What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[LizzieMaine]

Introduced and projected a screening of the definifitve Harold Lloyd film, 1923's "Safety Last," with a live score performed by the Maine-based jazz-ish combo "Les Sorcieres Perdus."

This is of course one of the iconic silent comedies of all time -- even people who wouldn't know Harold Lloyd from Lloyd George have seen, at some time in their lives, the image of the thin man with the straw hat and glasses handing from the hands of a clock. And it's also the film I find to be the best of all silent comedies for introducing newcomers to the form. It's punchy, well-paced, and most of all has a likeable, believable figure at its center -- with plenty of buildup to get the audience to care about the character before he starts up the side of the building.

Lloyd's films are foolproof with live audiences -- even those who've never seen any silent picture are laughing with, not "at" the film well before the climax, and this has been true of every Lloyd picture I've ever seen on the big screen. He designed them that way, timing the gags specifically to work with large audiences, and all the triggers work as well as they did nearly a hundred years ago (and to think that these films are that old is highly disturbing.)

We had quite a few kids at today's show -- some of whom seemed noticeably skeptical as they filed into the theatre. And every single one of them, without exception was bouncing with excitement and enthusiasm for what they'd just seen as they were leaving the show. All this stuff about how modern kids won't sit still for black and white films or silent pictures is the bunk. All you have to do is choose the right films -- and present them properly. And I guarantee the kids will get it.

 

[Benzadmiral]

The recent Oscar contender, Darkest Hour, with Gary Oldman unrecognizable and yet shining as Winston Churchill. There's an old joke that states, "All babies look like Winston Churchill," and Oldman's WC here actually says, when a young woman on the Underground tells him that her child looks like him, "Madam, all babies look like me!"

It's a good movie, powered by Oldman's performance plus the clothes and the cars. And I couldn't help but be reminded, as I watched Chamberlain and Lord Halifax trying mightily to undermine Churchill at every turn, of the troubles besetting a certain occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in our own time. I wonder if writer Anthony McCarten had that parallel in mind . . .?

 

[AmateisGal]

The Cutting Edge, a nice, cheesy early '90s film about a figure skater in need of a partner, and a hockey player who answers the call. Fun stuff. I used to own it on VHS.

 

[KY Gentleman]

From Paris With Love starring John Travolta. Travolta plays Charlie Wax, who is a totally over the top secret agent showing an apprentice the ropes while tracking a terrorist organization in Europe.
Lots of gratuitous violence and gun play. Pretty well written dialogue with some good quotable lines.
You can tell this was a fun movie for John Travolta.
Good mindless fun, lots of action and I have the BluRay so I’ve seen it a number of times. Worth a watch!

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Small Talk," the very first talking "Our Gang" comedy, released in the spring of 1929.

This one was not widely shown in TV syndication because of its three-reel length, so it's not one of the ones everyone's seen over and over again. And it's an oddity, because much of it is noise for the sake of noise -- the kids spend way too much time blowing on noisemakers and yelling just to prove that sound is now a thing. Plus you can clearly see the boom mike hanging over the kids in the opening scene. Brave New World indeed.

The story is a schmaltzy bit of sentiment about the kids wanting to be adopted from the orphanage where they're living, which sometimes gets just too too too. It's a transitional time for the Gang, with several silent veterans -- Joe Cobb, Harry Spear, and Jean Darling -- on the way out, and kids better identified with the talkie period --Mary Ann Jackson and "Wheezer" Hutchins -- on the way in. Wheezer is the center of the story, and it has to be said that a cuter four-year-old has never existed on earth, especially the way he bellows out his dialogue, and six-year-old Mary Ann has some nice bits as his motherly older sister. "Farina" Hoskins, the main Rascal to straddle the silent and talkie periods, gets to display his ability to cry on cue, and is by far the most comfortable of all the kids with dialogue.

One thing that's missing, though, is the frenetic pace of the Gang's silent comedies. The kids have for the most part had to learn their lines by rote repetition, and it's sometimes painful to watch them struggling to get thru their dialogue, as everything grinds to a halt while they stammer. There isn't much physical comedy here, but the microphone confounded more than a few adult comics as well during this period, and the kids actually do bear up under the challenge better than some.

Not long after this short there would be a major turnover in the Gang, with the arrival of Jackie Cooper, Chubby Chaney, and other familiar stars of the early talkie era. So "Small Talk" is, essentially, a farewell to one era that helps lay the ground work for the next. It won't make you laugh much, but it's still fascinating to watch.

 

[2jakes]

Her (2013)

I asked Siri if she had seen the movie.
She told me,
"No, but I'd like to see it jake!"

 

[Harp]

The Cutting Edge, a nice, cheesy early '90s film about a figure skater in need of a partner, and a hockey player who answers the call. Fun stuff. I used to own it on VHS.

I recall this somewhat vaguely, but I remember the scene when he asked her to remove her engagement ring because it was cutting his hand.
And his heart...

