What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

^Margin Call sounds a brokerage firm flick. I once worked an overnight trading desk
at a Chicago commodity brokerage and this particular "call" was made every nite-always
to the amateurs who insisted on sitting in on professional stud poker.

 

[Fading Fast]

Butterfield 8 from 1960 with Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Dina Merrill, Mildred Dunnock and Eddie Fisher


Every period has its take on "the fallen woman," which is closely associated with the always fun and overwrought Madonna-whore complex, both of which drive Butterfield 8.

In the lightly censored movies of the pre-code early 1930s, "the fallen woman" could often stand herself back up and go on living because, sometimes, that's what happens in real life. But once the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced in the mid-1930s, "the fallen woman" needed to be punished to have any shot at redemption, but usually, it was easier to just kill her off.

Butterfield 8 was made at a time when the code was wobbling but still holding on, so its quasi prostitute, Elizabeth Taylor, is kinda, sorta sympathetic, yet still, punishment must be meted out.

Taylor plays a darker cognate to Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's. She's a model slash partygirl slash early social media "influencer" (she gets paid to wear designer dresses to hot night spots so they will be noted in the next day's newspapers) who also, (the movie elides this a bit) sleeps with men for money.

Darker than Golightly how? When we first meet Ms. Taylor, she's waking up after having been railed by some guy who left in the early morning. So, disheveled and still wearing last night's makeup, she stumbles out of his bed wrapped in nothing but a sheet, looks for a cigarette, throws an empty pack on the carpet, finds a loose cigarette, lights up, inhales, starts coughing, pours herself a good-sized shot of whiskey and has the first drink of the day. Good morning.

Today, we take a more understanding and sympathetic approach to almost all human failings (except for the ones current day has deemed unacceptable). Yet back then, the heavy moral disapproval of "the fallen woman" (with a prostitute being about as far as you could fall) meant something, even if it all floated on a narrative of hypocrisy and inconsistency, just as a lot of what we believe today also floats on shaky narratives.

So, when upstanding businessman, Laurence Harvey, married to social-registry wife, Dina Merrill (the blonde Madonna in our story), falls in love with his girl-on-the-side Taylor (the brunette whore), all sorts of things get smashed up, starting with poor Dina Merrill.

Beyond being ridiculously attractive, Merrill is an unbelievably understanding wife who tries to give Harvey "space" to find his way back to her. Most women's definition of "space" in this case would be a bullet with their husband's name on it, but Merrill loves her husband and wants to save the marriage.

She believes marrying into her wealthy family - which gave Harvey instant status, wealth and a job with a fancy title at her family's firm - destroyed his self esteem. Harvey plays the "victim" role to the hilt. He angrily mopes his way through the movie as the aggrieved party because, well, his wife made his life too easy for him. We now have a winner in the "rich people's problem" contest.

Maybe Harvey really loves Taylor or maybe he just wants to spit in his wife's face, but Taylor believes she loves Harvey and sees him as the moral lustration she needs to scrub clean her past life of sin and debauchery.

Just as Harvey is about to ask his wife for a divorce so that he can marry Taylor - a do-I-leave-the-Madonna-for-a-whore moment - he comes face to face with Taylor's past. He knew about it, but to this point, had done his best to make believe it didn't exist. Yet he can't ignore, when in a bar, several men casually joke with him about his new "girlfriend" Taylor by saying, "welcome to the fraternity, we meet once a year in Yankee Stadium." Ouch.

Harvey, it turns out, belongs to that odd niche of men who knowingly fall in love with prostitutes - nothing wrong with that, everyone should find love where they can - but then begin to hate the object of their affections because she's slept with a whole lot of men. In logic, that's called a "category error," as Harvey is angry at something for being exactly what it is. It's like hating a top for spinning.

As the movie climaxes, Harvey, even when he breaks with Taylor, wrecks his marriage to Merrill. Taylor, meanwhile, leaves New York to start afresh with wholesome intent, this time, in Boston. But don't forget the Motion Picture Production Code which, basically, (spoiler alert) says, "The Whore Must Die!"

So, at the end of a silly and forced car-chase scene, where Harvey pursues Taylor in an attempt to get her back, she is killed as her very cute two-seater Sunbeam Alpine flies off the road. Taylor is dead; the Code is satisfied; Harvey is crushed and, unbelievably, wife Merrill is willing to take him back.

It's saponaceous melodrama on steroids with an overlay of fire and brimstone condemnation. But tucked inside and countering the "bad whore" narrative are Taylor's mother, the wonderful Mildred Dunnock, and Taylor's childhood best friend, Eddie Fisher, who provide a sympathetic view of Taylor's life.

