What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

How 'bout you?

Oil; S&P index; started long ago spreading Treasuries/Eurodollars. Simpler time long ago.
Yesterday's Texas Light coffee crash through the floor...knew this was going to happen....

 

[Trenchfriend]

Das Boot, cinema cut.

 

[belfastboy]

The new Netflix...."Sergio". Not a bad movie but my praise is tempered as I found the subject a most dislikable character.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The big difference in dramaturgy between Das Boot cinema cut and TV cut is, that the cinema cut is "Captain-centered", while TV cut isn't.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Next Voice Your Hear from 1950 with James Whitmore and Nancy Reagan

• I've been watching old movies since the I was a kid in the '70s and, still, some pop up, like this one, that I never heard of, but are darn good with, in this case, a foreshadowing of The Twilight Zone

• A basic American post-war family living in a basic American post-war suburb - husband, a factory worker (Whitmore), wife, a homemaker (Reagan), son, a newspaper delivery boy who also plays little league, baby on the way and an annoying aunt (but, also, kinda okay) - go about their day grumbling about all the stuff we all grumble about - the cost of this, that and the other thing, the car won't start, the fridge door is broken, doing homework, washing the dishes, having "the same thing for dinner," you know, life - until a radio program is seemingly interrupted by a voice

• It is another "Orson Welles" stunt or "some sort of promotion" is the first thought, but when it turns out that anyone who was listening to any station, on any radio, in any country and in any language also heard the exact same message, a (literal) come-to-Jesus (or Allah or...) moment is in the making

• The messages - they come one each night for six days - are basically a call to return to faith, goodness, neighborly love - the basic values of most religions

• Everybody's gyroscope is thrown off: husband (Whitmore) kinda melts down a bit at the idea of God speaking to mankind over the radio and gets drunk with his wanton friend, the son (kinda) runs away from home, the cranky aunt gets more fire and brimstone initially and the mother (the only adult in the room) calmly and reflectively takes it all in

• It's a wonderful premise, reasonably well-acted but - like many The Twilight Zone episodes - leaves the ending a bit open, a bit unsatisfying. But still, it is an, overall, engaging and different effort than so many wash-rinse-repeat movie plots

• And, for this agnostic, it was nice to see a confidently pro-religious movie. Today, mainstream Hollywood would never make this movie as its default setting runs from being snarky to outright hostile toward religion

• Great - really great - time travel to 1950s America as the homes, cars, appliances, airplane factory, clothes (workman clothes, not suits and ties) and architecture are wonderful

N.B., I think my friend Worf would find this one interesting.

 

[Worf]

^^ Strange almost Twilight Zone sort of flick as you rightly point out. I've seen it a couple of times over the years. I didn't like the ending much either but the premise was interesting and kind of forward looking for it's time. Whitmore gives one of his best performance as Joe Suburban "Everyman". Probably wouldn't have been made after the start of the Korean war as it's a bit "Kumbyah" for the McCarthy era. Still I'd recommend it. And you're right I DID find it interesting. LOL! Hope you and everybody's doing well and fine...

Worf

 

[Trenchfriend]

Trying to remember, but heading for 40...

 

[Fading Fast]

The Citadel from 1938 with Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell and Rex Harrison (in a small role)

A young, fresh-out-of-medical-school idealistic doctor (Donat) begins practicing medicine in an English mining town (top pic) where the union and the company have created an in-house medical system that is not only inadequate for the workers' needs, but is, basically, corrupted by everyone involved.

Union management and the company created a construct that allows for favored union members to featherbed (get excused from work with pay for a non-existent or minor medical condition), while the company gets the doctors to look the other way regarding safety issues like air or water quality. The union management and company have sold out the workers and, effectively, the doctors either go along or they don't get paid.

After a few years of trying to do the right thing in this miasma of corruption and only getting denounced for his good efforts (Donat studied the air and water and found issues / wouldn't sign bogus "not able to work" slips), idealistic Donat, now married to equally idealistic mining-company school teacher (Russell), quits and moves to London where he buys a small practice.

Once again, honesty and putting your patients first doesn't pay, especially in the lower-income neighborhood Donat practices in. By chance, in an emergency, he treats a wealthy society woman and discovers an entirely different world of medicine.

Here, a former medical school friend (Harrison) introduces Donat to the world of medicine for the wealthy and neurotic where padded bills, unnecessary consultations and questionable treatments (ineffective, harmless, but expensive) support a luxurious lifestyle of fancy clothes, cars, meals and homes for the physicians willing to play in this softly corrupt, elite sandbox.

After a few misgivings, Donat quickly adapts, thoroughly enjoying his new wealth and status (bottom pic). But wife Russell won't kid herself as she knows that what he's doing is morally wrong and a waste of his talents. Since we're now about ninety percent in, the rest of the movie happens fast and furiously.

