What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Wheeler Dealers from 1963 with James Garner, Lee Remick, Jim Backus and John Astin


"You don't go wheelin' 'n' dealin' for money. You do it for fun. Money's just the way you keep score."


The Wheeler Dealers is not meant to be taken seriously; it's really a 1960s version of the 1930s screwball comedy right down to single men and women acting as if the universe would be sucked into a giant black hole if they even so much as slept in unlocked adjoining rooms.

Taken in the spirit of "this is all hyperbole," The Wheeler Dealers is a pretty fun way to pass almost two hours. James Garner plays a Texas "wheeler dealer:" an oil wildcatter who spends his time raising money with fast talk about his crazy schemes that he either pulls off or creates enough tax write offs for it to work out in the end.

On his latest "capital raising" trip to New York City, he meets a young stock analyst played by Lee Remick who is trying to save her job by getting clients interested in a dog of a stock called Universal Widgets.

He's handsome; she's pretty, so the real point of the movie is getting these two together, but first a bunch of things have to get in their way. Garner's character is all for the getting together, so much so that he helps Remick drum up interest in stupid Universal Widgets, unfortunately, through what, effectively, is a pump-and-dump scheme.

The fun in this one is not the details of the exaggeratedly corrupt and silly "Wall Street" schemes, but watching Garner having fun "wheelin' 'n' dealin'," as straight-laced Remick stands by in shocked but intrigued amazement.

Garner buys modern art he knows nothing about and syndicates it out to his old oil buddies; he has Universal Widgets, now also syndicated out, ridiculously drilling for oil in its home state of Massachusetts and he buys a chi-chi New York City restaurant, effectively, with the restaurant's insurance company's money.

It's all nonsense, but Garner is good at it and is clearly enjoying his role. Remick, too, appears to be having fun as her character begins to like the "wheelin' 'n' dealin'." Helping it all work, the two stars have real on-screen chemistry, which has you rooting for them to get together.

Along for the ride is Jim Backus playing Remick's completely immoral boss at the brokerage firm and bumbling John Astin playing a government regulator envious-of-the-wheeler-dealers as these silly movies always need a few goofy character actors.

Stylewise, it's all early-sixties big cars, big hair for the women and tailored clothing for everyone, plus Hollywood was still amping up the color palette to compete with TV (think of the Doris Day and Rock Hudson battle-of-the-sexes movies and you got the look). It's fun time travel to a world that probably never really looked quite like that.

Despite the cartoon nature of Garner's "wheelin' 'n' dealin'," you'll recognize the core similarities to modern-day pump-and-dump schemes like we've recently seen in meme stocks and many corners of crypto.

The planned hype, calculated story building, intentional appeals to emotion and fear-of-missing-out narratives of those modern schemes are all here in Garner's gaming.

It's pretty amazing to see the blueprint of modern-day pump-and-dump schemes in a movie from 1963. As succinctly explained by Garner, "we got to build a bandwagon for these people [investors] to jump on."

In all of these movies, the story doesn't really make sense and the misunderstanding - Remick thinks Garner switched hotel rooms to be next the hers on purpose and, later, she thinks he sabotaged her career so that she'll marry him, he didn't do either - would easily be resolved in real life, but if you just go with it, it's silly fun.

If you've seen Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and That Touch of Mink so many times you're worn out, then The Wheeler Dealers will be a fresh version of the same basic story and style, but with James Garner having a ball "wheelin 'n' dealin'" his way into pretty-as-heck Lee Remick's heart.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Ms Remick starred with Anthony Hopkins in Queen's Bench VII. She always sparkled and owned considerable depth.

 

[belfastboy]

Kevin Kostner's Covid delayed release..."Let Him Go". Oh, what a terrible movie. It should have stayed in storage. Go ahead, mock me, I like Kostner but even he failed to make this watchable.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Costner has delivered but something about the man himself rather annoys me for some reason.
Bodyguard, where he came back home after an away job, instead of ordering a pizza, he cooks over
a stove and splashes some wine into a saucepan. Later, he clearly shows he never carried a pistol by
ham handed automatic Beretta rigamarole. Dances With Wolves, I thought he phoned it in. Robin Hood,
another call in. At times he carries a scene well, other times not so much.

 

[Edward]

Watched Black Cadiilac last night. Interesting picture. Released in 2003, but I had to look that up; the overall look and feel could have been any time since 1990; only the cars (and few at that) really give it away, so it has a sort of timeless feel to it. It's not especially original - it's your standard issue 'young guys hanging out and getting into scrapes get terrorised by a mysterious vintage car. The big reveal in the end is that it's not the obvious one who caused the trouble. For all its lack of any real originality, it does what it does quite well, the narrative is engaging, and while the characters are all more archetypes than individuals, they convince enough to be relatable. Unusually, they're mostly positively so: I find all too often in Hollywood pictures, especially horror and adjacent genre pieces, I default to the villain's side as the protagonists tend to be grating. Not so much here.

