What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

The opening scene in Casablanca when she speaks to Sam seated at the piano is the moment
Cupid's dart struck a thunderboldt to my heart. And I have been hopelessly in love with Ingrid ever since.

There are few films that have put my conscience to such test as Casablanca, and the final scene
when Rick states fated love's truth to Ilsa is the ultimate testament of honor and courage
and decency I have ever seen.

 

[Edward]

Shadow in the Cloud 2020. Chloe Grace Mortiez is a female flight officer with the ATA in WW2 who ends up on a B17 transport flight, on a top secret mission, when the plane is attacked by a Gremlin... A fun enough action picture that help my attention for the duration, though what could have been a great, intense, psychological horror becomes something of a much more implausible action picture by the final act, with a romantic sub-plot that's too thinly laid in to feel much more than shoe-horned in. Nice to see the concept of the gremlin as a supernatural entity explored in its original context for the first time (unless you count the Twilight Zone, I suppose - but wasn't that a demon?), but could have been so much more. Emphasised nicely what a sitting duck the guy in the ball turret was, though.

The opening scene in Casablanca when she speaks to Sam seated at the piano is the moment
Cupid's dart struck a thunderboldt to my heart. And I have been hopelessly in love with Ingrid ever since.

There are few films that have put my conscience to such test as Casablanca, and the final scene
when Rick states fated love's truth to Ilsa is the ultimate testament of honor and courage
and decency I have ever seen.

Indeed. This is why it is so important they never remake it: there's no way Hollywood today would allow as perfect an ending. Doubtless they'd try to make it "happy" to appease audience expectations, and ruin it in the process. The husband would turn up, but it would be ok, because he's been secretly gay all along, and he'd divorce her, and give her away at Sam's wedding, where we'd then see him pick up a very pretty French sailor. Not that I have a problem with the depictions of same sex relationships in that period, but that's hardly the point here...

 

[Harp]

Indeed. This is why it is so important they never remake it: there's no way Hollywood today would allow as perfect an ending...

Several years ago, I took a late afternoon bus home and sat reading Pollock's Spinoza when a kid
seated across the opposite side aisle asked if I had ever read Maimonides. The kid could not have been
more than seventeen; so I admittedly was somewhat taken aback, but we fell into converse. He had read
Spinoza, wanted my opinion on Maimonides and Benedictus, but somehow Casablanca popped up,
since he was examining the last scene in his mind, looking at all the angles for discernible truth.
It is not an everyday occurrence to meet a soulmate aboard the Chicago Transit Authority,
or have such a far range converse; however this introspective young man was quite impressed
by the film and the moral questions posed its principals.

It is difficult to imagine any recent Hollywood fare approaching this state of considered thought.

 

[MisterCairo]

Introduced our girls to Gremilns. 1984 at its best!

 

[Edward]

Introduced our girls to Gremilns. 1984 at its best!

A quality little horror picture. I also rather enjoyed the sequel, though it's a very different animal again.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Family Way from 1966 with Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett and John Mills


The Family Way is a lighter version of an English kitchen-sink drama about a young newlywed couple who are unable to consummate their marriage as a lack of privacy, they live with his parents, causes "performance" issues for him.

Of course he, Hywel Bennett, doesn't want anyone to know, but his family, friends and neighbors slowly kinda sorta suss out what is not going on in the newlyweds' marriage. Wife Hayley Mills is as understanding as could be, but even she recommends they see a marriage counselor, which he refuses as he doesn't want to tell his problem to a stranger. But, secretly, he does go to see one.

What we have now is a shy young man, with an horribly embarrassing performance issue, summoning up the courage to talk to a professional. It's the 1960s in England, so one expects the counselor to be a elderly, serious-looking man.

Instead, he walks into the office and the counselor is an attractive young woman. Effectively, our in-his-late-teens hero has to tell a pretty woman he can't get it up. Life can really suck on a bad day.

Perhaps feeding into this problem, Bennett, his mother tells us, has always been a sensitive boy whose passion for reading irritates his working-class father who's angry his son isn't "more of a man." We later learn, the father himself seems to have some repressed homosexual leanings, which, it is implies, fuels his "tough guy" persona.

The real fun and point, though, of The Family Way is watching the secret slowly leak out to both families and the neighbors in this small town.

In a priceless scene when the couple's parents, all normal-for-their-day sexually repressed men and women, try to discuss "the problem" amongst themselves. They do so without ever really saying what is going on or using any descriptive words. The conversation goes on humorously awkward like this:

Girl's mother: I had a heart to heart with Jenny (the young wife).

Boy's mother: She didn't give you any details?

Girl's father: There wouldn't be any, would there?

The neighbors are less discrete, which fuels the climax as Bennett rightfully accuses Mills of telling someone "their secret." She did tell her mother and from there it just spreads until their "problem" becomes the subject of over-the-back-fence gossip.

There are a few other things going on - a travel agent embezzled their honeymoon funds, which is why their marriage began in his parents' small and thin-walled house. Also not helping things is Bennett's still-living-at-home, studdly motorcycle-racing brother who takes too much of an interest in now-frustrated Mills. But the crux and humor in this one is why "nothing" is happening in this marriage.

In The Family Way we do see some real day-to-day problems of the working class and how even the newlyweds' parents' marriages are far from perfect, but the general tone is humorous enough to make it, overall, a fun movie.


N.B. #1 While it was probably risque at the time, the one short scene where we see Hayley Mills' plucky bare bottom, compared with today's ubiquitous and graphic sex scenes, is more cute than racy.

