics" to see how The Rolling Stones memorialized McQueen's super-cool ability to have women provide him with sexual favors while they fought for his attention. McQueen's public persona and movie characters - including a love of cars, motorcycles, speed and women - combined to create the star's image.

 

[Harp]

^^^McQueen was the only guy who could wear a non-trench trench (a completely neutered WWI trench-no epaulets,
pistol pocket, shoulder rifle pad, grenade rings, belt, rain cape flap) and get away sartorial Scot-free with it.

I believe The Thomas Crown Affair captures McQueen completely when he fingers his Phi Beta Kappa key
during a corporate board session, a man more than the sum of his apparent parts, deeper, enigmatic.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Wonder Woman 1984. Just awful, a total waste of time.

2017's Wonder Woman is the only DC/Warners superhero flick of the last decade that wasn't a huge disappointment to me, so with the same director and stars, I was kinda hopeful. But everything goes off the rails here - it's way too long and badly paced, terrible villains (both written and played badly), idiotic story, huge mistakes (like reviving Steve Trevor, whose WWI biplane background then enables him to jump into a jet cockpit, and pilot it, no problem; or, having Diana fighting criminals in a crowded mall before hoards of people, which pretty much trashes the whole "so I hid away from the world for a hundred years" backstory of her earlier appearances.)

Gal Godot is still charismatic and charming as Diana, some of the action/effects are good (particularly a sequence where she finally discovers she can fly), but the film's a LOSER. For hardcore WW fans and completists only.

 

[belfastboy]

"Waiting for the Barbarians"....J Depp, Mark Rylance in what we thought was a very good movie. But the reviews were mixed....OK to crap. One of the reviewers quipped..."For the first and only time in a movie I found myself saying the movie needs more Johnnie Depp". I liked it, and thought it time well spent.

 

[MisterCairo]

I did warn you all...

Wonder Woman 1984. Just awful, a total waste of time.

2017's Wonder Woman is the only DC/Warners superhero flick of the last decade that wasn't a huge disappointment to me, so with the same director and stars, I was kinda hopeful. But everything goes off the rails here - it's way too long and badly paced, terrible villains (both written and played badly), idiotic story, huge mistakes (like reviving Steve Trevor, whose WWI biplane background then enables him to jump into a jet cockpit, and pilot it, no problem; or, having Diana fighting criminals in a crowded mall before hoards of people, which pretty much trashes the whole "so I hid away from the world for a hundred years" backstory of her earlier appearances.)

Gal Godot is still charismatic and charming as Diana, some of the action/effects are good (particularly a sequence where she finally discovers she can fly), but the film's a LOSER. For hardcore WW fans and completists only.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Barretts of Wimpole Street from 1934 with Norma Shearer, Charles Laughton, Fredric March and Maureen O'Sullivan

The Barretts of Wimpole Street unfolds like a car slowly shifting through gears. It begins in first as an interesting-enough look at a famous Victorian family where infirm poetess Elizabeth Barrett (Browning comes later) and her eight siblings live in fear of their tyrannical father, Charles Laughton, who forbids any of his children to marry (or have fun).

The family is light and joyful when father Laughton is not around, but is reduced to abject fear when he enters a room. Through outright intimidation, mixed with emotional and financial blackmail, he keeps his adult children at home and ostensibly respectful, but deeply resentful underneath.

Elizabeth, Laughton's favorite and the only child he shows marginal kindness too, is suffering from some unknown ailment that keeps her all but bed ridden. Despite that, she is the spiritual center of the family, along with her scene-stealing English Springer Spaniel, Flush*. The other siblings huddle in her room to escape from their redoubtable father.

The movie shifts into second gear when poet and playwright Robert Browning, Elizabeth's pen pal till now, appears and begins to surreptitiously court Elizabeth, whose health, not unrelatedly, begins to improve. Simultaneously, sister Henrietta, played vivaciously by super-cute Maureen O'Sullivan, secretly courts an army captain. Neither daughter has much hope with father Laughton's no-marriage edict in effect, but their passion for love tries to push through.

