What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

^ Fast I found a YT video done by a lady finance advisor dubbed ''The Financial Diet'' titled appropriately,
Millennial Women May Never Recover From The Romcom that you might find interesting. A take on millennial
women of today who watch current romcoms populated by female college grads with corporate magazine,
media, publication jobs that pay enough to afford downtown costly digs, pub nights every night with girl mates,
and fruitlessly futile search for husbands at least six feet six figure salaried and available. And how post covid millennial young ladies still must cope with dating life in the non movie world.

I never stopped to consider the social film connect with its confusion.

It is hilarious how unrealistic those movie "lifestyles" are. My next-door neighbor just retired from a long career in publishing, she was an editor for a well-known NYC publishing house. The entry level pay and pay scale in publishing, in general, which was never high, is even lower now as the internet has, obviously, pressured the traditional publishing model.

Even in high-paying fields like tech, no one (other than the crazy one-off story) in their twenties can afford the apartments and lifestyles shown in movies as, often, those apartments are, in cities like NYC, multi-million dollar ones. The men and women in their twenties and, often, thirties in publishing (and most fields) are living in small, rundown apartments in what had been tenement apartments eighty years ago (like the one our friend the super Krause takes care of).

As to dating, my girlfriend and I have a lot of friends, some that young, and now, also, friends with kids in their twenties, and dating for women is brutal in this city. I'm sorry if it doesn't align to the movie or political views of today, but it is our female, not male, friends who have a much tougher time finding a partner. I have my theories on why, but they don't matter, the reality is it seems that the men find it much easier than the women. And single women in their 30s and 40s in this city say it's nearly impossible. To be sure, what I am saying is anecdotal, but it's based on a lot of anecdotes over many years.

 

[Touchofevil]

Cry Terror from 1958 on TCM’s Noir Alley. A cast starring Angie Dickinson, Rod Steiger, James Mason, Jack Klugman, and Inger Stevens ( as well as some other familiar face) sounds like a can’t miss flick, but nope. It wasn’t that the actors were bad, it was more that it lacked the oomph one would expect with such a group of actors. Maybe it’s me. It was still worth the viewing just for the peak into the world of yesteryear.

 

[Fading Fast]

Brief Encounter from 1945 with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard


There is no reason why a short movie about a middle-class man and woman, both married, having a fleeting affair should be anything more than a mundane picture, yet Brief Encounter's poignant portrayal of a heartbreaking romance is a minor cinematic classic.

Based on a Noel Coward play, almost everything about it rings true and sad. Leads Celia Johnson, as the housewife, and Trevor Howard, as the general practitioner, who meet by chance in a small train station cafe, look like your neighbors, not movie stars.

While we learn more about Johnson's marriage than Howard's, both seem happily married; although, maybe a bit bored with their spouses after nearly two decades together raising kids and facing all the day-to-day challenges life throws at everyone.

When Johnson and Howard meet, neither is looking for an affair. Their initial time together - he has some hours free from his hospital work and she's in the city for a day of shopping - is spontaneous and almost English proper.

But after several of their half-day weekly rendezvous, both realize something more than a friendship is going on, which leads to the joy of new love and the guilt of cheating.

These are basically good people doing something very wrong. They want to be together, but they don't want to wreck their families, so they slow-walk their way forward knowing every path leads to some kind of heartbreak.

It all plays out amidst the palpable fear of exposure as being "respectable" meant so much in England at that time. And not just for the woman, as revealed by Howard's obnoxious friend's scathing disapproval of Howard’s behavior.

With Johnson's voiceover narration, we see how the affair preys on her. She knows she is fortunate to have a good and kind husband and two healthy young children. She also knows what she is doing is wrong, but the heart and libido have a powerful pull of their own.

Brief Encounter works because it gets the details right. The accidental train-station meeting, the afternoon escapes at the movies, walking arm in arm for the first time or waving goodbye as his train leaves are all perfectly captured by director David Lean's keen eye.

Early in his directorial career, Lean, who would go on to direct some of the great mid-century epic love stories, shows he already understood that it is those small details - a knowing glance, a gentle touch - that reveals the intimacy and affection of a romance.

Lean also understood the importance of atmosphere. The trains coming and going in the station, amidst clouds of steam and blasts of whistles, parallels the jarring passion of the affair. Similarly, the lovers' trip to the countryside, like their love, is only a redoubt from reality.

