What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MikeKardec]

Now watching The Prisoner of Zenda on TCM (the Stewart Granger version). I love this movie.

As you probably know there are a thousand versions of this story, the sheer proliferation of them is mind blowing and probably an indication of some fundamental Jungian archetype. Edgar Rice Burroughs did TWO versions, The Rider and The Mad King (the latter being notable for being written about the onset of WWI, DURING the onset of WWI), there are also some fun movies like Dave and Moon over Parador. Robert Heinlein did a version called Double Star. From the same era as your favorite Zenda film there is The Magnificent Fraud. Back in prose, probably the most obscure is "Rupert the Resembler" by Bret Hart.

If you REALLY like this story you could probably read and watch different versions for a year or so! You also might lose you mind. Be careful.

 

[AmateisGal]

As you probably know there are a thousand versions of this story, the sheer proliferation of them is mind blowing and probably an indication of some fundamental Jungian archetype. Edgar Rice Burroughs did TWO versions, The Rider and The Mad King (the latter being notable for being written about the onset of WWI, DURING the onset of WWI), there are also some fun movies like Dave and Moon over Parador. Robert Heinlein did a version called Double Star. From the same era as your favorite Zenda film there is The Magnificent Fraud. Back in prose, probably the most obscure is "Rupert the Resembler" by Bret Hart.

If you REALLY like this story you could probably read and watch different versions for a year or so! You also might lose you mind. Be careful.

I had no idea!

 

[Doctor Strange]

See the list of adaptations and rip-offs here:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ThePrisonerOfZenda

 

[Zombie_61]

Hostiles starring Christian Bale and Wes Studi.
Hollywood doesn’t make many Westerns anymore, but when they do the love for the genre shows through and it’s done well.
This is a good story that offers several points of view of our country’s western expansion.
Beautiful scenery and excellent performances make this one worthy of a 2 hour viewing time.

Watched Scott Coopers 'Hostiles' the other night. Gritty Western set in 1898. Slow burner for the most part with occasional and abrupt outbursts of violence. Great performance from Christian Bale and Rosamunde Pike. Too little character exploration and development of the Native Americans. Probably because the film is already quite long as it is. Scenery and cinematography is beautiful. Despite its minor flaws I would absolutely recommend watching it, it's a refreshing alternative to most usual formula-ish and generic entertainment trash Hollywood throws at us.

I finally had an opportunity to watch Hostiles (2017) during the wee hours of this morning (insomnia). I can't disagree with the quoted reviews above--well acted and beautifully filmed--but felt the overall story was marred somewhat by being told from a politically-correct/revisionist modern-day perspective. If you like character-based movies that are told at a deliberate/leisurely pace with occasional scenes of non-gratuitous violence it's worth seeing, but those who prefer action packed "shoot 'em up" westerns would probably be disappointed.

 

[Formeruser012523]

See the list of adaptations and rip-offs here:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ThePrisonerOfZenda

Holy cats!

Whelp now I have to watch and/or read The Prisoner of Zenda. Have loved the movie Dave ever since I first saw it the year it came out, even though I've since noticed its similarities to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Does anyone pass out in Zenda too?

There's also allthetropes.org that would surely have quite the comprehensive list of Zenda related items, as well.

 

[MikeKardec]

I finally had an opportunity to watch Hostiles (2017) during the wee hours of this morning (insomnia). I can't disagree with the quoted reviews above--well acted and beautifully filmed--but felt the overall story was marred somewhat by being told from a politically-correct/revisionist modern-day perspective. If you like character-based movies that are told at a deliberate/leisurely pace with occasional scenes of non-gratuitous violence it's worth seeing, but those who prefer action packed "shoot 'em up" westerns would probably be disappointed.

I remember agreeing with you on the PC aspects at the time I saw it but can't remember any specific complaint.

Filmmakers, the sort of people who go out and hammer films together (this includes actors), LOVE any kind of film where they can actually go DO IT, as no effects, few stages, out in the elements like the old days. Because of this they can get past their political sensitivities, especially if they have some sort of story to tell themselves about how they are rewriting history for the good. However, the suits, the Creative Executives, HATE Westerns. They have to leave the office and go to lunch with one and other and fess up to what they are working on and, in their world (which is utterly divorced from getting out and making films) there is no upside to working on a Western. These are urban MBA types and they can be teased and pilloried for it. In Hollywood, this is a big bad deal. I worked on two Westerns and prepped a half dozen more. At the time (not so much any longer) TV audiences still loved them but the Executives would do damn near anything to get out of admitting it.