An old doctor friend tries to recruit Donat to his new healthcare clinic for the poor (sounded like a 1990s HMO), which Donat initially rejects - after all, Donat's eyeing a fancy new car, umm, his current work is important too - but then an all-to-obvious set of events occur exposing the corruption of his present world and the need for the clinic that results in a come-to-Jesus moment for Donat.

To be sure, this is not new ground as, even by 1938, several movies had already addressed the "practice medicine for profit or virtue" question and many more would do so later. Even so, and despite The Citadel being a bit clunky, it's worth watching as Donat and Russell are enjoyable and skilled actors and the story does have several powerful moments.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

About a week ago, it was Double Harness (1933) with Ann Harding and William Powell (billed in that order), from the TCM app. A post on IMDB calls it a gem of social satire, while I view it as a film of a stage play that did not quite replace stage delivery with film acting. Several monologues seem written for and delivered for an audience just beyond the footlights. The plot is rich folks acting archly and sophisticated about marriage. Powell is Powell, always smooth, making acting seem effortless.

Then, last night, Godzilla (1954), the original Japanese version. Was it Worf who has posted already about this? It's the one without Raymond Burr or the English-language narration. I ate it up, but the Missus was not impressed, so we then watched-

Sisters in War (2010) a tv movie about the friendship between an Australian Army nurse and a Catholic nun in New Guinea at the outbreak of WW2. Both the Catholic mission station and the Army group are stranded by the Japanese attack, and we see their lives under occupation. Well done.

 

[Fading Fast]

About a week ago, it was Double Harness (1933) with Ann Harding and William Powell (billed in that order), from the TCM app. A post on IMDB calls it a gem of social satire, while I view it as a film of a stage play that did not quite replace stage delivery with film acting. Several monologues seem written for and delivered for an audience just beyond the footlights. The plot is rich folks acting archly and sophisticated about marriage. Powell is Powell, always smooth, making acting seem effortless.....

Haven't seen it in awhile, but I remember really liking the way Ann Harding tries to turn their fake marriage into a real one - it felt sincere on her part. A really good pre-code.

 

[belfastboy]

Not sure it qualifies as a movie but.....watched Michael Moore's latest doc..."Planet of the Humans". It was okay his usual amount of gotcha journalism and he is justly criticized for his casual application of the facts. But it is fun to watch his former 'greeny' supporters go apoplectic in their response as they can't believe that one of them has turned. I am thinking though that rather than a sincere change of perspective from him he just feared becoming irrelevant as he hasn't really been in the news lately. So he figured this was his best shot at gaining headlines again. The worst thing for a narcissist is to be ignored.

 

[steve u]

Just finished watching The Burmese Harp (1956) Criterion Collection
Outstanding movie.....but sad.

 

[Trenchfriend]

"La grande illusion" (1937).

Still fantastic and so ahead of its time.

 

[Worf]

Just finished watching The Burmese Harp (1956) Criterion Collection
Outstanding movie.....but sad.

Great movie. I loved it. Sad... it's true but well done post war Japanese film.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from 2019 with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and an incredible array of stars ranging from newcomers to long-in-the-tooth veterans.

I flat-out enjoyed it, as I do most Tarantino movies, as his brand of craziness works for me.

Less a plot-driven than a moment-in-time movie, it's the story, at least from one angle, of how a now-struggling, but once-successful TV actor (DiCaprio) and his friend, stuntman double and factotum (Pitt) try to navigate the insanity of 1969 Hollywood, its drug scene and, not unrelatedly, its counterculture. Heavily weaving in and taking great liberties with "The Manson Family" and Sharon Tate murder stories allows Tarantino to launch into a trip through America's late-60s' zeitgeist closet.

And, as Tarantino does, he amps it all up, changes what he wants, fires dialogue out of a machine gun, indulges in gratuitous violence, shows you intimate details that highlight the difference between our outward lives and what really goes on all the while spinning you through a world of madness and insanity that only works because our world is mad and insane.

We see some of that madness and insanity when Pitt - picking up a young female hippie hitchhiker - takes a trip out to The Manson Family ranch owned by an old friend of Pitt's, where, in one defining scene he, effectively, confronts this sadistic and crazy sleeve of the hippie culture by showing that a combination of human decency (his concern for his old friend) and a greater physical prowess (these are not peacenik hippies) easily cowed the confident-in-numbers cult. Even though you might have to turn away once or twice seeing Pitt beat-up the hippie who flattened his car's tire until said hippie agrees to change it, this is Tarantino rough justice at its best.

There's simply too much to capture in this two-plus hour phantasmagoria, but another highlight is a drunk-and-dispirited DiCaprio having an on-set private conversation with an eight-year-old acting prodigy in which he thoughtfully discusses her method for "getting into character" and that conversation inspires DiCaprio to, later, deliver a stunning performance -- a classic Tarantino "out of the mouths of babes" moment.

