What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Swimmer from 1968 with Burt Lancaster, Janice Rule and a large cast of many tier-two 1960s stars


This experimental movie, based on a John Cheever's short story, is a spiritual cognate to that same era's The Graduate. But instead of a disillusioned young man looking forward with apprehension, The Swimmer examines a disillusioned middle-aged man looking back with regret.

Neither men, though, found happiness in their very upper-middle-class suburban worlds of well-paid jobs, big houses, inground swimming pools (an oddly important thing in both movies) and endless boozing and bed hopping. Both find the "good life" spiritually wanting.

Burt Lancaster, wearing only a bathing suit throughout, plays a middle-aged man who uses an odd journey home of walking, jogging and swimming across his neighbors' yards and pools to get to his house as an allegory for, and exploration of, his life.

At the start of his journey, muscular and handsome Lancaster seems like the all-American success story. He moves comfortably amongst his also successful neighbors with a big smile and plenty of confidence, but as the journey continues, we see all is not right.

Bits and pieces of Lancaster's life are, gradually, revealed as he meets more people. The story's arc is constructed so that the initial picture of success and happiness is slowly undermined as we learn by inference and additional comments more about his past.

Lancaster "had it all:" The pretty Vassar wife, the two cute daughters, the large house in the plush suburb, the backyard tennis court and the big job in New York City. But we also see that he was all surface as those are the things that defined him, even seemingly, to himself.

In the movie's most revealing and powerful scene, he meets his former mistress, played with pitch-perfect poignant anger by Janice Rule. She understands Lancaster's shallowness and reveals how he needed all those "props" to make him feel important.

We don't know why, but he's clearly lost his job and money and is having some sort of mental breakdown that goes beyond a midlife crisis. In another powerful vignette, he meets a few of the town's shop owners whom he's now stiffed.

His wife wasn't nice to these merchants, but she put in big orders for expensive items so they put up with her. Lancaster, though, seems to have been a nice guy to them, yet the merchants saw that it was all surface charm with him.

But was it? What slowly comes out is that maybe Lancaster didn't know that playing the role of successful businessman and happy family man isn't real. He defined himself by glib things, because he didn't understand that character, not possessions and titles, define you.

There's more to unpack as additional details of his life emerge in later scenes. There is a creepy sequence where he kinda hits on a young woman who used to babysit for his kids, a weird very-1960s nudist moment and a segment where Lancaster helps a sad young boy.

The movie's structure of Lancaster walking, jogging and swimming in and out of neighbors' backyards, all upper middle-class 1960s suburban and wealthy, is an odd technique. It takes a while to settle in and it won't be for everyone, but it is different and, at times, effective.

This is Lancaster's movie as he is in almost every scene and the single focus of attention. Kudos to the big aging star for putting himself fully "out there." Even though the result is uneven, his performance is impressive, unguarded and moving.

Directors Frank Perry and Sidney Pollack also deserve mention for this unusual movie. In the hands of lesser auteurs, the film could have become too artsy; whereas, Perry and Pollack smartly kept it commercially appealing, or at least tried to.

There is, though, a smugness to the movie itself. It, like The Graduate, paints almost all wealthy suburban people as callous, boozing and unfaithful materialists with no appreciation for art, culture or the suffering of others, as if that is a fair universal portrayal.

The Swimmer, in its different, interesting but not fully successful way, says all is not right with the American dream in the suburbs. That is one perspective, but not the only one. Still, along with The Graduate, it is a curious piece of 1960s commentary and moviemaking.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I saw an interview Cheever gave discussing The Swimmer but retain slight recall of it now, though do remember
a snippet of film where Lancaster waited entrance at a public pool and had a caustic exchange writ middle age
angst large. Pollack ran a tele series called The Essentials I wished to follow for his critique. A lost penny tossed
wishing fountain and for some reason The Swimmer went unread too.
Lancaster appeared with Dick Cavett which I found YT. Always interesting, Lancaster possessed a highly intelligent
persona that bespoke his New York upbringing, a brief college, circus acrobat tenure, and World War II experience.
He lived life before Hollywood so his acting had a solid bedrock foundation. I'll definitely see Swimmer sure.

