What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Odds Against Tomorrow from 1959 with Harry Belafonte, Ed Begley, Robert Ryan and Shelley Winters


Odds Against Tomorrow is a film-noir heist movie with vicious racial overtones that has lost none of its punch since its release.

A disgraced and pensionless ex-NYC cop, played by Ed Begley, recruits a tough and taciturn ex-con, played by Robert Ryan, and an urbane black singer with a large mob-owed gambling debt, played by Harry Belafonte, to knock off a small-town bank.

Director Robert Wise leveraged a screenplay by Abraham Polonsky based on a novel by William P. McGivern to create an incredibly taut movie about three people, whose lives are failing, taking a last shot at achieving personal redemption by pulling a huge heist.

Begley is an old man resentful that he was the fall guy for a political cover up; Ryan is a late middle-aged angry man who blames everyone else for his failures and Belafonte is a young, promising musician who's facing ruin from gambling debts.

Begley's team is immediately stressed as Ryan is an unabashed racist who starts taunting Belafonte from their first meeting. Yet as the saying goes, need breaks iron, so these two antagonists agree to work together with Begley for their own selfish motives.

The story is good, but as with most engaging movies, it's the people who matter and Wise gets the most out of his incredibly talented cast by rounding out his characters.

Ryan's girlfriend, played with emotionally needy perfection by Shelley Winters, is financially supporting proud Ryan, which is eating away at him. He's a despicable character, but he's complex and we come to understand him.

Belafonte is equally complicated as he could be comfortably successful, but his gambling addiction, perhaps driven by his passion for a luxurious lifestyle, has already caused his marriage to fail and now has him staring at ruin.

Begley we see is a bitter man trying to replace the pension he believes was stolen from him when the political machine he was part of needed somebody to go down and he was tagged.

By the time we see these men head up the Hudson to the bank they plan to rob, we also see that all their personal baggage is there with them, especially Ryan's arrant hatred of Belafonte simply because Belafonte is black.

It's a raw racism that doesn't require a "new theory" to explain it or special academic skills to see it because Ryan's hatred of blacks is so God-awful out loud. It gives Ryan, a man who is angry at his own failures, someone to feel superior to.

Begley appears not to care about race and tries to get Ryan to let it go for the good of the heist, while Belafonte ignores the goading up to a point. These are three actors who understand their craft.

The subtle beauty here is that Belafonte is no hero, as he would be portrayed today. Instead, he's a compulsive gambler and criminal, but we still feel great anger at the indignities he, regardless of his personal shortcomings, must endure from racist Ryan.

The planning stage of the heist is good as is the heist itself. Both are gripping and have a The Asphalt Jungle - the progenitor of the modern heist movie - feel as, in particular, you can't help somewhat identifying with the crooks.

The movie's beautiful black and white cinematography, kudos again to Wise, has a spartan look and feel that echoes the stark choices faced by its protagonists. Plus today, the on-location shots make for wonderful time travel to late 1950s New York.

When the movie is almost over, fans of the original Star Trek TV show will notice a powerful "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" moment foreshadowing the epiphany in that episode's famous half-white-half-black-face storyline.

Wise shows that tackling racism in a movie can be handled much-more effectively by weaving a message into a broader story than by overtly preaching denunciation. Modern virtue-signalling screenwriters and directors could learn a lot from Wise.

Odds Against Tomorrow is a powerful, engaging and atypical film-noir/racism mashup released at the end of the original noir era. Impressively, its forward-looking message still resonates today.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I absolutely adore this genre. I particularly favour credible characters. All three here are true to life.
Meticulous planning. Precise no screwing around with sound coin for being in the game to begin with for starters.
I think Belafonte recently passed. God rest his soul. I know Begley and Ryan are gone. A staunch yet supple plot,
linear exactitude aimed at a defined objective. I can readily identify with these three guys and I'll admit I hope
they score and cleanly escape with the loot.

