What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MisterCairo]

Youngest daughter away at my sister's, asked our eldest to pick. Chose Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Fun throwaway, but I had forgotten what an awful person Andie McDowell's character is, and why I could never understand why Hugh Grant's character would want to touch her.

 

[Fading Fast]

I just read your review! awesome! I was only slightly aware of her self destructive flaws but I didn't know how redundant her foolish habits were. I can see how she would fall into the Hollywood ego trap being so young and so in demand so quickly. That sort of super-stardom can mess with your mind and perspective. The higher they fly the harder they fall.. and she did so, so many times. I prefer knowing only just enough about the real person... I prefer to keep my idealized and romanticized fantasy of the Hollywood golden-age stars even though I know they were human just like anyone else. I feel for them. Their legacy endures.

Nobody summed up your view better about wanting to believe the image rather than the reality than Cary Grant himself with his famous quote:

"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."

 

[Fading Fast]

Youngest daughter away at my sister's, asked our eldest to pick. Chose Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Fun throwaway, but I had forgotten what an awful person Andie McDowell's character is, and why I could never understand why Hugh Grant's character would want to touch her.

Agreed, plus I can't stand her rat's nest head of hair.

 

[Edward Reed]

Nobody summed up your view better about wanting to believe the image rather than the reality than Cary Grant himself with his famous quote:

"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."

wow! awesome! yup, the Hollywood image machine. and it can be detrimental to a human being. hard to live up to.

 

[Harp]

wow! awesome! yup, the Hollywood image machine. and it can be detrimental to a human being. hard to live up to.

Years ago, many years long gone I had considered Los Angeles relocate and the film industry executive
legal corporate suite type career, an academic scholarship having tendered University of Southern California,
a flyout visit, bags packed. All before I came to my senses and decided Hollywood wasn't a career option,
all things considered. Two years ago I came upon Scotty Bower's memoir, Full Service. If you haven't
heard about this ghostwritten author's life, he pimp sourced out of a gas station after the Second World War
and thereafter as a pro bartender for the star set. Pumped more than gas, mixed more than drinks and named names. A film deal is supposedly under consideration. Bowers passed a year ago or so, caught his obit in
the New York Times I think. Lionel Friedburg ghosted the book. A trenchant look at the underside of Hollywood.

 

[Doctor Strange]

There's also a good documentary about Bowers:

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood - Wikipedia

 

[Edward]

Youngest daughter away at my sister's, asked our eldest to pick. Chose Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Fun throwaway, but I had forgotten what an awful person Andie McDowell's character is, and why I could never understand why Hugh Grant's character would want to touch her.

Fairly common in Hollywood flicks. Bridesmaids took a similar thing to even greater extremes.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Americanization of Emily from 1964 with James Garner, Julie Andrews, James Coburn and Melvyn Douglas


"The first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor."

"The first dead man on Omaha Beach is alive!"


This movie gets more enjoyable with every viewing. While the book is better (comments here: #8119), the movie stands nicely on its own.

It works well because it's a fun story about two American Naval officers, colloquially known as "dog robbers," who "take care" of their admirals by procuring food, liquor, luxury goods and, yes, women for their parties and pleasure. Yet tucked inside this movie about a superficial corner of the war is a complex morality tale about militarism, patriotism and the insanity of battle.

James Garner and Charles Coburn are the dog robbers for their Admiral, wonderfully portrayed by Melvin Douglas. These two officers are having a nice, safe and comfortable WWII in a luxurious London hotel redoubt (after the Blitz). They are surrounded by well-stocked storerooms and plenty of young English lasses happy to "be with" these handsome officers with access to all the things England has been doing without for several years now.

Garner, an actor with a great talent for playing likable rogues, meets war widow and military chauffeur Julie Andrews, looking ridiculously cute while proving she can act in a movie without singing. Andrews is prim, proper and, initially, as disgusted by good-time Garner as he is with "stuck up" her.

She sees his military featherbedding and proudly admitted cowardliness as morally contemptible. He sees her devotion to duty and pride in the military deaths of her husband, brother and father as ignorant sentimentality perpetuating a rah-rah view of war.

I've read the book once and have seen the movie, probably, half a dozen times and still am not sure of Garner's and, one assumes, the book's author, William Bradford Huie's philosophy. It seems to be denouncing the romanticizing and propagandizing of war, but is not really against war itself. Especially if the war is necessary, as it was in WWII, to, well, save the world.