 

[Edward]

Wr watched Asteroid City on PPV the other day.

I for the most part loathe Wes Anderson films. A couple I actually love (See Grand Budapest Hotel, .French Despatch)

This falls into my Life Aquatic zone of okay, glad I saw it, will never watch it again.

Great visuals, ScarJo, and a funny alien plot within a plot. Otherwise inexplicably broken play within a film plot device.

Your mileage may vary.

I liked the Brechtian approach; I read it as a tongue-in-cheek way of cocking a snook at those critics who don't care for Anderson's 'fairytale' approach, and thus set out to do it down from the off. There's no logical reason for it in-film, though I didn't have a problem with that. I rather liked the device of the 'real world''s monochromism as compared to the bright colours of the 'teleplay'. It's my favourite of what I've seen of his, though that is in part I'm sure because the aesthetic just plays right into what tickles my fancy in a way the others don't quite reach. Hotel is equally beautiful - difference is I'd like to visit that; City, I want all the wardrobe, for everyday wear...

Just discovered that I visited two days and some hours early to chance across this... https://www.nme.com/news/music/jarv...celebrate-wes-andersons-asteroid-city-3459399 !!

I wish I could find the soundtrack available. I have the film on disco n pre-order, but I really want the soundtrack. Doesn't seem to have been released anywhere (yet) - at least ot here in the UK, which is a shame. Not sure if rights complication or what....

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Under the direction of Gordon Douglas, who gave us Gildersleeve on Broadway, Zombies on Broadway, as well as Viva Knievel!, it was Between Midnight and Dawn, 1950's proto-buddy movie of two radio patrol police officers who fall for the same police chief's assistant. Billing order is Mark Stevens, Edmond O'Brien, and Gale Storm, as Rocky Barnes, Dan Purvis, and Katharine "Kate" Mallory.
It seems Barnes and Purvis teamed up as Marines in WW2, and somehow got to share a prowl car in a big city, where they josh and razz each other while crime-busting and cooling down rambunctious kids and squabbling married couples. A lot of this is done on the night shift, hence the title.
Romance effervesces its way to the top and our buddies vie for the affections of Kate. But, wait- terribly maladjusted hood Ritchie Garris sets off inter-gang violence with a rival syndicate by murdering fellow mobsters to thwart them from muscling in on Garris' comfy setup. Our heroes leave jollity behind for tough law enforcement.
Without giving away the plot, tragedy strikes our fun trio, and the movie heads to the climax where... well, I won't spoil it for you. Bullets fly, the police light up a building with searchlights, and it seems like a whole battalion of officers are called in.
Speaking of which, nearly all the police wear those cool-looking "bomber" type jackets, and even-cooler Sam Browne belts underneath.

 

[Fading Fast]

Under the direction of Gordon Douglas, who gave us Gildersleeve on Broadway, Zombies on Broadway, as well as Viva Knievel!, it was Between Midnight and Dawn, 1950's proto-buddy movie of two radio patrol police officers who fall for the same police chief's assistant. Billing order is Mark Stevens, Edmond O'Brien, and Gale Storm, as Rocky Barnes, Dan Purvis, and Katharine "Kate" Mallory.
It seems Barnes and Purvis teamed up as Marines in WW2, and somehow got to share a prowl car in a big city, where they josh and razz each other while crime-busting and cooling down rambunctious kids and squabbling married couples. A lot of this is done on the night shift, hence the title.
Romance effervesces its way to the top and our buddies vie for the affections of Kate. But, wait- terribly maladjusted hood Ritchie Garris sets off inter-gang violence with a rival syndicate by murdering fellow mobsters to thwart them from muscling in on Garris' comfy setup. Our heroes leave jollity behind for tough law enforcement.
Without giving away the plot, tragedy strikes our fun trio, and the movie heads to the climax where... well, I won't spoil it for you. Bullets fly, the police light up a building with searchlights, and it seems like a whole battalion of officers are called in.
Speaking of which, nearly all the police wear those cool-looking "bomber" type jackets, and even-cooler Sam Browne belts underneath.

Great comments, you captured it. I liked this movie, but thought, had it been made ten or so years later, it would have been made as an hour-long TV cop show episode. While the acting was very good, the production quality felt like 1960s TV.