 

[Fading Fast]

Executive Suite from 1954 with William Holden, June Allyson, Fredric March, Nina Foch, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas and Shelley Winters


MGM spent lavishly adapting Cameron Hawley's best-selling novel Executive Suite to the screen. Its all-star cast, wonderful on-location shots, impressive sets and all-around first-class production made it a hit in its day and a movie that has held up over time.

The studio turned a boardroom battle over control of a manufacturing concern into a philosophical debate over the existential meaning and purpose of a company and how best to lead it for long-term success.

The movie asks whether executives of a business should manage the balance sheet with a ruthless focus on short-term profit or, instead, have a larger vision to create products of value and excellence that inspire employees and customers alike.

When the president of a large furniture manufacturer dies unexpectedly, the company's board of directors is forced to choose, before the end of one tense weekend, the next president from the company's five current vice presidents.

This sets up the main story arc of the movie as the executives and their wives, some of the wives are more ambitious than their husbands, jockey for advantage over the weekend before the pending Sunday night vote.

Frederic March plays the ruthless head of finance who sees a company as a balance sheet to be manipulated for maximum profit today. Oleaginous and nervous, March is smart, prepared and always scheming for an advantage; he is a formidable adversary.

Opposing him is William Holden playing the young golden-boy engineer and Randian visionary who believes building quality products - products employees are proud to make and customers are proud to own - is the path to long-term business success.

Over the weekend, the plans, plots and alliances shift with the other vice presidents alternately promoting themselves or getting behind either Holden or March. Director Robert Wise turned a "boring" board vote into an intense battle of good versus evil.

The cast is impressive with Walter Pidgeon playing the older executive realizing his day has passed. Paul Douglas plays the head of sales and a board member whose extra-marital affair with his secretary, played by Shelley Winters, could compromise his vote.

Amidst all this infighting, a board member, played with smarmy charm by Louis Calhern, is selfishly trying to manipulate the vote so that he can advantageously cover shares of stock he shorted when he learned of the president's death ahead of the market.

Quietly centering the story is Nina Foch in an Oscar-nominated performance as the poised, smart and loyal executive secretary who knows the company's secrets, but also knows how to keep them. She is the quiet gem in this movie.

Rounding out the cast is Barbara Stanwyck as a large shareholder and the neurotic daughter of the company's founder and June Allyson as Holden's wife who shows plenty of grit and fight in a very 1950s corporate-wife way.

Executive Suite's Wall Street location shots capture a time when Wall Street was the physical center of the business world, while its well-designed and stuffy executive-floor set reflects the near-religious solemnity that can develop at the top of the house.

Director Robert Wise steered his large cast and tension-filled story to a climax worthy of its buildup. When Holden and March go mano-a-mano like Roman gladiators in Brooks Brothers suits at the fateful board meeting, you're on the edge of your seat till the final vote.

Executive Suite is one of Hollywood's best business movies, not only because of its stars and MGM gloss, but because its story transcends business and becomes a morality tale of good versus evil, of honor versus deceit, of integrity versus greed.

 

[Fading Fast]

Jealousy from 1934 with George Murphy, Nancy Carroll and Donald Cook


The first rule of marriage is to not marry an idiot. Jealousy is almost singularly about, well, jealousy. Yet, had Nancy Carroll's sweet and kind character simply not married an idiot, none of the bad things that happen to her in Jealousy would have happened.

Carroll plays a young secretary with a nice boss, played by Donald Cook. She, also, is all but engaged to a heavyweight boxer played by George Murphy, who has a violent streak of jealousy.

Murphy directs most of his jealousy toward Cook, even though Cook has not behaved inappropriately in any way toward Carroll. But part of a jealous rage is irrationality.

After Murphy has a few flair-ups of jealous rage - one that cost him an important boxing match - Carroll leaves him. Unfortunately though, after his passionate promises to no longer be jealous, she agrees to marry him.

Now married, they are struggling financially, in part because Murphy is also irresponsible with money - this guy has no impulse control. Carroll, by necessity, goes back to work for Cook, but knowing how jealous her husband can get, she lies to him about who her boss is.

