What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MisterCairo]

We watched with the girls Quantum of Solace, the in my view unfairly maligned follow up to Casino Royale. Anything following the incredible reboot of the franchise was doomed to comparison.

Frankly, I put this effort far and above beyond SPECTER in the list of the four Craig films. Worth a re-watch if you've been infected with the "it's awful" bug. Might just cure you!

 

[Harp]

We watched with the girls Quantum of Solace, the in my view unfairly maligned follow up to Casino Royale. Anything following the incredible reboot of the franchise was doomed to comparison.

Frankly, I put this effort far and above beyond SPECTER in the list of the four Craig films. Worth a re-watch if you've been infected with the "it's awful" bug. Might just cure you!

The 007 franchise lost me a long time ago. Brosnan, had he better script material to work with captured the character
persona to some extent, had a certain depth lacking in quite a few of the others; also, of course, the need to politically
correct everything according to scripture finished it.

Craig looks more the east ender barrow boy than a suave polished Royal Navy commander/agent.
He lacks a certain credibility for the role despite his athleticism. The man Ian Fleming created in his mind
remains too tad a conjecture hard to peg much less portray.

 

[MisterCairo]

The 007 franchise lost me a long time ago. Brosnan, had he better script material to work with captured the character
persona to some extent, had a certain depth lacking in quite a few of the others; also, of course, the need to politically
correct everything according to scripture finished it.

Craig looks more the east ender barrow boy than a suave polished Royal Navy commander/agent.
He lacks a certain credibility for the role despite his athleticism. The man Ian Fleming created in his mind
remains too tad a conjecture hard to peg much less portray.

We will have to agree to disagree on this! Brosnan had better script material? !?!?!

Yikes!

 

[Harp]

We will have to agree to disagree on this! Brosnan had better script material? !?!?!

Yikes!

Clarification: I wrote: had he better script material. Of the past twenty years of Bond films I thought Brosnan
fit the requisite character mold fairly well and with better scripting might have made more of a mark in the role.

 

[MisterCairo]

Clarification: I wrote: had he better script material. Of the past twenty years of Bond films I thought Brosnan
fit the requisite character mold fairly well and with better scripting might have made more of a mark in the role.

Agreed then. I enjoyed Brosnan the actor, and wished he had been available when Remington Steele prevented him from doing it, hence Dalton.

FWIIW, I also believe Dalton gets too rough a ride, as does Lazenby. Lazenby if he had stayed on would be in the same league as Connery in my view.

And yes, I place Connery in second place!

 

[Trenchfriend]

The Guilty (2018), right now on arte.

 

[Harp]

Agreed then. I enjoyed Brosnan the actor, and wished he had been available when Remington Steele prevented him from doing it, hence Dalton.

FWIIW, I also believe Dalton gets too rough a ride, as does Lazenby. Lazenby if he had stayed on would be in the same league as Connery in my view.

And yes, I place Connery in second place!

Connery nailed Bond as few others have as far as the ice water cold blooded ba***rd professional aspect
but he too lacked like Craig in the patrician naval officer details; perhaps inconsequential against the franchise
but disconcerting when the man himself is considered. Moore, Brosnan, hit this particular nail squarely; Lazenby,
Dalton also credible, but the character himself remains elusive, almost enigmatic in some sense.

 

[Zombie_61]

Connery nailed Bond as few others have as far as the ice water cold blooded ba***rd professional aspect but he too lacked like Craig in the patrician naval officer details; perhaps inconsequential against the franchise but disconcerting when the man himself is considered. Moore, Brosnan, hit this particular nail squarely; Lazenby, Dalton also credible, but the character himself remains elusive, almost enigmatic in some sense.

What do you think of David Niven and Woody Allen?

 

[Fading Fast]

Leatherheads from 2008 with George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski and John Price

If I'm not the target audience for this movie, I don't know who is. Yet, that is the problem as Leatherheads feels like a movie designed to appeal to me - a fan of Classic Hollywood movies from the thirties and forties - instead of being a modern period movie that is simply well done.

In the twenties, aging football star George Clooney, in the incipient days of the NFL when the game's survival is still in question, recruits John Krasinski, a college star (the popular football league of that era) and WWI hero, to save the professional league. Just as Krasinski signs up, star reporter Renee Zellweger pursues rumors Krasinski's war record is fabricated.

