What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

....Oh and I love how The Riddler's theme was a haunting take on Ave Maria.

Seems a nod to Ave Maria as performed by Dimash Kudaibergen.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lusty Men from 1952 with Robert Mitchum, Susan Hayward and Arthur Kennedy


On paper, the story here is one of an older, worn-out and retired rodeo veteran who helps a young married kid break into rodeo to make money fast so the kid and his wife can buy a farm to have something of their own.

The wife is against it as she doesn't want her husband getting hurt, but her husband partners with the veteran in a mentor-mentee way and off the three go to the rodeo circuit. The kid quickly becomes a star and the money starts rolling in.

His wife tries to save it as she wants her husband out of rodeo as soon as possible, while the veteran warns the kid not to let success go to his head. But the kid's now a "big man" who starts buying flashy clothes and eyeing the rodeo groupies, which sparks a bond between his pretty wife and the veteran.

You know what happens next: The kid gets cockier and cockier and the hurt wife turns to the shoulder-to-cry-on old veteran. The young kid, then, gets angry and taunts the old guy about no longer being a man because he doesn't "rodeo." So Rocky like, the old guy returns to the arena to prove something to someone.

It's an old tale, but a good one, which is why it keeps getting told. Unfortunately, Lusty Men never fully engages with its story. First, "young kid," Arthur Kennedy looks (and in real life is) older than the retired veteran, Mitchum, who does not look tired and beat up at all. This deeply undermines the personal dynamic and morality tale at the center of the story.

Second, it all takes too long for anything to happen. Most movies speed things up to get to the action; Lusty Men slows down on the obvious build up and then rushes through the climax.

Third, with a title Lusty Men and the entire subtext being about men, sex and a love triangle, there needs to be some actual lusting, loving and triangling. For most of the movie, though, Kennedy and his wife, Susan Hayward, are content, while Mitchum is just the good-guy mentor, yawn.

(Minor spoiler alert) When some crisis and conflict finally arrives - when Kennedy's swollen head has him flirting with rodeo cuties - Haworth and Mitchum do nothing more than exchange one public kiss. After that, a few macho punches are thrown and everyone goes back to his or her proper place, yawn again. Even the big return of Mitchum to the rodeo feels snapped on and anticlimactic.

It's not a terrible movie at all; it's just too slow, too safe and takes too long for too little payoff. A much better quasi-version of Lusty Men would be made nine years later, as Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift, in The Misfits, show how aging cowboys, with some lust left in their hearts, can break themselves trying to reach for past glory and love.

 

[Harp]

^ A Susan Hayward movie dimly remembered except Arthur Kennedy took
a punch from a cowboy, resentment writ large across his phiz, and Bob Mitchum
stepped in. Suzie-Q there for emphasis isosceles triangle.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Watching a Terminator (1984) reaction video on Youtube. I always liked the movie. But now, the question came to my mind!

Does the plot make any sense??
I mean, why Sarah and Kyle didn't just leave L.A? How could T800 find them, if they would be anywhere else, far away?

 

[Zombie_61]

Watching a Terminator (1984) reaction video on Youtube. I always liked the movie. But now, the question came to my mind!

Does the plot make any sense??
I mean, why Sarah and Kyle didn't just leave L.A? How could T800 find them, if they would be anywhere else, far away?

Kyle Reese seemed to have only the most basic information about the Terminator and it's mission in the movie, so for all he knew leaving the Los Angeles area could have been the exact wrong thing to do. Also, if she stayed in an area that was well populated with other humans like Los Angeles, hiding in the crowd could have made it that much more difficult for the T-800 to locate her.

 

[Bushman]

Kyle Reese seemed to have only the most basic information about the Terminator and it's mission in the movie, so for all he knew leaving the Los Angeles area could have been the exact wrong thing to do. Also, if she stayed in an area that was well populated with other humans like Los Angeles, hiding in the crowd could have made it that much more difficult for the T-800 to locate her.

Not to mention that Reese was a basic soldier in the Future War picked for the mission because it was necessary for John Connor to exist. It's a self-fulfilling time loop. Kyle Reese has to be the one sent back with no information so that he can naturally fall in love with Sarah and John can be born to send Reese back.

Also, Kyle Reese was likely not intimately familiar with 1980s society. He was a soldier who grew up in post-apocalyptic ruins. It'd be like sending a WWII soldier into 1984 with very little context of what he'll experience.

 

[Harp]

... It'd be like sending a WWII soldier into 1984 with very little context of what he'll experience.

