What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[belfastboy]

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The Gentlemen from 2019 with Mathew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnan, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding and Michelle Dockery

Sometimes the most-important question about a movie is did you enjoy it? For The Gentlemen, my answer is an emphatic "yes."

Director Guy Richie has a somewhat-lighter, somewhat-more-stylish view of the world than Quentin Tarantino, but they both live in the same zip code of Crazytown.

Richie's world is one of insanely dapper and chess-master-smart gangsters, drug dealers and thugs who completely understand how their criminal world works and co-exists with the regular world of, comparatively, more law and order. They don't view themselves so much as criminals, but as men and women who've chosen an alternative path.

Here, the plot - surprisingly less confusing to follow than most Richie movies - is about a current London drug kingpin (Mathew McConaughey) trying to "get out" by selling his business to another kingpin (Jeremy Strong), which sets off a crazy serious of machinations including violent raids attempting to drive the price of McConaughey business down, shifting criminal alliances, generational mob coups, blackmail and extensive murder and mayhem. It's fun, over the top and ridiculously engaging. You know it's all beyond the pale and you don't care.

And that's in part because Richie knows what he wants and how to get it. The sequences are seamless when that's what he needs or effectively jarring when that's his intent. He also knows how to make good actors great and great actors greater. Here, Mathew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnan, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell and Henry Golding put in the best or nearly the best performances of their careers.

Michelle Dockery as McConaughey's wife, too, would have given a career performance, but her part was too small. However in her one main scene - outwitting and, eventually, out shooting her husband's rival drug kingpin and his thugs - she gives you a hint of what Mary from Downton Abbey would have been like had she grown up on the streets and not in a manor house.

Guy Richie, similar to Tarantino, creates a captivatingly fictitious world of super-intelligent, super-violent, super-Machiavellian and super-well-dressed criminals. To be sure, while that world is no longer new to us - the Godfather movies introduced it and Tarantino reinvented it a few decades later - Richie knows how to amp up the roller-coaster ride while also, somehow, lightening its tone just enough so that you're laughing as the insanity unfolds. And the best part, because the dialogue is so smart and rapid fire, the movie will still be enjoyable - maybe even more so - the second and third time you see it.

Oh, and I don't remember Dockery ever being that skinny....maybe the dresses in D Abbey added pounds to her frame

 

[Fading Fast]

Oh, and I don't remember Dockery ever being that skinny....maybe the dresses in D Abbey added pounds to her frame

I think you're spot on re "Downton Abbey" as, in the few other things I've seen her in away from DA, she has always looked that thin.

 

[MisterCairo]

I think you're spot on re "Downton Abbey" as, in the few other things I've seen her in away from DA, she has always looked that thin.

Best she looks to my eyes - Godless on Netflix.

 

[belfastboy]

Best she looks to my eyes - Godless on Netflix.

Yes, you cannot top a good lookin' women in a western hat!

 

[Touchofevil]

A one armed Spencer Tracey kicking the ever lovin' crap out of Borgnine is one for the ages. I love the look of surprise on any Bully's face when he/she realizes they've picked the wrong pigeon to pluck. Gold.....

Worf

That is one of my favorite scenes in the movie and I am a fan of Borgnine.

 

[Touchofevil]

In the background, Bad Day at Black Rock and a bit of the Maltese Falcon.

 

[Zombie_61]

^ I got that beat. We started earlier with Murder, My Sweet (1944) because I'd never seen it, then stuck with TCM and watched Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Rio Bravo (1959), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and High Sierra (1941).

 

[Fading Fast]

Best she looks to my eyes - Godless on Netflix.

Haven't seen it, but will put it on the list. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ I got that beat. We started earlier with Murder, My Sweet (1944) because I'd never seen it, then stuck with TCM and watched Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Rio Bravo (1959), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and High Sierra (1941).

That is a darn fine day of movie watching. Kudos.