It, of course, all blows up one night when Murphy finds Cook and Carroll working together. It's still innocent, but try telling that to a blinded-with-rage Murphy.

From here the story explodes into a fight between Murphy and Cook (as if one punch from a heavyweight boxer wouldn't knock Cook out), a struggle for a gun, shots, Cook dead on the floor, Murphy fleeing the scene and Carroll charged with murder. What a mess.

The movie simply gets bizzare from here with an amnesia angle, a crazy lawyer summation at trial, a death row walk and, then, a "Dallas (the 1970s TV show) shower scene style" retconning of the entire movie.

The last twist almost certainly happened because the movie was made as a pre-code, but was released after the Motion Picture Production Code was being strictly enforced, so to save the picture, the producer and director had to change the entire ending.

Jealousy, the movie, does a good job showing that jealousy, the emotion, can be destructive, especially as it was portrayed in the non-altered version of the story.

The problem is Murphy's character is a complete idiot whom Carroll - a Janet Gaynor doppelganger - should have walked away from after seeing a bout or two of his rage. To make things even easier for her, she had a very nice and kind man, Cook, in love with her.

But no, for just over an hour of runtime, we have to watch Murphy being a violent idiot and Carroll being a kind numbskull. At some point, you want to tell Cook to move on and find a woman who isn't an idiot married to a violent maniac.

Jealousy lacks any nuance to its obvious message, "jealousy is bad," as a more-interesting picture would have given Murphy some reason to be jealous, like if Cook and Carroll had been even innocently flirting.

Murphy, then, wouldn't come off as a two-dimensional violent dunce and all three characters would have a way to learn and grow. As written, it's too black and white, which makes it difficult to believe.

Jealousy is in desperate need of restoration, but it's not hard to see why no one is anxious to spend the significant amount of money that requires, as the movie, other than it being a part of movie history, lacks a compelling reason to be saved.

Then again, any movie that reminds people to not marry an idiot might be worth saving.

 

[ton312]

GOTG 3. I absolutely loved it. I laughed, I cried, I threw all my wife’s makeup in the garbage.

 

[Fading Fast]

The House on 56th Street from 1933 with Kay Francis, Gene Raymond, Richard Cortez, Margaret Lindsay and John Halliday


The 1930s produced several uber-sacrificing-mother melodramas with The House on 56th Street being a lesser-known entry in the subgenre. It's a good one, though, especially if you enjoy plots full of symbolic coincidences and weepy moments.

Kay Francis, never looking younger, but still sporting helmet hair, plays an early 1900s music hall star with a wealthy, older society boyfriend, played by John Halliday. Then a younger wealthy society gentleman, played by Gene Raymond, comes courting.

Raymond offers marriage and position; whereas, with Halliday she's a kept woman. Halliday has no interest in matching Raymond's offer, so off with her young man to their new mansion on 56th Street goes Francis.

Life is good, a daughter is born and then a dying Halliday shows up regretting he let Francis go. In a forced-as-heck scene, Halliday attempts suicide, Francis tries to stop him, the gun fires, yada, yada, yada, off to jail for murder goes Francis.

While in prison and after Raymond is killed in WWI, Raymond's family whitewashes Francis out of her daughter's history by saying her mother died. One assumes Raymond's money was involved in helping Francis, though, as she practically has a suite at the prison.

Francis eventually is released from jail, looking the same except for some gray hair. With a little stake left to her by Raymond's mother, she starts a new phase of her life as a card sharp, yup! She teams up with a fellow sharp, played by Richard Cortez.

After the two have a successful run fleecing wealthy cruise ship passengers, Cortez makes a deal with the owner of a speakeasy to run the gambling concession, which turns out to be housed in Francis' old 56th Street mansion.

Francis, the chief dealer at the speakeasy, in what was once her happy home, has one more big surprise coming when her now-married society daughter, whom she has never revealed herself to so as not to embarrass her child, shows up at her table one night.