Gale Storm has to be a top-ten all-time-great name for a woman.

 

[Fading Fast]

Parole Girl from 1933 with Mae Clarke, Ralph Bellamy, Hale Hamilton and Marie Prevost


In Parole Girl, Mae Clarke's character goes from being a reluctant grifter, to a prison inmate, to a parolee bent on revenge, to, finally, a woman facing a come-to-Jesus moment in a sham marriage in this engaging and short precode.

With an overly complicated and not particularly believable plot and a story focused on one character, it is up to Ms. Clarke to carry the movie.

Clarke's acting talent and an impressive screen presence is more than up to the challenge, so much so you wonder why this off-beat pretty actress didn't have a bigger career like contemporaneous and off-beat pretty actress Betty Davis did.

At the opening, Clarke and her grifter partner, played by Hale Hamilton, are scamming department stores with a fake pickpocket scheme. Clarke, caught at one of the stores, pleads for mercy from a store manager.

That sympathetic manager checks if he can let her go with the store's overall manager, played by Ralph Bellamy, who says it is out of his hands because the store's insurance company requires them to prosecute shoplifters.

Despite this, Clarke, now in jail, has it fixed in her mind that Bellamy himself made the decision to prosecute.

When Clarke then learns, in the movie's first massively unbelievable coincidence, that Bellamy is married to, but separated from, a fellow inmate, played by Marie Prevost, Clarke plans her ridiculous revenge scheme.

After scamming her way to an early parole (giving the movie its title), Clarke, hiding her past connection to Bellamy from him (he never met her, in person), manipulates a very drunk Bellamy into a quickie marriage. She then reveals her true self to him the next day.

Bellamy can't divorce her because, owing to his earlier marriage to Prevost, he could be prosecuted for bigamy. He thus agrees to stay married, support her and play the loving husband until her parole is up in a year.

That insanely complicated and forced setup takes up about a third of the movie. But once in place, the movie then settles into a standard romcom formula where two young and attractive antagonists are forced to live together.

The rest of the movie is Clarke and Bellamy fighting, but also beginning to fall for each other as she has to play the nice wife for his boss to keep the scam going. He also isn't immune to the pretty young woman walking around his apartment, often, in a negligee.

Thrown into the mix are Clarke's former grifter pals trying to pull Clarke back to her old world. The climax, though, is the exact one you'd expect after all the usual romcom confusion and misunderstanding, including the obligatory last-minute turn.

It all works for one reason, Clarke. She convincingly runs the range of emotions from crying and pleading grifter, to angry inmate bent on revenge, to nasty wife, to, finally, confused girl wondering if she's seen everything in life wrong until this point.

It's a moving performance that helps shepherd the movie over its many forced plot twists. Bellamy is fine but bland as the closest thing the movie has to a male lead and Prevost and Hamilton are enjoyable as grifters to their core, but this is Clarke's movie.

Sporting a cropped hairstyle, Clarke is cute, sexy and convincing as the woman on a revenge mission. Yet, all along, she also manages to hint at an underlying decency that makes her later conversion believable. It's impressive and subtle acting.

Parole Girl is just a slapped-together early 1930s picture with a small budget and a ludicrous story, but Clarke brings so much heart and soul to her performance that she makes this precode take on the romcom formula an enjoyable ride.

The real question surrounding the movie is why Clarke's career fizzled shortly after Parole Girl's release.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Indeed a question demanding answer. A very young Bellamy. His cameo in Pretty Woman was most welcome.
''Old School'' acting is solid. Also, now recall he played FDR opposite Robert Mitchum's 'Pug' Henry in Winds of War.
Classic cinema made all the more memorable.

 

[MisterCairo]

So, I am thinking of seeing MEG 2: The Trench.

But I have not seen the first MEG film.

Will I miss out on the subtle nuance of the second film if I lack the backstory and character development of the first?

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Will I miss out on the subtle nuance of the second film if I lack the backstory and character development of the first?

Absolutely, positively, bet on it mate and your arse with bollocks on the plate well enough sure.
Who the hell shag is MEG anyway?

