What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

^Fast, Murder Inc is of the genre that leaves indelible mark for its psychological intensity.
Loved Falk in Colombo. Definitely an actor's actor.

I agree and his performance in "Murder, Inc." is one of his best.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Do they show Reles going out the window? Please tell me they show Reles going out the window!

 

[Fading Fast]

Do they show Reles going out the window? Please tell me they show Reles going out the window!

Like a greased pig.

 

[Fading Fast]

Employees' Entrance from 1933 with Warren William, Loretta Young, Wallace Ford and Alice White


Capitalism, anti-capitalism, marital fidelity, marital infidelity, career versus family and other big social, political and cultural ideas are all tossed around in this engaging and fast-moving pre-code starring all-but-forgotten 1930s star Warren William.

Employees' Entrance's story is pretty simple: a domineering and singularly focused head of a department story, played by William, drives what had been a nice family run business to new heights in the booming 1920s and then bucks conventional thinking to keep it growing in the Depression.

In business, William is ahead of his time as he expects the same commitment and effort from women as men, but in his personal life, he's a Neanderthal who sees women as objects to be paid off after he's had his fun, but credit to him as he's mostly honest with them upfront.

After meeting an unemployed, pretty young woman, played by Loretta Young, he sleeps with her, gives her a job and, then, moves on.

When William's protege, played by Wallace Ford, later marries Young, the newlyweds hide their marriage from William as William's stated philosophy is you can't be truly committed to a high-level job and married at the same time. He's no modern work-family-balance boss.

With that set up, the movie is William ruthlessly driving efficiency and expansion despite the Depression pushing business down as Ford tries to do the impossible of being available to William twenty-four-seven while also keeping his marriage going.

William isn't portrayed, here, as a Randian capitalistic hero/saint as he ruthlessly fires long-time employees who aren't forward thinking while crushing suppliers who depend on his store's business. But he's also seen as a man whose vision and approach is saving the business and many jobs, even if his methods are often cruel.

An America facing double-digit unemployment isn't being talked down to or handed simple socialist bromides in this one as each viewer will have to form his or her own opinion about the merits of William's approach.

When William denounces the bankers calling in the department store's notes, which the company’s "old guard" is using as a strategy to force William out, his speech about productive people versus blood-sucking bankers must have resonated with Americans who had just seen bank failures wipe out their savings or take their farms.

The personal side of Employees' Entrance is equally complex as Young's later infidelity, she returns to sleep with Williams again even after she's married (God love the brutal honesty of pre-code land) isn't condemned, but understood.

William uses other women, one in particular, played with blonde verve by Alice White, to manipulate men for William's business needs. Even this is shown to be morally ambiguous and nuanced.

Employees' Entrance is William's movie and he's a treat to see as an exaggerated-for-effect driven business leader who blasts through each day unwilling to let the Depression defeat him or his company.

Young is so pretty you simply enjoy seeing her even if she never fully comes alive in this one, while Ford, unfortunately, can't match William's or Young's screen presence. White is one of the few who can hold her own with William, but her screen time is limited.

Most movies today plant their flag in one ideology and then, reality be damned, twist their plots and dialogue to perfectly align to that bias.

Employees' Entrance has more respect for its audience and reality as it shows the complexity and messiness of the business world and personal relationships, even if no one's beliefs come out unscathed.

Movie making has made incredible technical strides since the 1930s, but modern movie makers could learn how to more-honestly and confidently explore political, social and cultural issues from these sometimes-clunky, but ideologically free-wheeling efforts from the early days of Hollywood.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Alice White does a wonderful job in this picture -- she was a performer who lived the "pre code" experience in her own life. She was pushed hard at First National in the last days of silent pictures as their answer to Clara Bow, and became the target of a constant whispering campaign that she'd "slept her way to stardom." She did a few early talkies where she played the same type of brassy characters she'd played in silents, but when she started to push for more ambitious parts, Warner Bros, which had bought out First National in 1928, tried to keep her in her place by starting another innuendo campaign against her in the fan-rag press. She disappeared for a couple of years and made a comeback in supporting roles like this one -- only to end up in a new scandal in which she was beaten savagely by her lover, only for that lover to end up being beaten just as savagely himself by thugs hired by White's *new* lover. That essentially tanked her career, just as she was building up to what could have been a fine run in wisecracking-best-friend roles.