There is nothing special about two middle-class people having a brief extramarital affair, except that to them, it is earthshaking. Steered by Lean's thoughtful directing, Johnson and Howard, fully realizing Coward's script, make us all feel just how earthshaking it can be.

It is this ability of Brief Encounter, the ability to bring someone else's inner tragedy to life for the audience, that makes it a timeless classic.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Postwar British society and English respectability had a go during the Second War with consistent
tremours reverbrating until the '60s, but the war years and immediate aftermath remain poignant grist
for discussion and British cinema captured snapshots all the more cherished for its stark truth.

I caught the original The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway over the
weekend and aside from these two principals this film frankly could not, or perhaps wouldn't be green lighted
by today's ultra sensitive politically correct Hollywood. McQeen bests Dunaway in this white collar crime romp,
shags and shakes her, then splits the scene but leaves her his Rolls Royce. After roasting lobsters in fire on
the beach and sipping wine wearing a tight knit British woolen sweater. Awesome cool. Just awesome.

Scored three superfecta Saturday at Remington Park slinging dimes but did well enough at Aqueduct
and Del Mar before throwing dice in Kyoto and hardscrabble Australia where short handle reigns and smart bettors scarce, so chasing smart money action is difficult handicap. To assuage a large loss I checked out
Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past (1946), a noir web of intrigue with a lovely actress named
Jane Greer whom I didn't recall. What a woman. Crime boss Douglas wants private eye Mitchum to find her,
and Mitchum asks why and Douglas said he'd know why when he saw her. Mitchum saw her and he and I fell
in love with her and the rest is great noir. Damn fine spooled spider silken web in the best noir 1940s trad.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ Postwar British society and English respectability had a go during the Second War with consistent
tremours reverbrating until the '60s, but the war years and immediate aftermath remain poignant grist
for discussion and British cinema captured snapshots all the more cherished for its stark truth.

I caught the original The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway over the
weekend and aside from these two principals this film frankly could not, or perhaps wouldn't be green lighted
by today's ultra sensitive politically correct Hollywood. McQeen bests Dunaway in this white collar crime romp,
shags and shakes her, then splits the scene but leaves her his Rolls Royce. After roasting lobsters in fire on
the beach and sipping wine wearing a tight knit British woolen sweater. Awesome cool. Just awesome.

Scored three superfecta Saturday at Remington Park slinging dimes but did well enough at Aqueduct
and Del Mar before throwing dice in Kyoto and hardscrabble Australia where short handle reigns and smart bettors scarce, so chasing smart money action is difficult handicap. To assuage a large loss I checked out
Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past (1946), a noir web of intrigue with a lovely actress named
Jane Greer whom I didn't recall. What a woman. Crime boss Douglas wants private eye Mitchum to find her,
and Mitchum asks why and Douglas said he'd know why when he saw her. Mitchum saw her and he and I fell
in love with her and the rest is great noir. Damn fine spooled spider silken web in the best noir 1940s trad.

Could not agree more about Greer or "Out of the Past -" both deserve the applause they receive.

I agree, too, Re political correct Hollywood. I think it's great that women outsmart men in some movies as that happens in real life, but so does the reverse, at least in real life. It is silly today as you can, 90%+ of the time, pick who will win whatever is happening in a movie based on identity politics, not the organic nature of the plot. What was wrong in the past, men mainly winning, is no less wrong now just because the winners and losers have switched.

The more I watch post-war British films, the more impressed I become. Probably because their budgets were smaller than Hollywood, the British films focussed on story and character development in a way that Hollywood often didn't, resulting in movies that, overall, feel more real and more intimate. Plus, there is no better (clearer and crisper) black-and-white cinematography than post-war British black-and-white cinematography.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Good Morning, Vietnam!

Adrian Cronauer :
"If I would have done HALF of things, he did in the movie, I would be still in Leavenworth and we would do this interview in prison."

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Could not agree more about Greer or "Out of the Past -" both deserve the applause they receive.

I agree, too, Re political correct Hollywood. I think it's great that women outsmart men in some movies as that happens in real life, but so does the reverse, at least in real life. It is silly today as you can, 90%+ of the time, pick who will win whatever is happening in a movie based on identity politics, not the organic nature of the plot. What was wrong in the past, men mainly winning, is no less wrong now just because the winners and losers have switched.

The more I watch post-war British films, the more impressed I become. Probably because their budgets were smaller than Hollywood, the British films focussed on story and character development in a way that Hollywood often didn't, resulting in movies that, overall, feel more real and more intimate. Plus, there is no better (clearer and crisper) black-and-white cinematography than post-war British black-and-white cinematography.