A good soldier adjusts and adapts, makes the terrain work to his advantage.

...and if he was in the 101st Airborne it's red meat; hard liquor; and soft beautiful women.

 

[Fading Fast]

Easy Living from 1949 with Victor Mature, Lizabeth Scott, Lucille Ball and Lloyd Nolan


Easy Living is a B movie that punches above its weight class. Also-ran studio RKO, with a small budget and tier-two stars, put out a powerful commentary on the brutally short life of football players entwined with the hazards of marrying the wrong woman.

Not unlike Warner Bros. in the 1930s, RKO fires out of the gate with Easy Living and just keeps running. Victor Mature plays the star professional quarterback who seems to have it all: talent, a good contract, public adulation and a beautiful "society" wife.

Less than ten minutes in, though, we see how little of what appears on the surface is true. Mature's wife, played by the blonde and striking Lizabeth Scott, wants Mature and her to be a "power couple -" a star quarterback and a star interior decorator (the Tom Brady and Gisele of 1949). But her business is only kept alive by his money as, it's implied, she lacks the talent to match her ambition.

When Mature, who has been experiencing blackouts, learns from an incognito visit to a doctor that he has a career-ending heart condition, he tries to tell his wife. But Scott doesn't want to hear anything but that his career is going well and the money will continue pouring in.

In 1949, however, professional football money was a good payday for stars like Mature, but not get-rich-for-life money like today. Mature understands all this and wants to take a job as a college coach, but wife Scott wants no part of, what to her is, some "backwater" college existence.

Worse, Scott is playing up to a wealthy older big-city "power broker" who she thinks will make her interior decorating business the "go-to" design firm for the society types. Meanwhile, Mature finds, in the team's secretary/bookkeeper, played by Lucille Ball (in one of her best pre-Lucy roles), a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

Here is where you need your Motion Picture Production Code translation key. What's really going on, and it's probable most of 1949's audience understood this, is Scott is having an affair with the older man in hopes that she can break free of Mature now that his career is on the wane. Mature, angry and hurt owing to his wife's callousness and greed, is sleeping with Ms. Ball who truly loves Mature and wants to take him from his wife.

(Spoiler alert) After Scott realizes she's being played by her older lover - he's getting sex, she's going to get discarded when he's done - she tries to come back to Mature (any port in a storm), but he's having no part of it. He's finally seen who she is and gives her the perfect kissoff (literally and figuratively) in the penultimate scene.

(One more Spoiler alert) But that pesky Motion Picture Production Code, which hates to see marriages end in divorce, couldn't let it finish there. So, in the final unconvincing scene, Mature forgives Scott as she pledges to be a good supportive college coach's wife. Audiences knew to ignore these code-required snapped-on endings.

As long as you use your Motion Picture Production Code translation key, Easy Living is an outstanding, short (seventy-seven minutes long) movie that captures the nuances, fears and ambitions of professional football players and their wives. The clubhouse scenes and private family moments feel real and personal.

Kudos to RKO for putting out a B movie that rises above its budget and the constraints of the Production Code. Yes, it's too obvious, but it didn't have the time or money for much subtlety. In Easy Living, RKO just mashed the accelerator pedal down and quickly told a good story.

 

[Harp]

Haven't seen this^ but several months back I did catch Being The Ricardos
which added considerable perspective to both Lucy and Rick's lives and entertainment
industry rigamarole. Luce had both acting chops and comedic schtick, it's tragic
she could not balance both within her career, and have a blissful marriage.

 

[basbol13]

Rawhide starring Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward

 

[Fading Fast]

The Case of the Howling Dog from 1934 with Warren William, Mary Astor, Grant Mitchell, Allen Jenkins and Helen Trenholme



In the 1930s, Warner Bros. put out a series of B-movies based on the Perry Mason character (comments on two other movies in the series here #28,433 and here #29,118 ). These hour-plus-long movies are the predecessors to the wash-rinse-repeat TV dramas of the 1960s-1990s.

Warren William is the famous lawyer cum private investigator who, in a very 1930s way, is so loyal to his client that he'll break the law to win a case. Planting false evidence, hiding incriminating evidence and suborning testimony are all in William's toolkit.

Even worse by today's standards, his clients are often wealthy society types, not a disadvantaged "victim" as defined by today's "enlightened" politics. Making Mason even more of an anathema to today's hero template, he gets paid by his clients and likes it.

For anyone raised on the hero model of the last fifty or so years - a hero who fights injustice, saves the downtrodden and would never taint his or her motives by taking money - William's Mason is a jarring champion. But in the 1930s, heroes were more idiosyncratic, where having a code of honor - Mason fights ruthlessly for his clients - was enough to make someone a hero.