The Code was buckling a bit in 1960, but it was not yet ready to let the whore live. However, in about a decade, the 1970s would bring a new and forgiving perspective to the prostitute.


N.B. Butterfield 8 is wonderful time travel to early 1960s New York City from the Village to the fancy apartments of Fifth Avenue, including many of the bars, restaurants and nightclubs in between. There's even a neat moment where, in the background of super-lit-up-at-night Times Square, you can see a movie marquee advertising Ben-Hur.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Comedian Harmonists (1997)

Bad, because visually totally unauthentic. The setting has no vintage look.

 

[Harp]

^Butterfield 8 I never saw in its entirety and whenever CBS television ran it I usually
caught snippets just to see a bit of Liz, recall her telling a cabbie "double your tip for a cigarette,"
and her in a slip standing provocative-pensive La Liz. As the product of a repressed Catholic
upbringing I took my sinful sips of the forbidden and depraved when opportunity afforded
and jettisoned plot narrative as quite unnecessary. Thanks for filling in the details.

 

[Touchofevil]

Orange County last night. An entertaining little movie.

 

[MisterCairo]

On temporary duty, Canadian Army staff college, have trusty 2009 MacBook Pro with dvds and some digital downloads.

If you need the name, you are not a fan.

 

[Worf]

"Fear Street" - Before R.L. Stine went all PG-13 with his "Goosebumps" series he did a book series primarily for Teens called "Fear Street". Whereas G.B. generally had happy endings and no kids truly died, F.S. is a polar opposite. Deaths are copious in these books and the blood even more so. Netflix has adapted one of these books (I think) into a series of three 2 hour films. The first is set in 1994, the second in 1987 and the final one in 1666. The overarching tale is of a girl wrongly accused of witchcraft and the spell she cast on her village at the time of her death that would lead to serial murders and carnage in the town till the end of time. However, as you no doubt suspect, everything is not as it seems. The twin towns of Shady Side and Sunny Vale seem to live polar opposite lives, with the former constantly wracked by murder and multiple deaths while the latter seems to grow richer and more peaceful with every passing tragedy across town.

A group of teens in 1994 who are caught up in the latest murder spree in Shady Side decide to investigate the curse and somehow put an end to it. In know... I know... it sounds like a bad episode of "Scooby Doo" but it isn't. There's death, blood, mystery and mayhem afoot that would put Velma and company in the bug house if they'd witnessed it. The story is engaging and is almost good enough to fill three feature length films... almost. While there are frankly few stupid suicidal teens in this flick there are enough tropes (particularly at the end of the last film) to make you role your eyes and groan. But in the end I was entertained and found myself rooting for the kids to solve the mystery and end the curse.

You could do worse.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Hard to Handle from 1933 with James Cagney, Ruth Donnelly, Mary Brian and Claire Dodd


You just have to love the pre-codes. Cagney is a likable scammer in love with the daughter, Mary Brian, of fellow scammer Ruth Donnelly. Donnelly wants her pretty daughter to marry money, so Donnelly and Cagney butt heads all movie long, but at some level, they kinda like each other as only two scammers can.

Cagney is in full flower in this one, running one scam after another, but talking so fast even he's not sure half the time what he's saying. Matching him scam for scam and flimflam for flimflam is Donnelly who, literally, sells the furniture from her furnished rental apartment and then skips town.

Stuck in the middle of these two whirling dervishes of deceit is honest daughter Brian who wants to marry Cagney when he's down and out, but mother Donnelly will have none of that.

Then, when Cagney's on top, Brian is hesitant to marry him as she thinks money will change him, but Donnelly is shamelessly now all for the marriage. Cagney and Donnelly are probably the ones who should get married, but if these two hucksters did, quite possibly, a black hole would open up and swallow the earth.

After our two matchstick men move from West to East Coast, with daughter in tow - you have to "relocate" from time to time when you're in the "scamming" business - Cagney hits it big as a promoter of a Florida land deal. There is nothing more period-scam perfect than a Florida land deal. To be fair, Cagney, at first, isn't aware it's a scam, but he probably wouldn't have cared if he did.

Thrown into the mix at this point is pretty-as-all-heck Claire Dodd, the daughter of Cagney's land-deal partner, who seems to want Cagney mainly to prevent Brian from getting him.