Possibly the most touching scene was the joy and innocence of an early-in-her-career Sharon Tate going to a movie theater to see one of her own pictures. The glee she feels - it ripples through her - at both seeing herself on screen and the audience enjoying her performance is infectious. You are happy for her, but sad knowing her fate; it's a beautiful and touching moment from Tarantino.

But mainly you get scenes like Pitt throwing an arrogant and self-absorbed Bruce Lee (no idea if he was those thing) into a Lincoln simply to shut him up. Lee was so obnoxious that I didn't want the scene to end. Or you get a drunk, in-his-bathrobe, holding-a-pitcher-of-frozen-margaritas DiCaprio walking out of his house to rebuke the Manson hippies because they drove onto his neighborhood association's "private road."

And, as always, Tarantino packs a lot of craziness into this scene as the Manson-DiCaprio confrontation highlights a clash of cultures: the '60s-rebellion-against-the-man culture versus traditional American values represented - quirkily - by a fading TV cowboy. Also, this tense but comic scene has Tarantino's signature weaving in of humor amidst threatened violence as one of the hippies fingers the trigger of a hidden gun while DiCaprio blithely continues his tirade taking, almost without thinking, periodical gulps from his pitcher of margaritas, clearly oblivious to the threat.

Of course, this being Tarantino, you also get plenty of exaggerated violence highlighted by a blowtorch that is first introduced to us (gun, hung, wall, Chekhov) when, DiCaprio, learning to work it for a role, asks, in classic clueless-actor mode, if it could be used without throwing off so much heat. This nasty piece of equipment appears much later to (minor spoiler alert) immolate one of the hippies in a scene that also includes Pitt smashing a female intruder's head into a stone fireplace mantle so many times you have to look away: gratuitous violence is just part of the Tarantino "touch."

Along with so much else, a few more key things to watch out for / to enjoy are the DiCaprio-Pitt friendship - best employer-personal assistant relationship since Eastwood and Freeman in Million Dollar Baby - DiCaprio's career detour (desperation move) into Spaghetti Westerns, the of-the-'60s Italian bride he brings back to LA with him who proceeds to proves that screaming - when mayhem and murder take place in your home as will happen in Tarantino's world - is a universal language and the Playboy Mansion party where handsome Steve McQueen laments losing Sharon Tate to troll-like Roman Polanski (who continues to get a pass on his MeToo behavior).

Lastly, this film offers incredible time travel to late '60s Hollywood. The clothes, cars, architecture, hairstyles and vibe all look and feel legitimate, including Sharon Tate's awesome white go-go boots, barefoot hippies hitching rides with anyone who'll stop and restaurants where dishes are enflamed for whatever reason that era liked to see its food on fire. As are all Tarantino films, it's a crazy romp through some romanticized and tortured version of some period in history, in this case, the romanticized and tortured Hollywood of 1969. Oh, and the soundtrack is rock music awesomeness.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Watched it recently. Eh. It was clever and well done... for what it is. I liked it more than most Tarantino films.

His dialog is great. His direction of both actors and scenes is great. His dedication to outstanding production values is great. But his entire output perversely glorifies what was cheap schlock in the first place. I dream that someday he'll come up with something worthy of his talent that doesn't net out to an homage to old movies/actors/genres/eras.

(The Coen Bros. often fall into this trap too, but they occasionally come up with something stunningly original. So I put up with weak films like Hail, Caesar! and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs waiting for the next Inside Llewyn Davis or A Serious Man.)

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

House of Bamboo (1955) dir. Sam Fuller, w/ Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Shirley Yamaguchi, Cameron Mitchell. First US film produced entirely on location in Japan. The Missus, in her gracious manner, thought I'd like an old movie instead of Green Acres or Cheers, so she selected this one. Never having seen it, she enjoyed Fuller's noir-in-color-heist-suspense story.

Former matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa as a Tokyo Metro Police captain had his lines dubbed by Richard Loo back here in Hollywood. Look for Bones McCoy as a member of the ex-GI crime gang.

 

[Trenchfriend]

 

[belfastboy]

View attachment 231331
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from 2019 with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and an incredible array of stars ranging from newcomers to long-in-the-tooth veterans.

I flat-out enjoyed it, as I do most Tarantino movies, as his brand of craziness works for me.

Less a plot-driven than a moment-in-time movie, it's the story, at least from one angle, of how a now-struggling, but once-successful TV actor (DiCaprio) and his friend, stuntman double and factotum (Pitt) try to navigate the insanity of 1969 Hollywood, its drug scene and, not unrelatedly, its counterculture. Heavily weaving in and taking great liberties with "The Manson Family" and Sharon Tate murder stories allows Tarantino to launch into a trip through America's late-60s' zeitgeist closet.