Colour came belatedly but the homespun 'kitchen' films with subtle nuance cut jewel facet are sparklers sure.
An Inspector Calls with Alastair Sim is essential kit here for me.

A McQueen-Mitchum bookend cannot be bested but then with Douglas no less it's tops hands down.
Steverino always the man wears a plain deal trench briefly for his trademark indelible signet seal. In the older classic Robert Mitchum wears a 1917 British Army officer trench bells and whistles but tightly belted. Unless he's using coat for concealment. Another particular in Mitchum's tale is it's begin/middle/end expertly crafted to a bull's eye. Out of the Past focuses a woman's wisdom and the directorial take at end wraps the
package with strong twine. And the boy whose deafness conceals a wise heart far more mature than his
youth and the wave at a ghosted name, I'll say nothing more except this is real life personified.

Leprechaun satyr out Spitalfields I be and the moonlighted beach when Ms Greer sits upon sand with
the wind tousling her hair and beautiful moonlit face walked meself into a hard fast right cross. Why I never heard nor seen her before? Think Dorothy Malone in a bookstore with Bogie and she takes off her glasses then pulls down the window shades right cross. Floors mind, sure. This is Ms Greer's effect and both Mitchum
and Kirk are goners. Magnificent direction and the rest is history.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

After some work and steak n' ale, I sat the Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo Thomas Crown Affair redo (1999) since my curiosity wouldn't let go and I needed a movie anyway to chase away work blues. A not altogether bad effort but simply second-rate boiled tosh served toast with tepid tea that sophomoric directorial noblesse oblige nudity and ice blonde Faye Dunaway, now middle age, and cast as protagonist psychiatrist to gin script, hardly improved upon its predecessor classic from thirty years earlier.

Then too; although shot two decades ago, the lavender soap script act is all evidenced in plain sight,
c'est la vie and it's what it is isn't it? The heavy ham handed predictable politically correct ending however ruined what otherwise had the makings of a second class banana redux.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Rancho Notorious (1952) starring Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, and Mel Ferrer, under the direction of Fritz Lang. Wowsers, what a movie. Dietrich plays the world-weary Dietrich she does so well, and Kennedy is the nice guy driven by revenge; his fiancee is murdered by a rotten thug during a robbery. Ferrer is a smooth, articulate, suave, gentlemanly criminal, who is in love with Dietrich, who in turn runs an isolated safe house for all kinds of criminals in exchange for a percentage of their illegal gains.

Kennedy tracks the murderer to the "safe hideout" and spends the middle part of the movie trying to figure out which of the bad guys is the guilty party. Along the way we see a couple of flash-backs about Dietrich's character.

Favorite part of the movie is the naming of characters: Dietrich is Altar Keane, Kinch the rotten thug, Frenchy Fremont, Baldy Gunter, Mort Geary, Jeff Factor, the town is called Gunsight, Ace Maguire, and so on.

There is a sung narration that sets up the exposition and moves the story along. The scenes alternate between location shots and very obvious sets, but you give Lang et al a pass since the characters and the drama are so...so....over the top? way out? filled with seething emotions? typical western tropes skewed into something you can't stop watching? You be the judge.

 

[Fading Fast]

I Cover the Waterfront from 1933 with Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence and Hobart Cavanaugh


The storytelling is a bit choppy in I Cover the Waterfront, but with only seventy-two minutes of runtime, it's not shy in its scope nor in its willingness to show the seedy elements of the tough docksides of San Diego.

Ben Lyon plays a cynical investigative reporter whose beat is the waterfront where he's always looking for a salacious angle or a corruption story. Working one night, he spies a nude swimmer, which turns into an opportunity to have a meet cute with a young girl.

The young girl, played by Claudette Colbert, is the daughter of one of the waterfront's big fishermen, played by Ernest Torrence. Being a precode, Lyon's interest in Colbert is for sex not love, but he disingenuously plays the part of the well-intentioned suitor in his quest.

Unknown at first to Lyon is that Colbert is Torrence's daughter. Lyon's been investigating Torrence for some time as he suspects him of being a smuggler. This makes the setup Lyon trying to canoodle the daughter of the man he's trying to expose as a criminal.