Clooney, Zellweger and Krasinski quickly form a love triangle amped up by Clooney's career being threatened by the younger Krasinski. Thrown into the mix are a cookie-cutter corrupt agent, John Price, a hard-as-nails newspaper editor, a drunk reporter and a bunch of football player caricatures, meaning all the elements are here for a fun, lighthearted movie.

But that's the hitch as it all feels constructed to mimic the screwball romcoms of the thirties - think Bringing up Baby or His Girl Friday. Leatherheads is almost a checklist of those older movies: love triangle, check; fast witty dialogue(well, kinda), check; cardboard bad guys, check; comic relief character, check; wacky chases and getaways, check; happy ending (not a spoiler as you just know this from the beginning), check.

It's not bad as the story is serviceable, the actors talented and the period details insanely enjoyable; it just has no heart. It feels reverse engineered from a dissection of its thirties antecedents.

Maybe it could have overcome all that if for a second you believed that Clooney and Zellweger or Krasinski and Zellweger are in any way, shape or form attracted to each other, but in that triangle, only Clooney and Krasinski seemed to have any genuine connection.

Perhaps director Clooney should have asked Robert Redford to have taken the reins as Redford seems to have a firmer hand than Clooney at making period movies redolent of Classic Hollywood without having them slide into weak parody. Still, Leatherheads is worth the watch for the incredible twenties clothes, trains, architecture and early football ephemera alone.

 

[Edward]

Agreed then. I enjoyed Brosnan the actor, and wished he had been available when Remington Steele prevented him from doing it, hence Dalton.

FWIIW, I also believe Dalton gets too rough a ride, as does Lazenby. Lazenby if he had stayed on would be in the same league as Connery in my view.

And yes, I place Connery in second place!

I never warmed to Lazenby, though his to-camera "This never happened to the other fella!" was a great gag.

View attachment 330966
Leatherheads from 2008 with George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski and John Price

I'd have said pastiche as homage, rather than parody. I quite liked it, a fun bit of fluff (like the originals, of course). I found the commentary on the military / military propaganda interesting and done with a deft hand. The hints at veterans still dealing with traumatic experiences were well done, avoiding being heavy handed. (Based on recollection of watching it a decade ago).

 

[Fading Fast]

Beauty and the Boss from 1932 with Warren William, Marian Marsh, Charles Butterworth and David Manners

"We were all wrong, you see. You're a girl of the evening whom I only met, unfortunately, in the daytime."

- Warren William firing his secretary so he can keep her as a mistress.

I have no doubt the romcom goes back to the old nickelodeons, but we can date the modern "talkie" movie version of them at least as far back as Beauty and the Boss in 1932.

All the basic elements of the romcom are here. A man and a woman who have no interest in having a meaningful relationship with anyone are thrown together at work. He's a hard driving businessman who treats women as playthings and she's a serious secretary with no time for romance. Then, after a bunch of misunderstandings and denials of true feelings, they finally come together right at the last minute when it looks like all hope is lost.

It's a ridiculous formula that has been incredibly successful for, again, in talking pictures, ninety years because it's fun as heck to watch unfold. Warren William is the businessman with no time for romance and Marian Marsh is the cute, serious and frumpy-dressed whizbang secretary who makes William's work life incredibly efficient.

She's indifferent, at first, to his peccadilloes and he sees her as nothing more than an office machine. But as their feelings slowly grow, Marsh, for reasons she doesn't understand immediately, becomes perturbed about William's "dating" habits. When she starts to intentionally muck-up his personal life, he is mildly annoyed, but neither one of these two has yet to recognize what is happening - as in any good romcom.

After that, it's what would become more standard romcom stuff: he tries harder to enjoy his frivolous relationships but becomes angry when they no longer please him, while she shows interest in other men trying, without fully realizing it, to make him jealous. A bunch of other nonsense also goes on about mixed up business meetings and men and women chasing each other around a restaurant with Marsh escaping in a waiting horse-drawn carriage. To this day, romcoms love horse-drawn carriages.

As in any successful romcom, this one works because you like the characters and are rooting for them to get together. Playing to what would become formula, she's cute as heck and he's a handsome bumbling idiot without her. In an early scene where she arranges his merger meetings, Marsh's acting is impressive as she delivers dialogue like machine-gun fire with William, her boss, struggling just to keep up. You know, right then, who the smarter one in this relationship will be.

