What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Julian Shellhammer]

A couple of nights back, it was Kitty Foyle (1940) with Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, and James Craig, directed by Sam Wood. Best Actress Oscar for Ginger. No less than Dalton Trumbo and Donald Ogden Stewart worked on the screen play and dialogue. We enjoyed it, even though it was soap-opera-ish at times. It did what it was supposed to do, while away the time pleasantly.

 

[Worf]

"Flight Commander" - Scroll back a few pages and you can see I reviewed Errol Flynn and David Niven in "Dawn Patrol". A film I've seen many times and love. I knew there was an earlier version and "Flight Commander" is it. Made in 1930, this early talkie is directed by Howard Hawks. D.P. is a line by line and beat by beat copy of the earlier film. So much so that all the aerial battle scenes were reused in the latter. The one thing that D.P. has over its predecessor is acting and accents. In F.C. the leads sound like they're on the set of a western instead of Englishmen flying in the "Royal Flying Corps" for King and Country! And like most early talkies the acting is way too broad and overblown. Don't use a chainsaw when a scalpel will do. Still it was a great watch just to see the differences.

Worf

 

[Harp]

A split of champagne and two films: The Blue Max and The Great Waldo Pepper.

The latter is a post war barnstormer about a guy who never made it to combat or acehood.
But had circumstances allowed, he'd have nailed six kills easily. And he knows it.
Does the rubber chicken dinner circuit triple loop in Nebraska, moves on to California,
meets a German ace so their duel is ordained set pistols at dawn. They attack each others' plane.
Won't spoil the heart tear end.

The Blue Max centers a shavetail lieutenant aviator, commissioned out of trenches, a talented
buck ass private serf among landed gentry. They see him as a lowly peasant but he can fly and fight.
Combat decrees its own class structure and he is knighted a sky samurai. He nails a general's wife,
whom he shares with the squadron top gun, ka sera sera, and fate lays a trap.

Time well spent.

 

[Bushman]

Watched "Cold Skin" (2017) last night. Doesn't really have any big names surrounding it, but it was incredibly well done. In 1914, at the outbreak of WWI, a British weather station attendant (David Oakes) in the far reaches of the world finds himself in over his head when he discovers that the local lighthouse keeper, Gruner, (Ray Stevenson) has been actively been at a quiet war with a population of merpeople. We never learn what exactly sparked the conflict, but Gruner's disdain for this amphibious race is expressed most explicitly by his enslavement of a mermaid, Aneris (played by Aura Garrido).

Honestly, this movie is far better than I expected it to be. The description on Amazon Prime made it sound like a schlocky b-movie, but the make up effects were well done, the tone of isolation palpable, and the story was engaging. The movie becomes a lesson about the other, and while Gruner sees these strange merfolk as worthy of extermination, our weather attendant (who is only given the name "Friend") looks at them with a far more curious eye. This widely different view of the battle splits a wedge between Friend and Gruner even as their necessary partnership in defending each other in the nightly battles grows ever more desperate and intense.

The heat of the war comes at the climax, when Grunar begins dynamiting the merpeople attackers, leading to the burgeoning friendship between Aneris and Friend allowing the formation of a truce. In the end, the lesson seems to be that sometimes, there's no enemy until you create one, and that it is the wiseman that seeks not to in the battle, but to end the war.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I watched Villeneuve’s new Dune last night.

It is NOT better than Lynch’s wacko version from the 80s. Both follow the book closely and mostly hit the same narrative beats. The production design is ugly – huge spaces of colorless, brutalist concrete – and despite 35 years of effects technology, things only look slightly more believable. Some of the allegedly impressive sequences are just videogame quality-CGI wherein huge fleets of ships and thousands of troops look... just as bogus as in the Star Wars prequel trilogy twenty years ago. (Unlike Lynch's, this version doesn't try to avoid the Star Wars story/setting similarities, it embraces them.)

It has none of the oddball designs of Lynch – no vulva-faced Navigators, no Sting in a brass jockstrap, no retro tech, and Baron Harkonan is still gross, but a lot less so. The whole “put your hand in the box” sequence is much less effective, you don’t feel the visceral fear, despite a nice little performance by Charlotte Rampling as the Bene Gesseret Witch.

The cast are all very familiar actors, a mistake that Lynch didn’t make in 1984 (apart from Sting!), so you could see the character Paul Atreides, not Kyle McLachlan (it was his first film). I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t get the alleged appeal of Timothee Chalomet: I’ve seen him in like eight roles now, and I’m not impressed… and for me, he never disappeared into the role. I mean, petulant superiority balanced against emotional sensitivity are his only modes in every role.