She got a raw deal every step of the way, but I'll always be an Alice White fan.

 

[Fading Fast]

Alice White does a wonderful job in this picture -- she was a performer who lived the "pre code" experience in her own life. She was pushed hard at First National in the last days of silent pictures as their answer to Clara Bow, and became the target of a constant whispering campaign that she'd "slept her way to stardom." She did a few early talkies where she played the same type of brassy characters she'd played in silents, but when she started to push for more ambitious parts, Warner Bros, which had bought out First National in 1928, tried to keep her in her place by starting another innuendo campaign against her in the fan-rag press. She disappeared for a couple of years and made a comeback in supporting roles like this one -- only to end up in a new scandal in which she was beaten savagely by her lover, only for that lover to end up being beaten just as savagely himself by thugs hired by White's *new* lover. That essentially tanked her career, just as she was building up to what could have been a fine run in wisecracking-best-friend roles.

She got a raw deal every step of the way, but I'll always be an Alice White fan.

That's a lot of great background on someone I had "heard" bits and pieces of the story you just told.

In "Employee's Entrance," she's just about the only one who can hold her own in a scene with William.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Well said Ms Elizabeth. I can only add that Ms Loretta Young stole my heart. I recall her in The Bishop's Wife with David Niven and Cary Grant where her presence really staked this Christmas favourite down.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

1950's Ann Sheridan starrer Woman on the Run enabled us to while away an evening as the police try to track down an eye-witness to the murder of soon-to-testify witness in the trial of a big-time criminal. Sheridan's husband stumbles across the homicide, and disappears into the San Francisco night.
Sheridan and spouse are on the outs, and she doesn't seem to care one little bit about him. Robert Keith plays weary, cynical, and seen-it-all Inspector Ferris of San Francisco PD, who is bound and determined to find the missing husband.
Into the mix drops Dennis O"Keefe, who offers Sheridan help and a thousand dollars for an "exclusive" newspaper story. The bulk of the story follows the hunt, and shows Sheridan begin to care about her missing hubby. Lots of SF location scenes, with Chinatown prominent. Stay until the end for the amusement park finale. The print we watched was extremely poor; IMDB says the original print was destroyed by fire, leaving only some low-quality PD copies.

 

[Worf]

Whiplash (2014). Great film!! Had heard good things. I can't believe it took me this long to get around to watching it!!!

As a musician that's been "playing for pay" off and on since Nixon was President, I found "Whiplash" so traumatizing as to be just this side of torture... I watched it once with my jaw on the floor and a constant stream of cuss words coming out of my mouth... I know that "monsters" like this exist... conductors or band leaders of the Captain Bligh school but good lord do they have to? Thankfully I never had to work under one... It was so hard on me I don't think I could ever watch it again...

Worf

PS Welcome aboard, nice to meet ya!

 

[AmateisGal]

Double Indemnity. I never get tired of watching it.

 

[Fading Fast]

Diner from 1982 with Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly, Daniel Stern, Paul Reiser and Ellen Barkin

In Diner, writer and director Barry Levinson captures late 1950s Baltimore as seen through the lives of several coming-of-age post-highschool boys who, like most post-high-school boys ever, are struggling to find a path to adulthood.

The movie is a touch nostalgic, but not overly sentimental as this is no "happy 1950s" movie. Yet neither is it a, as later became the default movie meme, "the 1950s were a horrible time of repression" movie.

Nothing was ever as black and white as those shorthands aver, which is exactly what Levinson brilliantly shows.

Yes, women had less options and the assumption was most boys and girls would get married soon after school, but we also see women having sex before marriage without guilt and one who wants a career, not marriage.

This is, though, a boys-focused movie starring several actors who would soon become household names. Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly, Daniel Stern and Paul Reiser, along with Ellen Barkin, deliver impressive portrayals of young guys, and one girl, trying to find their way to adulthood.

The titular diner, which becomes another character, is their gathering spot and hangout in a way that a place - a pizza parlour, a coffee shop or, well, a diner - can take on exaggerated meaning to a group of friends at that time in their lives.