I was pulled over for speeding while driving the news truck to go cover a hotel fire.
"Where are you going in such a hurry...a fire?” The officer asked.

"Yes sir”, as a matter of fact I am.” I replied....

A Chicago cop once pulled me over for a minor traffic violation, which I successfully talked myself out of because he threatened
impounding my sister's Honda Accord that I had borrowed for the day. This scared the hell out of me....
And at the conclusion of our jovial discussion he cursed and sarcastically retorted, "What are you studying, Law?"
"Yes sir." He shook his head and walked back to the patrol car.

 

[Bamaboots]

One common trait among every police officer I've spoken with is that they really don't like it when someone questions their authority, at least while they're on duty.

I love reading these stories. Having spent 25 yrs as one outside the drivers window, it's always fun to get others perspective when I'm not being yelled at. I have to add, news people are the worst.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The Cutting Edge, a nice, cheesy early '90s film about a figure skater in need of a partner, and a hockey player who answers the call. Fun stuff. I used to own it on VHS.

Insider-tip in Germany! Nearly forgotten, but very good rated.

 

[Fading Fast]

Cheating a bit on work, I've been half watching "Love in the Afternoon" (1957 with Gary Cooper and Andrey Hepburn) on TCM in the background and it hit me why, even though I like the movie, it doesn't really work. Gary Cooper, the movie star not the real man, has too much integrity for the role of an aging playboy.

The scenes where he allows himself to fall in love with Hepburn ring true; the scenes where he acts like a "love 'em and leave 'em" guy ring false.

And I love Hepburn and her dad's (Maurice Chevalier) apartment - a French version of a very FL apartment.

 

[2jakes]

Red Violin (1998)
Interesting tale tracing the history of a well-made violin across three
centuries and five countries in three continents.


Elizabeth Pitcairn, performing "The Red Violin Suite" on the Red Mendelssohn
Stradivarius. It was a gift from her grandfather in 1990 at Christie’s Auction
in London.

 

[Harp]

Red Violin (1998)
Interesting tale tracing the history of a well-made violin across three
centuries and five countries in three continents.

Elizabeth Pitcairn, performing "The Red Violin Suite" on the Red Mendelssohn
Stradivarius.

Gorgeous film, perhaps the most romantic background origin of love's loss and redemption associated with a musical instrument.

 

[Zombie_61]

Cheating a bit on work, I've been half watching "Love in the Afternoon" (1957 with Gary Cooper and Andrey Hepburn) on TCM in the background and it hit me why, even though I like the movie, it doesn't really work. Gary Cooper, the movie star not the real man, has too much integrity for the role of an aging playboy...

I had a similar problem with Cary Grant in None but the Lonely Heart (1944). Mr. Grant plays Ernie Mott, a ne'er-do-well in London during World War II. They mussed his hair a little and dirtied his wardrobe a bit, but beneath it all it's still Cary Grant and his mannered demeanor just doesn't ring true for such a character. My wife and I only saw the first 30-40 minutes so I can't offer an opinion on the movie itself, but I found it interesting enough to record so we could see the rest of it; we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Good Housewrecking," a rambunctious 1933 entry in RKO's "The Average Man" series of two-reelers starring the incomparable Edgar Kennedy.

Kennedy's one of those guys you know even if you don't know his name -- he was all over the place in movie comedy from the 1910s thru the 1940s. He worked at Keystone under Mack Sennett during the heyday of the Kops, and he was a fixture at Hal Roach Studios in the twenties, usually as the bumbling Kennedy The Cop, who turned up again and again as an all-purpose blustering foil for Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, and Our Gang. He left Roach in 1930 just ahead of a massive budget cut at "The Lot Of Fun," and landed squarely on his feet at RKO-Pathe, which after a couple of years of second-rate musical shorts was making a decisive move into two-reel comedies.

"The Average Man" was a perfect series for Kennedy -- a hulking, baldheaded Irishman who during his years at Roach had perfected his famous "slow burn," a steady, mounting image of frustration that built and built until the inevitable explosion. When he takes off his hat and slowly wipes his glossy dome with the palm of his hand, down over his face, you know what's coming. This series gave him plenty to be frustrated about -- in a perfect depiction of how "the average man" of the 1930s caricatured his own home life. Kennedy is just a guy trying to get along, despite a nagging, passive-aggressive wife, played by Florence Lake, a harridan mother-in-law perfectly essayed by silent-screen veteran Dot Farley, and a useless, mooching brother-in-law played first by William Eugene and later by Jack Rice. No matter what Mr. Average tries to do, it will always, *always* end up in disaster due to a combination of his own bull-headed refusal to ever admit to his own incompetence, and the interference of his dubious relatives.

