What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MisterCairo]

We watched The Raven when it came to cable TV. I kinda' liked it, but as much as I like John Cusack I didn't for a moment buy him as Poe.

It would be impossible to get a closer look alike, and as for his personality, we know only so much, but his fondness for the drink was I thought well done.

 

[Harp]

It would be impossible to get a closer look alike, and as for his personality, we know only so much, but his fondness for the drink was I thought well done.

Poe supposedly possessed an acerbic and quite caustic nature. I researched a college paper on him
and found a note he adressed to Col Sylvannus Thayer on eve of his expulsion from West Point,
asking recommendation or letters of introduction toward purpose of securing a commission in the
Polish cavalry. A rather strange but highly significant document attesting Poe's mercurial personality.

 

[Zombie_61]

It would be impossible to get a closer look alike, and as for his personality, we know only so much, but his fondness for the drink was I thought well done.

Ah. See, except for both men being Caucasian and having dark hair, I see no resemblance between them whatsoever. That was a big part of the problem for me because I didn't see Poe; I saw Cusack.

 

[Motocann]

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Fantastic film!

 

[Harp]

Ah. See, except for both men being Caucasian and having dark hair, I see no resemblance between them whatsoever. That was a big part of the problem for me because I didn't see Poe; I saw Cusack.

Dissipated and haggard toward later life and death, Poe was aware of his appearance and sensitive
to its impression given others, which may perhaps partially account his erratic behavior.
Cusack probably understood this and tried for the essence of the inner man.

 

[Worf]

Stephen King's OTHER vampire story besides "Salem's Lot". It's called "The Night Flier". They made a film adaptation of this on in 1997. A fairly low budget affair but it had some decent chills. There is no "protagonist" per se as the film revolves around a tabloid journalist looking for his "next big score", pursuing a vampire who flies into rural airstrips, munches whoever's handy and flies off into the night. Both pursuer and pursued are loathesome, blood sucking, vermin who deserve each other.... A bit on the nose but entertaining... VERY hard to find. Had to watch a bootleg on YouTube to finally see it.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

A Woman Rebels from 1936 with Katherine Hepburn, Herbert Marshall, Elizabeth Allan and Donald Crisp


"Don't you think that dependent myth about women is one that men created for their own pretension?"

- Katherine Hepburn in A Woman Rebels


Even under the Motion Picture Production Code "controversial" movies, now and then, seemed to sneak by the era's tight censorship to make it to the big screen. In A Woman Rebels, Hepburn's mid-Victorian-era character has sex out of wedlock and then raises her daughter as a single parent, albeit, under the subterfuge that she's raising the baby of her now-deceased sister and brother-in-law.

As if all that isn't enough to fill 1936's theater lobbies' fainting couches, Hepburn goes on to edit a liberal women's magazine advocating for women's rights including the opportunity to be educated, work and vote just like men.

How come the villagers didn't storm the theaters with pitchforks and flaming torches? Probably because the code was more the reflection of one man's narrow views on "morality" than the broader views of 1930s (and 1940s, and 1950s) America.

It also probably helped that A Woman Rebels was set in England in the 1800s, which gave it a fig leaf of "period drama," but any sentient being could see how its arguments slid right into the social and cultural debates of the 1930s. Ideology is A Woman Rebel's strength because its story, away from its message, is only okay.

Katherine Hepburn is the sheltered daughter of a wealthy Victorian widower, Donald Crisp, who raises his two daughters to see their role in the world to be subservient to their future husbands. After a childhood of fighting this circumscribed upbringing, Hepburn moves to Italy with her now-married sister, but not before having an affair with a married man.

After the sister and her husband die - sometimes a writer just has to advance his bigger plot - Hepburn returns to England with her "sister's baby." After being rejected from every job she applies for because she's a woman, Hepburn gets hired at a liberal woman's publication, where she eventually becomes editor advocating, as noted, for women's rights.