Quickly slipping into third gear, several powerful confrontations take place as Laughton all but forbids Browning from visiting while he outright dismisses Henrietta's captain and also forbids her from seeing him. Laughton, trying then to explain himself to Elizabeth (something he wouldn't even bother to do with Henrietta), presents a man who has wrapped his selfish desire to keep his family around him inside some disingenuously noble effort driven by his religious passion.

It's a mishmash of rationalizations and slippery justifications delivered with skill by an actor who intuited "method acting" a few decades before it would become famous. Changing, with ease, from cruelty - he threatens to throw Henrietta out on the street penniless if she sees her beau again - to stilted empathy toward Elizabeth, Laughton delivers a tour-de-force performance.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street shifts into overdrive toward the end as Laughton thunders with rage and declamations of moving the family to the isolation of the country to stop all the affairs and, horror, fun his family is having in London. (Spoiler alert if you don't know the Barrett-Browing love story). Her hand forced, Elizabeth plots an escape and elopement, which will be a dagger right through her father's heart.

With the movie's engine now flatout, the siblings, sans eloping Elizabeth and with a surface sympathy hiding barely contained glee - the Germans call it schadenfreude - convene to see Laughton's response when he reads Elizabeth's note informing him she has left to marry Browning. It's a money moment that's been building since the movie's first scene when a happy family gathering turned to one of cowering and dread upon the arrival of Laughton.

Kudos to director Sidney Franklin for slowly but powerfully building the pace and drama of the movie scene by scene. He engages the viewer lightly at first, but brings him or her to the edge of his or her seat by the final scene. It's a wonderful, even if exhausting, ride.


N.B., The Barretts of Wimpole Street, with its 19th Century Romanticism, is tailor made for Norma Shearer's silent-screen mannerism. Combined with Laughton's dominating performance and O'Sullivan's light-and-sunshine interpretation of Henrietta, The Barretts of Wimpole Street is an actor's movie from 1934 that still delivers punch after punch in 2021.


* This is our dog Finn's, an English Springer Spaniel himself, favorite movie as he thinks Flush is really the star. Despite my discussing the merits of Citizen Kane and Casablanca with him, there is no moving him on this point.

@Worf, This one's another impressive performance by our man Laughton.

 

[Harp]

Gal Godot is still charismatic and charming as Diana, some of the action/effects are good (particularly a sequence where she finally discovers she can fly), but the film's a LOSER.

Brother, she's a lot more than merely charismatic and charming.

 

[Harp]

^^^EBB is my favorite poet, never seen this.

 

[Fading Fast]

Ladies in Retirement from 1941 with Ida Lupino, Edith Barrett, Isobel Elsom, Elsa Lanchester and Louis Hayward

Ladies in Retirement is a solid entry in the subgenre of movies set in isolated country houses populated with eccentric family members where somebody needs money in a hurry. Unfortunately, though, the wealthy old lady (it's usually an old lady), who has all the money, doesn't want to part with it. Therein lies the problem and, possible, motive for murder (cue ominous music).

The house in these movies, often, is old and eerie with a bunch of dark nooks, creepy furniture and a dungeon-like basement. Basically, the setting advertises that something bad will eventually happen here. In addition to the eccentric family members, there's normally an oddball staff with, at minimum, a sassy young maid and an older gent who serves as a general caretaker. Finally, a few quirky village characters come by regularly to round out the cast.

In Ladies in Retirement, the story pivots around deadly serious housekeeper, Ida Lupino, who needs a home for her two older and genuinely daffy sisters, Edith Barrett and Elsa Lanchester. Otherwise, the state is going to put them in an asylum.

Lupiino convinces her employer, Isobel Elsom, to let them come and stay for a bit, but after a few days with these two wackjobs in her house, wealthy eccentric Elsom tells Lupino her sisters have to go. When Lupino bucks her, Elsom then tells Lupion all three of them should leave.

What to do? What to do? Next thing we know, Elsom has gone on a trip and left Lupino in charge of the house, or has she? Lupino tells the maid and villagers that story, but she tells her sisters she's secretly bought the house.

Things go along, awkwardly, like this for a bit and then Lupino's scammer "nephew" (he's really a more distant relative), Louis Hayward, shows up looking for a place to hide out as he's absconded with money from his job at a bank (it's a heck of a family). Like all skilled scammers, he immediately senses that something is wrong in the house and begins noodling around.

