What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Poseidon Adventure from 1972 with Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine, Stella Stevens, Carolyn Lynley, and Pamela Sue Martin


The Poseidon Adventure is one of the best of the "disaster" films that populated 1970s movie screens. It's held up well because the standard in those pre-CGI days was to make the movie believable; whereas, now the standard is to use over-the-top, unbelievable special effects.

The movie is also helped along by its outstanding cast including veterans Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, and Ernest Borgnine; 1970s heavyweight Gene Hackman; and several talented old and new tier-two stars like Stella Stevens, Carolyn Lynley, and Pamela Sue Martin.

At the outset, a cruise ship departs for a multi-day trip over New Year's. As the passengers do their thing - have fun, argue, dance, eat, drink, gamble - the owner of the ship pushes the captain to go for speed to save money, à la the Titanic disaster.

Owing to an underwater earthquake, and in the movie's era-iconic visual moment, a tsunami hits the ship, flipping it upside down. It's not perfect, but the lack of CGI makes the special effects still impressive today.

As the ship settles down after the wave, an iconoclast preacher, played by Hackman, realizing the ship is upside down, encourages the survivors to follow him on a journey up to the bottom of the ship, which of course is now the top. Only a few agree to go.

There is a lot of 1970s "Me Generation" religious ideology in play as Hackman was already challenging the Protestant Church's establishment before the wave hit. You see some of that attitude in his leadership of the small band of survivors who follow him.

If you want to carry the metaphor further, you might view him as a Christ with his Apostles or, alternatively, as Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt. Hackman even yells at God, demanding He stops getting in their way if He isn’t going to help. It's full-on 1970s anti-establishment stuff.

You don’t need to pay that rigmarole any attention if you don’t want to; instead, you can simply enjoy a good old-fashioned disaster/survivor movie, which is where The Poseidon Adventure shines.

Hackman's group fight among themselve but also pull together as they overcome obstacles, including flooding decks, flash fires, locked steel doors, underwater escape routes, destabilizing shocks as the ship experiences explosions, and other challenges.

You can pick apart scenes and effects if you study them closely, but if you just go with it, it’s a darn good disaster-escape story, complete with a little 1970s titillation as Lynley, Martin, and Stevens end up with fewer clothes over time, often soaked through.

Hackman and Borgnine – Borgnine plays a retired New York City police detective – fight endlessly, embodying the anti-establishment trope, while others, like Buttons and Lynley, form an unlikely bond born of kindness and need.

These are professional actors, all led by experienced director Ronald Neame, who take their work seriously. The result is a somber, not-campy effort with fewer cringeworthy moments than most of its 1970s counterparts, and it even delivers a few genuine nail-biting scenes.

For what it is – a 1970s disaster movie with a big cast – The Poseidon Adventure has aged well. It’s the perfect movie to grab a bucket of popcorn, sit down, and enjoy a fun picture from a time when disaster films were all the rage.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lawyer Man from 1932 with William Powell, Joan Blondell and David Landau


Not every precode movie is a steaming cauldron of wanton sex – most aren't.

Many use their precode freedom to take a realistic look at social issues. In Lawyer Man, political corruption and legal ethics are explored through the career ups and downs of an honest Lower-East-Side attorney.

When William Powell, playing the honest lawyer, wins a big case for a poor immigrant, a prestigious uptown lawyer offers him a partnership. Powell then moves to the high-rent district with his smart, loyal, and quietly pining-for-him secretary, played by Joan Blondell, in tow.

Once there, Powell refuses to play ball with the city's political boss, played by David Landau. Since this is the era when "political machines" ran cities, Landau then sets Powell up to be disbarred. The climax sees Powell fighting back against the machine and Landau.

The story is simple, but it's also very precode as the movie takes for granted that the audience knows political organizations and city governments are crooked patronage systems. Jobs and contracts were doled out in return for bribes and graft.

It also doesn't shy away from showing plenty of sexual shenanigans, with aggressive women – one played with viper-like blonde greed by Claire Dodd – using sex in exchange for money and favors. Dood will be the pivot that eventually tests Powell's integrity in his new "rich" world.

Beyond its revealing look at corruption, the fun in this film is Powell playing a smart but personally careless lawyer. He wants to get ahead, stay honest, chase skirts, and fight corruption, all with a blind eye to the entrenched interests he's challenging.

Blondell sees all those risks and tries to warn her overconfident boss, for whom she's carrying a torch, but Powell has to learn the hard way. Blondell was outstanding at playing the wisecracking "smart gal" with a heart of gold, a role she perfected in the 1930s at Warner Bros.