I Cover the Waterfront quickly, though, becomes a brutally graphic movie. We learn Torrence is smuggling illegal Chinese immigrants when he weighs one down with chains and throws him overboard to hide the evidence from an approaching Coast Guard boat. Jesus!

Later there is a fishing scene (see N.B. section below) that could give the most brutal scenes from Jaws a run for their money. If that isn't enough, there is a palliated bondage scene where Lyon shackles Cobert's hands and neck. It's is done playfully, but still.

The plot isn't complicated as we know, early on, Lyon will eventually really fall for Colbert, and that he's also going to expose her corrupt - outright evil - father. How the chips fall from that confrontation is, no spoilers coming, the climax of the movie.

Along for the ride is character actor Hobart Cavanaugh as Lyon's sort of sidekick. He goads Lyon along in his relationship with Colbert as he knows Lyon is falling in love before Lyon does. He also simply brings some much needed comic relief to this intense picture.

Lyon is good as the edgy reporter, but at times he plays it too brash. That was, though, the style of the era as actors like Lee Tracy and Pat O'Brien set the standard for the on-screen, fast-talking "I don't care about anything" cynical reporter.

Torrence is outstanding portraying the corrupt, tough, hard-drinking and hard-whoring (yup, and it's not hidden) captain with a, surprisingly, genuine soft spot for his daughter. He's Quint from Jaws without the buried compassion for most other human beings.

Colbert looks great as she's less stylized here than in most of her movies, but is still a bit miscast as she has too much innate sweetness to be a waterfront-rat kid who's now a young woman. Harlow or Ann Dvorak had the natural street cred for the role.

Visually, I Cover the Waterfront adumbrates film noir with its gritty scenes of crime and human depravity, hard drinking and blatant prostitution. Plus, the foggy waterfront sequences feel, at times, like a 1950s Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame effort.

Precode movies have a reputation for sexual salaciousness and there's plenty of that here (little shown, much alluded to). But as opposed to today's pictures, there's restraint, which forces the movie to be more than just a dressed-up soft porn film.

The true value of precodes, like I Cover the Waterfront, is their raw display of real life - corruption, drinking, sex, violence, heartbreak, murder - that would soon be tamped down in movies once the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced after 1934.


N.B. There is a shark-hunting scene in I Cover the Waterfront that is hard to believe didn't inspire Spielberg when he made Jaws. The shark attacking the boat, a futile firing of a gun at the shark and a desperate attempt to cut the harpoon ropes so that the shark doesn't pull the boat under, are all here as they are in Jaws.

 

[Edward]

View attachment 560194
Brief Encounter from 1945 with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard


There is no reason why a short movie about a middle-class man and woman, both married, having a fleeting affair should be anything more than a mundane picture, yet Brief Encounter's poignant portrayal of a heartbreaking romance is a minor cinematic classic.

Based on a Noel Coward play, almost everything about it rings true and sad. Leads Celia Johnson, as the housewife, and Trevor Howard, as the general practitioner, who meet by chance in a small train station cafe, look like your neighbors, not movie stars.

While we learn more about Johnson's marriage than Howard's, both seem happily married; although, maybe a bit bored with their spouses after nearly two decades together raising kids and facing all the day-to-day challenges life throws at everyone.

When Johnson and Howard meet, neither is looking for an affair. Their initial time together - he has some hours free from his hospital work and she's in the city for a day of shopping - is spontaneous and almost English proper.

But after several of their half-day weekly rendezvous, both realize something more than a friendship is going on, which leads to the joy of new love and the guilt of cheating.

These are basically good people doing something very wrong. They want to be together, but they don't want to wreck their families, so they slow-walk their way forward knowing every path leads to some kind of heartbreak.

It all plays out amidst the palpable fear of exposure as being "respectable" meant so much in England at that time. And not just for the woman, as revealed by Howard's obnoxious friend's scathing disapproval of Howard’s behavior.

With Johnson's voiceover narration, we see how the affair preys on her. She knows she is fortunate to have a good and kind husband and two healthy young children. She also knows what she is doing is wrong, but the heart and libido have a powerful pull of their own.

Brief Encounter works because it gets the details right. The accidental train-station meeting, the afternoon escapes at the movies, walking arm in arm for the first time or waving goodbye as his train leaves are all perfectly captured by director David Lean's keen eye.

Early in his directorial career, Lean, who would go on to direct some of the great mid-century epic love stories, shows he already understood that it is those small details - a knowing glance, a gentle touch - that reveals the intimacy and affection of a romance.

