What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MisterCairo]

Speaking of its darker vibe, I recall reading on the inter web a religious guy discussing the many sexual references in what was supposed to be a family film!

George, cab driver and cop meeting Violet on the street ("This old thing? This is what I throw on when I don't care how I look") one of the most egregious examples!

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It's a Wonderful Life from 1946 with James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore and Henry Travers


It's a Wonderful Life's rights lapsed into the public domain from 1974 until 1993, so for many years at Christmastime, it was played endlessly on TV. It was shown so often, it turned into a joke as viewers burned out on it.

No longer in the public domain and having avoided it for a few decades, one is able to look at It's a Wonderful Life anew, and it holds up pretty darn well. Its economics are all but nonsense - standard Hollywood and director Frank Capra cardboard anti-business hokum - but its spirituality is inspiring. Its exposition of one man's life is surprisingly thoughtful and poignant.

James Stewart as George Bailey grows up in the small town of Bedford Falls dreaming of travel, adventure and big cities. His father runs the beloved but perpetually struggling Building and Loan - the town's small bank alternative to its only other bank owned by the greedy and mean Mr. Potter, played with Scrooge-like exaggeration by Lionel Barrymore.

Everytime George is close to getting out of Bedford Falls, something - his father's stroke, a bank run, his injured ear - prevents his escape. He turns down business opportunities out of town to keep his necessary-to-the-community bank going. Soon enough, he marries girl-next-door Donna Reed and settles down to keeping the bank alive while he and Reed have a bunch of kids.

George is a good guy who helps his neighbors and customers with their problems while, ironically, providing the funds for others, like his brother, to leave town. Despite a few bank crises, with the community's support, he keeps it all together until one Christmas Eve when his uncle accidentally loses the bank's cash reserves just as a bank examiner arrives (I know, but it's a movie).

Stewart is now facing the bank being closed and, even, being arrested because of the missing funds. At home that evening, his old house is falling apart, his gaggle of kids are being annoyingly rambunctious and one is not feeling well. After a small meltdown there, he walks out only to get into a bar fight and car accident later.

With his world crumbling around him, George, holding a personal pity party standing on a bridge, contemplates suicide. He believes everyone would be better off without him as he is "worth" more dead than alive because of his life insurance policy. Enter the wonderful Henry Travers as George's bumbling guardian angel sent from above to save George.

He grants George his wish to have never been born and then, riffing like all heck on A Christmas Carol, shows George what charming Bedford Falls would be like if he, George, truly hadn't been born.

The town having been, effectively, taken over by the greedy Mr. Potter has become a seedy honky tonk. Several of the people whom George had saved with a kind last-minute loan or gift or other help are now drunkards, embittered or impoverished. His wife is a spinster librarian (still looking Donna Reed adorable, though) and his kids have never been born.

Seeing all this, George begs his guardian angel to have his life restored. Now back, George is happy to see the town he had grown to hate and hugs his wife and children with a renewed love.

Being a Frank Capra movie, and this still being Christmas Eve, the townsfolk come to the Bailey's house with whatever money they can dig up to save George and the bank. It's a Capraesque moment of treacly happiness that works because, heck, George is a good guy and you share in his redemption.

It's a Wonderful Life is outstanding movie propaganda with a darker vibe than its reputation would have you believe. Even though the characters are cartoons and the business and financial constructs are ludicrous, the Christmas spirit endnote is so infectious, you don't care.

 

[AmateisGal]

Bell, Book, and Candle (1959) with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. My first time to see this film and I absolutely loved it. Will definitely be watching it again and again.

 

[Zombie_61]

Speaking of its darker vibe, I recall reading on the inter web a religious guy discussing the many sexual references in what was supposed to be a family film!...