Also watched The Cemetary Man - 1994 - an early Rupert Everett picture. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109592/ I can only describe it as Roger Corman trying to make a Tarrantino picture, assuming QT wanted to make a chracter-led zombie piece. I can see elements of the American Werewolf franchise's influence too. An offbeat, slacker, comedy-horror that doesn't try too hard and ends up effortlessly cool. I enjoyed it. Very European; reminds me a lot of some 80s era French and German cinema I've encountered.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Hondo (1953) directed by John Farrow, with John Wayne and Geraldine Page. Neither the Missus nor I had ever seen it, and it was a pleasant surprise. Time is spent to allow for character interaction and development, and the Apache get a decent, sympathetic presentation (in response to violations of treaty agreements they are taking up arms.) Wayne plays Wayne, but with less bravado and more humanity, and Page brings a naturalness to her performance that brings you in to the story.
Clocking in at 1 hour 10 minutes, it was No Man's Woman (1955) with Marie Windsor as a ruthless art dealer, John Archer as her estranged husband, and Patric Knowles in the George Sanders role of well-spoken cad. Windsor uses people to support, promote, and fund her art gallery. She sets her eye on the fiancé of her employee, lying and manipulating folks for her own devious ends. A murder occurs, and at one point the Missus and I counted up about 6 suspects with motive to do the deed. Somewhat set-bound, it ventures outside to see some interesting location shots of Newport Beach and Balboa in the early 50s.

 

[Touchofevil]

Instead of Hangover Square (1945) on TCM’s Noir Alley, it’s The Detective (1968) and its taboo for the time storyline on FXM. although I have watched The Detective a number of times, I find its grittiness and cast of actors draws me back. It’s probably my attraction to the private/cop detective genre as much as anything.

 

[Touchofevil]

Lady in Cement (1968) on FXM. Frank Sinatra as private dick Tony Rome. A sequel to 1967’s Tone Rome. Entertaining with a nice cast. It is nice to see Dan Blocker as Gronsky. Always enjoyed him as Hoss Cartwright on Bonanza. A very different role, but well done. Worth a watch.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ I enjoy a well done criminal investigation. A fact scrapper off street gristle-n-grimer not easy to detect and I should talk after Bale's Pale Blue Eye. Missed it all so damn good the actual film is truly.

The deductive search itself is key for me. The Imitation Game where Turing and the Bletchley Park crowd crack German codes really hit the detective mark. A television spiner about female Bletchley WWII codebreakers dubbed the Bletchley Park Circle I eschewed for perhaps wrong reason. Agenda not analysis. It's tradecraft all tradecraft with me.
And its set circa 1952 or there with crimes left supposedly alone. I'd much rather see a female detective like Helen Mirren just dig in and go about what needs done. An American film centered on black women mathematicians whom were in NASA early days-title cannot recall. A definite film I need to see.

 

[Fading Fast]

Emma (not the Jane Austen one) from 1932 with Marie Dressler, Richard Cromwell, Jean Hersholt and Myrna Loy


It's 1932, "talkies" are a little more than two-years old and one of MGM's biggest stars is Marie Dressler, a heavy set and plain-faced grandmotherly looking actress who can carry an entire movie with her screen presence, comedic timing and ability to project an innate decency.

In Emma, Dressler takes a common Depression Era tale about spoiled rich kids, and turns it into an emotional drama packing an incredible amount of story into seventy-two fast-moving minutes.

At the open, Dressler, as Emma, is an all-around housekeeper/nanny to a family of modest means with a bunch of young kids, but after the mother dies in childbirth and the father, played by Jean Hersholt, strikes it rich with an invention, we see Dressler is raising the kids and running a mansion for her now widowed and wealthy employer.

Dressler plays Emma as a big, kind-hearted ball of energy who is happiest doing something and has the deep reserves of patience necessary to raise several kids, kids whom she loves as if they were her own.

One kid, though, played as a young adult by Richard Cromwell, is special to her as it was her, Dressler's, swat on his behind right after childbirth that started his breathing.

Dressler as the kids' surrogate mother and the father's trusted housekeeper and confidant is part of the family, so much so that when the kids are all in their late teens and twenties, Hersholt marries Dressler.

The kids, who, other than Cromwell, have grown up to be spoiled snobs, are appalled that their much-beloved "Emma" is now their stepmother. For old movie fans, it's fun to see a pre-stardom Myna Loy play one of the family's mean-spirited rich kids.

Things really heat up, though, when the father dies and everyone learns that he left all his money to Dressler. He did this because he knows Dressler loves the kids and will take care of them and, also, that the kids are too irresponsible to handle the money themselves.