Garner gives long speeches about how if the men who die fighting would ignore the "hero stuff" and push back against war, war would be hard to wage. It's less of a sincere blueprint to stop war than a cri de coeur against its glorification.

While Garner and Andrews fall in love arguing over the purpose of war, Garner's Admiral, the slowly cracking-up Douglas, hatches a crazy scheme to have a film made of the first man, a sailor, dying on the beach on D-Day. It's all part of his coldly calculating strategy to increase the Navy's standing when post-war budget cuts begin.

The sheer cynicism of his plan all but drives a usually fawning Garner to confront his Admiral, but he figures why risk his comfy situation for a principal. Yet when the spiralling into crazytown Admiral assigns Gardner to lead the filming on D-Day, Garner is now faced with being the cannon fodder he deplores or being hauled off to the brig.

From here, it's Garner looking for every angle to get out of his assignment, while Andrews, now confronted with losing another man she loves, deeply questions her previous views of honor and duty.

The end is hokey, but a ton of fun with everyone's morality getting spun in the centrifuge one more time. Garner and Andrews are so appealing that you can just enjoy the boy-chases-girl-then-girl-chases-boy story and let all the multi-layered morality slide by. At least that's becoming my preferred method for watching The Americanization of Emily.


N.B. The first line of the quote at the top is the genesis of the crazy plan of the Admiral's to glorify the Navy. The second line reflects the brass' chagrin when, with a publicity-driven memorial service all set, they discover their dead sailor is actually alive - don't you hate it when that happens?

 

[Harp]

W.B. Huie's literary creation The Americanization of Emily borders on being a masterpiece of cynicism
and sensibility with a dash of sentiment for practical purpose. Both book and film adaptation are extraordinarily
interesting; which, after the war also served a much needed objective look at recent history.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Jungle Cruise (2021), courtesy Disney+. One of my kids bought it, so we passed an evening chuckling at the jokes about the ride, at the Prince's off-center humor, and enjoyed the remarkable backstory.

 

[Doctor Strange]

FF, the one thing you left out of your review of The Americanization of Emily that should be noted is that the adapted screenplay was written by the great Paddy Chayefsky. That's the main reason it's a great movie - not its fairly undistinguished director Arthur Hiller.

 

[Harp]

FF, the one thing you left out of your review of The Americanization of Emily that should be noted is that the adapted screenplay was written by the great Paddy Chayefsky...

When I was a kid Chayefsky wrote for television. Unbelievable but true.

 

[Touchofevil]

Kiss Me, Stupid on TCM. I was hooked by the cinematography at the beginning of the movie which seems to happen a decent amount with Billy Wilder flicks. An entertaining enough cast, but the movie is just okay. Okay enough to keep watching, but the story is not really enough for me to stop, drop, and watch the next time I stumble across it.

 

[Fading Fast]

Keeper of the Flame from 1942 with Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Richard Whorf and Forrest Tucker


What happens when you start a movie with a Citizen Kane-style great-man buildup, but morph it into an off-the-shelf anti-Nazi/fascism WWII-propaganda effort? You wind up with a good movie that lets its audience down because it never delivers on its "Rosebud" promise.

Spencer Tracy is a noted foreign correspondent back in the States to cover the funeral of a famous American, Robert Forrest, who died when he drove his car off a just-collapsed-in-a-storm bridge located on his estate.

Forrest is presented as a "great man" who gave powerful speeches that inspired kids and adults to form clubs around the country in support of his ideas, which, at this point in the movie, while vague, sound "wholesomely" American. Forrest's resume checks all the boxes as he is a WWI hero, a successful businessman (when that was respected) and a well-known philanthropist.

We first sense, though, something is off when Tracy tries to gain access to Forrest's forbidding-looking mansion to interview his widow. He gets no farther than its imposing iron fence and gatehouse where he is turned away by the taciturn and suspicious groundskeeper.

From here, a stock mystery story takes over until the last twenty-or-so minutes. Tracy gains limited access to the mansion, meets the widow and is allowed to come back to do research for his book on Forrest, but the atmosphere is mistrustful and ominous.

In a series of visits, he encounters a hostile male cousin who might be having an affair with Hepburn, Forrest's surface-friendly but prickly secretary, the groundskeeper's child who believes he "killed" Forrest because he didn't warn him in time the bridge was out and Forrest's all but locked-away mother who thinks her son was killed by his wife Hepburn.