Powell is excellent as the mirthfully smooth yet fundamentally honest lawyer with the grit to fight the system. He is, though, a bit less believable as the downtown "champion of the immigrant" lawyer, as everything about the man says he's educated and urbane.

This is, though, a small flaw in the movie as Powell is supposed to be "at home" with the immigrants and "out of place" with the swells, but the reverse seems true. He's good at relating to the immigrant community, but it's obvious he's not one of them.

Powell went on to great success playing roguishly sophisticated characters throughout the 1930s, while Blondell, as noted, often played the "sassy gal" going toe to toe with the fast-talking male actors of that era. It's fun to see them together here, early in the decade.

Lawyer Man is a short, enjoyable precode look at the blatant corruption of that era's big-city governments dominated by "political machines." It’s a candor that would largely disappear from movies after the post-1934 enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code.

While a work of fiction, Lawyer Man offers modern audiences a vivid reminder of how entrenched politically corrupt "machines" once were. Today we are equally cynical about our political class, with the good news being that the system did correct itself, once, when it rid itself of the "machines."


N.B. Another pre-Code specialty of Warner Bros. – and something else that would vanish with the Code’s enforcement and the “cleaning up” of “immigrant” America on screen – is the scene where Italian Powell, back in his old neighborhood, speaks Yiddish with a Jewish man.

 

[Edward]

View attachment 664144
The Poseidon Adventure from 1972 with Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine, Stella Stevens, Carolyn Lynley, and Pamela Sue Martin


The Poseidon Adventure is one of the best of the "disaster" films that populated 1970s movie screens. It's held up well because the standard in those pre-CGI days was to make the movie believable; whereas, now the standard is to use over-the-top, unbelievable special effects.

The movie is also helped along by its outstanding cast including veterans Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, and Ernest Borgnine; 1970s heavyweight Gene Hackman; and several talented old and new tier-two stars like Stella Stevens, Carolyn Lynley, and Pamela Sue Martin.

At the outset, a cruise ship departs for a multi-day trip over New Year's. As the passengers do their thing - have fun, argue, dance, eat, drink, gamble - the owner of the ship pushes the captain to go for speed to save money, à la the Titanic disaster.

Owing to an underwater earthquake, and in the movie's era-iconic visual moment, a tsunami hits the ship, flipping it upside down. It's not perfect, but the lack of CGI makes the special effects still impressive today.

As the ship settles down after the wave, an iconoclast preacher, played by Hackman, realizing the ship is upside down, encourages the survivors to follow him on a journey up to the bottom of the ship, which of course is now the top. Only a few agree to go.

There is a lot of 1970s "Me Generation" religious ideology in play as Hackman was already challenging the Protestant Church's establishment before the wave hit. You see some of that attitude in his leadership of the small band of survivors who follow him.

If you want to carry the metaphor further, you might view him as a Christ with his Apostles or, alternatively, as Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt. Hackman even yells at God, demanding He stops getting in their way if He isn’t going to help. It's full-on 1970s anti-establishment stuff.

You don’t need to pay that rigmarole any attention if you don’t want to; instead, you can simply enjoy a good old-fashioned disaster/survivor movie, which is where The Poseidon Adventure shines.

Hackman's group fight among themselve but also pull together as they overcome obstacles, including flooding decks, flash fires, locked steel doors, underwater escape routes, destabilizing shocks as the ship experiences explosions, and other challenges.

You can pick apart scenes and effects if you study them closely, but if you just go with it, it’s a darn good disaster-escape story, complete with a little 1970s titillation as Lynley, Martin, and Stevens end up with fewer clothes over time, often soaked through.

Hackman and Borgnine – Borgnine plays a retired New York City police detective – fight endlessly, embodying the anti-establishment trope, while others, like Buttons and Lynley, form an unlikely bond born of kindness and need.

These are professional actors, all led by experienced director Ronald Neame, who take their work seriously. The result is a somber, not-campy effort with fewer cringeworthy moments than most of its 1970s counterparts, and it even delivers a few genuine nail-biting scenes.

For what it is – a 1970s disaster movie with a big cast – The Poseidon Adventure has aged well. It’s the perfect movie to grab a bucket of popcorn, sit down, and enjoy a fun picture from a time when disaster films were all the rage.

I remember seeing that one as a kid, back in the early eighties, on television. I've seen it a few times since and it always holds up. It feels like such a different era of cinema now.