With maybe fifteen minutes to go, everything rips to a head: Cagney is caught cheating with Dodd (he tried not to, but come on, when a pretty woman with an agenda comes to your hotel room at night with a bottle of liquor, things are going to happen), the land deal blows up, Cagney is arrested and Donnelly sets daughter Brian up to marry someone else.

But fear not as 1930s Warner Bros. never saw a hopelessly tangled plot it couldn't fix in ten minutes max, which is exactly what happens here in this it-all-turns-out-good movie. It's fun; it's fast; it's silly and there's this pre-code wonder to ponder: Cagney and Donnelly run a bunch of scams, they are never really punished and they are the heroes of the story.

One year later, with the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, that wouldn't be allowed. Darn it, though, movies are more fun (and more like real life) when you find yourself occasionally liking rapscallions like Cagney and Donnelly even though you know you shouldn't.


N.B., 1941's His Girl Friday is often noted as being the first movie to have overlapping speed dialogue, but Hard To Handle, and many other pre-codes were doing it a decade earlier.

 

[Harp]

^^^The Grifters premiered six decades later starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening
for a point blank depiction of short-term con scams and invariable consequences for those who play
other people as easy marks while casting morality aside as worthless baggage. Fate is neither foolish
nor easily sated by sin and lays a lien across all fortune these characters pursue and the lives they
chose to lead. A crown fashioned by twisted caprice given by fate can never be removed.

 

[MisterCairo]

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

"Damn! We're in a tight spot!

 

[Zombie_61]

^ "Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!" - Ulysses Everett McGill

 

[LizzieMaine]

I never get tired of that picture. We've had Chris Thomas King, who plays Tommy Johnson, on our stage several times over the years, and he's even better in person. And he's very patient with people who keep quoting lines of dialogue from the film at him.

 

[Touchofevil]

Last night, Jaws!

 

[Fading Fast]

Father of the Bride from 1950 with Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Billie Burke and Leo G. Carroll


Father of the Bride is fluff that shamelessly plays to cliches and emotions, but if you're in the right mood, an A-list cast, fast-paced directing by Vincent Minnelli and a serviceable script moves it along seamlessly and entertainingly.

Spencer Tracy is the typical 1950s upper-middle-class father who's kinda clueless as to what's really going on with his kids. He is shocked into focus when daughter Elizabeth Taylor (the young, lithe version before hard living intervened in the next decade) casually announces she's engaged to a boy the family hardly knows.

From here, the script all but writes itself. After initial elation mixed with a little "what do we know about this boy" concern - mollified by meeting his family, who is exactly like Tracy's family - it's full speed ahead to the wedding planning.

Tracy assumes it will be a small, simple wedding. Hah! While daughter Taylor seems okay with this, mother Joan Bennett, who is still smarting a bit from her no-frills Justice-of-the-Peace elopement to Tracy twenty-plus years ago, is having none of this "small-wedding nonsense."

Now it's all Tracy worrying about the cost, Bennett ordering every wedding adornment under the sun, Taylor pinging back and forth between excitement and despair, upset either by her parents' bickering over the cost or some minor kerfuffle with her fiance.

Right on schedule, Tracy meets the snooty caterer/wedding planner, wonderfully played by Leo G. Carroll, who condescendingly explains why every cost save Tracy suggests is, yes, doable, if you want "that" kind of affair.

Shamelessly playing to all the over-priced wedding tropes, Tracy sees dollar signs next to every discussion or appearance of dresses, bridesmaid's gifts, champagne orders, guest lists, chauffeured cars, orchestras, invitations and on and on.

There's even the last-minute pre-wedding bride and groom fight with the heartwarming moment of Dad consoling his daughter (paraphrasing): "forget the cost, if you don't want to go through with this, Dad will make it all okay." But naturally, they do go through with it and, other than a few Hollywood-forced pratfalls, all goes well on wedding day.

It's one cliche after another, but it also works in a silly-movie way mostly because Tracy knows his role here - bluster a bit on the surface, but have a heart of gold underneath. If you do see it, look for the scene where he basically tries to pay his daughter off to elope and, then, shifts the blame for that idea to daughter Taylor when his wife catches wind of it. A husband's gotta do, what a husband's gotta do.


N.B. Father of the Bride is lighthearted fun about a family that can afford to waste money on a fancy wedding even if "Pops" doesn't want to. For a serious look at a family being, literally, torn apart over paying for a wedding it can't afford, see 1956's A Catered Affair. It's Father of the Bride's real-world working-class cognate, and a much better movie.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Note that there's a sequel: Father's Little Dividend (1951).

 

[MisterCairo]

Last night, Jaws!

Did they ever get a bigger boat?