Pretty Margaret Lindsay, with her perfect diction and lovely rounded voice, plays the unaware daughter with a gambling addiction threatening her marriage. From here, the movie is a few more coincidences, another dead body and an only-in-pre-code-Hollywood resolution.

Raymond, Halliday and Cortez are all good as the men in Francis' life. Also, the sheer scope of the story and the number of coincidences that are chewed through in sixty-eight minutes are breathtaking.

The House on 56th Street is pure melodrama, but if you go with it, it's a fun romp. Francis, a 1930s Hollywood curio, does her best playing a woman whose life has a Candide arc. Plus, she gets to wear several elaborate outfits and to sacrifice like heck for her daughter.

 

[Edward]

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1972). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068370/ Early 1970s horror, medling kids go where they shouldn't, unleash dark forces, suffer consequences. Entertaining. Notable more for being probably in and around the last wave of horror cinema (and, indeed, much cinema in general) where most of the film's duration is given to setting up the narrative, with the "action" such as it is occurring primarily in the final act. I rather enjoy the pacing of films like this. It's very much akin to the pacing of 1976's Carrie, or, in a more mainstream context, Taxi Driver. By 1978, some cinema was still made this way (I'm thinking especially of The Deer Hunter's long first act), but in the horror genre certainly things were beginning to change as Halloween really introduced the modern slasher-picture, a style that would inform much horror for the next decade plus.

 

[Worf]

"Wichita" - A mid fifties "Oater" bout Wyatt Earp's taming of Wichita Kansas BEFORE he moved on to Dodge City and later, Tombstone. Earp is played with stoic earnestness by Joel McRea with Vera Miles as his love interest. Standard fare for its time. Earp rides into a lawless cattle town, refuses to become Marshall until carousing cattle hands blast a 5 year old through his bedroom window. He then straps on his guns and takes the badge. Much like today, leading citizens of the town want the money the cow punchers bring in but don't want to be killed in the process. When Earp won't quit and the Mayor won't fire him, gun slingers are hired. Earp's brothers, posing as hired guns, expose the assassination attempt and proceed to help him clean up the town. McRea and Miles buggy off into the sunset.

Typical film of its time when Westerns were the Superhero films of the era but raised to a slightly higher level by the performances of the actors. Also, being that I was raised on "Oaters" and WWII movies, I got a nice nostalgic feeling watching good triumph over evil and political corruption. Time well spent.

Worf

PS - I figured out why this one seemed a cut above the typical western fare. It was directed by Jacques Tourneau.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Typical film of its time when Westerns were the Superhero films of the era but raised to a slightly higher level by the performances of the actors. Also, being that I was raised on "Oaters" and WWII movies, I got a nice nostalgic feeling watching good triumph over evil and political corruption. Time well spent.

Worf

The War Lover with McQueen always wraps it for me. Like another staple 12 O'Clock High this Steverino looks
a bomber pilot square in the eyes warts and all. And Irvins galore. Mac attack. That man had some badass swag.

 

[Fading Fast]

Flaming Gold from 1932 with Mae Clarke, William Boyd and Pat O'Brien


In the 1930s, there were many movies made about young American men going down to Mexico or South America or "out to the Orient" for well-paying jobs or investment opportunities.

Fruit and rubber plantations, oil fields, start-up airlines and other businesses offered a young man a chance to get rich, if he was willing to do often dangerous work in a remote part of the world.

That alone is a good story, but Hollywood quickly sussed out its best part, the same part it susses out of most stories - the part about two people getting naked together. Specifically, how does a man get sex in a remote part of the world where, mainly, only men are working?

Enter, of course, one of Hollywood's favorite characters of all time: the woman practicing the oldest profession of all time.

Now you have everything you need for a good prurient story: men, women, lust, passion, love triangles, deception, class snobbery and commerce all smashed together in a remote part of the world where the regular rules of civility don't always seem to apply.

Flaming Gold is a fast fifty-three minute take on this typical tale of the era, which has an oddly complicated business story wrapped around the important sex-deception-jealousy story the movie really cares about.