And, as Tarantino does, he amps it all up, changes what he wants, fires dialogue out of a machine gun, indulges in gratuitous violence, shows you intimate details that highlight the difference between our outward lives and what really goes on all the while spinning you through a world of madness and insanity that only works because our world is mad and insane.

We see some of that madness and insanity when Pitt - picking up a young female hippie hitchhiker - takes a trip out to The Manson Family ranch owned by an old friend of Pitt's, where, in one defining scene he, effectively, confronts this sadistic and crazy sleeve of the hippie culture by showing that a combination of human decency (his concern for his old friend) and a greater physical prowess (these are not peacenik hippies) easily cowed the confident-in-numbers cult. Even though you might have to turn away once or twice seeing Pitt beat-up the hippie who flattened his car's tire until said hippie agrees to change it, this is Tarantino rough justice at its best.

There's simply too much to capture in this two-plus hour phantasmagoria, but another highlight is a drunk-and-dispirited DiCaprio having an on-set private conversation with an eight-year-old acting prodigy in which he thoughtfully discusses her method for "getting into character" and that conversation inspires DiCaprio to, later, deliver a stunning performance -- a classic Tarantino "out of the mouths of babes" moment.

Possibly the most touching scene was the joy and innocence of an early-in-her-career Sharon Tate going to a movie theater to see one of her own pictures. The glee she feels - it ripples through her - at both seeing herself on screen and the audience enjoying her performance is infectious. You are happy for her, but sad knowing her fate; it's a beautiful and touching moment from Tarantino.

But mainly you get scenes like Pitt throwing an arrogant and self-absorbed Bruce Lee (no idea if he was those thing) into a Lincoln simply to shut him up. Lee was so obnoxious that I didn't want the scene to end. Or you get a drunk, in-his-bathrobe, holding-a-pitcher-of-frozen-margaritas DiCaprio walking out of his house to rebuke the Manson hippies because they drove onto his neighborhood association's "private road."

And, as always, Tarantino packs a lot of craziness into this scene as the Manson-DiCaprio confrontation highlights a clash of cultures: the '60s-rebellion-against-the-man culture versus traditional American values represented - quirkily - by a fading TV cowboy. Also, this tense but comic scene has Tarantino's signature weaving in of humor amidst threatened violence as one of the hippies fingers the trigger of a hidden gun while DiCaprio blithely continues his tirade taking, almost without thinking, periodical gulps from his pitcher of margaritas, clearly oblivious to the threat.

Of course, this being Tarantino, you also get plenty of exaggerated violence highlighted by a blowtorch that is first introduced to us (gun, hung, wall, Chekhov) when, DiCaprio, learning to work it for a role, asks, in classic clueless-actor mode, if it could be used without throwing off so much heat. This nasty piece of equipment appears much later to (minor spoiler alert) immolate one of the hippies in a scene that also includes Pitt smashing a female intruder's head into a stone fireplace mantle so many times you have to look away: gratuitous violence is just part of the Tarantino "touch."

Along with so much else, a few more key things to watch out for / to enjoy are the DiCaprio-Pitt friendship - best employer-personal assistant relationship since Eastwood and Freeman in Million Dollar Baby - DiCaprio's career detour (desperation move) into Spaghetti Westerns, the of-the-'60s Italian bride he brings back to LA with him who proceeds to proves that screaming - when mayhem and murder take place in your home as will happen in Tarantino's world - is a universal language and the Playboy Mansion party where handsome Steve McQueen laments losing Sharon Tate to troll-like Roman Polanski (who continues to get a pass on his MeToo behavior).

Lastly, this film offers incredible time travel to late '60s Hollywood. The clothes, cars, architecture, hairstyles and vibe all look and feel legitimate, including Sharon Tate's awesome white go-go boots, barefoot hippies hitching rides with anyone who'll stop and restaurants where dishes are enflamed for whatever reason that era liked to see its food on fire. As are all Tarantino films, it's a crazy romp through some romanticized and tortured version of some period in history, in this case, the romanticized and tortured Hollywood of 1969. Oh, and the soundtrack is rock music awesomeness.

View attachment 231332

Thank you for this. This movie is on offer on the $1 movie of the week....for that kind of money plus your + review I will risk the 2 hours of my life.

 

[Fading Fast]

Thank you for this. This movie is on offer on the $1 movie of the week....for that kind of money plus your + review I will risk the 2 hours of my life.

Let us know what you think afterwards; hope you feel I didn't steer you wrong. If you haven't pulled the trigger yet - my last thought would be this: if you like Tarantino movies in general, I think you'll like this one; if you don't like Tarantino movies in general, I doubt you'll like this one either.