 

[MisterCairo]

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meg_2_the_trench

Absolutely, positively, bet on it mate and your arse with bollocks on the plate well enough sure.
Who the hell shag is MEG anyway?

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meg_2_the_trench

Give it a go. Make it a BarbMeger like Barbheimer.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Indeed a question demanding answer. A very young Bellamy. His cameo in Pretty Woman was most welcome.
''Old School'' acting is solid. Also, now recall he played FDR opposite Robert Mitchum's 'Pug' Henry in Winds of War.
Classic cinema made all the more memorable.

A film, Sunrise at Campabello flares across dim recollect---did Bellamy play FDR opposite Greer Garson?

 

[Zombie_61]

A film, Sunrise at Campabello flares across dim recollect---did Bellamy play FDR opposite Greer Garson?

Yes, in that movie Bellamy played FDR and Garson played Eleanor.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Greer Garson has always been a favourite of mine. A fair rose whose elegance cast sunshine.

 

[Edward]

Chanced across Spitfire over Berlin on Prime at the weekend. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13434866/ A seemingly low-budget, British film from 2020 I've never hard of anywhere else. It's the story of an RAF pilot who flies a crucial reconnaissance mission to Berlin and back in his unarmed Spitfire fitted up for recon work. Surprisingly engaging, much of the film takes place within the confines of the Spitfire's cockpit, backstory filled in a bit here and there in flashback. It reminds me somewhat in pacing of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. While not on a par with the latter, it is still worth seeing.

Last night, I gave 12 Mighty Orphans a go on Netflix. Netflix has been promoting this a lot the last week or two here. I'd assumed it was one of their original pictures, but the Googles informs me that it actually had a 2021 cinema release. It tells the true story of a 1930s Texas orphanage, at which a football (US football, so very little actual foot contact with said ball....) team was established, fought all the odds to become a real force, yadda yadda. I'd put it somewhere between Leatherheads and A league of their own. Drama, though - not a comedy like the former Clooney vehicle. It's not an especially demanding watch, and there's little novelty compared to the eleventy million other inspirational sports flicks out there, but well-executed and entertaining enough. That it's based on a true story (specifically, a non-fiction book written by one of the adults) and the characters are all real, named people rather than composites gives it an edge over its many fictional counterparts. It held my attention for a couple of hours, which counts for something as I certainly couldn't be bothered watching any actual, real sport that long. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8482584/

 

[Fading Fast]

These Glamour Girls from 1939 with Lana Turner, Lew Ayres, Jane Bryan and Marsha Hunt


Even during the era of the strict Motion Picture Production Code, a few movies with real grit and social commentary found a way to sneak by the censors. These Glamour Girls did it by hiding its darkness and class criticism under a snappy title and plenty of MGM gloss.

When an upper-class college man, played by Lew Ayres, drunkenly slumming it in NYC, invites a taxi dancer, played by Lana Turner, to the college's upcoming "house parties," she's ecstatic that she'll be socializing with the famous college "Glamour Girls" she sees in the glossies.

When an excited Turner shows up at the college the following week, though, a now-sober Ayres has forgotten all about her. Since he also invited a girl of his class, played with sweetness by Jane Bryan, he rudely tries to pass Turner off to another boy.

When Turner decides to stay on for the weekend anyway, it sets off the main conflict in the movie. Ayres finds he really likes Turner, but he's close to being engaged to Bryan. At the same time, some of the "Glamour Girls" try hard to make taxi dancer Turner feel small.

These Glamour Girls, though, also has several subplots involving class, money, reputation and financial corruption. Plus, one slightly older girl, played heartbreakingly by Marsha Hunt, is mentally breaking down over fear that her "marriage window" is closing fast.

The climax, no spoilers coming, pivots on the Ayers-Bryan-Turner love triangle as the aforementioned class, money and corruption factors twist the triangle's geometry hard. Yet the movie's most dramatic moment is the crushing denouement of Hunt's last grasp at marriage.

Before all that, though, Turner, who's been talked down to by some and treated nicely by others, finally rips into the "Glamour Boys and Girls" with a good old-fashioned dose of "you're a bunch of spoiled and snooty kids" American egalitarianism. It's fun and needed to be said.