It all happens in just over an hour, but in the 1930s, Warner Bros. could probably have condensed War and Peace to just over an hour without dropping too much story. Proving how Beauty and the Boss set the formula for so many romcoms to come, the ending has William dictating a letter to unaware Marsh asking her to marry him. Different versions of the surprise dictated-letter proposal have popped up in numerous romcoms ever since.

It's silly, predictable and a bit clunky (it's an early talkie), but also great fun to see a quick romcom that, even in 1932, already had many of the key elements of its genre in place. Jennifer Aniston and Meg Ryan might or might not know it, but their hugely successful careers in the 1990s as romcom stars owe more than a hat-tip to Marian Marsh in Beauty and the Boss.


N.B. Speed Drill: Look for William's insanely cool Art Deco office / note the pre-MeToo moment where William fires his secretary, pays her a large severance and, then, sets her up as his mistress as he explicitly won't mixed business and pleasure / catch the always enjoyable Charles Butterworth tossing off lines like this as a compliment to Marsh's genuine business talents, "The Barron's [William's] other secretaries were fast too, but not around the office."

 

[Fading Fast]

Breakfast at Tiffany's from 1961 with Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen and Mickey Rooney

TCM's current series, Reframed: Classic Films in the Rearview Mirror, discusses the racism, sexism, prejudices and stereotypes in movie history. It's been a smart and honest approach so far that doesn't elide the ugliness, but does recognize that, effectively, it's a part of these movies that can't be effaced, nor TCM argues, should it.

If you want to watch these movies, you can't avoid seeing these odious period cultural norms (some of which were already dated at the time as culture moves forward haphazardly). For Breakfast at Tiffany's, the TCM discussion rightly points out the terrible, racist and insulting character of Mr. Yunioshi played by Mickey Rooney. His portrayal of a buck-toothed, bumbling and immature Japanese man is awful, insulting and cringe worthy.

The truly crazy thing about Mr. Yunioshi is his character fits neither the sophisticated style, nor the forward-looking social commentary, of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sadly, it's just an awful and demeaning part of an otherwise outstanding film.

Having seen Breakfast at Tiffany's more times than I'll admit unless under extreme interrogation methods, my relationship with this movie is like visiting with a life-long friend. Each time, I focus on a different aspect of the movie as I have long since absorbed the plot.

For newbies, the plot is Audry Hepburn, as Holly Golightly - a young New York City partier, socialite wannabe, gold digger and courtesan - having her confidently cynical approach to life disrupted by her upstairs neighbor, George Peppard.

He, like Holly, makes his living from wealthier New Yorkers who, no other way to say it, pay to have sex with these very pretty people. While Peppard is weary of his demimonde lifestyle and immediately sees the value of real love with Hepburn, it takes Hepburn the length of the movie - as her various marry-someone-rich plans continue to fall through - to see its value too.

The story is a good one, but what captured my attention this viewing is Breakfast at Tiffany's style. Though being, at times, sad, morose and bleak, every scene, even the most dispiriting, is visually appealing. Bus depots, the NYC Public Library, police stations and even strip clubs are all stylishly beautiful in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Despite Hepburn's and Peppard's problems, you want to live in this world (if it would have you).

When a depressed Ms. Hepburn, suffering from a case of what she calls the "mean reds," sits on her window sill, with one foot resting on the fire escape singing the melancholy Moon River, she's in jeans and a grey sweatshirt with her wet hair wrapped in a towel, yet she looks fantastic.

A five-and-dime store never appeared more attractive and color coordinated than the one where Hepburn and Peppard don and then abscond with plastic Halloween cat and dog masks. It's not the disheveled Woolworth of my youth, but like a store designed by Andy Warhol at the height of his Pop Art powers.

The wardrobes - where one assumes half or more the movie's budget was spent - are a trip though early sixties cool with Hepburn wearing the best little black dress (not the famous opening-scene evening gown) possibly of all time. She has so many wardrobe changes that several of them take place on screen and serve to advance the plot (see Hepburn preparing to go to Sing Sing or in the cab after her time at the local precinct).