As I mentioned back in my post on Mile 22, the art of creating just the right scenes that allow the story to unfold in an unhurried manner yet gets the job done in under two hours is a dying ability. Sound killed a bit of the capacity for directors to think efficiently but now, with all silent directors dead, silent film no longer taught (I had to learn to make silent films in the 1980s), and open ended storytelling TV allowing endless amounts of time for writers to spin out a story (and those writers filtering back into the feature business) it's damn rare to see a movie that gets the job done quickly.

Typically, modern films also try to take on too much story. This too is a TV instigated issue ... and an Executives don't trust the Filmmaker issue. Not being Filmmakers, Executives are always paralyzed with fear that the audience may become disoriented or "not understand" the story. So they tend to demand lots of context. I remember a last minute panic on a film I wrote where in post production the Execs freaked out with worry that the audience needed to know everything about how the hero chose to go to the part of the world where the adventure takes place. Nothing had even happened yet! I said over and over that as soon as he was in jeopardy (about 2 minutes in!) no one would care what boring back story placed him there (this was covered by inference later on ... as in you could figure it out if it mattered to you). The actual plot wouldn't kick in for another ten minutes so there was no question about confusion. It wasn't going to be a problem.

Anyway, they kicked around the idiotic idea of adding voice over but finally gave up. End result? No problem. The Audience only cares about what happens next. An iron rule.

Anyway, older films (pre 1990s) tend to have simpler plots and demand the audience follow fewer complexities. Some of the simplest films were made in the late 1960s and early '70s. I always felt that Lost In Translation is a throwback to that time. Up until the 1950s there were occasional features that ran a lean 70 or so minutes. That's around 20 scenes; five or six to set up everything, ten to advance and develop the complications, three or four to resolve. Lean and mean! And don't get me started on 22 to 24 minute anthology episodes like Alfred Hitchcock Presents!

 

[Doctor Strange]

Just to finish up re The Prisoner of Zenda...

(I had severe problems entering my post yesterday: using MS Edge is frequently a disaster since the latest forum upgrade, and I wrote and rewrote that post a half-dozen times. Every time the ads were redrawn, I was popped back two screens and lost everything I'd typed in the edit field! So I finally limited myself to just the TV Tropes link.)

I agree with the TV Tropes page that the 1937 version is definitely the one to see. The 1952 version is okay... but it's a shot-for-shot remake of the 1937 version in color, and I'll take Ronald Colman over Stewart Granger any time. The 1922 silent is also pretty good... within the limitations of a silent film, like not hearing Ronald Colman's voice!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some of the finest films of the 1930s didn't even top 70 minutes -- go watch some of those Warner Bros. social dramas of the early 1930s. Not a shot is wasted, there's not a word of superfluous dialogue, and you don't feel like you're missing a thing. Bang bang bang. The scripts were written with a machine gun.

My biggest complaint with modern movies, especially "serious" modern movies, is that they've forgotten how to be concise, and I think audiences, at least the audiences I get here, would agree. The most common complaint I get from people as they exit the theatre after some bloated 130 minute vanity project is "They could have cut half an hour out of that and nobody would have noticed a thing."

 

[MikeKardec]

The more I think about this "concise movie storytelling" issue the more I think it's going to get worse.

Writing silent movies and watching silent movies helped train filmmakers to get things done simply. I don't know if silents even show up in film making curriculum any longer or anywhere outside of History and the dreaded "studies" classes. Certainly no one is studying with or working with silent era filmmakers any more.

I never thought I'd say this but we are paying for the death of the TV Movie of the Week. MOWs were the bargain basement of narrative film making but you had to do it in well, 94 minutes in the 1970s and ultimately 89 by 2000. The few that still exist, like on Lifetime, might be shorter but I doubt it. On top of the overall limit there were 6, 7 or 8 Acts caused by commercial breaks, so you couldn't bang on about any one thing for too long without making time for Palmolive or Charmin. The stories had to move.

TV series work was even more demanding in those days because everything was Episodic rather than Serialized. An Episodic show (there are still a few) had the same characters week to week but every episode was a different plot. Even with a highly Episodic show these days I suspect that there are continuing, Serialized, "B" plot elements. You had around 40, 42, 44 minutes and four acts. To be fair I mostly worked in MOW/Cable Films, not series.

When I was doing a lot of 60 minute Audio Dramas, all from short stories, the first thing we would do would be to strip the short story plot down to the bare minimum. Basically, remove all the complexity. New, different sorts of complexity, generally stemming from the subtleties of character interaction, would eventually bulk out the scenes but getting the plot down to a minimum of storytelling moves was a requirement. You had 15 to 20 scenes, no more.

The engine of efficiency in storytelling, you can do this in Film, Audio, Theater, or Prose, is what Filmmakers call Montage (like in the original Eisenstein interpretation, not just a sequence of shots showing the passing of time) where the content of Shot or Scene A, when contrasted with the content of Short or Scene B allows the audience to realize C ... a thing not STATED in the story but present and important nonetheless.