These Glamour Girls works because it starts out as another "isn't college pretty" movie, but slowly peels back the skin to show all the tensions, prejudices and anxieties simmering below the surface.

Even for the rich kids, who like the rest of us, don't get to choose their parents, there are plenty of pressures. "Boohoo" is an easy and flip response, but humans, like fish, only know the water they swim in.

While the movie hints at a social revolution, the irony is that it also shows and notes there are regular kids from modest backgrounds working their way through college in the 1930s. Yes, the Ivies were pretty elite, but there were plenty of colleges with working-class kids attending.

After WWII, the college class system wasn't broken by Trotskyites throwing stones through windows, but by the G.I. Bill and, over time, additional college aid and loans that led to higher education becoming meaningly more democratic.

Made at MGM, with MGM's gloss, These Glamour Girls has, surprisingly, a Warner Bros. like social message. It also has excellent acting, writing and directing, with plenty of snappy period college clothes, cars and architecture to give all the angst a very pretty backdrop.

As to that excellent acting, Ayres, old for the role, is still somehow in his sweet spot as the polished college man. Bryan is outstanding as the nice girlfriend who gets dumped on. And Turner, still learning her craft, shows her future promise as the townie who gives as good as she gets.

Yet it is Hunt's moving performance that will break your heart. She portrays a young woman suffering some sort of mental breakdown, in an era when that was usually hushed up, with agonizing sincerity.

Somehow in 1939, with the Motion Picture Production Code in control, not-radical MGM studios managed to make a smart college movie that denounced the elitism of the Ivies, while also making you sympathetic to the pressures many of the well-off college kids felt.

These Glamour Girls rises above the other college movies of the 1930s with a realism that belies the happy "rah-rah college" story those other movies were telling. Today, it serves as a cool time capsule, with some sharp social commentary mixed in, of 1930s college life.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Metropolitan immediately.
Eons ago but can sketch its outline and not to be silly M itself seems to reel in that FS Fitzgerald undeniable
The Great Gatsby. After the First World War, allied officers were granted one year of study at either Cambridge or Oxford. Gatsby went Adam's off Ox. I kept Fitzgerald safely tuck inside Gloverall coat thru Michaelmas and Hilary. Saw Gatsby a thorn sandwiched between lovely roses with Fitz and a tall vodka topped heavily peppered crushed acorns by another rose (PhD lit cand) who could recite whole passages from Gatsby. Metropolitan I viewed hungrily for all
caste and class barriers and set dismantle. Another must-do soon with this Lana sweater girl college flick.
And do I see a left ankle bracelet on Lana?

 

[Fading Fast]

...And do I see a left ankle bracelet on Lana?

Good catch. In this movie and that day, it's a mark of her "lower class" status. MGM got its small details right in this one.

Since we are on the subject of ankle bracelets, Ms. Stanwyck's in "Double Indemnity" deserves a shout out:

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Good catch. In this movie and that day, it's a mark of her "lower class" status. MGM got its small details right in this one.

Fast please a little elaboration, do not leave me in the lurch over Lana's legs. Or her leg shackle.
Is this an American 'lower class' accessory? I failed to note any others worn, but paid this no mind.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Ben Lyon and Claudette Colbert team up to give us I Cover the Waterfront from 1933, directed by James Cruze (nee Bosen), who was active in directing from the 'teens through the thirties. Based on a book by a former reporter about life and doings on the waterfront, Lyon plays a top-notch reporter after a rum-runner and human smuggler (Ernest Torrence) whose daughter is Colbert. Lyon despicably courts Colbert to catch her father at his crimes, and, it being the movies in 1933, they fall in love.

Dedicated news-hound that he is, Lyon keeps after the smuggler until the Coast Guard busts him. Passions flare, desperate attempts to flee happen, Colbert realizes she was used by Lyon for a "big story", and we have to ask, Will they get back together? Invest 1 hour and 12 minutes for the answer. Just be aware that the print on Prime Video was muddy and murky.

A caveat or two: much a product of its time, the Chinese immigrants being smuggled are referenced repeatedly by ethnic slurs, and are treated no better than non-human cargo. No one, neither the smugglers nor the authorities, seem care about them as human beings at all.