For a group of people who aren't supposed to be preoccupied with sex, some of those religious types sure spend a lot of time thinking about it and pointing it out to those of us who couldn't care less.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

About two weeks ago we had a relatives staying with us for Thanksgiving, and the Saturday following we watched Elf, the traditional kick off movie for Christmas. My brother-in-law commented that many of us were laughing before the scene really started.
More recently it was Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) with Jack Benny top-billed as a hustling news reporter. In terms of screen time he was in third place to Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor, dancer and stage producer respectively.
It's certain that many of you know this already, but quite a few of the songs in the movie were used in Singin' in the Rain- Broadway Rhythm, You are My Lucky Star, All I Do is Dream of You, and I'm sure some more.
Then, it was Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) with practically the exact same cast, minus Benny, but with the talented feet of George Murphy. Good stuff.

 

[MisterCairo]

Big Night.

Away on temporary duty for a few days, watching the DVD.

Also nearly done Stanley Tucci's new book (signed edition) on his journey with food.

 

[Fading Fast]

Cat Ballou from 1965 with Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin and Nat King Cole


I am just not the audience for comedy westerns as I could tell this was a reasonably good one, yet I was, oftentimes, bored or put off by its silliness. As with screwball comedies in the '30s or college fraternity flicks in the '80s, some part of the movie-going public enjoys seeing farce on screen.

Set in the "Old West," the surface story in Cat Ballou is one of an innocent new schoolmarm, Jane Fonda as Cat Ballou, coming home after college to find her father's farm is going to be stolen from him by "the railroad."

Her dad is then killed by the railroad's hired gun, Lee Marvin, in one of his two roles in this one. Fonda, in response, forms a gang with her dad's old farmhand, a pair of cousins and Lee Marvin, in his second role, as a drunkard, former gunslinger whom Fonda found in one of the cowboy story books of the day.

After robbing a train, this ragtag "gang" splits a bit as Marvin goes on to the big showdown with his evil doppelganger brother (the man who shot Fonda's father), while Fonda has a showdown of her own with the railroad baron who gave the order to have her father killed.

That's the story, but this movie is really about the antics along the way. It's about Nat King Cole (he is the best part of this one) and Stubby Kaye coming in like a Greek Chorus to sing the theme song periodically.

It's about the comedy of watching drunk Marvin try to shoot straight or the sarcasm of Ballou's Native American Indian farmhand's spot-on commentary about how poorly his people have been treated (note, it's 1965, meaning our current young generation isn't the first one to be angered by or expose America's inconsistencies).

It's also about Fonda maybe falling in love with one of the cousins in Cat Ballou's weakest storyline. But it's also about Fonda, a hot star at the time, looking cool wearing a gun and holster slung over tight pants while being a badass leading a gang.

I get it and I don't. I get that this kind of farce or "send up" is to be taken tongue in cheek, but Cat Ballou felt to me like a really good ten minute Saturday Night Live skit that went on, without anywhere nearly enough funny material, for an extra hour and twenty minutes.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I saw Cat Ballou in theaters when I was 10 years old and loved it... but boy, it hasn't aged well.

I watched a couple of 1930s foreign language films recently recorded from TCM in the wee hours:

Walpurgis Night (Swedish, 1935) - Swedish-language melodrama about a newspaper's editor and publisher, marriage, adultery, and abortion - a subject that could not even be mentioned in American films at the time. Fascinating, gorgeously photographed, and featuring an impossibly young Ingrid Bergman as one of the leads. An interesting curio, as is...

The Dybbuk (Polish, 1937) - Yiddish-language classic based on a popular play, set in an 1800s Chasidic Jewish village in the Pale of Settlement. In Jewish folklore and superstition, a dybbuk is the spirit of a dead person who possesses a living person. In this case, a talented young student uses forbidden Kabbalistic methods to conjure Satan to prevent his beloved from marrying another; he is killed by the effort, but his spirit then possesses his intended bride on the day she is to wed. There's more to it than that, it's a long, slow film with a lot of plot and characters. The acting varies from amateurish to very good, some of the production has that wacky German Expressionist design, and the whole thing has a Fiddler on the Roof feel - but not as nostalgic or idealized: this community is just barely hanging on.