Jason Mamoa does far better as Duncan Idaho, a badass character who didn’t get enough attention in the old film… but he’s still that guy who plays Aquaman, Conan, and Khal Drago. Oscar Isaac is also now overly familiar after three Star Wars flicks, an X-Men film, and many other high-profile roles. Josh Brolin is good as always... but he sounds exactly like Thanos. And hey, it’s Javier Bardem, didn't he just play Desi Arnaz? And then there’s Zendaya, Spider-Man’s girlfriend. (Rebecca Furguson isn’t that familiar and she’s good as Lady Jessica… but she does NOT have the regal bearing and odd, alien aspect that Francesca Annis brought to the role in 1984.)

The desert-dwelling Fremen are now played entirely by non-white actors. We get it: they’re the underclass. Not exactly subtle. Nothing in this film is. And worst of all, it’s only part one, so there’s no resolution. It doesn't even have an emotional Empire Strikes Back last-shot moment, it just lurches to a halt.

Honestly, I think it's maybe a half-star better than the 1984 version in terms of telling its complicated story, but it's a much less personal and unique vision.

 

[Harp]

A post script toss out to Robert Redford: the guy has some chops, recognized good material,
took a shot at Gatsby even though Fitzgerald had a hard knock rep about being unfilmable
or at least resistant to the camera; others such as The Way We Were; Three Days of The Condor;
Ordinary People; Quiz Show; All The President's Men, collectively crown his career, setting precious
jewels sparkling a caring nature coupled with highly intelligent purpose, rhyme, and reason.
I don't agree with his politics but I love good films and Redford to his credit always delivered.

 

[Worf]

I watched Villeneuve’s new Dune last night.

It is NOT better than Lynch’s wacko version from the 80s. Both follow the book closely and mostly hit the same narrative beats. The production design is ugly – huge spaces of colorless, brutalist concrete – and despite 35 years of effects technology, things only look slightly more believable. Some of the allegedly impressive sequences are just videogame quality-CGI wherein huge fleets of ships and thousands of troops look... just as bogus as in the Star Wars prequel trilogy twenty years ago. (Unlike Lynch's, this version doesn't try to avoid the Star Wars story/setting similarities, it embraces them.)

It has none of the oddball designs of Lynch – no vulva-faced Navigators, no Sting in a brass jockstrap, no retro tech, and Baron Harkonan is still gross, but a lot less so. The whole “put your hand in the box” sequence is much less effective, you don’t feel the visceral fear, despite a nice little performance by Charlotte Rampling as the Bene Gesseret Witch.

The cast are all very familiar actors, a mistake that Lynch didn’t make in 1984 (apart from Sting!), so you could see the character Paul Atreides, not Kyle McLachlan (it was his first film). I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t get the alleged appeal of Timothee Chalomet: I’ve seen him in like eight roles now, and I’m not impressed… and for me, he never disappeared into the role. I mean, petulant superiority balanced against emotional sensitivity are his only modes in every role.

Jason Mamoa does far better as Duncan Idaho, a badass character who didn’t get enough attention in the old film… but he’s still that guy who plays Aquaman, Conan, and Khal Drago. Oscar Isaac is also now overly familiar after three Star Wars flicks, an X-Men film, and many other high-profile roles. Josh Brolin is good as always... but he sounds exactly like Thanos. And hey, it’s Javier Bardem, didn't he just play Desi Arnaz? And then there’s Zendaya, Spider-Man’s girlfriend. (Rebecca Furguson isn’t that familiar and she’s good as Lady Jessica… but she does NOT have the regal bearing and odd, alien aspect that Francesca Annis brought to the role in 1984.)

The desert-dwelling Fremen are now played entirely by non-white actors. We get it: they’re the underclass. Not exactly subtle. Nothing in this film is. And worst of all, it’s only part one, so there’s no resolution. It doesn't even have an emotional Empire Strikes Back last-shot moment, it just lurches to a halt.

Honestly, I think it's maybe a half-star better than the 1984 version in terms of telling its complicated story, but it's a much less personal and unique vision.

I can understand your comments and critiques of the film. I find some of them spot on. I also think Timothee Chalomet is a middling actor and miscast. The only thing going for him is that he's closer to Paul's actual age in the book than Kyle McLachlan was in the original. I too found his performance shallow. My main difference with you assessment regards the visuals. I saw this film on a BIG screen with superior sound. In the movies the size and scale of the effects take on a weight and feel all their own. I was awestruck. I believe had you seen this in the movies, as it should be seen, you'd have a different take.