While all this is going on, in theory, Tracy and Hepburn fall in love, but you don't feel it. Despite their other successful romantic movie pairings - and a real life love affair - their famous chemistry doesn't click in this one. Part of the problem is Hepburn's character never finds its center. Instead, she pings back and forth between being a loving widow one moment to a murder suspect the next, but it comes off as inconsistent not mysterious.

The movie then shifts gears again when (spoiler alerts) we learn that Forrest was, à la Charles Lindbergh, trying to start a fascist front to take over America. Also, Hepburn didn't directly kill her husband, but committed a sin of omission by not warning him the fatal bridge was out when she could have.

This accomplished what she wanted - to stop his movement - but then she and the others on the estate attempt to cover up Forrest's true intentions believing it was better for the country that Forrest should be remembered as a "great American hero." Tracy rebuts this with a super-duper pro-American democracy speech about trusting the people to understand the real story because truth is the most-important American value.

After that, (one more spoiler alert) Hepburn is senselessly shot. One assumes the Motion Picture Production Code needed her dead since, technically, she did kinda kill her Nazi-sympathizing, traitorous husband.

As a Citizen Kane doppelganger, Keeper of the Flame is a big let down. As a murder-mystery-in-a-creepy-mansion movie, it's an ordinary by-the-numbers story. As a WWII propaganda film, it takes too long to get to its point and then shamelessly over sells it, even for propaganda.

Yet, despite all its faults, it's sort of okay as modest entertainment because Tracy is that good and several scenes work. It's just that, unfortunately, Keeper of the Flame tries to be too many things at once and fully succeeds at none of them.

 

[Harp]

Another grand slam review. Looks a keeper, anything with those two: Tracy and Katherine,
and while the plot thickens, on a cold rainy Autumn night could do a lot worse flick-wise.

In high school, I stopped at the Drury Lane Theatre to pick up some tickets for my mom, and Forrest Tucker, starring in the current stage play was standing in the lobby talking to a small group. I recalled him from F Troop.
His height and size were a forceful combination. And the guy made quite a personable impression inside a room.

 

[Touchofevil]

Came in late to Where Danger Lives on TCM. It took me a while before I realized that I had seen it at some point in the past. It is entertaining enough although the plot is pretty flimsy. But it has Robert Mitchum in it so I figured it was worth another viewing.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Satan Met a Lady (1936) with Bette Davis and Warren William in this William Dieterle-directed remake of The Maltese Falcon. As secretary for gumshoe Warren William, Marie Wilson gives a sneak preview of her My Friend Irma persona. It's more breezy than the other two versions, giving WW snappy dialogue and an air of rascally sophistication. Caspar Gutman is reimagined as Madame Barabbas, a notable international crime figure.
Interestingly, the trigger-happy Wilmer character is called Kenneth, a trigger-happy adolescent-looking kid sporting a beret. Oddly, despite a decent role in the story, he is uncredited in the movie; IMDb says the actor is Maynard Holmes.

 

[Fading Fast]

Wall of Noise from 1963 with Ty Hardin, Suzanne Pleshette, Ann Conroy, Ralph Meeker and Jimmy Murphy


A woman who wants her former boyfriend back asking about his new girlfriend:

Former girlfriend: "What's 'she' like?"

Former boyfriend: "She's not a broad." [Ouch!]

Former girlfriend [hurt]: Oh, well then, umm, maybe you better let me out the back way? [Translation: Are you happy, you made me feel like a piece of garbage?]


The 1950s into the early 1960s was Hollywood's Golden Age of dramas, more accurately described as giant balls of soap-opera cheese. I say that as a fan.

Swimming in the wake of the big name, major-studio efforts like Peyton Place and The Young Philadelphians are the low-budget, let's-cash-in-on-the-trend pictures like Wall of Noise.

Not that they didn't already have me at early-1960s soap opera, but Wall of Noise is set in the world of thoroughbred racing - ooh! - with a story pivoting off a talented but moody horse, Escudero (translation: shield bearer). This ornery and powerful thoroughbred holds the dreams of several desperate people in his fast but fragile four legs.

Skilled, edgy, romance-novel handsome and financially broke horse trainer Ty Hardin pushes the good people out of his life - his model girlfriend, Ann Conroy, and best friend jockey - in his singular pursuit of race-track success where the only thing he puts before his career is the well being of his horses.

