What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

"Employee's Entrance" a solid pre-code in which a ruthless department store president has an affair with a female employee (it's kinda of squishy, definitely not physically forced but, in modern speak, he used his "position of power"). She later secretly marries another employee of the store who, then, becomes the president's protege. I leave the rest for those who haven't seen it - and if you like pre-codes, you do want to catch this one.

What's amazing is how consistently negative capitalists were betrayed in the '30s - amazing, not because of the negative view as this was during the great depression and business was hated, but amazing that the country didn't become socialists (yes, the New Deal had some elements, but the country basically kept its capitalist structure).

Let me emphasize, I am not advocating for either socialism or capitalism - that's not for this thread - what I am saying is that I have watched many 1930s movies and most are very anti-capitalist. If this truly reflected the mood of the country, I'm surprised the politics of the era weren't much more socialist.

 

[PrivateEye]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Also went to the theatre this weekend to see McFarland USA. Predictable, but fairly enjoyable.

 

[1mach1]

Voodoo Island (1957)

 

[Touchofevil]

American Sniper

 

[HoosierDaddy]

American Sniper

Well..what did you think of it..??

 

[Touchofevil]

Well..what did you think of it..??

I enjoyed it. I watched it knowing that there were inaccuracies and enjoyed it for the story it was. It was done well and kept me glued to the screen. I feel that it is definitely worth watching.

 

[Zombie_61]

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). One of the better "aliens invading Earth" B-movies from the 1950s, with visual effects (the titular flying saucers) by Ray Harryhausen.

 

[Worf]

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). One of the better "aliens invading Earth" B-movies from the 1950s, with visual effects (the titular flying saucers) by Ray Harryhausen.

Ray Harryhausen at his finest. Great visuals and wonderful sound effects. Not as seminal as those from George Pal's "War of the Worlds" but skin close!

Worf

 

[dh66]

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956). One of the better "aliens invading Earth" B-movies from the 1950s, with visual effects (the titular flying saucers) by Ray Harryhausen.

Ray Harryhausen at his finest. Great visuals and wonderful sound effects. Not as seminal as those from George Pal's "War of the Worlds" but skin close!

Worf

I'm a fan of it.

 

[Zombie_61]

Ray Harryhausen at his finest. Great visuals and wonderful sound effects. Not as seminal as those from George Pal's "War of the Worlds" but skin close!

Worf

I agree it's among his best work. Sadly, he allegedly stated that this is his least favorite of the movies he worked on, but I don't know if he was referring to his work or the movie overall (I suspect the latter). If nothing else, this movie is a good example of how to not waste time because nearly every second is used to move the story along.

I'm a fan of it.

Wonderful!

 

[Stearmen]

Here Comes The Navy. (1934) James Cagney. Kind of an embarrassing movie, with a black face scene! The USS Arizona was the real star. With a couple of cameos of Colorado class battle wagons, the best looking battle ships ever. They even got the USS Macon airship in, very beautiful!

 

[1mach1]

Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

 

[LizzieMaine]

We're starting a week's run of "Still Alice." Julianne Moore is one of my favorite modern-era actresses, and she's excellent as always, but it bugs me that it's yet another movie about a crisis facing an elegant wine-sipping upper-middle-class white woman. Would Alzheimer's be any less tragic for the victim or the family if Alice worked in a factory instead of being a Columbia University linguistics professor?

 

[jamespowers]

Here Comes The Navy. (1934) James Cagney. Kind of an embarrassing movie, with a black face scene! The USS Arizona was the real star. With a couple of cameos of Colorado class battle wagons, the best looking battle ships ever. They even got the USS Macon airship in, very beautiful!

The Macon crashed off the coast of Big Sur if I remember correctly. The hangar still stands.

 

[Fading Fast]

We're starting a week's run of "Still Alice." Julianne Moore is one of my favorite modern-era actresses, and she's excellent as always, but it bugs me that it's yet another movie about a crisis facing an elegant wine-sipping upper-middle-class white woman. Would Alzheimer's be any less tragic for the victim or the family if Alice worked in a factory instead of being a Columbia University linguistics professor?

Why do you think that is? My experience working in large companies - not film studios, but financial ones - is that they will sell, create, produce, distribute whatever they think will sell the most / make the most money. Hollywood, at the level of a "Still Alice" movie, probably works the same way (as they regularly come to Wall Street for money and have to show a plan to generate a competitive return).