He also hits on the maid as, in these stories, there's usually a, umm, horny young maid. Here, it's Evelyn Keyes, who is willing to do almost anything for the only youthful man to cross her path in a long time.

Also thrown into the mix are a few nuns from the local convent who stop in occasionally on some neighborly errand, but really to inject some Christian conscience into the story. That sets us up for the climax and denouement.

Did Lupino, who plays this one wound tighter than a drum, off the old lady so that she could provide a home for her spun-out-into-orbit sisters or did the old lady truly go on a trip with the incriminating clues pointing to murder really just explainable coincidences? As in most good mysteries, the answer is less interesting than the build up, but still, you'll want to see for yourself how it all plays out.


N.B. For some reason, 1937's Night Must Fall, which has a similar story to Ladies in Retirement, gets more attention from old-movie fans. Yet, Ladies in Retirement offers an equal or, maybe, greater amount of murder, mystery and dysfunction, while its director, Charles Vidor, keeps things moving along at a faster pace than in Night Must Fall.

 

[Fading Fast]

Tunes of Glory from 1960 with Alec Guinness, John Mills and Susannah York


Tunes of Glory is a bit slow out of the gate, but it's well worth staying with this intense drama about a battle of wills for control of a Scottish regiment during the post-WWII peace.

Alec Guinness is the major who worked his way up through the ranks to become the regiment's acting colonel during WWII, but he is passed over for permanent appointment after the war. Instead, third-generation academy man John Mills is given the commission with Guinness remaining a major now reporting to Mills.

It's as awful and untenable a situation as it sounds. Guinness is a soldier's soldier who is a drinking buddy with most of his officers, but he also has a vicious cruel streak, which he seems to justify because he, himself, had to succeed the hard way.

Mills, who spent most of the war as a POW - and admits quietly at one point that he "never really came back -" is uncomfortable around the men in his command, a situation aggravated by his efforts to restore the order and discipline that Guinness let slip.

Initially, our sympathies are with Guinness as, despite his flaws, he is the more affable of the two men and, as noted, worked his way up through the ranks. But as we watch him vindictively undermine Mills' attempt to acclimate to his new command, and as we learn more about the family pressures and expectations Mills has been under his entire life, our sympathies begin to shift.

It's easy to feel smug and dismissive about the pressures and problems of the "privileged," (it's a not-pretty tic of our modern culture), but you can't help where you were born. Expectations can be a heavy burden to carry through life whether we want to acknowledge it or not. It's also easy to forget that not everyone who pulls himself up by his bootstraps is a great guy.

This is where director Ronald Neame shines as, after setting us up with a boilerplate view of who's the good guy and who's not, he flips our sympathies around a few times.

First, a drunk and angry Guinness strikes a corporal who is covertly dating Guinness' daughter, Susannah York. Now that Mills has his enemy right where he wants him, he has to decide if he is going to court martial Guinness. After leaning that way initially, he hesitates as he truly struggles with finding the right thing to do.

When a contrite and apologetic Guinness convinces Mills to give him a second chance with the promise that "this time," he'll work with Mills to make his command a success, we assume the movie is about over as both men have "grown" through experience.

But there's one more major flip to come with tragic results that takes the story and movie to another emotional level. After having all our comfortable assumptions and expectations blown apart, we're left reflecting on two men who are neither all good nor bad, but like most people in real life, land somewhere in between.

When we learn Guinness' and Mills' personal stories in a way that we rarely do with people in our own lives, we become more forgiving of their faults...up to a point. Tunes of Glory leaves you thinking about, and a little uncomfortable with, your own beliefs, assumptions and snap judgments about people. It's hard to ask for more from a movie.


N.B. Guinness and Mills, under the talented directing of Robert Neame, deliver outstanding performances where you can see them thinking and feeling simply from facial expressions and eye movements - the way you can in real life, but not always in movies. Tunes of Glory, which clearly influenced 1992's A Few Good Men, deserves to be more well known today.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Thunderbolt and Lightfood (1974).

What the hell? What did I saw??

And the Dobermann-scene...

 

[Doctor Strange]

The new adaptation of David Copperfield with Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, etc.