 

[MisterCairo]

Haven't seen it, but will put it on the list. Thanks for the tip.

It is a limited series, one we found to be so good we were ticked it does not go on! And the creepiest role of Jeff Daniels' career...

 

[Fading Fast]

Honeymoon for Three from 1941 starring Ann Sheridan, George Brent, Charles Ruggles and Osa Massen

Let's get the unimportant stuff out of the way. The plot is weak. A novelist (Brent) engaged to his secretary (Sheridan) meets an old girlfriend (Massen) on a book tour and has an all but harmless flirtation - no sex, no deep connection.

Sheridan, the secretary/fiance, pretty much doesn't care as she doesn't believe much is going on, but the old-flame's husband (Ruggles) wants to unload his annoying wife on Brent, so he tries to sue for divorce. Throw in a few lawyers looking to profit from the affair and potential divorce and, that's it. That's the plot and it descends, from time to time, into screwballness. But...

Tick, tick, tick, BOOM!

I've always liked Ann Sheridan in a blasé way, but this is the movie where Ann Sheridan went BOOM! for me. And it wasn't her Oomph Girl-ness (not that there's anything wrong with her Oomph), but her humor, lilted cynicism and sarcastic wit is what won me over here.

Right out of the gate, she's firing off one liners as when she taps on Brent's train compartment door early in the morning.

Sheridan: "Got anything on?"
Brent: "Yeh."
Sheridan: "I never do get a break, do I?"

How Sheridan's asking for a morning "quicky," in the movie's opening line, made it by the censors in 1940 is a separate issue, but in doing so, she announces that this is her movie.

And it is. Basically, she's surrounded by idiots, knows she's surrounded by idiots and lets us in on the joke, but she does love one of the idiots, Brent, c'est la vie. So she struts through the movie firing off one-liners, giving dead stares, rolling her eyes and delivering deprecating looks to Brent and everyone else who's an idiot, which is, almost, everyone else.

But it's not mean spirited; she's having fun, knows that most of the idiocy around her is harmless and, since she's in love with Brent, she protects him as much as she elbows him. He's lucky to have her. Pro tip: Marry someone smart.

Spendthrift and broke, Brent is a big tipper which causes pragmatic Sheridan, every time he over tips, to lower her head, show a slight smirk and make a small "give me" wave of her hand to retrieve his excessive tips from bellboys, waiters, etc., which she takes back and replaces with an appropriate tip. By the end, the bellhops are so familiar with this game, that after Brent tips them, they immediately and unprovoked make the "exchange" with Sheridan behind Brent's back.

The other fun in this movie is Brent's old-flame's husband, Charles Ruggles, who wants to peddle his wife off on Brent. He has a bit of a brain and he also has an agenda - to get rid of said wife - so he's working hard to advance his goal while Sheridan has the luxury of sitting back and watching everyone else make fools of themselves.

When these two meet up, it's movie-relationship fun as Ruggles' little machinations are uncovered and smirked at by Sheridan. And when he takes her for drinks and dinner and then tries to split the check with her, you know she's more amused than annoyed as she calls him on every gambit he throws at her. He's smart enough (smarter than everyone else but her) to know when he's outmatched, so he just picks himself up from each Sheridan roundhouse as his only goal is to get rid of his wife (as any man married to his wife would).

Since it's a Code-era movie, there's too much avoiding sex and screwball stuff going on, but this one is all about Sheridan and she's up to the challenge. It's hard to recommend a silly movie with an addled plot, but if you enjoy seeing a smart - and darn good looking - woman tweak everyone else in a movie with wit, spirit and eye rolls, it's well worth the seventy-five-minute investment.

 

[belfastboy]

We watched two small gems. ....both Netflix offerings both in Spanish. "I'm No Longer Here" & "Nobody Knows I'm Here." Simple, small movies that tell wonderful human tales. These two movies are in my sweet spot, I love these types of movies

 

[Zombie_61]

That is a darn fine day of movie watching. Kudos.