After that, nasty things get said to kind Dressler and, worse, it's off to court as the kids, other than loyal-to-Dressler Cromwell, try to get their father's will overturned. The outcome has a Voltaire "all we need to do is work" message.

Emma is an odd and engaging movie: odd because it has a grandmotherly looking heroine and odd because, for some reason, Depression Era America, struggling to find work, food and shelter, loved stories about the rich and their spoiled offspring.

Yes, it's a form of escapism, but it's still amazing how many movies about rich kids squandering their parents' hard-earned fortunes populated the movie screens of the 1930s.

That's almost as odd as Dressler having mainstream popularity in her sixties, but she did. America hadn't yet become a twenty-four-seven youth-and-beauty culture.

Director Clarence Brown, like so many of his early 1930s peers, knew how to stuff a ton of plot into a short run time.

He covered about twenty-five years in the life of one family, a number of flying scenes - Cromwell's a flying enthusiast and, at that time, it was a popular and relatively new technology the public loved seeing - and an engaging courtroom battle, before ending with a homily at the seventy-one-minute mark. Phew.

You can read a lot into Dressler's portrayal of Emma - her unshakable kindness, indifference to money, turn-the-other-cheek love and desire to simply stay busy helping others has a Christ-like feel to it - but whatever the reason, audiences in the early 1930s simply loved this stocky, bug-eyed, often comedic performer who showed, here, she was much more than a character actor.

Unfortunately, at the peak of her popularity, Ms. Dressler passed away at the age of sixty-five in 1934 leaving a relatively small number of movies, but a noted legacy, with her performance in Emma being one of her more important roles.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Fast, spot on. Wasn't Ms Dressler 'Tugboat Anne?'
And your youth and beauty remark dart thrown at American culture also hits the British board.
Age always appealed with me. Older films with adult men and women, real life, war.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Jennifer O'Neill led cast Summer of '42. A home front tale of an adolescent boy's fantasy become briefly real by Death. A small chess board type of film where only three pieces are shown actual focus play. A pair of knights and their queen. Adulthood onset can be abrupt or gradual with love's bittersweet lessons cruel and quick.
Truly memorable.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I saw it in theaters in 1971 (when I was also a teen) and not since. I don't recall thinking it was anything all that special at the time. I should probably give it a rewatch.

 

[Doctor Strange]

From TCM, a 1963 French New Wave film directed by Jean-Luc Goddard that I hadn't seen before, Contempt.

A very strange story: an American producer (Jack Palance!) is in Italy to make a film based on The Odyssey with famed director Fritz Lang (playing himself!) He enlists a screenwriter and his bombshell girlfriend (Brigitte Bardot) in the project... and they all end up having philosophical discussions and/or yelling at each other. Characters constantly shift between speaking English, French, German, and Italian - most of which isn't subtitled/captioned, but you get the idea.



It's unsatisfying as a story, but it was gorgeously photographed in 70mm Technicolor, and this restored edition is awesome: every hair, every leaf, every thread in a piece of clothing, is pin sharp. Bardot was contractually obligated to do a partial nude scene in order to get the project greenlit, and of course, she looks fabulous and gives a good performance throughout.

Only recommended for its stunning visuals, bizarre plot, and freaky casting. Not exactly a good film, but a worthy watch if you're curious.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I saw it in theaters in 1971 (when I was also a teen) and not since. I don't recall thinking it was anything all that special at the time. I should probably give it a rewatch.

The film is based on Herman Raucher's title which I had read at Cambridge with Sagal's Love Story. Sum'42 is probably better appreciated with age for all the right reasons and probably all the wrong.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Escort from 2015 with Lyndsy Fonseca and Michael Doneger


There are two types of movies made today, those that fully embrace modern cultural pieties and those that check just enough piety boxes so they can be made and not be denounced by the culture police.

Promising Young Woman, from 2020, is of the former type and godspeed to those who can sit through it. The Escort, from 2015, is of that latter type, as it's a good movie that, Orwellian-like, grafts on just enough modern cultural shibboleths to please the ministry of propaganda.

With the proper boxes checked, The Escort can then be seen for what it is: a somberly raunchy romcom that is a modern variation on the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold story, which has been told for as long as they've been making movies.

Lyndsy Fonseca plays the intelligent Stanford graduate with a 4.0 average who, because her personal college sex journal was stolen and posted on the internet, became a victim of cyberbullying and couldn't get a job when she graduated.

It's forced, but they needed a reason for why this smart, attractive young woman had to become an "escort" as, in the real world, companies would be tripping over themselves to hire her.

Of course, to prove to the audience she's really a good person, she tutors young kids on the side because that, and not banging unattractive men for money, is her true passion.

Michael Doneger, who also co-wrote the movie, plays the sex-addicted struggling journalist who needs to write a killer article to get a job.