As for the Fremen... errr have you seen what people look like in desert climes? If anything Lynch got their racial makeup wrong in the original... take a look at any desert dwelling peoples and perhaps you might want to amend your opinion. And Arrakis is even more inhospitable than any desert we have here....

Worf

 

[Doctor Strange]

I'm definitely willing to believe it was much more impressive on a big screen with an audience.

And yeah, I'm not saying that the casting was wrong for desert folk, just that it seems a lazy way to make this crazy SF story a little more relevant to our own society's problems. Not that that idea isn't built into the original book too.

Despite how negative I was before, I consider this film a worthy attempt at telling the story, equally valid for now as Lynch's was in its day. This version has a longer runtime, a bigger budget, bigger stars, and yeah, it has some great moments. But I think the old one did some things better.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Good Die Young from 1954 with Laurence Harvey, Richard Basehart, Stanley Backer, John Ireland, Gloria Graham and Joan Collins.


The Good Die Young is a kitchen-sink and crime-drama mashup done in a noirish style with an almost The Twilight Zone overlay - phew. Like the better all-in-one gadgets, it doesn't do any one thing great, but it is serviceable.

Set in London, we meet four men whose lives are falling apart. One, Stanley Baker, is a middle-aged boxer who retired and immediately lost his modest savings while he had to have his hand amputated owing, in part, to an injury sustained in the ring. He needs money.

The second, Richard Basehart, is an American office worker who, effectively, quit his job to come to London to get his wife, Joan Collins (never looking better) to come back home. She's been taking care of her hypochondriac and passive-aggressive mother. Yet, after a few setbacks in London, he no longer has airfare home for them. He needs money.

A third is a military pilot, John Ireland, whose actress wife, Gloria Graham, is openly flaunting her affair in front of her husband. He believes if he could afford to support her in the upscaled lifestyle she prefers, he could win her back. He needs money (or, better, a different wife).

The last one is playboy, Laurence Harvey, whose profligacy has burned down his money bridges to both his wealthy father and successful artist wife. With a check he wrote to pay off his most-recent gambling debt about to bounce, he needs money.

After all that kitchen-sink drama, these four coincidentally meet over the next few weeks in the local pub where cocky and creepy Harvey tries to talk the other three into robbing a mail truck he knows will be carrying ninety-thousand pounds. While first laughing him off, the other three ultimately face the decision of becoming criminals or not: they do not choose wisely.

The Good Die Young now slips into both noir and The Twilight Zone mode as these men, who would have led honest lives if not pushed to the wall, after much angst, agree to go along with Harvey's slapdash plan. Harvey is a good salesman, but he's got a shoddy product.

(Minor spoiler alerts for the next two paragraphs as it's not a big surprise.) We know what is going to happen next: these four are going to fail, but still, you're engaged in watching it painfully unfold. You're not quite rooting for them to succeed, but you can't help feeling bad as you know they (with the exception of Harvey) only ended up tumbling down to this level of desperation owing to a lot of not-good things happening in their lives in rapid succession.

The "heist" itself is so sloppy that it's almost comical as a policeman walks right into it at the start, which just leads to one fatal mistake after another. As it all falls apart, a flash version of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre plays out as greed and deceit amongst the gang members delivers the deathblow.

The denouement is less noir than The Twilight Zone as you almost expect the closing scene to be the four men meeting up in the pub like they did early on with one of them saying, "You won't believe this crazy dream I had, now don't laugh, but we tried to hold up a mail truck..."

The Good Die Young is a small-budget effort with some real star power that mixes too many styles, but still works in a morality-tale way.

 

[Edward]

Recently watched of all things, the new Ghostbuster picture, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. I have to say I went in prepared to be disappointed: as a rule of thumb, any franchise which formerly was all-adults that introducing children into it as central characters is about to go south in a big way (Hello, Phantom Menace). This one breaks that rule. Very pleasing indeed. The kids, unusually for Hollywood, aren't grating or irritating, and they are, while smart. "right" for their age. No superhuman intelligence or abilities ridiculously beyond their years. Bringing back folks from the original cast is beautifully done - it could have been cloying and schmaltzy, but it's well done here. Recreating Egon is incredible - I would genuinely not have known it wasn't Harold Ramis had I not known he was dead already. Lovely look and feel to it as well. So many films that pick up after a long while don't sit easy in their universe because the tech is "too good" and technology has moved on. This, on the other hand, works very well - even the terror dogs have enough of the look of the old, jerky stop-motions from the original to totally fit, and the score carries wonderful echoes of the 1984 original too. There is definitely room for a sequel building on this which would work well in the context of the original idea for Ghostbuster 3, i.e. a new team, franchised out or newly recruited, overseen by an original player. Paul Rudd and a team of young folks out doing the busting, Ackroyd as the Font of All Occult Knowledge, Murray the marketing man, and Winston as the big player in finance bankrolling it all...