When a self-made construction titan, Ralph Meeker, hires Hardin to be his trainer, Hardin's luck looks to have changed. But Meeker's promises of autonomy for Hardin were just words further eroded when Hardin begins an affair with Meeker's beautiful, young but disaffected wife, Suzanne Pleshette (just once I want to see her in a movie without her hair puffed up into a giant bubble).

Pleshette represents the world of wealth and breeding that Hardin has never been a part of as thoroughbred racing is a mix of extremes with little in between. Almost everyone who tries to earn a living in it is either moving up or down in this fickle business, with only the very rich able to fund it as a hobby. The rest are just one bad season or, sometimes, one bad race away from ruin.

Pleshette, born to the "right" family, but just as its money was running out, married Meeker to give the up-by-his-bootstraps millionaire social shine while he became her lifeboat bank account. She's potentially risking it all for a fling with a volatile man with an empty bank account.

Enter Escudero, a horse Hardin buys at auction for Meeker, but then ends up owning himself, however, with borrowed money he can't pay back unless the horse wins. From here, it's all Hardin trying to hold on to Escudero as, under his care, the temperamental colt begins to run well.

With the ex-girlfriend hanging around and helping, Escudero's note holder circling, Pleshette selfishly waiting to see if he hits it big with the strapping colt and Meeker trying to break him, Hardin has pushed all his chips into the center of the table on Escudero's next race (for racing fans, it's a way-up-in-class stakes race).

A day before the big race, Hardin notices Escudero might be injured. Since horses can't talk, the bane of every trainer ever, Hardin has to discern by observation if there is an ever-so-slight tendon issue which would cause him to scratch (pull from the race) Escudero.

So now, the man of integrity with horses, who has everything riding on the race and really can't afford to wait for another opportunity with Escudero's note due, faces a difficult go-no-go decision. Run the horse and he wins - all is good. Run him and he is injured - all is lost, including Hardin's integrity, Pleshette, the horse himself and, maybe even, the former-girlfriends' respect and love.

The "wall of noise," the overwhelming roar from the grandstands when the horses race by in the homestretch, is a metaphor for a man deaf to anything but winning. Will Hardin succumb to the "wall of noise" or do the right thing by his horse? Sure, the story is a big ball of cheese, but it's supposed to be as that's the raison d'etre of these wonderfully saponaceous 1950s and 1960s movies. In that "genre," Wall of Noise is a low-budget gem.


Suzanne Pleshette's bubble hair.



@Harp If you're okay slumming it in a soap-opera movie, I think you'd enjoy the thoroughbred racing aspect of this one.

 

[Harp]

View attachment 352358
Wall of Noise from 1963 with Ty Hardin, Suzanne Pleshette, Ann Conroy, Ralph Meeker and Jimmy Murphy


A woman who wants her former boyfriend back asking about his new girlfriend:

Former girlfriend: "What's 'she' like?"

Former boyfriend: "She's not a broad." [Ouch!]

Former girlfriend [hurt]: Oh, well then, umm, maybe you better let me out the back way? [Translation: Are you happy, you made me feel like a piece of garbage?]


The 1950s into the early 1960s was Hollywood's Golden Age of dramas, more accurately described as giant balls of soap-opera cheese. I say that as a fan.

Swimming in the wake of the big name, major-studio efforts like Peyton Place and The Young Philadelphians are the low-budget, let's-cash-in-on-the-trend pictures like Wall of Noise.

Not that they didn't already have me at early-1960s soap opera, but Wall of Noise is set in the world of thoroughbred racing - ooh! - with a story pivoting off a talented but moody horse, Escudero (translation: shield bearer). This ornery and powerful thoroughbred holds the dreams of several desperate people in his fast but fragile four legs.

Skilled, edgy, romance-novel handsome and financially broke horse trainer Ty Hardin pushes the good people out of his life - his model girlfriend, Ann Conroy, and best friend jockey - in his singular pursuit of race-track success where the only thing he puts before his career is the well being of his horses.

When a self-made construction titan, Ralph Meeker, hires Hardin to be his trainer, Hardin's luck looks to have changed. But Meeker's promises of autonomy for Hardin were just words further eroded when Hardin begins an affair with Meeker's beautiful, young but disaffected wife, Suzanne Pleshette (just once I want to see her in a movie without her hair puffed up into a giant bubble).

Pleshette represents the world of wealth and breeding that Hardin has never been a part of as thoroughbred racing is a mix of extremes with little in between. Almost everyone who tries to earn a living in it is either moving up or down in this fickle business, with only the very rich able to fund it as a hobby. The rest are just one bad season or, sometimes, one bad race away from ruin.