I'm usually fairly hit-and-miss with TCM's lineup, not because they aren't good movies but mostly because I'm just not interested in the story/subject matter of a particular movie. So I was surprised by their selections, and pleased we didn't have any errands to run for a change. Truth be told I would have replaced Rio Bravo with something like The Big Sleep or Key Largo, but I ain't complainin'.

 

[Touchofevil]

^ I got that beat. We started earlier with Murder, My Sweet (1944) because I'd never seen it, then stuck with TCM and watched Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Rio Bravo (1959), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and High Sierra (1941).

I forgot to add Rio Bravo into that mix. Wow, that was one heck of a lineup. I didn’t see Murder My Sweet in the lineup. It was difficult enough to break away and get outside.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee from 2009 with Robin Wright, Alan Arkin, Blake Lively and Keanu Reeves (and a bunch more names you know)

• An oddball movie about a middle-aged woman (Wright) married to an old, and now, dying man (Arkin) who reflects on her life (through flashbacks) to make sense of the present uncertainty she's feeling

• Years earlier, Pippa's mom, a manic-depressive pill popper, provided an exciting but chaotic childhood for Pippa, resulting in Pippa (young Pippa is portrayed by Lively) leaving home at an early age to join the counterculture-world of Greenwich Village

• There she meets her now-dying husband who was, even then, married to a young, pretty woman who had replaced his earlier wife. He leaves this second wife and marries Pippa who proceeds to morph into a kinda traditional wife and mom (right down to, years later, having the de rigueur young-adult daughter who hates her)

• As all this looking back is happening, Pippa's dying husband (true to form) has an affair with one of Pippa's friends pushing Pippa, who was thinking about it anyway, to have an affair of her own with lost-in-life-himself Keanu Reeves

• There's more - sleepwalking, a quirky son, jealous friends, some kinky photography, a (seriously) crazy ex-wife - basically, it's a darker, much-less-kibitzy Woody-Allen-style movie

• And a shout out is deserved for both Robin Wright's and Blake Lively's engaging performances

 

[Doctor Strange]

Laggies - a recent pseudo-romantic comedy from the late director Lynn Shelton (whose work I admire) starring Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, and Chloe Grace Moretz.

Despite having a great grad degree and planned career, Knightley is ten years out of high school, and at a loss as her friends marry and move on while she's somehow stuck. When her longtime boyfriend proposes, she freaks out and ends up going into hiding, hanging out with a bunch of high school kids led by Moretz.

Although it follows some rom-com tropes and has some laughs, this is more a series of character studies and observations about maturing. I've been on record here for years as hating Keira Knightley... but she does reasonably well in this flick as a privileged-but-lost American woman, though she can't entirely shake off her annoying (to me) Knightley-ness. Once again, Sam Rockwell turns in the film's best performance, as Moretz's divorce lawyer dad.

Anyway, I liked it, and thought it was as well observed as some of Shelton's other films, like My Sister's Sister.

I also recently saw her final film, Sword of Truth, a weird comedy starring Marc Maron (her long-time partner) as a grumpy pawnshop owner selling an allegedly historically significant Civil War sword. An okay flick, but not as good as Laggies, which is clearly closer to her central concerns.

 

[Fading Fast]

Laggies - a recent pseudo-romantic comedy from the late director Lynn Shelton (whose work I admire) starring Keira Knightley, Sam Rockwell, and Chloe Grace Moretz.

Despite having a great grad degree and planned career, Knightley is ten years out of high school, and at a loss as her friends marry and move on while she's somehow stuck. When her longtime boyfriend proposes, she freaks out and ends up going into hiding, hanging out with a bunch of high school kids led by Moretz.