 

[Harp]

A brief moment last nite, remote comfortably inside my left paw, I almost clicked King of Thieves
with Michael Caine as evening selection but backed off since the storyline seemed familiar.
Never saw this flick but a walk through Youtube and some other sites showed a couple of movies
or docuz done around 2017, including KoT; allabouts the Hatton Garden bank job.

Nice hit I recall. Lotza ice. But a Caine flick didn't seem to flick my Bic. He nailed Harry Palmer, ok,
otherwise he turned caricature way too soon. Busted flush. Most reviews gave similarz or criticized
film for several glares deficient, not enough grit and grime. Nobody's boat float.

Def not De Niro's Heat. Which I really wanted but saw. And saw The Irishman.
All the seens and unseens.

 

[Doctor Damage]

Last night I watched the 2019 film "Arkansas" with Liam Hemsworth, Vince Vaughan, and John Malkovich. One of those random things I grabbed in the library which turned out to be a gem. It got poor reviews apparently but I think it's one of the best films I've ever seen, more or less flawless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_(film)

 

[Doctor Damage]

I watched Villeneuve’s new Dune last night.

It is NOT better than Lynch’s wacko version from the 80s. Both follow the book closely and mostly hit the same narrative beats. The production design is ugly – huge spaces of colorless, brutalist concrete – and despite 35 years of effects technology, things only look slightly more believable. Some of the allegedly impressive sequences are just videogame quality-CGI wherein huge fleets of ships and thousands of troops look... just as bogus as in the Star Wars prequel trilogy twenty years ago. (Unlike Lynch's, this version doesn't try to avoid the Star Wars story/setting similarities, it embraces them.)

It has none of the oddball designs of Lynch – no vulva-faced Navigators, no Sting in a brass jockstrap, no retro tech, and Baron Harkonan is still gross, but a lot less so. The whole “put your hand in the box” sequence is much less effective, you don’t feel the visceral fear, despite a nice little performance by Charlotte Rampling as the Bene Gesseret Witch.

The cast are all very familiar actors, a mistake that Lynch didn’t make in 1984 (apart from Sting!), so you could see the character Paul Atreides, not Kyle McLachlan (it was his first film). I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t get the alleged appeal of Timothee Chalomet: I’ve seen him in like eight roles now, and I’m not impressed… and for me, he never disappeared into the role. I mean, petulant superiority balanced against emotional sensitivity are his only modes in every role.

Jason Mamoa does far better as Duncan Idaho, a badass character who didn’t get enough attention in the old film… but he’s still that guy who plays Aquaman, Conan, and Khal Drago. Oscar Isaac is also now overly familiar after three Star Wars flicks, an X-Men film, and many other high-profile roles. Josh Brolin is good as always... but he sounds exactly like Thanos. And hey, it’s Javier Bardem, didn't he just play Desi Arnaz? And then there’s Zendaya, Spider-Man’s girlfriend. (Rebecca Furguson isn’t that familiar and she’s good as Lady Jessica… but she does NOT have the regal bearing and odd, alien aspect that Francesca Annis brought to the role in 1984.)

The desert-dwelling Fremen are now played entirely by non-white actors. We get it: they’re the underclass. Not exactly subtle. Nothing in this film is. And worst of all, it’s only part one, so there’s no resolution. It doesn't even have an emotional Empire Strikes Back last-shot moment, it just lurches to a halt.

Honestly, I think it's maybe a half-star better than the 1984 version in terms of telling its complicated story, but it's a much less personal and unique vision.

Oh dear, this is exactly as I feared when I saw the first trailer. Ugh. Sounds like that TV series, uneven though it was (and with a miscast Paul), might be better or at least more innovative visually and whatnot than this latest outing. I have long believed that the 1984 film has always been underestimated, although it should have been 4 hours to really cover the material better. This latest version "just lurches to a halt", dear gawd, that's a mistake. There's enough ups and downs in the book to end episode one with a cliffhanger or some sort of now we'll get our revenge moment. Thanks for the review, Doc.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Broken English (2007) with Parker Posey. She plays a NYC boutique hotel customer service specialist who is pretty good at her job, but really bad at relationships. At first, it's just "bad luck with guys", but as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that she has some real issues - mood swings, panic attacks, a crippling lack of confidence and seriously bad judgment. After yet another date gone wrong, he sparks with a nice French guy at a party, and eventually flies off to France with her best friend to find him. Of course, it goes badly.