I found it quite interesting, especially because it was made by Jews for Jews back when the shtetls of the 1800s were still in existence. It's a real window into that time, like the photographs of Roman Vishniac... My own family background is Eastern European Jewish, so this resonated with me... and I even understood a Yiddish word here and there. Not a great film, but an interesting one.

 

[Edward]

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It's a Wonderful Life from 1946 with James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore and Henry Travers


It's a Wonderful Life's rights lapsed into the public domain from 1974 until 1993, so for many years at Christmastime, it was played endlessly on TV. It was shown so often, it turned into a joke as viewers burned out on it.

No longer in the public domain and having avoided it for a few decades, one is able to look at It's a Wonderful Life anew, and it holds up pretty darn well. Its economics are all but nonsense - standard Hollywood and director Frank Capra cardboard anti-business hokum - but its spirituality is inspiring. Its exposition of one man's life is surprisingly thoughtful and poignant.

James Stewart as George Bailey grows up in the small town of Bedford Falls dreaming of travel, adventure and big cities. His father runs the beloved but perpetually struggling Building and Loan - the town's small bank alternative to its only other bank owned by the greedy and mean Mr. Potter, played with Scrooge-like exaggeration by Lionel Barrymore.

Everytime George is close to getting out of Bedford Falls, something - his father's stroke, a bank run, his injured ear - prevents his escape. He turns down business opportunities out of town to keep his necessary-to-the-community bank going. Soon enough, he marries girl-next-door Donna Reed and settles down to keeping the bank alive while he and Reed have a bunch of kids.

George is a good guy who helps his neighbors and customers with their problems while, ironically, providing the funds for others, like his brother, to leave town. Despite a few bank crises, with the community's support, he keeps it all together until one Christmas Eve when his uncle accidentally loses the bank's cash reserves just as a bank examiner arrives (I know, but it's a movie).

Stewart is now facing the bank being closed and, even, being arrested because of the missing funds. At home that evening, his old house is falling apart, his gaggle of kids are being annoyingly rambunctious and one is not feeling well. After a small meltdown there, he walks out only to get into a bar fight and car accident later.

With his world crumbling around him, George, holding a personal pity party standing on a bridge, contemplates suicide. He believes everyone would be better off without him as he is "worth" more dead than alive because of his life insurance policy. Enter the wonderful Henry Travers as George's bumbling guardian angel sent from above to save George.

He grants George his wish to have never been born and then, riffing like all heck on A Christmas Carol, shows George what charming Bedford Falls would be like if he, George, truly hadn't been born.

The town having been, effectively, taken over by the greedy Mr. Potter has become a seedy honky tonk. Several of the people whom George had saved with a kind last-minute loan or gift or other help are now drunkards, embittered or impoverished. His wife is a spinster librarian (still looking Donna Reed adorable, though) and his kids have never been born.

Seeing all this, George begs his guardian angel to have his life restored. Now back, George is happy to see the town he had grown to hate and hugs his wife and children with a renewed love.

Being a Frank Capra movie, and this still being Christmas Eve, the townsfolk come to the Bailey's house with whatever money they can dig up to save George and the bank. It's a Capraesque moment of treacly happiness that works because, heck, George is a good guy and you share in his redemption.

It's a Wonderful Life is outstanding movie propaganda with a darker vibe than its reputation would have you believe. Even though the characters are cartoons and the business and financial constructs are ludicrous, the Christmas spirit endnote is so infectious, you don't care.

I've always enjoyed this - indeed, it's one of few Christmas films I can stomach rewatching annually. I have strong memories of seeing parts of it when it was on TV when I was a very small child - for some reason, the scene with the near-run on the bank always stuck with me, no ides why that captured my pre-school imagination, maybe because I didn't quite get what was going on then. I think it speaks to a lot of us who feel we've never amounted to anything much.

I also have a lot of affection for the Married with Children parody, which ends with Al Bundy deciding to live just to spite everyone else and stop them having what the angel shows him to be a much better life without him.

