What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Touchofevil]

A Christmas Story running in the background interrupted by the Vikings Saints game.

 

[Fading Fast]

Christmas-movie roundup, part one (we usually continue watching Christmas movies through New Years):



The Cheaters from 1945. This was a new one to me and, while not a tier-one or even two Christmas movie, it does have its moments (the carolers scene), strong acting (Eugene Pallette and Joseph Schildkraut) and a generally fun vibe. A stronger director could have smoothed some of the clunky transitions and known how to pull off the Christmas moments better, but still, in a few years, I'll be ready to see it again.



Holiday Affair from 1949. This one still gets my vote as the most underrated of all the Christmas movies as, beneath the fun Christmas story, there is a lot of real life: a war widow struggling with her grief, a veteran struggling to restart his civilian life, a man asking the wrong-for-him woman to marry and almost everyone struggling with money problems. Despite this, the general vibe is still uplifting, the dialogue is, overall, smart and funny and the just-post-war-period details are time-travel heaven. Plus, there's a cool model electric train right at the center of the story.



A Christmas Carol from 1938. One year, I watched four versions of this movie and discovered that I liked them all - it's a wonderful story with, in the versions I saw, outstanding actors. I only watched this one version, this year, as it was the one TCM ran, but I have no complaints. Reginald Owens is an outstanding Scrooge, the movie rips through its story in sixty-nine minutes and I've had the wonderful Fred-Scrooge exchange of "Uncle!," "Nephew!" piquantly suck in my head since.



The Holly and the Ivy from 1952. For all those who complain that Christmas movies are too treacly, this is the one for you (with the exception of the too-easy solutions at the end - hey, it is a Christmas movie). It has a surprising amount of real dysfunction - alcoholism, out-of-wedlock children (when that was a big deal) and a middle-aged daughter having to decide between taking care of her aging father or grabbing her, probably, last chance at marriage. The general Christmas trappings are here - decorations, turkey, carolers and snow - but this one brings some real grit and an outstanding cast headed by the always-excellent Celia Johnson.



Desk Set from 1957. To be sure, Hollywood exaggerates, but if this one and The Apartment from 1960 are to be, even somewhat, believed (and from what I saw in the '80s before the PC police took over) big-city office Christmas parties used to truly be drunken, sexual bacchanalia. That alone makes this a time-capsule must-see movie, but the best part is watching Hepburn and Tracy exchange some fantastically smart and funny dialogue while falling in love at Christmas time.



The Man Who Came to Dinner from 1942. It's only a Christmas movie in that it takes place during the Christmas holiday, but the whip-smart dialogue and tour-de-force performances by Monty Woolley, Bette Davis and the obviously braless-throughout Ann Sheridan (how did that get past the censors?) makes this an always fun one to see. Plus, heck, with all the snow, skating, fireplaces and presents, it does feel sorta Christmasy, despite the real story in this one being elsewhere.

Ms. Sheridan in The Man Who Came to Dinner:

 

[Harp]

I vaguely recall that cool electric train from Holiday Affair. But I've never seen Reginal Owens
play Ebenezer Scrooge. And, uh The Man Who Came To Dinner looks very interesting...

 

[Trenchfriend]

A question on Anime!!

I found NOTHING on the net!
But there was a Anime show on german TV. And one evening I saw an episode with a Space Battleship Bismarck, NOT the Yamato!
Could have been just any kind of music video Anime series. I think, there was music in.

Anyone remember this show and it's name??

PS:
It was not "Saber Rider".

 

[Harp]

A question on Anime!!
I saw an episode with a Space Battleship Bismarck, NOT the Yamato!

Not Otto von Bismarck?
The self same guy who said "God protects drunks, fools, and the United States of America?"
Or did Horoshi Yamato say that? Anyway, back to Holiday Affair. I never saw the entire flick,
but remember that train set and Jeanne Crain. She was a looker and quite a charismatic lady.
I've got that film on my back burner list.