When he stumbles onto Fonseca's story, he, after the usual back and forth, convinces her to let him write about her anonymously, while she uses him to act as her pimp to provide her with some on-the-job protection.

It's not particularly believable, but it gets the story to where it wants to be: two smart, attractive and broken people are now spending a lot of time together. Then, like in every romcom ever, they, at first, irritate and pretend to not like each other, while they also begin to develop mutual feelings.

That is the heart and soul of any successful romcom and The Escort does it pretty well as Fonseca is good at projecting toughness with an underlying vulnerability. She's the spark in this one and the reason it works.

Doneger is less attractive as he comes off more as a self-centered jerk whose "problems" are related to his rich Dad not loving him enough, yawn. His using an app to bang random women probably felt a bit edgy in 2015, but not so much today.

What saves the movie is that Fonseca and Doneger have good on-screen chemistry where you feel them beginning to, first, like each other and, then, start to fall in love. Their ribbing of each other is funny, especially as they begin to learn the other's foibles and insecurities.

All the other characters in the movie - his cocky friend, her sensitive friends, his new-age Dad, his just-pay-me landlord - with the exception of Doneger's younger sister, who sees that her father and brother are pretty messed up, are boring caricatures that take some energy out of every scene they are in.

Still, The Escort is a good by-the-numbers romcom in a "this is not your father's romcom" way because of the raw sexual nature of her job and his addiction (although, by today's standards, very little is actually shown). Yet as our culture shifts to nearly twenty-four-seven graphic sex and we become desensitized to anything prurient, the picture begins to feel like just another romcom.

By that measure, The Escort is a mildly entertaining one that's worth one watch for romcom fans. Even its check-the-box political pieties aren't that irritating since they are obviously just snapped on in a few places to please today's de facto ministry of propaganda.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ The other month I caught Lawrence's Lady Chatterley and felt pleasantly grounded in reality. A tragic war leaves a young married couple stranded yet bias and jealousy rear ugliness amidst genuine love that prevails. Love knows not class, society, wealth but only its own simple truth.

 

[GHT]

^ The other month I caught Lawrence's Lady Chatterley and felt pleasantly grounded in reality. A tragic war leaves a young married couple stranded yet bias and jealousy rear ugliness amidst genuine love that prevails. Love knows not class, society, wealth but only its own simple truth.

My Catholic Grammar school, run by The Vincentian Fathers, (Vincentian simply means, members of The Society of St. Vincent De Paul,) were so outraged by Lady Chatterley's Lover that we were all warned of our eternal damnation if our eyes ever fell upon that book.

All the fuss, the publicity, how well I remember it and of course, the acquittal. We had to read it, we were schoolboys, after all. My thoughts were, "is that it?" I found it boring and an effort just to finish the whole book.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

All the fuss, the publicity, how well I remember it and of course, the acquittal. We had to read it, we were schoolboys, after all. My thoughts were, "is that it?" I found it boring and an effort just to finish the whole book.

Another recent film, Summer of '42 had a poignancy seldom seen screen or page for that matter.
With Sum'42 the knife went in with me quick and still twists. I like film that turns me inside out.

 

[Doctor Strange]

From HBO, The Menu, a 2022 film with Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo, Janet McTeer, and (starring) Anya Taylor-Joy.

The Menu is another of the almost-horror films that seem to be right in the zeitgeist now. Think Get Out, Midsommar, Last Night in Soho, Old, Us, (even The White Lotus), etc. Call it "sociological horror", where things seem great and beautiful at the start... but are not what they seem to be.

In this case, a bunch of uber-rich foodies flock to the super-expensive, exclusive island restaurant of a world-class chef (Fiennes) for the meal of their lives. Things do NOT go as expected. The only "ordinary" (as in not rich and/or famous) person there, Taylor-Joy, as Hoult's last-minute date, doesn't put up with the pretentious bushwa and turns out to be the real power character.

The film is interesting and occasionally shocking, makes some valid points about food culture, privilege, etc., and gives Taylor-Joy her meatiest role since The Queen's Gambit. I'm not really a fan of most modern horror films - certainly not the disgusting, gory ones - but I liked it. There's enough black comedy and social critique present to make it only marginally a true horror film.



I think there's a fascinating article/book to be written on why this sort of "social horror" is our current hot film/TV genre, supplanting the future dystopia chosen-one-fights-the-system flicks of a few years back (The Hunger Games, The Giver, The Maze Runner, Divergent, etc.) Here's what my 29-year-old daughter has said:

Back in 2015, when I asked her why those chosen-one films were so popular, her answer was, "Because my generation knows that we're already living in a dystopia, and they give us some hope for the future."

When we were discussing the popularity of these social-horror films last night, her comment was, "After the horrible events of the last few years, my generation and Gen Z know that we're already living in a horror film, and there's no longer much real hope."

An interesting, if depressing, POV.