In this entry, the Kennedy clan goes into the interior-decoration business -- but get the address wrong when reporting to their first job and predictable chaos ensues. The effect is sort of like Laurel and Hardy crossed with the Bickersons -- there's lots of messy slapstick, punctuated by escalating arguments and lots of yelling until the ultimate explosion. Contemporary audiences often find the Kennedy shorts too harsh and too abrasive, but that's exactly the point: you're seeing the rest of the family as Edgar himself sees them, with himself a prisoner of forces beyond his control, without his ever understanding that when you get right down to it he's no prize package either. An argument can be made from pop culture that the "average man" of the 1930s had a severe persecution complex, and the exaggerated Gorgon-like women of the Kennedy household in this series offer an interesting bit of insight into how "Mr. Average" saw his situation.

As aggressive as some of the "Average Man" shorts are, Edgar Kennedy himself is always worth watching -- no comedian ever topped him as a stack-blower, and though most of the films end the same way, watching how he gets there is always worth a laugh. The Kennedy series ran for eighteen years, with over a hundred episodes, and those I've seen seem to keep up a pretty consistent level of comedy.

 

[2jakes]

^^^^
I remember Edgar Kennedy from the Hal Roach comedies with the
“slow-burn” and also looking directly into the camera.


Oliver Hardy was another that looked into the camera.
I’ve read that he loved golf and by the afternoons, he was ready to go
out on the range. Laurel used this time of the day to capture Ollie’s
look of frustration.

 

[LizzieMaine]

More fun with Edgar Kennedy in "Shivering Shakespeare," another early-talkie "Our Gang" short, released in early 1930.

One of the most delightful aspects of these early sound-era films is their sense of realism: they have a raggedy, improvised quality that makes them feel far more genuine than any of the slicker, glossier shorts you'd see later in the decade. In this film, "Mrs. Funston Evergreen Kennedy," wife of Kennedy the Cop, is a flustered elementary-school dramatist, who has cast the Gang in her elaborate production of an extremely non-Shakespearean pastiche, "The Gladiator's Dilemma," and what makes it work more than anything else is the sense that you really are watching a second-rate, small-town grade-school play. The hall where the show is performed is dingy and old, the audience is stuffed with impatient parents sitting on folding chairs, the kid actors are a mixture of enthusiasm and utter indifference, and in the rear of the hall there's the inevitable bake sale: a young lady at a booth selling pies.

The performance is about what you'd expect. Some of the kids dive into their roles with zeal -- Mary Ann Jackson hams it up, Farina Hoskins gives it his best shot but knows he's better than the material, Wheezer Hutchins thinks it's all the bunk. And Chubby Chaney is perfectly cast as Nero, carrying himself with a sweeping regalness, except for those moments when he lifts his toga to read the lines scrawled on the underside of the skirt. Meanwhile, Kennedy the Cop loafs backstage in his undershirt, smoking a calabash pipe, and providing the occasional shoddy "special effect." But the real star of the film is Gertrude Sutton as Mrs. Kennedy -- with her bulging eyes, stringy hair, twisting fingers, and frantic prompting from the wings, you forget she's an actress in a low-budget comedy short and she genuinely becomes a frazzled schoolteacher desperate for her one big moment in the sun. It really is a superb performance.

The climax of the film is a good old-fashioned pie fight, one of the best of the sound era, but one done in a very deliberate Hal Roach style. A group of junior high boys who look like they're waiting around for the Dead End Kids to form start if off by flinging a pastry at Chubby, who responds with a priceless look of wounded dignity. Chubby's mom in the audience demands that something be done about the situation, and something is: she gets a pie herself. A chivalrous gentleman in the audeince stands up and declares "A lady has been struck! Down where I come from, we resent it!" And a pie for him as well. Before long the air is thick with pies, some of them flung in a dreamlike slow-motion effect ending in a satisfying splat. Mrs. Kennedy goes into a fit and storms to center stage -- and on a signal from her husband, the kids let her have it. Fade out.

You'll find plenty of funnier films in the short-subject canon of the 1930s, plenty with better pacing, better acting, and better direction. But you won't find many that create the illusion of a tattered, frowsy small-town reality better than this one.

 

[2jakes]

A Chump At Oxford.

Rare instance when Stan steps out of character as Lord Paddington
and refers to Ollie as “fatty”.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Churchill, the Churchill film from last year that's not Darkest Hour. The cast was good - Brian Cox as Churchill, Miranda Richardson as Clementine, John Slattery as Eisenhower, etc. - but it was pretty meh. I've seen better depictions.

And two recent films about guys who encounter doppelgangers of themselves for my film discussion group - Enemy with Jake Gyllenhaal and The Duplicate with Jesse Eisenberg. I didn't like either of them, but Enemy was definitely the more serious and interesting one. Not recommended unless you are a big fan of WTF flicks.

 

[Touchofevil]

Rear Window with a cup of coffee this morning. I never tire of this movie.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rear Window with a cup of coffee this morning. I never tire of this movie.

Grace Kelly is in that one, right?

Amazing how intense the movie is even after you've seen it (like some people) ten or more times at least. Also, great that so much story is built into what almost feels like a set from a theater production.

Great to see you posting again - you've been missed.