 

[belfastboy]

"Midnight Sky" Geo Clooney's vanity project. What a boring, horrible, predictable, manipulative movie. 3 stars out of 10 because I am in a generous mood.

 

[Fading Fast]

Not Otto von Bismarck?
The self same guy who said "God protects drunks, fools, and the United States of America?"
Or did Horoshi Yamato say that? Anyway, back to Holiday Affair. I never saw the entire flick,
but remember that train set and Jeanne Crain. She was a looker and quite a charismatic lady.
I've got that film on my back burner list.

I think you meant Janet Leigh. But, yes, Jeanne Crain is quite pretty and a good actress too, she shined in "A Letter to Three Wives" and "People Will Talk." I hope you are able to catch "Holiday Affair," it's quite good.

 

[Harp]

I think you meant Janet Leigh. But, yes, Jeanne Crain is quite pretty and a good actress too, she shined...

A sip of coffee and another look at your earlier thread...that train set...you're right that is Janet Leigh.
I lapsed into prepubescent mode and did a flip out all over for Jeanne Crain. I've always fixed JL
with Psycho, which sent chills down my spine. Jeanne I recall starred in Pinky-a film way ahead of the
racial curve, and another film I need to see again.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Nights of Cabiria (Le notti di Cabiria, 1957), right now on arte.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Spider Man Spiderverse animated film, very enjoyable!

 

[MisterCairo]

1985 classic - Clue, with all three endings. Hey, we're at the cottage...

 

[Fading Fast]

High Sierra form 1941 with Humphrey Bogart, Ida Lupino, Henry Travers and Joan Leslie

There's a lot of moral ambiguity going on beneath the code-approved wrapping of this gangster picture cum film noir where you end up kinda rooting for the wrong people at times.

Bogart, serving a life sentence, is sprung from jail by a governor's pardon obtained by a bribe paid by a gang leader who gets Bogie freed so that he can mastermind a heist for him. Pause on that corruption at a high level for a moment; a corruption that is not later "fixed" by the Motion Picture Production Code. It is never exposed and the governor suffers no consequences.

Bogie, now freed and on his way to the heist job on the west coast, befriends a poor family whose one daughter, Joan Leslie, has a club foot. His kindness to the family and girl reveals that Bogie has a mixed-up morality that can be cold and ruthless at times, but also kind and caring.

Once out west, Bogart connects with the new gang - amateurs that he tries to mold into professionals while he meets hanger-on-girl Ida Lupino, whose horrible family life has led her to become, essentially, a gangster groupie. Here again, we see Bogie the antihero as a caring man who shows kindness to Lupino. And Lupino, like a beaten dog, responds with love and devotion to the modest scraps of decency Bogie throws her way.

But Bogie's real affections are reserved for club-footed Leslie who seems to represent for Bogart the innocence of his youth and the respectability society will no longer offer him. With the movie's two paths - a crime caper and a love triangle - set, we shift to the jewelry heist part of the story, which goes horribly wrong as we see the ruthless side of Bogie when he shoots innocent people who get in the way.

From here, it's all a painful unravel of the few hopes for a normal life Bogie and Lupino (she sticks to him like glue) have. After paying for a surgery to fix Leslie's foot, Bogart asks her to marry him, but she rejects him, at first nicely, and then, as he pushes, not so nicely.

With that dream crushed, the law closing in and Lupino still around, Bogart ships Lupino, who is kinda sorta not guilty (other than that she knew the heist was being planned), ahead to Vegas so that he can try to escape the law and get the money from the stolen jewels on his own.

But it's the 1940s and even antiheroes have to pay for their sins, so (spoiler alert) in a well-filmed, tense final scene, Bogie, with a rifle and plenty of ammo, attempts to hold off the police in the Sierra Mountains. During the standoff, Lupino appears pleading for Bogie's life. But in a final twist of irony, as Bogie goes to pick up his and Lupino's dog - who Lupino brought with her and who has run up to Bogie's redoubt - Bogie exposes himself enough to be shot.