In The Case of the Howling Dog, we see all the basic elements of a 1930s Mason movie. One rich person killed another rich person because of a bunch of marital bed hopping. Mason is then hired by a dicey client, while the always-two-steps-behind-Mason police think this time they'll "get" Mason when he cheats. Finally, Mason has a ton of fun solving a convoluted story while sending everyone else in the wrong direction.

Mason's assistant, confidant and informal partner, Della Street, is also here, played ably this time by Helen Trenholme, but with less verve than Mason's usual 1930s movie Della, Claire Dodd.

Thrown into the mix are the regular Warner Bros. cast members including always put-upon Grant Mitchell as the District Attorney Mason loves to wind up and Allen Jenkins as the police sergeant who can't keep up with Mason. Finally, there are a few pretty women as always - Mary Astor as Mason's lying and angsty client* and Dorothy Tree as the cute-but-suspicious housemaid at the center of the mystery.

As with those early TV dramas, you don't watch these small-budget Mason movies like The Case of the Howling Dog for their brilliant plots. You watch them for the comfort of the story, the cast you've come to enjoy and, mostly, for Warren William's picaresque portrayal of Mason as a roguish hero who does things his way, but who also makes things work out kinda-sorta fair in the end.


*Astor was practicing being a lying and angsty client for her role in The Maltese Falcon seven years later.

 

[ChazfromCali]

Terminator Genisys (2015).
When it was released - without seeing it - I figured it was a ridiculous and unneeded cash-in. Hmmm, well, yes and no. Mostly no. It's actually pretty darn good. This is the one where Arnie was de-aged with the hi-tech studio wizardry. As far as I'm concerned that didn't interfere with the story at all. It's interesting in how it deals with the time-line or canon or whatever it's called. Worth seeing. I appreciated the happy ending.
4.63583 out of 5 stars.

 

[Harp]

View attachment 417037
The Case of the Howling Dog from 1934 with Warren William, Mary Astor, Grant Mitchell, Allen Jenkins and Helen Trenholme



In the 1930s, Warner Bros. put out a series of B-movies based on the Perry Mason character (comments on two other movies in the series here #28,433 and here #29,118 ). These hour-plus-long movies are the predecessors to the wash-rinse-repeat TV dramas of the 1960s-1990s.

Warren William is the famous lawyer cum private investigator who, in a very 1930s way, is so loyal to his client that he'll break the law to win a case. Planting false evidence, hiding incriminating evidence and suborning testimony are all in William's toolkit.
...anyone raised on the hero model of the last fifty or so years - a hero who fights injustice, saves the downtrodden and would never taint his or her motives by taking money - William's Mason is a jarring champion. But in the 1930s, heroes were more idiosyncratic, where having a code of honor - Mason fights ruthlessly for his clients -

Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make truth appear
where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true.

Shakespeare--Measure for Measure V; I

Those are law books shelved in Mason's office, where scripture is writ for lawyers,
come hell or high water. I've not yet seen a Perry Mason flick but I was a boyhood fan
of the television series and I often marveled at the way Mason-Raymond Burr-followed
the law to the letter but kept within its stricture, no more but certainly no less.

Perry Mason was a hero, still is. I asked a law prof who taught on the side because
he just loved Law what he does when the client withdraws truth, or smudges complete
revelation-and his answer was he leaves it to God. After class I chased him to a local
McDONALDS because I too love the Law and over late nite repast we talked Perry Mason
episodic struggles. At least on television Mason hit it right down fair.

 

[Harp]

I chanced upon YouTube fare the other day and came across a strange but true tale
of cruel accidental fate as played out in the nineteenth-twentieth century in New England,
something out of Melville or Nathaniel Hawthorne, or perhaps more suited Washington Irving.

The Sin of Our Mothers occurs in a tiny rural Maine hamlet called Fayette, where a fourteen
year old girl named Emeline is sent to Massachusetts to work textile for her impoverished family.
Emeline is raped there and sent back home, giving birth to a boy placed for adoption.
She later inherits her family farm, meeks out a hardscrabble existence. Unwed, Emeline meets
a younger man, the couple fall in love, and marry.

A simple but complex tragedy of a woman who wed her actual son. And was shunned for life.

 

[Doctor Strange]

C'mon, C'mon (2021) written and directed by Mike Mills.

Mills is one of those filmmakers (like Noah Bumbach) who makes dramatic films in a continuing attempt to come to terms with aspects of his parents and childhood. I really liked his previous film 20th Century Women, so I gave this one a try.