Another wonderful talent is when the writer is able to tell one level of story in pictures and action and another in dialog. I always admire it when the dialog never gets too close to the subject of the action. With the exception of the moment when people are given or take on a task people really don't talk too much about what it is they are doing except for minor aspects. If, instead of just banter, the dialog and interpersonal interactions can tell a separate or thematically aligned level of story you can "stack up" a lot of information.

These last two tricks are still done but not so much for efficiency's sake. These days they appear just because they are examples of good writing rather than for necessary compactness.

 

[LizzieMaine]

If I was running a film school I'd assign every student to make a two-reel silent short -- 16 to 18 minutes, no more, no less, shot on location, from an improvised scenario jotted down on the back of an envelope. Anybody can make a picture with a bottomless budget and all the trinkets of modern technique, but it takes real creativity to turn the lack of those things into an asset.

Radio also makes for a worthwhile study, especially how serials were developed -- when you see how much story and characterization Correll and Gosden got into just four pages a night on "Amos 'n' Andy" -- 10 minutes of airtime sans commercials, usually one scene, maybe two at most, and rarely more than three characters at a time -- you begin to see how minimalist technique is a boon to good storytelling rather than an impediment to it. Or TV sketch work -- take a good look sometime at the short "Honeymooners" sketches from the Gleason variety show of the early 1950s, and you'll be astounded at, not just how funny they were but how deep the characterizations were and how much emotional punch they could carry with just four people in front of a canvas and cardboard set.

Like so many other aspects of modern-day life, creative storytelling has been warped by overabundance -- too much money, too much indulgence, too much technique. Just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you *should.*

I think film schools themselves, as institutions, have a lot to do with the development of that mindset. We have one in our area, and I deal with its students on a regular basis, both in arranging for location shooting and from time to time even appearing in their films, and when I see the finished product it's always slick, full of "technique," and completely soulless. The "student filmmakers" are like dancers who've learned their steps by following footprints on an Arthur Murray chart -- they know the moves, but they don't feel the melody.

And that coldblooded film-school soullessness permeates a lot of what's going on in filmmaking today. I've never watched a Terrence Malick film, for example, that ever made me feel anything except deep and profound irritation that I'll never get that 180 minutes back.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Mike, I think all this information about storytelling is very interesting. I am one of those film goers who, more often than not, is almost indifferent to stories and plots. For me, a movie story is usually just an excuse for the filmakers to create something striking with mood and visuals.

In other words it's how a film is made rather than what it is about that interests me.

The films that I enjoy most have stories that are often hard to discern and/or full of piss and wind, like Blade Runner or Taxi Driver, Jaws, Psycho, Once Upon a Time in the West, Rumblefish, Angel Heart, Raiders or The Shining. The stories or plots are pretty ludicrous or banal and just about everything that is interesting is in the execution of the ideas. I wonder if that makes me a formalist...

 

[MikeKardec]

I've never watched a Terrence Malick film, for example, that ever made me feel anything except deep and profound irritation that I'll never get that 180 minutes back.

Oh God! That got me laughing! When I was teaching writing I found that many of my students were really afraid to "go there" do the stuff that made them feel and would make an audience feel. They were in love with high minded concepts and throwing around a lot of jargon that they had learned in other classes. Full of theory and sh -- stuff that kept them from engaging. I think it was immaturity mostly. It's probably too early in life to expect a turmoil filled adolescent to dig down and play with their own longing and hypocrisy and doubt. In the film classes they not only had a bunch of labels and post modern BS to barricade themselves from real emotion, they had technique much of it learned from the (legitimate) masters of technique. You are so right in what you say. The big question is "why?" Why the technique if not in service of telling the guts of the story. They hadn't gotten to that place yet.

The films that I enjoy most have stories that are often hard to discern and/or full of piss and wind, like Blade Runner or Taxi Driver, Jaws, Psycho, Once Upon a Time in the West, Rumblefish, Angel Heart, Raiders or The Shining. The stories or plots are pretty ludicrous or banal and just about everything that is interesting is in the execution of the ideas. I wonder if that makes me a formalist...

I'd say that some of those are just films with good simple stories that make room for the film to then spend time on other things like creating a "world" that feels deep and complete. The simpler you make the plot the more complete an emotional, textural, visual, world you can create. There are stories there that don't draw me in, true. However, all are really "deep" and evocative realities, visions, of the fictional world. Evocative in that they make you think and imagine beyond the edges of the film itself. This is not an effect that say, a Marvel film, can provide.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Nicely put. I often find myself enjoying films and not knowing or caring what they are about. At my age you're seen all the stories available anyway.