Chugging alongside this narrative is Hepburn's longtime affair with senior diplomat, Herbert Marshall, who wants to marry Hepburn. She refuses for a couple of decades - yes, he's that persistent - without telling him it's because she's afraid if the true story of her "sister's baby" ever came out, it would wreck his career.

Eventually, the story comes spilling out because Hepburn's daughter, now a young adult, begins dating - get ready for it - the son of her biological father (the man a young Hepburn had an affair with all those years ago). Of course, Hepburn's daughter had no way of knowing whom she was dating.

The soap opera ramps up from here - Hepburn is named as a correspondent by her former lover's wife, a public scandal ensues, the daughter learns the truth and initially rebukes Hepburn. After that, it's a too pat and too happy ending.

That's unfortunate, but A Woman Rebels is not about its soap-opera story. It's really just a period stalking horse used to slip a movie advocating for women's rights past the censorship board. The good news is it succeeded, but its weak story hurt its box office and, thus, the megaphone for its message.


N.B. By advocating for women's rights, A Woman Rebels achieved something simply by being made and shown in 1936. Yet it makes the same mistake many modern movie producers, directors and writers make when they are so focused on their political message that they forget to make an entertaining movie. That's why many of today's political movies, just like A Woman Rebels in 1936, end up having very small audiences.

 

[MisterCairo]

We have booked our tickets to see the next Bo d flick, No Time to Die, so we needed to catch our girls up on the first four Craig films.

We hit pause on Hallowe'en films for SPECTER last night.

Had not realized we (wife and I) had not seen it again since watching in the theatre. We have the high definition Craig collection on Blu-ray.

Better than I recalled it (I felt the background story of Blofeld incredibly weak, still do), but I remain convinced Quantum of Solace is the better film.

Next weekend is Thanksgiving in Canada, so in addition to OP Turkey, we have Craig's final turn to look forward to!

 

[Edward]

We have booked our tickets to see the next Bo d flick, No Time to Die, so we needed to catch our girls up on the first four Craig films.

We hit pause on Hallowe'en films for SPECTER last night.

Had not realized we (wife and I) had not seen it again since watching in the theatre. We have the high definition Craig collection on Blu-ray.

Better than I recalled it (I felt the background story of Blofeld incredibly weak, still do), but I remain convinced Quantum of Solace is the better film.

Next weekend is Thanksgiving in Canada, so in addition to OP Turkey, we have Craig's final turn to look forward to!

I really liked Casino Royale - Craig playing Bourne-Bond. Skyfall took the franchise back to more 'Bond', probably the best one since Goldfinger. Quantum of Solace I've tried to watch twice and could barely make head nor tail of it. I suspect it much have been heavily edited for television. Spectre was deeply disappointing to me - Blofeld was always my favourite villain and Waltz was a great casting, but I wish they'd let him make it his own rather than trying to make him somehow Donald Pleasance in disguise at the end - wholly unconvincing. The reviews here for the new one have been very scathing so far, but I plan still to give it a go. I'm not yet ready to risk the cinema again, so I'll probably wait until it's on streaming. It's going to be interesting to see what they try to do with Bond next: the logical conclusion from an artistic pov is probably to stop, but Bond is business not art, so I doubt we'll see either risk or end in its future. Craig era did very well to revive a dying franchise, though for the longer term they're going to have to either go period or take Bond beyond the limits of "Cold Warrior can't fit in post Cold War".

 

[Zombie_61]

...Quantum of Solace I've tried to watch twice and could barely make head nor tail of it. I suspect it much have been heavily edited for television...