A big US oil company operating in Mexico tries to destroy a wildcatter's nearby well by setting fire to one of its own wells hoping the fire will spread to the wildcatter's. Okay, I guess that's a strategy. It did make for a crazy scene.

It also sets off a chain of events that brings one of the wildcatters, played by William Boyd, to New York City to secure financing for a new well. There, for entertainment, the financier sets Boyd up with a prostitute, played by Mae Clarke, whom Boyd mistakes for a real date.

Clarke doesn't correct Boyd's mistake. They then fall in love, get married and, with the well's financing secured, Boyd heads back to Mexico with his new wife, the former call girl.

Once there, Clarke tries her best to be a good wife, despite the deception she pulled on her husband, but Boyd's wildcatting partner, played by Pat O'Brien, sees Clarke for who she is.

O'Brien doesn't outright say anything, but he is nasty to Clarke and makes life miserable for all three of them.

Flaming Gold is just one of a surprisingly large number of pre-code movies involving a man marrying a prostitute and not knowing it. It was viewed as a very big deal back then.

To be fair, it kinda is a big deal, at least from an honesty perspective. Today though, we'd, ultimately, be more forgiving of the situation as, what the hey, nobody comes into a marriage anymore with a low "number."

Back in the 1930s, however, this stuff still mattered so Flaming Gold climaxes with truths being exposed, wells shooting up oil and decisions around honor and forgiveness being made.

In the movie, there are a ridiculous number of shots of oil wells being drilled, of their machinery pounding into the earth and of oil spurting out the top of them to make the sexual symbolism fun in an obvious but silly way.

The picture, overall, is a good, not-great version of this common story with super-cute Mae Clarke, sporting a boy's short haircut, standing out as the calmest, smartest and nicest of the three leads.

In pre-code land, women often were smarter and more mature than the men, which tells us the Motion Picture Production Code has distorted our modern view of that prior era's true outlook on women.

Even though she is billed below Boyd, this is Clarke's movie. Boyd comes across as a bit wooden, while O'Brien, employing his usual machine-gun-style delivery of dialogue, is a bit too strident. Clarke's performance, though, is sympathetic and nuanced.

Flaming Gold is nothing more than a short B movie with a story and theme incredibly common to the era, but it's worth the watch for Clarke's performance, the over-the-top business machinations and the ridiculous oil-well sexual symbolism.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Fast, I just love these reviews. And this one's a gusher.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

ELVIS. A classic even if only yesterday premiered. With every watch, some aspect first-time seen.

 

[Fading Fast]

A Month by the Lake from 1995 with Vanessa Redgrave, Edward Fox and Uma Thurman


A Month by the Lake is a charming 1990s version of a 1930s/1940s romantic comedy with echoes of those wonderful Hepburn-Tracy and Powell-Loy pictures from Hollywood's Golden Era.

Vanessa Redgrave plays a vivacious late-middle-aged spinster staying at a small, picturesque Lake Como resort in the summer of 1937. There she meets a stuffy late-middle-aged bachelor and former army major played by Edward Fox.

While Redgrave is more the driver of the relationship, she's no desperate woman, as she enjoys her photography hobby, the attention of a young handsome Italian boy and, in general, has too much spark to pine for a man.

Fox is reserved and a bit pompous as a former British major would be from that era, but he, after first being miffed, is able to laugh at himself, as when Redgrave beats him in tennis or when she unintentionally stands him up.

These two would probably have gotten together early in the movie if not for Uma Thurman, in the Jean Harlow role here, playing a wild young American who is the not-particularly-good-at-her-job nanny for a spirited Italian family.

Thurman, out of mischief and boredom, comes on to Fox just enough to take his attention away from Redgrave. If there is a plot, it's seeing how this awkward Redgrave-Fox-Thurman love triangle, with a dotted line from Redgrave to her Italian boy, plays out.

The plot, though, is secondary as the joy in A Month by the Lake is simply the resort's charming atmosphere, architecture and setting all beautifully framed by Lake Como. It's also the elegant clothes, cars and manners of a slower-moving, languid time and place.