N.B. #2 When the parents have their big confab, the possibility that Bennett is (using the language of the day) "queer" comes up, prompting one parent to say, effectively (and paraphrasing), "so what if that's what he is, that's what nature wanted." Once again, we see the past was not as closed-minded nor black and white on issues as it's often portrayed.

N.B. #3 Britain's 1960s socialist government doesn't come across as ruthless and dictatorial, but bureaucratically indifferent to those it serves and grossly inefficient in its efforts to help, in this case, a young couple find a place to live.

 

[Harp]

^This is great. When I was a boy Hayley Mills was my girlfriend.

At Christmas I give out stockings stuffed with select film CDs and imported Central American coffee
to the office gals, the other year The Trouble With Angels with Hayley and Roz Russell really made a hit.
(Waterloo Bridge with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor; Ryan's Daughter with Robert Mitchum and John Mills-
Haley's father-for which he won an Oscar; and The Red Violin).

And, of course, Hayley and I never broke up. Unrequited, never consumated love is chaste but quite joyous.

 

[MisterCairo]

A quality little horror picture. I also rather enjoyed the sequel, though it's a very different animal again.

Bought both on blu-ray. Will watch 2 closer to Hallowe'en.

 

[belfastboy]

The new release from Prime..."The Courier" with Benedict Cumberbun....A very good movie, a 'biographical spy yarn' with a more personal human twist to the story. Cumberbun is a marvelous actor.

 

[Edward]

Bought both on blu-ray. Will watch 2 closer to Hallowe'en.

My favourite bit in 2 remains the 'New York, New York' number...

I remember seeing 2 in the cinema. My brother and I went to see it, the day after having gone to see Back to the Future III. For added comedy value, there actually had been a break-down during BTTF, which took them a few minutes to correct. Same venue (albeit the screen next door), next day, when Gremlins 2 went down, we thought that was for real too, until they broke the fourth wall.

 

[MisterCairo]

Cumberbun?

The new release from Prime..."The Courier" with Benedict Cumberbun....A very good movie, a 'biographical spy yarn' with a more personal human twist to the story. Cumberbun is a marvelous actor.

 

[belfastboy]

Cumberbun?

Yes, I think it more easy for me to remember than his other name.

 

[Edward Reed]

A Guy Named Joe
1943

An unconventional sentimental WWII love story.
Setting: Army Air Forces crew flying B-25 Mitchells in the ETO and P-38 Lightning fighters in the CBI.
* Not sure I can-or even should- explain this one especially if you haven’t seen it. Any review would be a spoiler that would remove any surprises … it, as usual for wartime films, tends to pander to the patriotic national mood of the time to unveil spirited two-dimensional wartime propaganda but that doesn’t really overshadow the film’s sentimental nature of love and loss message too much.
Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Lionel Barrymore, Ward Bond

 

[Doctor Strange]

BTW, A Guy Named Joe was remade by Steven Spielberg as Always (1989), with the airmen changed to aerial firefighters.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The last third of "Footlight Parade," one of my favorite 1930s Warner Bros. musicals. I've seen it dozens of times over the past fifty years, but the dynamism of Mr. Cagney's performance in the "Shanghai Lil" number never gets stale, and makes it all the more tragic that he did so few full-blown musicals over the course of his career. You can't look at anything else on the screen when he's on it.

 

[Edward Reed]

The last third of "Footlight Parade," one of my favorite 1930s Warner Bros. musicals.

Awesome! I put it on my viewing roster! Thanks!

 

[Worf]

I've been wanting/avoiding this movie for years because I knew... KNEW it would scare the dickens out of me... Man was I right. "30 Days of Night", not the best vampire picture I've ever seen but its one of the scariest and goriest. As one reviewer put it, "these ain't no sexy tuxedo wearin' vampires... no sparkling in daylight dreamy eyed picture bait for pre-teen girls... these things are ancient, savage killing machines who deliberately invade the northernmost town in Alaska to have a 30 night feast. They're fast, savage and smart. In that they're derived from a viral infection and are NOT supernatural/religious in nature, half your arsenal is gone. No holy water, no crucifixes, none of that religious stuff will affect them in the least. Only two things kill em for sure.. daylight and decapitation... that's it. Unless you can get headshots with double Ought you pretty much toast. What a movie.

Worf

 

[Doctor Strange]

Lizzie, my sister and I also watched Footlight Parade. Like you, it's nearly my favorite of the Busby Berkeley pictures, I've seen it MANY times (though the one that I have long owned a 16mm print of is Dames). But my sister hadn't seen it since we first watched it... when were kids, on one of the local NYC TV stations on a weekend afternoon around fifty years ago!

The last third is magic, but that's true of most of the Berkeley musicals. What this one really has going for it is a more interesting first two-thirds than many of the others, with the dynamic performances of Cagney and Blondell as anchors.

One thing I noticed this time around that I'd forgotten: how all the music for the big numbers is used as underscroring earlier in the film. The vague familiarity of that foreshadowing adds an element of excitement when the songs finally show up full-blown "onstage". Clever!

 

[Doctor Strange]

Since so many of us are Turner Classic Movies regulars, note the changes coming to the channel's presentation TOMORROW:

Turner Classic Movies Is Changing. And Trying to Stay the Same. - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

As for me, I only have one problem with TCM: I'm still waiting for the day when Ben Mankiewicz comes up with an allegedly astute observation that can't be found in the movie's Wiki article. I miss Robert Osborne!

 

[MisterCairo]

Yes, I think it more easy for me to remember than his other name.

Sounds like a hipster's hairstyle!