There isn't really a plot as the only motivation in the movie are the friends gathering back in Baltimore for Guttenberg's wedding, which will only happen if his fiance can pass a test he's writing for her on his beloved Baltimore Colts.

Maybe based on something true or maybe exaggerated, it is those small details that make the characters, time and place come alive in a real and palpable way. Another one of those revealing details is the insanely complicated filing system one of the boys, Stern, has for his record albums.

This, as happens often within couples, becomes a source of friction with his wife, Barkin, but it really serves as a surrogate reason for a fight in a marriage that isn't working.

Reiser plays an insecure guy who doesn't have a car, but instead of just asking his friend for a ride, will hint around for one and, then when offered a ride, will act as if he never brought the subject up. It is infuriating and endearing at the same time in the nuanced way real-life friendships work.

Rourke is the "cool player guy" who does the best of all the friends with the women, but also gets in trouble with the local bookie. Bacon is the trust-fund kid who hates his family and all but proves the point that trust funds kill ambition.

There's more and it all mainly works because it rings true. Life and cultures - like post-high-school friendships - are almost always a jumble of good and bad, which is refreshing to see honestly portrayed on screen.

Levinson captures those subtleties along with, in a pre-CGI era, the look and feel of late-1950s Baltimore. The cars, clothes, hairstyles, storefronts, kitchens and, yes, diner take you to that time and place.

Diner is an outstanding movie because it isn't really nostalgia, but reality, at least reality as Levinson remembers it from his coming-of-age period of life in late-1950s Baltimore. Most of us didn't grow up in that time and place, but as really good movies can do, Diner, for almost two hours, lets us feel like we did.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Fading Fast
What a cast!!
I think, I have to watch that!

 

[Fading Fast]

@Fading Fast
What a cast!!
I think, I have to watch that!

It's pretty amazing how many in the cast went on to become successful actors/actresses with very long careers.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Diner is good, but the Barry Levinson film set in Baltimore's past that I really love is Avalon.

 

[Doctor Strange]

On Netflix, the recent documentary about Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah. I know Cohen's music is an acquired taste, but I'm only barely a semi-fan... and I liked this enough to watch it twice.

The film covers Cohen's entire career but keeps "Hallelujah" as its central subject. There's a vast amount of interview and performance footage going all the way back to his first time on stage in NYC (when Judy Collins had a hit with "Suzanne" and basically pushed him onto the stage.) Everything that he has to say, at every time throughout his life/career, is interesting. He was a fascinating character, forever chronicling the line between the sacred and human...

And as for "Hallelujah", it's all there. The agonizing writing process - Cohen worked on it for seven years and wrote HUNDREDS of verses. Its first recording on a magnificent album that Columbia Records management deemed "not worth releasing in the USA"! His revising it and rerecording it a few years later. That's the version that John Cale covered... Leading to the better-known Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright versions. The use of the Cale version in Shrek, which finally broke the song wide. And thereafter, its ascension to a beloved song covered by everyone.

Anyway, if you're a fan of Cohen's music, or even vaguely curious, this is an outstanding doc.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

It's pretty amazing how many in the cast went on to become successful actors/actresses with very long careers.

Diner is one of my essentials to paraphrase a famed director whose name is on tip of my tongue this afternoon.
I'll get it later, but back to de rigueur film. Mickey Rourke. This gent is a separate item of the 'Flynn School,' a thespian up off the back alley who made good and lost to inner demons. Recent interviews about himself and his inner struggles are truly classic inward examination of such cost. Good to see him back in film, however facial appearance tells tale.
Fast I really enjoy your take and look on film.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The File on Thelma Jordan (1949) with Barbra Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Paul Kelly, and Joan Tetzel. Assistant DA Corey and mysterious niece of elderly aunt Vera, Stanwyck, become involved. I'm laboring here to remain spoiler free, so let's say there is high-stress relationship problems, theft, murder, a sensational trial, and a bunch of twists. The Missus and I found it difficult to ramp up any sympathy for the leads, seeing as how crummy they acted. Director Robert Siodmak did the best he could with the overheated plot.