Shot in gorgeous b/w, it tells of an adult brother and sister (Joaquin Phoenix, Gabby Hoffman) who have been estranged since the difficult passing of their mother and over how the brother dealt with the sister's emotionally unstable husband, from whom she's now separated. That husband, who moved from LA to SF, is now in crisis, and Hoffman goes to help, leaving their nine-year-old son with Phoenix, who the kid barely knows. A radio journalist who's interviewing kids around the country about "the future", he's not really equipped to be a surrogate parent, but he tries. The kid is brilliant but difficult, a mass of confused emotions regarding his parents and his uncle, and Phoenix learns just how difficult parenting is...

Good of its type. Not great, but a solid family drama.

 

[Harp]

Needed a film to take my mind off Emeline and found Manchester By the Sea,
which unfolds coastal New England, current times; Irish Catholic clan issues, premature
cardiac death older brother, younger sibling forced to accept guardianship minor nephew,
take on some responsibility and grow in the process. A good catch.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rio Bravo from 1959 with John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, Angie Dickinson and Ricky Nelson


There is a lot that is very good in the Western Rio Bravo if you can accept its silly cardboard story of good versus evil. It is almost easier to all but ignore the plot as the value here is in the depth and complexity of the characters.

Sheriff John Wayne arrests, on a charge of murder, the brother, Claude Akins, of a powerful local rancher, John Russell. Wayne and a now-drunkard former deputy, Dean Martin, are the only witnesses to the murder, so Russell wants them dead. Worse for Wayne and Martin, they have to hold Akin in the town's small jail for a week until the county Marshal arrives.

With only an "old cripple," Walter Brennen, trying-to-stay-sober Martin and a young hot-shot kid, Ricky Nelson, as his deputies, Wayne has to hold off the several dozen men on Russell's payroll who want to break Akins out of jail.

The story doesn't even hold up to surface scrutiny as Russell's crew could easily overpower Wayne's men and take Akin, but instead, we somehow are supposed to believe that Wayne's team's sporadic watches, random security walks and swiss-cheese roadblock is holding Russell's men back.

Once you let go of the plot and just believe that Wayne and his team are the good guys against an overwhelmingly stronger group of bad guys, you can enjoy the pith of the story: the character development and interaction of Wayne's team.

The team includes, as an honorary member, card-shark Angie Dickinson. You wonder if in the original short story the movie is based on she wasn't a prostitute, as the card-shark angle seems forced, but prostitute would fit perfectly.

Dean Martin is the true star of this movie as the former gunslinger deputy now just trying to stay on the wagon to help his buddy Wayne out of a tough spot and to reclaim his life wrecked by a "bad" woman. His recovering-alcoholic performance is years ahead of its time (and is method acting without the brouhaha branding) as you see and feel him struggling with detox and despair.

Walter Brennan creates another of his classic sidekick characters as the old deputy with a gimp who is smarter than he both looks and sounds. His loyalty and infectious, yet weary, devil-may-care attitude, time and again, balances Wayne's too-heavy seriousness.

A lot is also asked of Angie Dickinson as she has to bring freshness to the "whore with a heart of gold" trope, while also falling in love with a man, Wayne, almost twenty-five years her senior. She's not perfect, but you have to give her credit for nearly pulling off the impossible, while keeping her 1950s hairdo in place.

Even Ricky Nelson takes a cliched role - the young cocky gunslinging - and pulls it back enough to make it interesting, despite a sometimes wooden performance. He also adds a youthful energy to the multiple gunfight scenes that, like the plot, lack verisimilitude, but provide an entertaining backdrop to Rio Bravo's by-the-numbers parable.

Finally, Wayne is Wayne playing to his personal brand: the laconic Western hero character. It's fine for what it is, but everyone else is more interesting.

Rio Bravo is a morality tale that's too simple to be taken seriously. But director Howard Hawks clearly knew that, possibly even wanted that as the canvas for the tale he wanted to tell: the struggles of his engaging characters with complex backstories and personal demons to fight. Hawks knew you'd get so into their problems, you'd forgive Rio Bravo its many weaknesses. He was right.

 

[Harp]

Angie added spice to all the gunpowder. ^ Love that gal.

The walled in jail fortress holding Claude Akien and enemy phalanx outside calaboose
disguised Ace-upsleeve inherent threat of murder should jail be imminent due overrun,
etc etc. And Big Jack tossed Angie's nylon stocking out the winder, deftly caught by Walt
who tied a real McCoy Windsor knot on that regimental.