Lean also understood the importance of atmosphere. The trains coming and going in the station, amidst clouds of steam and blasts of whistles, parallels the jarring passion of the affair. Similarly, the lovers' trip to the countryside, like their love, is only a redoubt from reality.

There is nothing special about two middle-class people having a brief extramarital affair, except that to them, it is earthshaking. Steered by Lean's thoughtful directing, Johnson and Howard, fully realizing Coward's script, make us all feel just how earthshaking it can be.

It is this ability of Brief Encounter, the ability to bring someone else's inner tragedy to life for the audience, that makes it a timeless classic.

Brief Encounter very much owes its qualities to the time period, the sensibilities of the BBFC and local government (much moreso than the actual audience, I expect), the particular class politics of England on the period, and budgetary restrictions leading to more character-focused pieces than action based work. I've never studied it academically, but my understanding is this sort of approach to film laid the ground in which the kitchen sink dramas of the 50s / 60s in British cinema flourished, with more working class protagonists coming to the fore, and more overt issues of class politics, sexuality, and so on also coming to the fore. Hence by 1962 you get to a picture like The Loneliness of the Long distance Runner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loneliness_of_the_Long_Distance_Runner_(film) (one of the greatest British films I've ever seen), or The Leather Boys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Leather_Boys (the differences from the 1961 novel of the same name being telling about what they still could and could not depict in mainstream, British cinema). Some great shots of the Ace Cafe in its Rocker heyday, with the first generation of the 59 Club in that picture.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ To Sir With Love answered Native Son with grammatical sentence period later film Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.
Film serves much more than merely entertainment and is innately more poignant and strong than page writ alone.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Economic game theory is enjoyable chess but mind numbing and this seems movie week for me,
so I thought any noir with Gloria Grahame at fore wearing an impossibly tight blouse or sweater, yet instead
it's Gary Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy(2011). A cat and mouser-good but it really pays to have read the
John le Carre book or any le Carre first since the film's past background is present dug up dirt present.
Also le Carre is deep cesspool, very deep sewer scripy and a noticeable anti West attitude slant particularly
for the American cousins whom in Kim Philby's wake were quite distant relatives. Nod to alma mater Cambridge innoocent of all dereliction but admittedly more than apples fell in its courtyard. George Smiley
is called out of retirement by MI6 to track down a Soviet mole inside the service. Spun yarn knit high quality
spy genre with right darkness cast. If haven't seen a good choice.

Another film chosen is Finding Vivian Maier (2014). Pure chance I found Vivian, but imagine an unclaimed decedent
Chicago auction where a kid buys a few trunks holding a treasure trove chock full of negatives and unprocessed film,
and the cache reveals the work of an unknown photographer whom is undeniably great.
Perhaps amoung the finest shooters in the last century. Get the picture? FANTASTIC.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Yes, the Vivian Maier story is fascinating, an awesomely talented photographer who worked alone entirely for her own interest in photography, unknown in her lifetime. FYI, many of her wonderful pictures are online:

Vivian Maier Photographer | Official website of Vivian Maier | Vivian Maier Portfolios, Prints, Exhibitions, Books and documentary film

The official website of photographer Vivian Maier. Showcasing photo galleries, information about exhibitions, print sales, books and documentary film.

www.vivianmaier.com

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Very fascinating woman; whom, like many such uniquely gifted had a dark side partially told in the
documentary but evidenced by her later life eccentricity however. I am much too lazy to be a photographer
though I find her eye for subject a slight glimmer into herself and her own mystery.

Bye the bye, if a gumshoe old school noir is needed along Polanski's Chinatown line then check Marlowe (2022)
with Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange. I've a fondness for private eye flicks and Marlowe fills the bill of particulars, yet I noticed Liam lad a bit long the tooth for all the roughstuff even if his world weariness is so
spot on. Ms Lange too-there's the cat I be right. Though not to mean scould old sod it's plain as grass these
favourites are indeed getting on. Liam I guess is lining his pockets while good is offered and he can stand
and deliver which he most certainly does here.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Aladdin 1992 VHS

 

[Fading Fast]

The Ipcress File from 1965 with Michael Caine, Guy Doleman and Nigel Green


If you've ever complained that the James Bond movies are too fake, then The Ipcress File is the movie for you. Michael Caine plays a smart mid-level spy, stuck inside a frustrating intelligence bureaucracy, who, like a real spy, makes progress ploddingly.