But she's matched outfit change for outfit change by Peppard's cougar-provided sartorial splendor (note his insane closet). Even said cougar, Patricia Neal, strikes a style note. She sweeps in and out of scenes while treating Peppard like the kept man he is, but with so much over-the-top style you kinda like her, or respect her, or are scared of her, or something, but you are aware of her panache.

Even at the end, when all pretense is stripped away and the two lovers, broke, spiritually broken and soaked to the bone, are standing in a garbage-strewn alley (has garbage ever looked so artfully arranged?), with a wet cat pressed between them, their world is still visually enticing.

None of this even touches on the other style icon of the movie, New York City itself. Maybe that can be the focus on my next viewing. Director Blake Edwards had a style vision for this movie that carries so consistently from scene to scene that it serves as a narrative technique. Yes, there's an engaging story, talented acting and much pain and sorrow, but Breakfast at Tiffany's is also an insanely beautiful trip through early-sixties New York City from the opening to closing shot.

TCM deserves Kudos for its honest, unvarnished look at movies like Breakfast at Tiffany's. But being blunt, it's also a self-preservation effort by TCM to get in front of woke cancel culture as its survival depends on these movies being "acceptable" viewing. TCM has one product - old movies - so it can't afford for them to be the next thing tossed on this unforgiving generation's bonfire of the vanities.


N.B., I live three blocks from Holly Golightly's apartment building in NYC. It's still there and looks reasonably similar to how it did in the movie, umm, not that I, uh, err, walk by it often just to look.

The "mean reds."


A Pop Art Five and Dime.


Early '60s cool.


Best LBD ever.


She (far right) is paying him (far left) to sleep with stylish her and she (middle) knows it.


I'm not much for "Hollywood" kisses, but this is a darn good one.


And the apartment today.

 

[belfastboy]

Watched "Supernova" last night on a $1 movie rental of the week. It was a tough movie to watch as any movie about dementia (at my age) hits close to home and taps the fear button. But Firth and Tucci are marvels....a true master class in performance. The movie was slow pace with the director content with long quiet pauses. Hard hitting emotionally without lurching into maudlin sentiments. We had to stay up an extra hour and watch something frivolous and silly to shake my wife out of her funk.

 

[Doctor Strange]

A dissenting view on Breakfast at Tiffany's...

I'm not a fan. I have always found this flick massively overrated, not to mention that the production code hampered any chance of its being an accurate adaptation of the source Truman Capote story (where the George Peppard character is gay). It has exactly two things going for it: staggeringly luminous Audrey, and "Moon River". Everything else is a mess. Yes, it's a good looking, stylish mess, but still. And since I detest Mickey Rooney even in his "best" performances, I just can't watch it.

I recently saw the new Audrey Hepburn documentary on Netflix, Audrey. It was okay, and included some things I didn't know, but I had two issues with it: It wasted FAR too much time on gauzy sequences of a (vaguely) Audrey-lookalike as a ballerina, supposedly representing her interior-thoughts life. (Wha?) And for an allegedly complete doc, it skipped mentioning a lot of her best performances, from The Nun's Story to Two For the Road to Robin and Marian, etc.

 

[Worf]

The 007 franchise lost me a long time ago. Brosnan, had he better script material to work with captured the character
persona to some extent, had a certain depth lacking in quite a few of the others; also, of course, the need to politically
correct everything according to scripture finished it.

Craig looks more the east ender barrow boy than a suave polished Royal Navy commander/agent.
He lacks a certain credibility for the role despite his athleticism. The man Ian Fleming created in his mind
remains too tad a conjecture hard to peg much less portray.

I completely disagree... Connery struck me as the ONLY Bond that made me believe he truly had a license to kill. Suave and sophisticated enough to charm and disarm yet strong and tough enough to mix it up with anyone at anytime and come out on top. Roger Moore, tissue paper. Lazenby and Timothy Dalton... woulda, shoulda, coulda. Brosnon... even more lightweight than Moore (if that were possible). Then Craig came along... to me the perfect Bond for this nasty, violent world that no longer has mad scientists with Moon Bases and Laser Beams. Bond had to move beyond that stage and do more grounded things than keep Russia the U.S. and China from blowing each other up. I personally couldn't think of a better choice and yes I DID read the books...

Worf

 

[Trenchfriend]

Ronin, right now on the old DVD, original tone.

 

[Zombie_61]

A dissenting view on Breakfast at Tiffany's...