Like in its 1930s antecedent movies, the conflicts in this one, as when Redgrave, Fox and Thurman awkwardly go on a swimming date together, have some bite, but are never nasty or vicious. Director John Irvin understood the spirit of those earlier pictures.

The only dark shadow in the movie comes from the era's politics hinting at the aborning war as revealed in a scene when Redgrave is knocked down taking pictures of a fascist parade or as can be heard in the background radio reports of Churchill's failed talks with Hitler.

A Month by the Lake is Redgrave's movie. She creates an attractive and strong older-female character who avoids the usual cliches of her character's age and sex, but without the virtue signalling of characters like hers in today's movies.

Fox and Thurman deliver outstanding performances, too, as the foils who generate the conflict and tension needed to keep you engaged. Plus, with Redgrave and Thurman, this is a rare movie with two 5' 11' tall women in the female leads (Fox is all of 5' 8").

A Month by the Lake is a respite from the angry movies of today, with their blaring soundtracks and rapidly moving images, but it isn't cloying either, as underneath all its pretty, is a poignant story of two people struggling to make their last chance at love work.

 

[Doctor Strange]

After skipping the last couple of Marvel films, I dragged myself to a theater for Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.

Alas, I didn't like it. Too long and overstuffed, very self-indulgent (as third films often are), and while they wanted this to cap the "trilogy", not all the endpoints for the characters make much sense. Some of the jokes don't land, the music isn't as well used as in the first two films, and some of the action and effects are weak.

Rocket's very graphic creation flashbacks are terrifying... and will have a death-of-Bambi's-mother emotional effect on little kids who go in unprepared. The High Evolutionary of this film isn't recognizable as the original Lee/Kirby character, just another in a long line of nutso big bads whose goals (and personal power level) vary every 15 minutes as the plot requires. But even worse...

They botched the introduction of Adam Warlock, a fascinatingly complex character from his 60s Lee/Kirby introduction in Fantastic Four through his subsequent development (by Thanos-creator Jim Starlin [see cover below]) in the 70s and beyond. Yeah, yeah, he was just born, but even his initial version had a touch of Lee's Silver Surfer philosophical questioning that would lead to the tragic, conflicted character of the Starlin run (whose adversary is his own future self, an evil galactic "messiah"). Yeah, yeah, maybe he'll get there in later films/shows, but he's a big disappointment here. Just a gold-skinned brute causing mayhem. Ugh.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I gave the new (German) version of All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix a look.

Disappointing. The classic 1930 version is twice as effective in half the running time.

This one is mainly just endless, graphic battlefield carnage a la 1917 and the characters - and specifics of its anti-war message - mostly fall by the wayside. Paul is a cipher with no discernable character, and his buddies are the same. Even Kat is a much less impressive character than when played by Louis Wolheim (AND Ernest Borgnine in the 1979 miniseries with John Boy). The introduction of cross-cut scenes about politicians and generals working towards the armistice seem shoehorned in from a totally different project.

The intimate, very effective opening and later schoolroom scenes from 1930 are replaced with huge rooms full of hundreds of students and a professor with no personal connection to Paul and his classmates, unlike their 1930 teacher. So there's no powerful follow-up scene where Paul faces down the teacher whose patriotic hectoring sent his friends off to die in the mud. And for its big war-is-futile climax, Paul dies right after the armistice is signed, which is, I guess, tragic irony... but it's nowhere near as effective as reaching out for a butterfly.

 

[Worf]

"Village of the Damned" - I read the story on which this Sci-Fi classic is based while in Junior High. The film and the book "The Midwich" Cuckoos" tells the story of what happens after an entire village falls asleep in broad daylight and all at the same time. 9 months later every woman of childbearing age gives birth (including the virgins) to some rather strange looking children, all of whom have platinum blond hair, glowing eyes and growing psychic powers.