 

[Worf]

"Command Decision" - One of the best "post war" war films. At lot less jingoistic and more realistic. Based on a stage play the film shows little to no footage of battle against the Luftwaffe in the air... Instead it focuses on the battle to keep daylight bombing alive in face of political meddling, inter-service rivalries and other behind the lines machinations. It is also a great study of the burden of command. The pain and anguish of ordering men to die out of military necessity. Clark Gable gives it his all in this one and is surrounded by a magnificent cast. Not "12 O'clock High" but skin close to it.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

"Command Decision" - One of the best "post war" war films. At lot less jingoistic and more realistic. Based on a stage play the film shows little to no footage of battle against the Luftwaffe in the air... Instead it focuses on the battle to keep daylight bombing alive in face of political meddling, inter-service rivalries and other behind the lines machinations. It is also a great study of the burden of command. The pain and anguish of ordering men to die out of military necessity. Clark Gable gives it his all in this one and is surrounded by a magnificent cast. Not "12 O'clock High" but skin close to it.

Worf

Recorded it from TCM and, after your review, am looking forward to seeing it even more. Somehow, I've never seen it all these years.

 

[Worf]

Quick question... Are there two different versions of "All Quiet on the Western Front"? I'm talking the original 1930's version. I recall seeing one that was completely done in sound with all the dialogue in sound and another version that still is silent save for sound effects of bombs and such. Am I nuts or is there a real answer to this? The reason I'm asking is that TCM is showing the 1930 version all 2.5 hours of it and I want the full sound version not the other. Any help?

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Quick question... Are there two different versions of "All Quiet on the Western Front"? I'm talking the original 1930's version. I recall seeing one that was completely done in sound with all the dialogue in sound and another version that still is silent save for sound effects of bombs and such. Am I nuts or is there a real answer to this? The reason I'm asking is that TCM is showing the 1930 version all 2.5 hours of it and I want the full sound version not the other. Any help?

Worf

"...Except that All Quiet on the Western Front was shot with two cameras, one for a sound film, and the other for a film that has music and sound effects, but no dialogue. That is the version the Silent Film Festival is showing—played instead with live music. Isn’t this a film about quiet? There are other benefits. The silent version is a little longer. It has intertitles, like most silent films. But because the characters are without voices, it is easier to feel they are German, or supposed outcasts to our sympathy. Synchronized dialogue was a concession to naturalism, even though it could rise to glory in our best talking comedies (The Lady Eve, His Girl Friday). Turn off the sound for those pictures and the films are lost. They have many beautiful cinematic moments, but they are a type of radio."

Full article here:
http://silentfilm.org/archive/all-quiet-on-the-western-front

 

[LizzieMaine]

The silent version really is a very different experience. The talkie version isn't exactly a gabfest, but the silent is even more haunting. Watch it as a double feature with "The Big Parade" and you'll have the ultimate WWI experience -- except that "Parade" has a Hollywood ending, while "Front," in either version might be the most uncompromising war film ever made.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Richest Girl in the World" 1934 with Mariam Hopkins, Joel McCrea and Fay Wray

• Solid, fast (76 minutes - no nonsense*) pre-code where the richest girl in the world (think Barbara-Hutton like) swaps roles with her secretary to find a man that wants to marry her not for her money

• Depression-Era films loved this theme - and many variations of it - as (I'll argue once again), it appears, impoverished Americans enjoyed escaping their problems by seeing the "problems" of the super rich on screen

• Fay Wray looks great as a brunette (despite being iconically burned into my brain as King Kong's blonde) and steals several scenes from a surprisingly off-her-game Hopkins

• McCrea, as the man being tested for integrity, suffers from a woodeness it took years for his acting skills to overcome - that said, if Superman had been created five or ten years earlier than he was, all 1934's McCrea needed was a cape and a pair of tights to play the role as he naturally had the V-shaped body, square jaw, earnest glare and, even, the lock of hair swishing over his forehead

• Not the best and not the worst pre-code, just a good, bit-over-an-hour-long piece of entertainment

*Great example of Lizzie's post #25786 above of a director and writers not wasting time - not creating "art -" just firing a story out of a gatling gun to move a plot along and keep the audience entertained (something RKO did, at times, just as well as Warner Brothers did).

 

[Worf]

The silent version really is a very different experience. The talkie version isn't exactly a gabfest, but the silent is even more haunting. Watch it as a double feature with "The Big Parade" and you'll have the ultimate WWI experience -- except that "Parade" has a Hollywood ending, while "Front," in either version might be the most uncompromising war film ever made.

I've seen both versions... I like em both... but hearing Sergeant Cat in all his gruff glory is such a treat.

Worf