It may have been, but I saw it in the theater with a friend on it's opening weekend here back in 2008 and as we walked out of the theater discussing it we both realized we had no idea what the movie had been about. My friend thought Bond had gone looking for the people who killed Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, and I thought it was about a real estate deal and oil rights. I've tried to read the story synopsis for the movie on a few different websites, and they didn't seem to know what was going on either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[MisterCairo]

It may have been, but I saw it in the theater with a friend on it's opening weekend here back in 2008 and as we walked out of the theater discussing it we both realized we had no idea what the movie had been about. My friend thought Bond had gone looking for the people who killed Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, and I thought it was about a real estate deal and oil rights. I've tried to read the story synopsis for the movie on a few different websites, and they didn't seem to know what was going on either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You were both right, sort of.

Bond was seeking revenge for Vesper's death, and the villain and his Quantum group were seeking control - of water, in anarea with a shortage of it.

I did not find it confusing at all.

 

[Zombie_61]

You were both right, sort of.

Bond was seeking revenge for Vesper's death, and the villain and his Quantum group were seeking control - of water, in anarea with a shortage of it.

I did not find it confusing at all.

Okay, you've cleared it up more than anyone else has.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), a Perry Mason story, with Warren Willam as Perry, Genevieve Tobin as Della Street, and the dependable Allen Jenkins as Spudsy Drake. Strictly a programmer, with Mason as a slick double talker who breaks laws in the service of mystery-solving with easy-going aplomb.
His Majesty O'Keefe (1954) with Burt Lancaster as a larger than life sea-farer looking to make a fortune in the South Seas. An 1870 mutiny finds him on the island of Yap, hub of the copra trade. Burt and the screenwriters take it from there, showing that empire-building takes two-fisted luck and limitless wells of self-assurance. Filmed entirely on location, in Technicolor. Based on a true story.

 

[Harp]

It's going to be interesting to see what they try to do with Bond next: the logical conclusion from an artistic pov is probably to stop, but Bond is business not art, so I doubt we'll see either risk or end in its future. Craig era did very well to revive a dying franchise, though for the longer term they're going to have to either go period or take Bond beyond the limits of "Cold Warrior can't fit in post Cold War".

Craig's revival of a Lazarus franchise aside, political correctness and other societal issues still affect
the box office package product that remains a tad off-balance. Craig's intensity went some distance
but overall the corrective approach detracts rather than adds. The franchise ownership should decide
if Bond is worth salvaging or keep the cosmetic corrective application. An intelligent period approach
in the style of British criminal drama: highly reasoned, disciplined, and substantive.

 

[Fading Fast]

Craig's revival of a Lazarus franchise aside, political correctness and other societal issues still affect
the box office package product that remains a tad off-balance. Craig's intensity went some distance
but overall the corrective approach detracts rather than adds. The franchise ownership should decide
if Bond is worth salvaging or keep the cosmetic corrective application. An intelligent period approach
in the style of British criminal drama: highly reasoned, disciplined, and substantive.

We've talked about it here at FL before, I think a "period-Bond" ('50s/early '60s) TV drama or series of movies would be an outstanding separate work stream for the Bond franchise. I believe it was Lizzie who said it best (and probably better than how I'll try to paraphrase it now), but Bond was a product of his time and works best in that era.

 

[MisterCairo]

We've talked about it here at FL before, I think a "period-Bond" ('50s/early '60s) TV drama or series of movies would be an outstanding separate work stream for the Bond franchise. I believe it was Lizzie who said it best (and probably better than how I'll try to paraphrase it now), but Bond was a product of his time and works best in that era.

Such would have to be reduced to television, and not particularly expensive to produce at that, because the reality is, the current movie going public has no knowledge of, let alone fondness for, the Bond of the period novels.

Like it or not, that is the realty. No actor being considered for the role now looks like the Bond of the novels. Because no one statistically speaking would pay to watch him.

"In the next action packed adventure, Bond flies Pan Am to locate the microfilm stolen by Specter henchmen, and being held at a volcano lair".

Good luck!

 

[Fading Fast]

Such would have to be reduced to television, and not particularly expensive to produce at that, because the reality is, the current movie going public has no knowledge of, let alone fondness for, the Bond of the period novels.