This phenomenon was not singular to Great Britain. Occurrences in tribal countries led to the immediate destruction of children born to dark skinned parents. Behind the Iron Curtain in typical post WWII fashion , the children were viewed as potential weapons. Strange that none were born in North America. Still in all it doesn't take long before the little hellions start behaving...... well like Hellions! The rest of the film focuses on how our lead protagonist figures a way to deal with the little monsters which includes his son and only child. Great B/W film, well scripted and well acted. A must see for any Sci-Fi fan.

Worf

 

[AmateisGal]

After skipping the last couple of Marvel films, I dragged myself to a theater for Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.

Alas, I didn't like it. Too long and overstuffed, very self-indulgent (as third films often are), and while they wanted this to cap the "trilogy", not all the endpoints for the characters make much sense. Some of the jokes don't land, the music isn't as well used as in the first two films, and some of the action and effects are weak.

Rocket's very graphic creation flashbacks are terrifying... and will have a death-of-Bambi's-mother emotional effect on little kids who go in unprepared. The High Evolutionary of this film isn't recognizable as the original Lee/Kirby character, just another in a long line of nutso big bads whose goals (and personal power level) vary every 15 minutes as the plot requires. But even worse...

They botched the introduction of Adam Warlock, a fascinatingly complex character from his 60s Lee/Kirby introduction in Fantastic Four through his subsequent development (by Thanos-creator Jim Starlin [see cover below]) in the 70s and beyond. Yeah, yeah, he was just born, but even his initial version had a touch of Lee's Silver Surfer philosophical questioning that would lead to the tragic, conflicted character of the Starlin run (whose adversary is his own future self, an evil galactic "messiah"). Yeah, yeah, maybe he'll get there in later films/shows, but he's a big disappointment here. Just a gold-skinned brute causing mayhem. Ugh.

View attachment 516968

While I agree that the Rocket backstory was traumatizing (I sobbed several times), I thought it was a really well done movie. I enjoyed it a lot.

 

[AmateisGal]

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in the movie theater (I go to the theater maybe once a year? Too damn expensive) for my daughter's 23rd birthday.

We loved it. It was a very emotional roller coaster, but it hit all the right notes for me.

Tonight I watched Debbie Reynolds and Tony Randall in the delightful The Mating Game.

 

[AmateisGal]

^ Fast, I just love these reviews. And this one's a gusher.

I keep telling Fast that he could write reviews for a living because he's so damn good at it - but I doubt he would make much money!

 

[Worf]

I gave the new (German) version of All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix a look.

Disappointing. The classic 1930 version is twice as effective in half the running time.

This one is mainly just endless, graphic battlefield carnage a la 1917 and the characters - and specifics of its anti-war message - mostly fall by the wayside. Paul is a cipher with no discernable character, and his buddies are the same. Even Kat is a much less impressive character than when played by Louis Wolheim (AND Ernest Borgnine in the 1979 miniseries with John Boy). The introduction of cross-cut scenes about politicians and generals working towards the armistice seem shoehorned in from a totally different project.

The intimate, very effective opening and later schoolroom scenes from 1930 are replaced with huge rooms full of hundreds of students and a professor with no personal connection to Paul and his classmates, unlike their 1930 teacher. So there's no powerful follow-up scene where Paul faces down the teacher whose patriotic hectoring sent his friends off to die in the mud. And for its big war-is-futile climax, Paul dies right after the armistice is signed, which is, I guess, tragic irony... but it's nowhere near as effective as reaching out for a butterfly.

I agree with your assessment of the three telling's 100%! The first is by far the best. "Nightmare fuel" some Youtuber called it and rightly so. The trench assault was/is one of the most graphic battle scenes ever done. As I said in the past, this original version of this film should be required viewing for ALL politicians who think sending the youth off to die is a "glorious" thing. Don't get me wrong... sometimes you HAVE to fight, but it should be the last resort and never with songs and revelry. While I like to opening school scene, I was more moved when Paul comes back to the class on leave and, when goaded by his old teacher to give tales of the "iron youth of Germany", instead tells them the brutal truth. Or as least as much as the studio would allow. Great film.

Worf