The man is a ruthless killer; a hardened criminal foreshadowing a Tarantino character by decades as he sees crime and even murder as just part of his job. But he can also be kind, wistful and compassionate, and darn it, half the time you are rooting for him. Kudos to writers John Huston and W.R. Burnett and director Raoul Walsh for creating a morally complex character and story tucked inside the tightly circumscribed world of the Motion Picture Production Code.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Iron Lady, with Meryl Streep as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Oddly filmed biography, with jumps in the time line, dead folks chatting with the living, memories mingled with faulty recall. None of these devices are bad in film making, but I thought here it tended to detract from the story-telling. It is fun to compare Streep's presentation with Gillian Anderson's portrayal in The Crown.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Mank - a rambling, rather pointless, heavy handed and unusually dull film about the gestation of Citizen Kane. The source material (Hollywood grotesques; tabloid journalism; fractured politics; entertainment versus art; one man's attempt to remain true) was promising although heavily mined and the director (David Fincher) should have been able to craft something far more original and intimate instead of making a TV movie of the week.

 

[MisterCairo]

Snowed in at the cottage, we paid to see the new Wonder Woman 1984 flick, having enjoyed the first instalment.

Total bum chowder.

Trite return of Chris Pine, trite plot device, over two and half hours long with about 30 minutes of watchable moments.

It has 5.6 at IMDB. I gave it a three.

I told my wife I need to bleach it out of my my mind by watching Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddy's Island Adventure when we get home.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Snowed in at the cottage, we paid to see the new Wonder Woman 1984 flick, having enjoyed the first instalment.

Total bum chowder.

Trite return of Chris Pine, trite plot device, over two and half hours long with about 30 minutes of watchable moments.

It has 5.6 at IMDB. I gave it a three.

I told my wife I need to bleach it out of my my mind by watching Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddy's Island Adventure when we get home.

Interesting. I hated the first one (cliché ridden pap, with terrible CGI) and stopped watching just after an hour. Maybe I'll enjoy the sequel.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rope from 1948 with John Dall, James Stewart and Farley Granger

The reason why filming a theatrical play and showing it on TV doesn't work is, well, I don't really know why, but it doesn't as evidenced by this experimental effort by master director Alfred Hitchcock. Shot in one setting - an expensive NYC apartment (the skylight-ish windows are incredible) - this theatrical-play-like movie is left with only dialogue and characters to engage you. While both have their moments, they are not consistent enough to prop up this short, but surprisingly slow-moving, movie.

Two young, wealthy, upper-class, well-educated and (it's only implied, but we get it) gay men, Dall and Granger, kill by strangulation (using the titular "rope") a former classmate and friend. They commit this murder simply to test out their warped version of one of their former college professor's theories that intellectually superior people should not be restrained by the same moral and legal code as the benighted.

I get the Nietzsche superman concept at work and I know it oddly titillates many philosophers - and absorbs a lot of their intellectual bandwidth - but twisting it into justifiable murder for sport is stupid, boring and morally repugnant to those of us less cerebrally inclined; you know, us benighted folks who don't kill for intellectual exercise.

After the opening murder, these two sociopaths host a party with their dead friend's body stuffed in a trunk being used as a buffet for the soiree's food. Following that ten minutes of set up, the rest of the movie is about an hour of a boring party where we learn about all the interconnections between the victim's former friends, while concern grows over the friend's failure to appear at the party. This and some tedious side stories happen while we watch Dall luxuriate in his "achievement," as Granger welters in guilt and fear over being caught.

It's only when party guest and the inspiration for the murder, the boys' former professor, James Stewart, starts to get suspicious that some real tension builds. There's even a pretty good scene toward the end where Stewart realizes what these two nutcases have done and exposes their crime, but it's not enough to save this torpid effort.

I believe I read at some point that this movie was inspired by the true story of two young men, Leopold and Loeb, who did commit a murder just to see if they could get away with it. Now, a movie version of that story - with its extensive police search for the killers that hinged on one obscure clue - would have been a much more interesting movie.