 

[MisterCairo]

I've always enjoyed this - indeed, it's one of few Christmas films I can stomach rewatching annually. I have strong memories of seeing parts of it when it was on TV when I was a very small child - for some reason, the scene with the near-run on the bank always stuck with me, no ides why that captured my pre-school imagination, maybe because I didn't quite get what was going on then. I think it speaks to a lot of us who feel we've never amounted to anything much.

I also have a lot of affection for the Married with Children parody, which ends with Al Bundy deciding to live just to spite everyone else and stop them having what the angel shows him to be a much better life without him.

That parody, and the Blackadder Christmas special, where Ebenezer Blackadder, the nicest, kindest man in all England, learns how to become a greedy selfish miser thanks to Robbie Coltrane's Christmas spirit...

 

[Fading Fast]

The Night Holds Terror from 1955 with Jack Kelly, Vince Edwards, Hilda Parks and John Cassavetes


With a small budget and only a few second-tier actors, The Night Holds Terror feels more like a TV movie than a motion picture, but it's a reasonably good TV movie.

Billed as noir, but more crime drama with noir elements, the straightforward story has a man, Jack Kelly, picking up a hitchhiker, Vince Edwards (TV's future Ben Casey) with everything then going horribly wrong for Kelly.

The hitchhiker, after brandishing a gun, has Kelly pull over so his other two gang members, John Cassavetes and David Cross, can catch up. They rob Kelly, but are angered because he only has ten bucks on him.

As will happen several times, the criminals then plan on the fly and accept desperate-to-stay-alive Kelly's offer to sell his car and give them the money. But that necessitates some cumbersome banking, which holds up the money until tomorrow. So it's off to Kelly's house where his unsuspecting wife and two kids are waiting for him.

The movie now segues to the standard crooks-holdup-with-the-victim's-family script: tensions run high, the crooks fight amongst themselves, one crook comes on to the (good-looking) wife, a few escape plans by the family are abandoned or fail, neighbors inconveniently knock on the door and the phone rings a bunch, causing much stress.

By next morning, after getting the car money, the crooks plan, again on the fly, to demand a ransom for Kelly after they learn his father owns a chain of grocery stores.

This ad-hoc move follows the standard kidnapping script: money is demanded, the police are covertly called and phone lines are tapped, while the kidnappers fight, worry about the death penalty and fantasize about getting away with the money (you're not even sure they really believe that's possible). At the same time, the cops trace phone lines and connect small clues, while the wife and kids worry about daddy.

It's nothing special, but it has its moments as the small budget and not-well-known actors gives the film an intimacy, since there's not much to distract you. It could easily have been reverse engineered into a stage play.

At an hour and half in length (what would be a two-hour TV movie with commercials), it drags a bit here and there. Yet it mainly holds your attention, especially when the cops and phone company's efforts at tracing a call from the kidnappers takes you on a trip through state-of-the-art 1955 communications technology, all with the clock ticking.

I wouldn't search for The Night Holds Terror, but if it pops up, its serviceable story, plus its fun mid-1950s time travel, makes it an okay watch. Surprisingly, though, John Cassavetes - an actor who can certainly own a scene and create a memorable character - walks through this one without much spark or energy.

 

[Doctor Strange]

My Salinger Year, with Margaret Qualley (Andie McDowell's daughter) as a young woman working for Salinger's publisher (Sigourney Weaver) in the 1990s, dealing with the reclusive author and his nutty fans, and trying to become a writer herself. It was pretty good, I'm a sucker for any NYC-publishing-world story.

 

[Harp]

My Salinger Year, with Margaret Qualley (Andie McDowell's daughter) as a young woman working for Salinger's publisher (Sigourney Weaver) in the 1990s, dealing with the reclusive author and his nutty fans, and trying to become a writer herself. It was pretty good, I'm a sucker for any NYC-publishing-world story.