A pretty good film, well written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes (daughter of John and Gena Rowlands, who has a small role). Though less of a comedy, at times it's a bit like an American Fleabag. With a Cassavetes at the helm, the emotional beats mostly feel right... though Posey is so attractive and charming that it requires some real suspension of disbelief to accept her as a woman who's a dating disaster.

 

[Fading Fast]

Private Detective 62 from 1933 with William Powell, Margaret Lindsay and no soundtrack


William Powell and Margaret Lindsay in a pre-code international espionage movie sounds like a pretty good idea, and then it all went wrong.

Private Detective 62 opens with an engaging setup as "diplomat" Powell is expelled from France for spying (which he seemed to be doing) and sent back to the United States.

But the United States, apparently to maintain good relations with France, implies Powell went rogue and declares him an unwanted alien (or something like that). Powell, a man now without a country, makes his way back to the US and sneaks in.

That's a good setup for a story as we assume Powell is either still deep undercover or he'll fight to clear his name, but instead, he seems to accept his fate and just looks for work. Without papers or an employment history (that he can show), he ends up pushing his way into a failing detective agency.

From here until the last one minute of the movie, you can forget all the international spy stuff that happened at the beginning as Private Detective 62 morphs into a not-well-done shady detective agency/mob movie.

The agency's bread and butter is finding (or making up) evidence against cheating spouses. Powell doesn't like the work, but he keeps honest by only finding genuine dirt.

He's then assigned to find dirt on Margaret Lindsay; she's single, but the client wants dirt, "any dirt," on her. Not coincidentally, she's been winning a lot of money at a gambling parlor, as if that ever really happened in those rigged games.

Powell goes undercover to investigate Lindsay and they end up falling for each other, but their romance is undermined when a friend of Lindsay exposes Powell as a PI following her. Lindsay has other troubles as well because, as noted, she's won big at the gambling parlor, but can't collect.

The story from here becomes crazy as the mob guy running the gambling parlor plots with Powell's boss (unbeknownst to Powell) to trick Lindsay into thinking she's killed the mobster so that he won't have to pay her. Hey, I didn't write the script.

(Spoiler alert) Powell, of course, comes to the rescue by exposing the plot and saving Lindsay, who now sees Powell for the good guy he is. That puts their romance back on course at the same time that Powell, out of nowhere, is reinstated in the diplomatic service. I guess somebody wanted it to all work out in the end.

Maybe the scriptwriter had a stroke or something since this movie started out as an international espionage story, but completely dropped that line and quickly became a poorly written detective-mobster story. The studios, back then, were churning out several movies a week, so once in a while, I guess, one would go off the rails like Private Detective 62.

 

[Touchofevil]

The French Connection
The thing that stands out the most to me in this movie is all of the garbage on the streets. Often times with older movies I find myself noticing the world or backgrounds in the films. It is a neat little peak into the world of yesteryear. Sadly, it is all of the trash that stands out in this flick.

 

[Harp]

^Years ago, long past. Hackman had credibility. IN SPADES.

For some inexplicable last nite rewatched Fury. Like Hackman, Pitt has the King of Spades locked down.

 

[Doctor Damage]

The French Connection
The thing that stands out the most to me in this movie is all of the garbage on the streets. Often times with older movies I find myself noticing the world or backgrounds in the films. It is a neat little peak into the world of yesteryear. Sadly, it is all of the trash that stands out in this flick.

hahaha absolutely, the city was a mess back then. It was into the mid-80s too, at least when I was there on a vacation, but by the 90s it was clean... and now of course it's shiny clean. Movies can be fun time machines.

 

[Bushman]

Finally saw The Batman yesterday! Holy cannoli, Batman, that was a masterpiece! Totally worth the 3hr run time. Don't know how people are saying they were bored, this was Batman crime thriller at its best! And with a few courses of solid action to keep things interesting. My god, that car chase had me on the edge of my seat!!!! And the way the Riddler attacked the DA was a love letter to the Annie Brackett kill in Halloween! Oh and I love how The Riddler's theme was a haunting take on Ave Maria.

As you can tell, I'm raving about this movie!

 

[MisterCairo]

For the first time in over 30 years, on blu-ray Criterion Collection just arrived, Time Bandits by Terry Gilliam.

My dad and I saw rhis first run in 1981.

Classic...