But credit to Hitchcock for this attempt, flawed as it is, and for learning from it to use more of what movies allow a director to do when he made a film version of the play Dial M for Murder a few years later.

 

[Doctor Strange]

You got it right, but I have some additional notes on this film...

No "The" in the title.

As his career went on, Hitchcock enjoyed creating filmmaking limitations for himself - like in Lifeboat, where the entire film is set on a lifeboat at sea - and the key challenge for him with Rope was to make the film entirely in full-reel, ten-minute takes, and disguise the reel-change edits so it appears continuous. Essentially, he did what Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins just did with 1917... but without steadicams, digital effects and super-high-res low-light digital cameras, or any of the other recent methods for making seamless long takes (see also Roma, Birdman, etc.)

This means that all the actors moving around and speaking in the complex apartment set (it's great how the exterior view darkens as night falls, with moving, color-changing clouds and illuminated windows coming on in the huge cityscape models) had to be carefully blocked, more like a play than a film, to provide ten minutes of finely choreographed performances and camera moves, and it all had to be brightly lit for the slow Technicolor film stock. The reel changes are disguised by the camera passing over a darkened area, like the back of a character's dark suit jacket or a dark corner of the set.

It's a spectacular technical achievement for its time, not unlike the mega-complex set a few years later in Rear Window. However, the film's story and characters aren't near the level of Rear Window. The long takes do what they're intended to - ratchet up the tension - but apart from the technique, I've always considered Rope a weak Hitchcock movie with literally no "good" character for audience identification. The killers are reprehensible scum, and even Jimmy Stewart's professor "hero" comes off as an unpleasant a-hole.

PS - There's a good movie based on the Leopold and Loeb case that focuses on the courtroom drama: Compulsion (1959).

 

[Fading Fast]

You got it right, but I have some additional notes on this film...

No "The" in the title.

As his career went on, Hitchcock enjoyed creating filmmaking limitations for himself - like in Lifeboat, where the entire film is set on a lifeboat at sea - and the key challenge for him with Rope was to make the film entirely in full-reel, ten-minute takes, and disguise the reel-change edits so it appears continuous. Essentially, he did what Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins just did with 1917... but without steadicams, digital effects and super-high-res low-light digital cameras, or any of the other recent methods for making seamless long takes (see also Roma, Birdman, etc.)

This means that all the actors moving around and speaking in the complex apartment set (it's great how the exterior view darkens as night falls, with moving, color-changing clouds and illuminated windows coming on in the huge cityscape models) had to be carefully blocked, more like a play than a film, to provide ten minutes of finely choreographed performances and camera moves, and it all had to be brightly lit for the slow Technicolor film stock. The reel changes are disguised by the camera passing over a darkened area, like the back of a character's dark suit jacket or a dark corner of the set.

It's a spectacular technical achievement for its time, not unlike the mega-complex set a few years later in Rear Window. However, the film's story and characters aren't near the level of Rear Window. The long takes do what they're intended to - ratchet up the tension - but apart from the technique, I've always considered Rope a weak Hitchcock movie with literally no "good" character for audience identification. The killers are reprehensible scum, and even Jimmy Stewart's professor "hero" comes off as an unpleasant a-hole.

PS - There's a good movie based on the Leopold and Loeb case that focuses on the courtroom drama: Compulsion (1959).

Neat information, thank you for sharing (I'll edit the title in my post). I'll also keep an eye out for "Compulsion."

 

[belfastboy]

The Iron Lady, with Meryl Streep as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Oddly filmed biography, with jumps in the time line, dead folks chatting with the living, memories mingled with faulty recall. None of these devices are bad in film making, but I thought here it tended to detract from the story-telling. It is fun to compare Streep's presentation with Gillian Anderson's portrayal in The Crown.

Let me lead by saying I have a hard time watching Streep....IMHO a terrible actress but I watched her performance in the trailer for Iron Lady and now will rent it. I thought she was light years better than Anderson's horrific caricature of Maggie.....