TERRIBLE. Even ignoring my difficulties with the hot trend of ahistorical "colorblind casting" in a period piece, this is a very bad adaptation of the novel. It's played more as comedy than drama, and the "action" is ramped up to breakneck pace: no character ever walks calmly when a breathless, hysterical run could be used instead.

And it includes that other hot trend in classic adaptations: an unnecessary framing story where middle-aged Copperfield is reading his autobiography to a rapt audience (a la Dickens own performances). Nobody trusts just telling a novel's story straightforwardly now, so we have Jo March with her publisher fighting over happy endings, Nick Carraway with his shrink trying to work through the post-Gatsby breakdown, etc.

Anyway, not recommended.

 

[Harp]

View attachment 338756
Tunes of Glory from 1960 with Alec Guinness, John Mills and Susannah York


Tunes of Glory is a bit slow out of the gate, but it's well worth staying with this intense drama about a battle of wills for control of a Scottish regiment during the post-WWII peace.

Alec Guinness is the major who worked his way up through the ranks to become the regiment's acting colonel during WWII, but he is passed over for permanent appointment after the war. Instead, third-generation academy man John Mills is given the commission with Guinness remaining a major now reporting to Mills.

It's as awful and untenable a situation as it sounds. Guinness is a soldier's soldier who is a drinking buddy with most of his officers, but he also has a vicious cruel streak, which he seems to justify because he, himself, had to succeed the hard way.

Mills, who spent most of the war as a POW - and admits quietly at one point that he "never really came back -" is uncomfortable around the men in his command, a situation aggravated by his efforts to restore the order and discipline that Guinness let slip.

Initially, our sympathies are with Guinness as, despite his flaws, he is the more affable of the two men and, as noted, worked his way up through the ranks. But as we watch him vindictively undermine Mills' attempt to acclimate to his new command, and as we learn more about the family pressures and expectations Mills has been under his entire life, our sympathies begin to shift.

It's easy to feel smug and dismissive about the pressures and problems of the "privileged," (it's a not-pretty tic of our modern culture), but you can't help where you were born. Expectations can be a heavy burden to carry through life whether we want to acknowledge it or not. It's also easy to forget that not everyone who pulls himself up by his bootstraps is a great guy.

This is where director Ronald Neame shines as, after setting us up with a boilerplate view of who's the good guy and who's not, he flips our sympathies around a few times.

First, a drunk and angry Guinness strikes a corporal who is covertly dating Guinness' daughter, Susannah York. Now that Mills has his enemy right where he wants him, he has to decide if he is going to court martial Guinness. After leaning that way initially, he hesitates as he truly struggles with finding the right thing to do.

When a contrite and apologetic Guinness convinces Mills to give him a second chance with the promise that "this time," he'll work with Mills to make his command a success, we assume the movie is about over as both men have "grown" through experience.

But there's one more major flip to come with tragic results that takes the story and movie to another emotional level. After having all our comfortable assumptions and expectations blown apart, we're left reflecting on two men who are neither all good nor bad, but like most people in real life, land somewhere in between.

When we learn Guinness' and Mills' personal stories in a way that we rarely do with people in our own lives, we become more forgiving of their faults...up to a point. Tunes of Glory leaves you thinking about, and a little uncomfortable with, your own beliefs, assumptions and snap judgments about people. It's hard to ask for more from a movie.


N.B. Guinness and Mills, under the talented directing of Robert Neame, deliver outstanding performances where you can see them thinking and feeling simply from facial expressions and eye movements - the way you can in real life, but not always in movies. Tunes of Glory, which clearly influenced 1992's A Few Good Men, deserves to be more well known today.

Spoiler alert: Doesn't Mills' character commit suicide? And Guinness is left to suffer a stricken conscience?

I recall a scene (saw when a teenager) Guinness speaking to a young soldier that a soldier must be able to
handle the living and the dead. Always recalled that later in life.

 

[Fading Fast]

Spoiler alert: Doesn't Mills' character commit suicide? And Guinness is left to suffer a stricken conscience?

I recall a scene (saw when a teenager) Guinness speaking to a young soldier that a soldier must be able to
handle the living and the dead. Always recalled that later in life.

Your memory is impressive: yes and yes.