At the opening of The Ipcress File, Caine is assigned to find a missing British scientist. Several scientists have gone missing and come back "brainwashed and useless." This has the intelligence agency very worried about a Cold War "brain drain."

We quickly see how bureaucratic the British intelligence service is and how much class distinction still matters. Caine is of the "lower class," so he's talked down to by his better-educated bosses and is stuck with a lot of petty clerical tasks.

Guy Doleman and Nigel Green, playing Caine's arrogant and competing bosses, create quintessential "old guard" British Empire characters. They're petty and often persnickety, but they are also men of ability who live by a code that was, by then, on its last legs.

Caine, though, has an insubordinate streak. He needles his bosses, especially since, despite his humble background, he has a genuine appreciation for good food and music that his bosses affect but don't truly understand. It's a nice subversive take on the British "class" system.

After establishing all this petty and not so petty infighting, the movie kicks its spy story into gear, which has Caine and the other spies he works with trying to find the kidnappers. Caine is smart, but unlike Bond, he makes mistakes and has to work within the system.

It's a reasonably confusing spy story, which includes foreign agents and Cold War adversaries working through proxy states, 1960s psychiatry used as mind control (think The Manchurian Candidate), a secret tape (the titular one) and a potential mole in Caine's department.

There are several action scenes, but again, this isn't Bond, so Caine wins some and loses some, but only a little of it is over the top. Some of the action is even real-world sloppy, while some of it feels truly dangerous. It's refreshingly believable.

The movie works, just for that reason: it feels close to real. Even Caine's one sexual conquest - of a fellow spy played by Sue Lloyd - has a genuine feel to it. In a neat twist, though, it turns out, Lloyd might have been playing Caine.

London, too, looks very 1960s real as the grandeur of the empire is still noticeable in its old and imposing government buildings with their now dirty-from-pollution exteriors and tired interiors. There's no "M" with his tufted-leather-door office here.

Director Sidney J. Furie understood his mission was to deliver a real spy story as his, often, street-level shots, capturing of mundane details and, in general, not-glamorous take on Caine's life and career says this is how real bureaucratic intelligence work gets done.

It's not all condemnation of Britain's intelligence agencies, however, as even Caine's bosses, petty though they may be, are not stupid men. They are smart managers who balance advancing their careers with getting the job done, as happens in real life.

Caine, himself, on the brink of his movie career breakout, is excellent as the young, bitter about "classism," cocky, but also smart spy who seems to care about doing the right thing more to show his bosses up than for King and country.

The Ipcress File (a truly awful name for a movie) was produced by Harry Saltzman, the producer behind the Bond films. It's almost as if Saltzman wanted to say, "see, I understand the difference between Bond and real spy work."

With a regular "bloke" as the spy hero, petty bureaucrats above him and things not always working out, Caine created a real-world contemporaneous celluloid foil to James Bond. It is one that resonated so much with the public that it led to two sequels.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Class disdain is here but not as pretentious since Caine's day yet it's there.
Caine's Harry Palmer is my agent type. Makes mistakes, little quid, bets Ladbrokes, chases ponies and tarts, drinks. Sometimes too much. Like when a tart or horse throws him. And often.

The Catcher Was A Spy (2018) with Paul Rudd as Moe Berg, a catcher for the Boston red socks enlists in the OSS.
Berg is sent to Italy to kill a top shelf German scientist working on the Nazi nuclear program.
Not standard spy fare but a steady pursuit build. A chess game wonderfully done and a true WWII tale.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Jessica Chastain portrays the CIA analyst who doggedly pursued Osama Bin Laden
to his safe house hideout in Islamabad Pakistan where US Navy SEAL commandos killed him.
A very detailed search through gathered intelligence followed by meticulous piecemeal puzzle construct.
Chastain is formidable battling internal doubt and organization bureaucracy while flick itself delicately
brushes a haunting spade work portrait of nuts and bolt espionage gardening. Essential viewing.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Annapolis (2006) James Franco, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson. The US Naval Academy and its grueling
plebe year background this lesser Officer and Gentleman martial effort depicting a somewhat enigmatic
cadet character who somehow boxes himself into this prestigious institution with a poor scholastic record,
but magically experiences no academic difficulties afterward, and the rest of the movie is about cadet boxing.
Movies and mayonaise are similar in that a few eggs need crack first but I still fell for the college with the military discipline reminiscent of my own British Army years. Were I an American high schooler Annapolis
would be my university list topper.