I must see this. Salinger is a spectre whom has haunted me since forever and New York ices this cake.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Hollywood Hotel (1937), dir. Busby Berkeley, with Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Ted Healy (in his last movie), and an interesting mix of popular celebrities appearing as themselves (Benny Goodman, Louella Parsons, Ken Niles, etc.). A cross-pollination of the eponymous radio program with the film medium.
Indiana lad Powell wins contest, flies to Hollywood for a ten-week contract with All-Star Studios. Fun songs, snappy chatter, tons of faces you recognize, silly plot situations, and stunning sets. Berkeley's camera floats and tracks through impossibly glamourous nightclubs. Ronald Reagan is unbilled as a radio announcer at a red-carpet movie premiere, which fits, considering his radio background. Courtesy the TCM app.

 

[MisterCairo]

Cairo Cavalcade of Christmas continues with... Die Hard.

Which is a Christmas movie.

Packaging says so...

 

[Woodtroll]

Cairo Cavalcade of Christmas continues with... Die Hard.

Which is a Christmas movie.

Packaging says so...

It is indeed a Christmas movie: "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."

So there you go.

 

[MisterCairo]

 

[Zombie_61]

Okay then, if Die Hard is a Christmas movie could I use a replica of this shirt in an "Ugly Christmas Sweater" contest?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Funny point, that I never saw one of the Die Hard movies.

But I knew the Playstation 1 game.

 

[Fading Fast]

Funny point, that I never saw one of the Die Hard movies.

But I knew the Playstation 1 game.

What a perfect generational thing. I believe you are in your 30s? I have nephews in their 20s who have said the exact same thing to me about some movie franchises.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Of Human Hearts (1938) a period piece directed by MGM house director Clarence Brown...

Strange film about a preacher (Walter Huston) and his family (Beulah Bondi and a kid who will grow up to be Jimmy Stewart) who move to the Ohio frontier in the 1850s to take over the congregation of a poor village inhabited by a bunch of familiar character actors. The leading citizen and miserly general store owner (Guy Kibbee) underpays the preacher and his family with unsalable produce and worn-out clothing, which Huston accepts as part of his calling, but Bondi and the son resent. Huston is stern, and his relationship with his son is difficult, especially after the son shows an interest in becoming a doctor under the wing of the village's disgraced-drunk physician (Charles Coburn.)

It comes to a head years later, when now nearly adult Stewart accompanies Huston on a circuit ride to the hills, to visit those in his flock that live too far away to come to church. Spending the night with an elderly widow, Stewart refuses to eat her humble fare, and when she gifts him with her deceased husband's coat - which Huston explains is a huge act of heartfelt charity - he calls it a rag, they fight, and he returns home in disgust. He says farewell to his mother (note that Bondi played Stewart's mother in FOUR different films, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's A Wonderful Life!) and goes to a medical school in Baltimore that had been founded years earlier by Coburn...

Cut to the Civil War. Stewart is now an officer-doctor making a name for himself at saving limbs rather than immediately amputating them. For years, he's repeatedly asked Bondi to sell whatever she could to help pay his way through school and the army, even their beloved horse. Huston has died, and she's living in abject poverty; Stewart is so busy at the field hospitals that he doesn't write to her for two years. And now it gets really weird...

Stewart is summoned to Washington to see President Lincoln (John Carradine!), who essentially lambasts him for ignoring his mother, who thinks he's dead and has written Lincoln asking for help finding out what happened to him! Chastised, he rushes home (on their beloved horse, which conveniently just came back his way as he treats its dying owner) and all is forgiven.

It's odd to see young Stewart playing such an angry, short-sighted, unkind, selfish character (though it looks forward to his performances in George Bailey's dark night of the soul, those fifties Anthony Mann westerns, and Vertigo). Huston is indeed rough on him, but he's not wrong in many cases and Stewart won't see it. And Beulah Bondi is the film's MVP, getting way more screen time than typical for her; she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

An interesting semi-classic.