 

[Fading Fast]

Bad Sister from 1931 with Sidney Fox, Charles Winninger, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Zasu Pitts


Bad Sister is an entertaining run-of-the-mill Depression Era soap opera most notable today for the screen debut of Bette Davis and an early appearance by Humphrey Bogart. But even away from that aborning star power, the movie offers enough melodrama and 1930s cultural insight to be well worth a watch for modern audiences.

Set in a small town in middle America, the bad sister, played by Sidney Fox, is the bored flirty late-teenage daughter of a once-comfortable upper-middle class family now struggling, but still holding on in the Depression. Bette Davis, playing Fox's sister, is the dowdy-looking but kind, sweet and shy daughter of the family.

Fox has several beaus - including the local handsome doctor and a wealthy older insurance broker - whom she toys with and strings along, while also cajoling money for frivolous things out of her generous but obviously financially stressed father played by Charles Winninger. Davis, meanwhile, silently pines away for the doctor who only has eyes for Fox.

Rounding out the household is a mother, played by Emma Dunn, who basically offers kind motherly advice and support, a prepubescent son who's an annoying prankster, a married-and-pregnant older sister who, with her now out-of-work husband, is about to move back home and Zasu Pitts, playing to her personal brand, as the whining housekeeper.

Fox then meets a flashy and handsome newcomer to town, played by Bogart, who presents himself as the representative of a large manufacturing concern looking to open a factory in the town assuming he can get local businessmen to invest in the deal.

Bogart wants Winninger, a respected business leader of the community, to provide a letter of endorsement attesting to Bogart's integrity and business bonafides as that will encourage other businessmen in town to invest in the factory. Separately, Bogart tells Fox that he'll marry her and take her out of her small town once the deal goes through.

Up until now, "bad sister" Fox has been nothing more than a selfish spoiled teenage girl, but then she crosses a line that puts her father's business reputation at risk, while also putting her personal reputation for "respectability" at risk.

When Fox crosses that line, the tension and drama in Bad Sister amps up. After it is all revealed, the movie's money moment includes a very unconditional-love-like response from her father and a come-to-Jesus moment for Fox.

Surprisingly for a pre-code, there's an easy and rushed solution at the end, but maybe that tested well with audiences, as the movie's value is in its earlier insightful reveal of the passions and stresses sitting just below the surface in this "typical" American family.

Neither Davis nor Bogart, both still new to Hollywood, lift off the screen, but signs of their budding talents can be seen: look for Davis' diary-burning moment for an early peek at her acting skills.

Based on a Booth Tarkington novel, director Hobart Henley adroitly covers a lot of story in sixty-five minutes. Movie making then often benefited from the studio's limited budgets and short production schedules as those restraints didn't allow for the artistic flourishes that often turn modern movies into turgid affairs.

The Depression ripped through all classes in America at a time when "keeping up appearances" and being "respectable" (it was paramount for young women) were culturally and socially important, especially in a small town.

For modern audiences, Bad Sister shows the desperation and heartbreak incurred by a family about to lose its status and, worse, by a young woman about to lose her "respectability."

Today, we are, thankfully, a much-more forgiving society about these things (but much-less forgiving about many other things), which makes Bad Sister a valuable reminder of a different era.

 

[Worf]

"The History of the World - Part 1" - In preparation for watching the new HULU series of a similar name I decided to re-watch the original. I realized halfway in that I'd only seen parts of this film over the years. Like many a Mel Brooks offering this movie could never get made today. Not as gut busting funny as "The Producers" or "Blazing Saddles" but still an enjoyable romp. The only thing that's pretty consistent with Brooks' work is that he often doesn't know how to stick the endings.. but that's a small quibble. A fun watch....

Worf

 

[Frunobulax]

"The History of the World - Part 1" - In preparation for watching the new HULU series of a similar name I decided to re-watch the original. I realized halfway in that I'd only seen parts of this film over the years. Like many a Mel Brooks offering this movie could never get made today. Not as gut busting funny as "The Producers" or "Blazing Saddles" but still an enjoyable romp. The only thing that's pretty consistent with Brooks' work is that he often doesn't know how to stick the endings.. but that's a small quibble. A fun watch....

Worf

Be fair to Mel.

The world hasn't ended...yet.