Hence, a part of me says that there is another movie about, as you so wonderfully said, "an elegant wine-sipping upper-middle-class white woman" because they make more money than movies about factory workers, but another part of me wonders if it is because the writers / directors / producers are more comfortable with the world they know? The latter is an emotional response, but my experience says we'd be awash in films about troubled factory workers if they made more money - which they would if more people wanted to see them.

Since there are a lot more factory workers in the world - or blue collar / middle class people - than upper-middle class people, what does it say if money-grubbing Hollywood makes more movies about the later - does everyone prefer seeing movies about those wealthier than they are?

Also, I agree with you about Juliane Moore - she reminds me of Kristen Scott Thomas, she's an actress not a "star."

 

[MikeKardec]

Why do you think that is? My experience working in large companies - not film studios, but financial ones - is that they will sell, create, produce, distribute whatever they think will sell the most / make the most money. Hollywood, at the level of a "Still Alice" movie, probably works the same way (as they regularly come to Wall Street for money and have to show a plan to generate a competitive return).

People in the film biz are just trained to think this way. However, it's getting to be less and less of a problem. In the '70s and '80s it was monumental. I worked with a director who had started in that period and he just couldn't stop himself, what's more expensive, more upper class ... over and over. No one at the head office was ordering that (possibly they would have if they could have but, of course, they didn't have to with him around!). Having worked in both places I was always struck over the difference in the Aussie soaps vs American soaps. The American shows everyone was wealthy and glammed out, the Aussie shows took place in trailer parks. That said, some Australian trailer parks don't have the baggage their US cousins have ... but you get my point.

I had a scene where we needed a minor official was driving an old land rover ... this director was walking around the office asking which was better, a Rolls or a Bentley! I managed to find him a Humber (sort of a British Ford LTD) the day before we shot so he didn't have time to change it on us. Weird because his background was pretty mid west working class ... of course those people can become the biggest snobs. The guy himself wasn't at all but that's what he automatically tried to put on film.

 

[John T. Sarto]

Had the day off so... "Cry Danger" with Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming (1950) and "North By Northwest".

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hence, a part of me says that there is another movie about, as you so wonderfully said, "an elegant wine-sipping upper-middle-class white woman" because they make more money than movies about factory workers, but another part of me wonders if it is because the writers / directors / producers are more comfortable with the world they know? The latter is an emotional response, but my experience says we'd be awash in films about troubled factory workers if they made more money - which they would if more people wanted to see them.

Since there are a lot more factory workers in the world - or blue collar / middle class people - than upper-middle class people, what does it say if money-grubbing Hollywood makes more movies about the later - does everyone prefer seeing movies about those wealthier than they are?

I think it's the innate classism of a Hollywood culture built around the film-school mentality. The kind of kids who go to film schools are, generally speaking, not working-class kids. And they grow up in a bubble of privilege that they extravagantly imagine to be the "real world," and the films they make reflect that experience. I have to see a lot more of it than most people, given my line of work, and I find it tedious. I wouldn't pay $8.50 to see that type of picture over and over and over again, but then, I don't have to.

The problem comes out another way -- in that whenever some indie filmmaker decides to take a "penetrating look at working class life" the movie nearly always is built around drug addiction, alcoholism, sex abuse, or grinding poverty. The last picture I saw that painted a reasonably realistic look at working class life was another Julianne Moore picture from about ten years ago, "The Prize Winner of Alliance, Ohio." This was done as a fifties period piece, but it was a lot more realistic in its portrayal of class dynamics than any of these drug-booze-sex-poverty-inbred-hick pictures we get stuck showing.

Movies used to be made by people who had experienced a far broader cross section of life than the film-school crowd of today. I'd take any of the Warner Bros. proletarian dramas of the early thirties any day of the week over the poor-me-I'm-a-spoiled-white-girl-in-Manhattan indie pictures that flood the market today

 

[cw3pa]

"His Kind of Woman" (1951) with Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, a "skinny" Raymond Burr as the bad guy, and throw in Vincent Price for comic relief. Not too bad a movie; the run up to the climax was a bit long. Watching Vincent Price ham it up was worth the price of admission.

 

[Stearmen]

The Macon crashed off the coast of Big Sur if I remember correctly. The hangar still stands.

Off Monterey Bay, February 12, 1935. Only two crew men died. The Akron lost 73 of 76 crew men. The Shenandoah lost 14. The Los Angeles died in her bed! She was built by the Zeppelin Company. The Lakehurst, New Jersey hanger, of Hindenburg fame still stands. [video=youtube;IWoEQRl8dCs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWoEQRl8dCs[/video]