Pleshette, born to the "right" family, but just as its money was running out, married Meeker to give the up-by-his-bootstraps millionaire social shine while he became her lifeboat bank account. She's potentially risking it all for a fling with a volatile man with an empty bank account.

Enter Escudero, a horse Hardin buys at auction for Meeker, but then ends up owning himself, however, with borrowed money he can't pay back unless the horse wins. From here, it's all Hardin trying to hold on to Escudero as, under his care, the temperamental colt begins to run well.

With the ex-girlfriend hanging around and helping, Escudero's note holder circling, Pleshette selfishly waiting to see if he hits it big with the strapping colt and Meeker trying to break him, Hardin has pushed all his chips into the center of the table on Escudero's next race (for racing fans, it's a way-up-in-class stakes race).

A day before the big race, Hardin notices Escudero might be injured. Since horses can't talk, the bane of every trainer ever, Hardin has to discern by observation if there is an ever-so-slight tendon issue which would cause him to scratch (pull from the race) Escudero.

So now, the man of integrity with horses, who has everything riding on the race and really can't afford to wait for another opportunity with Escudero's note due, faces a difficult go-no-go decision. Run the horse and he wins - all is good. Run him and he is injured - all is lost, including Hardin's integrity, Pleshette, the horse himself and, maybe even, the former-girlfriends' respect and love.

The "wall of noise," the overwhelming roar from the grandstands when the horses race by in the homestretch, is a metaphor for a man deaf to anything but winning. Will Hardin succumb to the "wall of noise" or do the right thing by his horse? Sure, the story is a big ball of cheese, but it's supposed to be as that's the raison d'etre of these wonderfully saponaceous 1950s and 1960s movies. In that "genre," Wall of Noise is a low-budget gem.


Suzanne Pleshette's bubble hair.
View attachment 352359


@Harp If you're okay slumming it in a soap-opera movie, I think you'd enjoy the thoroughbred racing aspect of this one.

Anything with Suzanne Pleshette....Ms Pleshette always drove me nuts when I was a kid, still does.

A way up in class stakes entrant, and might be injured....shades of Nyquist in the Preakness few years back.
Nyquist was well within his class that day at Pimlico but a low white cell count later cited for cause;
however, Exaggerator was the real mudlark and cut down any assumed slop parity between those two.
Cherry Wine rode the rail to place, Nyquist showed, and Stradavari fourth.
I had $2k in my pocket that day but chose to keep the second grand holstered. My gut instinct screamed
mud, mud, mud, and I even had the Stradavarious in the mix. When a horse comes up fast and furious,
doubts discarded, and a gambler rues the day he ignored his subjective side.
And I could tell Nyquist was ill or injured seeing it all unfold. Funny in a way, the winners are cashed
and largely forgot, it is the losers that burn a hole in memory.

 

[Fading Fast]

Anything with Suzanne Pleshette....Ms Pleshette always drove me nuts when I was a kid, still does.

A way up in class stakes entrant, and might be injured....shades of Nyquist in the Preakness few years back.
Nyquist was well within his class that day at Pimlico but a low white cell count later cited for cause;
however, Exaggerator was the real mudlark and cut down any assumed slop parity between those two.
Cherry Wine rode the rail to place, Nyquist showed, and Stradavari fourth.
I had $2k in my pocket that day but chose to keep the second grand holstered. My gut instinct screamed
mud, mud, mud, and I even had the Stradavarious in the mix. When a horse comes up fast and furious,
doubts discarded, and a gambler rues the day he ignored his subjective side.
And I could tell Nyquist was ill or injured seeing it all unfold. Funny in a way, the winners are cashed
and largely forgot, it is the losers that burn a hole in memory.

In general, yes, the (close) losers stay with you more than the winners. But being in the grandstand for Racheal Alexandra's Woodward win at Saratoga in '09 (had her in a winning exacta as she was the favored so had to do something to make the bet worth while) is still one of my favorite days at the track and favorite races ever. It wasn't the money (several hundred bucks, nice, but life quickly rolls over that), but the crowd was so insanely excited - shaking, literally, shaking the grandstand as she blew by - that you couldn't help catch the enthusiasm. So much so that the normally controlled track announcer, who usually perfectly modulates his voice, was screaming with boyish excitement. A day and race my girlfriend and I will never forget.