 

[MisterCairo]

Introduced our eldest daughter to This is Spinal Tap.

She now understands what the heck I mean whenever I say "this goes to 11".

 

[Worf]

View attachment 349679
Father of the Bride from 1950 with Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Billie Burke and Leo G. Carroll


Father of the Bride is fluff that shamelessly plays to cliches and emotions, but if you're in the right mood, an A-list cast, fast-paced directing by Vincent Minnelli and a serviceable script moves it along seamlessly and entertainingly.

Spencer Tracy is the typical 1950s upper-middle-class father who's kinda clueless as to what's really going on with his kids. He is shocked into focus when daughter Elizabeth Taylor (the young, lithe version before hard living intervened in the next decade) casually announces she's engaged to a boy the family hardly knows.

From here, the script all but writes itself. After initial elation mixed with a little "what do we know about this boy" concern - mollified by meeting his family, who is exactly like Tracy's family - it's full speed ahead to the wedding planning.

Tracy assumes it will be a small, simple wedding. Hah! While daughter Taylor seems okay with this, mother Joan Bennett, who is still smarting a bit from her no-frills Justice-of-the-Peace elopement to Tracy twenty-plus years ago, is having none of this "small-wedding nonsense."

Now it's all Tracy worrying about the cost, Bennett ordering every wedding adornment under the sun, Taylor pinging back and forth between excitement and despair, upset either by her parents' bickering over the cost or some minor kerfuffle with her fiance.

Right on schedule, Tracy meets the snooty caterer/wedding planner, wonderfully played by Leo G. Carroll, who condescendingly explains why every cost save Tracy suggests is, yes, doable, if you want "that" kind of affair.

Shamelessly playing to all the over-priced wedding tropes, Tracy sees dollar signs next to every discussion or appearance of dresses, bridesmaid's gifts, champagne orders, guest lists, chauffeured cars, orchestras, invitations and on and on.

There's even the last-minute pre-wedding bride and groom fight with the heartwarming moment of Dad consoling his daughter (paraphrasing): "forget the cost, if you don't want to go through with this, Dad will make it all okay." But naturally, they do go through with it and, other than a few Hollywood-forced pratfalls, all goes well on wedding day.

It's one cliche after another, but it also works in a silly-movie way mostly because Tracy knows his role here - bluster a bit on the surface, but have a heart of gold underneath. If you do see it, look for the scene where he basically tries to pay his daughter off to elope and, then, shifts the blame for that idea to daughter Taylor when his wife catches wind of it. A husband's gotta do, what a husband's gotta do.


N.B. Father of the Bride is lighthearted fun about a family that can afford to waste money on a fancy wedding even if "Pops" doesn't want to. For a serious look at a family being, literally, torn apart over paying for a wedding it can't afford, see 1956's A Catered Affair. It's Father of the Bride's real-world working-class cognate, and a much better movie.

Great movie indeed, however as a father who grew up poor and worked his way out of the Projects the manner in which Tracey is fleeced, run amok, bamboozled and flim flamed.... makes my blood boil. In my version of the film he snatches a knot in his daughters errr posterior and drags the both of them to the nearest Justice of the Peace. Gives them the wedding money as a sizeable downpayment on their first house and has that "wedding planner" run out of town on a rail. That's a movie I'd pay good money to see!!!!!

Worf

 

[Worf]

"Blood Red Sky" - No spoiler here as the trailer gives you pretty much the entire plot. Vampire mom tries to get herself or her son to NY City via plane from Germany to get help with an "affliction". Along the way the plane is hijacked and the hijackers get a LOT more'n they bargained for. A little overlong but tense, non-stop action from start to finish. You find out how she was bitten but you don't find out how she expects to be cured. Also many things are played against trope here which I liked. The plan, the goals and the methods of the hijackers are different and ingenious. Some of the villains are way over the top but good villains are hard to write. Kept me and puddin' riveted till the wee hours last night.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

Great movie indeed, however as a father who grew up poor and worked his way out of the Projects the manner in which Tracey is fleeced, run amok, bamboozled and flim flamed.... makes my blood boil. In my version of the film he snatches a knot in his daughters errr posterior and drags the both of them to the nearest Justice of the Peace. Gives them the wedding money as a sizeable downpayment on their first house and has that "wedding planner" run out of town on a rail. That's a movie I'd pay good money to see!!!!!

Worf

I'm with you, as this raised-by-Depression-era-parents kid is always thinking very pragmatically about money. Have you seen "The Catered Affair," as that movie plays out - after a lot of family angst - more like you suggest?