Although it follows some rom-com tropes and has some laughs, this is more a series of character studies and observations about maturing. I've been on record here for years as hating Keira Knightley... but she does reasonably well in this flick as a privileged-but-lost American woman, though she can't entirely shake off her annoying (to me) Knightley-ness. Once again, Sam Rockwell turns in the film's best performance, as Moretz's divorce lawyer dad.

Anyway, I liked it, and thought it was as well observed as some of Shelton's other films, like My Sister's Sister.

I also recently saw her final film, Sword of Truth, a weird comedy starring Marc Maron (her long-time partner) as a grumpy pawnshop owner selling an allegedly historically significant Civil War sword. An okay flick, but not as good as Laggies, which is clearly closer to her central concerns.

I, too, enjoyed "Laggies" and, being a Knightley fan (I know we don't agree on her), it was just another good Knightley movie in my book.

 

[Haversack]

FadingFast, if you liked Ann Sheridan and her fast, censor-duping banter, check out her role as a truck-stop waitress in They Drive By Night. The movie itself is sort of two different movies welded together. The first half, (in which Sheridan's dialogue dices fine), is a Warner Bros. working class struggle film. The second is early noir where Ida Lupino dominates the story and courtroom.

 

[GHT]

A couple of evenings ago, I re-watched the 2001 version of the movie: "Enigma." The actor that really makes the plot so believable is Jeremy Northam. He portrays the most odious goody, come baddy. To see him in the film and then to see him out of character shows how he owned that part.

 

[Fading Fast]

Night and the City from 1950 with Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers and Francis L. Sullivan

This is a noir morality tale bordering on Greek Tragedy. London-based petty grifter Widmark tries to break into big-time wrestling promotion, after much scheming and a bit of luck, by signing a famous wrestler.

But London wrestling is mob controlled meaning Widmark really needs connections, money and muscle to succeed and he has none of the three. The entire movie is, basically, watching this small-timer with big aspirations desperately run around London trying to get the three things he needs and, ultimately, failing at each turn. The mob didn't get to be the mob by letting street detritus muscle in on its territory.

This turf battle takes place against a backdrop of outstanding noir style centering on Widmark who - in a fancy light-colored suit, collar pin, tie and white shoes - looks like a low-rent bounder versus all the dark suits, dark alleys and dark clubs he haunts. And when the action shifts outside at night, London's overly lit club and theater streets make an always-scrambling Widmark look like a pinball getting smacked around by the flippers.

In typical noir fashion, Widmark wrecks a bunch of lives along the way - an older, respected wrestler dies owing to a Widmark scheme, Widmark steals from his ridiculously devoted girlfriend (Tierney) and he destroys the marriage of his business partners leading one to suicide. Not bad for a day's work in noirland.

Sadly, the few decent people in this seedy world suffer the most. Widmark's girlfriend's unconditional love is repaid with neglect, abuse, (the aforementioned) theft of her property and one-last desperately humbling attempt to save Widmark.

Meanwhile, the marriage Widmark destroys is between an older heavy nightclub owner (Sullivan) and his younger-ish shrew wife (Withers) whom he nonetheless loves unconditionally and treats incredibly well. Widmark needs to pit these two against each other to raise funds for his promotion. The wife seeing an out to her marriage lets lose an invective on her husband when she leaves that breaks him, in part, because he knows he still completely and stupidly loves her and would take her back.

So, while Widmark's tale is a basic noir one - a second-rate grifter reaches too high and gets smacked down hard by the criminals with more skills and brains - the real lesson here is a Greek Tragedy one. It painfully exposes how life destroying unconditional love for the wrong person can be. Peters is a broken woman at the end while (spoiler alert) the nightclub owner takes his own life when his wife leaves. It's rough justice and rough morality in Night and the City.

It's not always easy to watch Widmark get bounced around this seedy corner of London, but it's an outstanding British entry into the noir genre propelled higher by the incredibly stylish directing of Jules Dassin, its classic black-and-white cinematography and its meta-tale of unconditional love getting punished unconditionally.