I have to agree. I watched BaT the first time because I'd never seen it and wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I've watched it two or three times since, because I'm still trying to figure it out. At this point I'm fairly certain the reasons for the movie's popularity will forever elude me.

 

[Fading Fast]

Late Spring from 1949, a Japanese movie with English subtitles staring Chishû Ryû and Setsuko Hara

A small budget can be a forced gift to filmmakers as it often requires them to focus on storytelling, character development and capturing beautiful, simple moments. Director Yasujiro Ozu leverages all of these to produce a gem of a movie in Late Spring.

Twenty-seven-year-old Noriko lives at home with her widowed professor father Shukichi. While she does most of the housekeeping, it is a surprisingly modern relationship where her father will help at times around the house while giving her a lot of space to live her life. If she doesn't like something, she speaks up and he takes notice.

But overall, they just have a comfortable, well-oiled-machine existence where they are glad to see each other at the end of the day. However, everyone around them - aunts, friends, business associates - wonders why pretty twenty-seven-year-old Noriko isn't married. As much as you want to tell them all to mind their own business, their point - what will happen to Noriko as her father ages - can't simply be dismissed.

Shukichi sees the problem, while Noriko doesn't want to hear about it. After a close male friend of Noriko - he seemed like he could have been "the one" for her - marries another woman, an aunt arranges a meeting with an eligible young man.

When that man asks Noriko to marry him, indirectly through family, the way arranged marriages were done at that time in Japan, Noriko faces a crisis. She sees the logic of marrying this good man, but doesn't want to give up her happy existence with her father.

Shukichi, who will lose his daughter since the bride is, generally, "absorbed" into her husband's family, creates a touching fiction about a woman he's considering marrying to encourage his daughter to marry. That's it; that's the plot and it makes for an engaging, heartfelt and beautiful film.

There is a wonderful low-key love and understanding in this father-daughter relationship that director Yasujiro Ozu reveals with poignantly "small" gestures. When Noriko and Shukichi take the train into the city, he offers his seat to her, but she says no as she knows her aging father will be more comfortable sitting. Equally touching is when dad quietly brings Noriko toast and tea as he senses her hurt after learning her close male friend has become engaged to another woman. These gestures are subtle yet quite moving.

Yasujiro uses a similar "simple" technique of letting the camera alone comment on the reality, struggles and beauty of post-war Japan such as filming, from an inbound train, a crowded, but recovering, industrial center with many large American companies amidst the smaller (for the moment) Japanese ones. Later, during a family trip to Kyoto, Yasujiro lets the camera show the beauty of "old" Japan as it quietly pans stunning ancient temples set amidst gorgeous rolling hills and cherry blossom trees.

It's 1949 and Japan is a recovering country with many signs of American influence, presented here in a positive light. The short scene of Japanese children, clad in American uniforms, playing baseball is a fun example. But the heart and soul of this movie is a moving father-daughter relationship where neither wants their world to change, but both know time will not allow it to stand still. Late Spring is a love letter to the end of that phase of their lives. It's sad, heartwarming, but hopeful and, just maybe, a metaphor for Japan and its evolving relationship with its American "parent" in 1949.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Did Joe Pesci play his part in killing the Dockercap (Kevin)?

 

[Harp]

I completely disagree... Connery struck me as the ONLY Bond that made me believe he truly had a license to kill. Suave and sophisticated enough to charm and disarm yet strong and tough enough to mix it up with anyone at anytime and come out on top. Roger Moore, tissue paper. Lazenby and Timothy Dalton... woulda, shoulda, coulda. Brosnon... even more lightweight than Moore (if that were possible). Then Craig came along... to me the perfect Bond for this nasty, violent world that no longer has mad scientists with Moon Bases and Laser Beams. Bond had to move beyond that stage and do more grounded things than keep Russia the U.S. and China from blowing each other up. I personally couldn't think of a better choice and yes I DID read the books...

Worf

Connery nailed Bond as few others have as far as the ice water cold blooded ba***rd professional aspect
but he too lacked like Craig in the patrician naval officer details; perhaps inconsequential against the franchise
but disconcerting when the man himself is considered. Moore, Brosnan, hit this particular nail squarely; Lazenby,
Dalton also credible, but the character himself remains elusive, almost enigmatic in some sense.

We agree to disagree then.