----

I was fortunate to meet the late Claude Akin at a college drama department coffee.
A great guy, Northwestern grad who made it out to the west coast with From Here To Eternity
and never looked back.

 

[MisterCairo]

We finally watched Lawrence of Arabia, 50th Anniversary blu-ray, in its 60th anniversary year!

Thought the disk was wonky, as there was no picture for 5 minutes. Turns out, it is a literal copy of the theatrical release, with the orchestral build up AND full intermission.

At the start, I advised my wife, who had never seen the film, that it was based on T.E. Lawrence's book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and that like the book, two events have been disputed as to their actually happening.

She turned and looked at me, and asked "you mean this is about a real person"?

She thought L of A was fiction!

Bless her...

 

[Touchofevil]

View attachment 417582
Rio Bravo from 1959 with John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, Angie Dickinson and Ricky Nelson


There is a lot that is very good in the Western Rio Bravo if you can accept its silly cardboard story of good versus evil. It is almost easier to all but ignore the plot as the value here is in the depth and complexity of the characters.

Sheriff John Wayne arrests, on a charge of murder, the brother, Claude Akins, of a powerful local rancher, John Russell. Wayne and a now-drunkard former deputy, Dean Martin, are the only witnesses to the murder, so Russell wants them dead. Worse for Wayne and Martin, they have to hold Akin in the town's small jail for a week until the county Marshal arrives.

With only an "old cripple," Walter Brennen, trying-to-stay-sober Martin and a young hot-shot kid, Ricky Nelson, as his deputies, Wayne has to hold off the several dozen men on Russell's payroll who want to break Akins out of jail.

The story doesn't even hold up to surface scrutiny as Russell's crew could easily overpower Wayne's men and take Akin, but instead, we somehow are supposed to believe that Wayne's team's sporadic watches, random security walks and swiss-cheese roadblock is holding Russell's men back.

Once you let go of the plot and just believe that Wayne and his team are the good guys against an overwhelmingly stronger group of bad guys, you can enjoy the pith of the story: the character development and interaction of Wayne's team.

The team includes, as an honorary member, card-shark Angie Dickinson. You wonder if in the original short story the movie is based on she wasn't a prostitute, as the card-shark angle seems forced, but prostitute would fit perfectly.

Dean Martin is the true star of this movie as the former gunslinger deputy now just trying to stay on the wagon to help his buddy Wayne out of a tough spot and to reclaim his life wrecked by a "bad" woman. His recovering-alcoholic performance is years ahead of its time (and is method acting without the brouhaha branding) as you see and feel him struggling with detox and despair.

Walter Brennan creates another of his classic sidekick characters as the old deputy with a gimp who is smarter than he both looks and sounds. His loyalty and infectious, yet weary, devil-may-care attitude, time and again, balances Wayne's too-heavy seriousness.

A lot is also asked of Angie Dickinson as she has to bring freshness to the "whore with a heart of gold" trope, while also falling in love with a man, Wayne, almost twenty-five years her senior. She's not perfect, but you have to give her credit for nearly pulling off the impossible, while keeping her 1950s hairdo in place.

Even Ricky Nelson takes a cliched role - the young cocky gunslinging - and pulls it back enough to make it interesting, despite a sometimes wooden performance. He also adds a youthful energy to the multiple gunfight scenes that, like the plot, lack verisimilitude, but provide an entertaining backdrop to Rio Bravo's by-the-numbers parable.

Finally, Wayne is Wayne playing to his personal brand: the laconic Western hero character. It's fine for what it is, but everyone else is more interesting.

Rio Bravo is a morality tale that's too simple to be taken seriously. But director Howard Hawks clearly knew that, possibly even wanted that as the canvas for the tale he wanted to tell: the struggles of his engaging characters with complex backstories and personal demons to fight. Hawks knew you'd get so into their problems, you'd forgive Rio Bravo its many weaknesses. He was right.

View attachment 417584
View attachment 417585

This was a film that as a kid I would confuse with El Dorado. The major characters seemed to mirror those of Rio Bravo. Robert Mitchum was the drunken sheriff, james Caan was the gunslinger, Arthur Hunnicut/Bull as the classic sidekick who while older than the rest was stiil effective and delivered the funny, Charlene Holt took on the part of you have to have at least one woman in the movie, and Ed Asner as the Bad Guy who has enough bad guys employed to hold the town hostage. I have always enjoyed both movies but thought it odd that Wayne made two movies that so closely resembled each other.