Like it or not, that is the realty. No actor being considered for the role now looks like the Bond of the novels. Because no one statistically speaking would pay to watch him.

"In the next action packed adventure, Bond flies Pan Am to locate the microfilm stolen by Specter henchmen, and being held at a volcano lair".

Good luck!

A period TV series or set of movies would still have to be updated as it, to your point, wouldn't be effective to simply redo a 1960s style movie and think a modern audience would embrace it. Bond was presented one way in the 1960s; I could see our modern desire to look more at the emotional- and psychologic-side of a character opening up a new area to explore in a Bond movie/TV show, even set in the 1960s.

There's also the opportunity to explore the Cold War in a different way as well as looking at technology with an understanding of what was to come.

I've seen three generations of Perry Mason - 1930s (movies), 1960s (TV) and the new HBO one (set in the 1930s). Of course, they are all very, very different as they reflect, in many ways, the period when they were made regardless of what era the show itself is set in.

 

[Fading Fast]

A Place in the Sun from 1951 with Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters and Raymond Burr


It all comes down to this: guilt in the heart versus guilt in deed. Everything in A Place in the Sun really exists to magnify that one question: thought versus action.

Young, poor and poorly educated Montgomery Clift, raised by Evangelists, is given a modest job in his wealthy uncle's large manufacturing concern. Despite being warned not to date the female employees, especially since he is related to the owners, Clift begins an affair with mousy factory girl Shelley Winters.

Clift, despite being almost cripplingly shy, manages to make an impression on his uncle who begins to promote him inside the company, while introducing him to "proper" society outside of work.

Enter into Clift's life, Elizabeth Taylor, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist and leader of the young, fast set. They quickly fall in love: she's attracted to his shy outsider aura, which is so different from the capped-toothed boys of her world, while she is his, well, place in the sun.

She is breeding, wealth, looks, connections and society; everything he's never had. The darnedest thing has happened though, Winters is pregnant. It turns out the factory mouse is tenacious and she's not letting go of Clift one bit.

As Clift tries to put off Winters (think bull and bullfighter), Taylor and he fall deeper in love as Clift's uncle offers him a management role. With everything he's wanted right in front of him, Winters digs in, now, demanding Clift marry her.

What to do, what to do? Slowly, almost by accident, Clift begins to contemplate murder. It's not an excuse, but Winters has become so shrewy and demanding that she inadvertently pushes him toward it.

It all comes down to an isolated moment, in a rowboat, on a lake, at night. Clift doesn't bonk Winters (he was thinking about it, though), but the boat accidentally goes over and she hits her head. In this pivotal moment (think the jouncing of the tree limb in A Separate Peace), does Clift try to save her or not? It's also an eerie premonition of Chappaquiddick.

(Spoiler alert) Clift is found guilty and sentenced to death. In his cell, about to take his final walk, Clift is still struggling with his potential guilt. The priest then asks him if, when he was in the water and maybe had an opportunity to save Winters, whom was he thinking of?

The priest goes on, "Were you thinking of the other girl [Taylor]? Then...in your heart was murder." From a religious point of view, maybe true, I guess; from a legal point of view, that is probably closer to manslaughter.

A Place in the Sun is all about guilt in the heart versus guilt in deed, but it tosses the question back to the viewer: did Clift commit murder, manslaughter or something else because he wanted his place in the sun?


N.B. #1 This deeply sad movie is made sadder by the fact that, other than for a set of unique circumstances, Clift would have gone through life as a moral, law-abiding man.

N.B. #2 Nineteen-year-old Taylor is a slip of a beautiful young girl in A Place in the Sun. This begs the question, what did she do to herself in the next nine years that made twenty-eight-year-old Taylor, in Butterfield 8, look closer to forty. She must have done some hard living in her twenties.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Excellent review of this multi-Oscar-winner. I have only two things to add... as usual, about the writing and directing.

This tragic story didn't come out of nowhere, it was based on An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

Director George Stevens was an expert at light comedy before WWII, stuff like Swing Time. During the war, he was one of the directors that went overseas and made documentary films, and it was his unit that filmed the liberation of the concentration camps. He was so distraught and depressed by that experience that it took him five years after returning to even make another film... and it was A Place In The Sun. He never directed another comedy.

(I'm again recommending the outstanding Netflix documentary Five Came Back, which besides Stevens discusses the before/during/after careers of Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, and William Wyler. Their war experiences had a huge effect on all of them: their first films after returning, respectively, were It's A Wonderful Life, They Were Expendable, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The Best Years of Our Lives.)

 

[Edward]

Craig's revival of a Lazarus franchise aside, political correctness and other societal issues still affect
the box office package product that remains a tad off-balance. Craig's intensity went some distance
but overall the corrective approach detracts rather than adds. The franchise ownership should decide
if Bond is worth salvaging or keep the cosmetic corrective application. An intelligent period approach
in the style of British criminal drama: highly reasoned, disciplined, and substantive.

Given the uber-mainstream market the Broccolis are targeting, I can't much imagine them doing anything that involves a risk; if audiences keep turning out, they'll give them what they want. Same reason they won't do a female Bond or anything else that will upset the incels; it's not what their core audience want. There's been a bit of window dressing in the Craig era to pander to recent, popular tropes, but less overt change than the upping of the ante from the Connery to the Moore era imo. I don't imagine we'll see anything significantly different from Craig for the next decade or so - unless the audience drops off and they need to revamp the product to make it more saleable again. If it does change significantly, likely the direction of travel will be more towards the Fast and Furious genre than anything else. I'd be surprised, tbh, if what they can now sell as Bond would get anywhere without the brand of Bond behind it.

Such would have to be reduced to television, and not particularly expensive to produce at that, because the reality is, the current movie going public has no knowledge of, let alone fondness for, the Bond of the period novels.

Like it or not, that is the realty. No actor being considered for the role now looks like the Bond of the novels. Because no one statistically speaking would pay to watch him.

"In the next action packed adventure, Bond flies Pan Am to locate the microfilm stolen by Specter henchmen, and being held at a volcano lair".

Good luck!

If even TV. The BBC have done something of this nature in recent years - on the radio, where of course you don't need more than a minimal effects budget - and nothing for costume.

A period TV series or set of movies would still have to be updated as it, to your point, wouldn't be effective to simply redo a 1960s style movie and think a modern audience would embrace it. Bond was presented one way in the 1960s; I could see our modern desire to look more at the emotional- and psychologic-side of a character opening up a new area to explore in a Bond movie/TV show, even set in the 1960s.

There's also the opportunity to explore the Cold War in a different way as well as looking at technology with an understanding of what was to come.

I've seen three generations of Perry Mason - 1930s (movies), 1960s (TV) and the new HBO one (set in the 1930s). Of course, they are all very, very different as they reflect, in many ways, the period when they were made regardless of what era the show itself is set in.

That's what I would like to see - some production company like AMC, or even Netflix or Prime funding it. Bond via Mad Men rather than Bourne. I don't think it'll happen, though - at least not this side of the Broccolis selling off the rights, and what they'll charge I would be surprised anyone would dare take the risk...

Arguably the closest I've seen to doing something like this was Never Say Never Again; while that did indeed contemporise the setting, it kept a lot of stuff from the book -Bond's restored Bentley, the (as memory serves) lesser emphasis on gadgets (though there were a couple), and general tone was different. A harkening back to the original Connery Bond films, but through then-modern eyes. I know I'm often in a minority on this, but NSNA for me holds up far better than Eon's risible Octopussy, released the same year. For me anyhow there were echoes of Connery's NSNA Bond in the first act of Skyfall, perhaps one of the elements that made it play so well.