Spoiler

What stands out for me particularly is how Hackman, as the hero, is 'allowed' to die in the end. It's such a rare thing in cinema these days - Logan in many ways really stands out because it bucks the contemporary trend by doing the same. There's a place for the unkillable hero, I suppose, but at an impressionable age I read so much Greek and other mythology - Robin Hood a notable example - where the hero's death is such an important part of the narrative arc. Sometimes the refusal to permit this in so much modern cinema, the refusal of the fanbase to tolerate it, seems so infantalised. I'm thinking particularly of the huge online backlash ahead of the release of Dial of Destiny when it was rumoured that Indiana Jones was to died in that picture. It robs so many films of their tension: it was hard to feel a sense of real danger in a crucial scene in World War Z when you're sitting there thinking "Well, they won't kill off Brad Pitt....".

The remake was interesting in the same way remakes of George Romero pictures are interesting: as a comment on the time in which these remakes are made, and thereby a comparison with the times in which the originals were made, and the then and now comparisons between the two. Not as good as the original, but interesting nonetheless.

I've watched a couple of films in the last week. The Mean One (2022, currently on Amazon Prime) is in the vein of 'modern horror film take on established childhood classic.' Specifically, it's the Dr Seuss story of the Grinch, but done as a 'what really happened' horror picture. Something akin to the notion of reading the original Grimm fairy story after being familiar with the sanitised, populist version. Much to my surprise, I thought it actually worked rather well. A lot of these sorts of things never get beyond an ill-thought out juxtaposition of a cute kiddy thing with violence. This however was clearly made with a lot of love for the inspiration (I wouldn't call it source material so much because this is completely unauthorised; while it is very recognisably, visually, a take on Seuss' Grinch, the film dances around the original, never quite using its language. The Grinch is never quite called that: it is, twice, implied that the word Grinch is used, but drowned out by a waitress shouting "Finch!" Events take place in Newville, not Whoville, and so on.) The ending is a very dark little twist on the ending in Seuss' story. Best of all, it plays the whole thing straight and leaves the audience to 'get' it. The opposite of so many modern pictures (I'm thinking especially of the Scream franchise) which all but have someone turn directly to camera to ay "Psst! Look at us being clever!" every two minutes, the cinematic equivalent of including a laugh track to instruct the audience how to recognise the jokes in a sitcom.

I also watched The Strangers: Chapter One . I was something of a fan of the 2008 original (its 2018 sequel I have never seen, so can't comment of that). The original picture was a well put together, psychological horror that stood out from the trend among its contemporaries of always providing an explanation / motive / justification for the villain, making the lack of any real motivation on the part of the antagonists truly chilling. Chapter One feels like a relatively straight remake of the original. Slightly different setting, but essentially the same story. Alone, this makes it somewhat superfluous. The original is no Jason Vorhees: it's a story that only works as well once. That said, this is a well made and well paced picture on its own (even if the protagonists aren't wholly sympathetic), and it is intended as a redux, not connected to the 2008 or 2018 pictures. It's intended as the first part of a trilogy, each of which will have a very different structure to the story, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. Not one for the casual fan, all told.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Holiday Movie-a-pa-looza continues with Christmas in Connecticut (1945) with Barbra Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, and Sidney Greenstreet, directed by Peter Godfrey, behind the camera for The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt, That Hagen Girl, and Escape Me Never, among so many others. Stanwyck writes a proto-Martha Stewart magazine column, regaling her readers with accounts of elegant home-life and fabulous recipes. She's fraudulent, fooling even her tycoon of a publisher Greenstreet, as she is an apartment-dweller in the Big Apple. Navy hero Morgan, rescued at sea and hospitalized after 18 days in a life raft, is set up by Greenstreet for a swell home-cooked Christmas dinner prepared by Stanwyck. Her attempts to convince all she's a wonderful hostess, great cook, doting mom, and exemplary wife (none of which she is) make up most of the story. This is a family-wide favorite, even the kids enjoying it. One of them even quoted Greenstreet's imperious "Or my name isn't Alexander Yardley!"

The rapidly-shrinking window of pre-Christmas evenings for movie watching may result in some double features-

 

[Fading Fast]

3:10 to Yuma from 2007 with Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, and Ben Foster


Old movie fans can't help but compare this relatively modern version of 3:10 to Yuma with the highly regarded 1957 one. Modern technology makes the action scenes in the new one incredibly engaging, but storywise, the slight nod goes to the 1957 one for a cleaner narrative.

On its own, the 2007 3:10 to Yuma is a modern classic in the Western genre. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, with an incredible cast, including Ben Foster playing one of the great psychotic gunmen of all time, draw you in early and never let go.

The core plot is all but the same as in the 1957 version. Crowe, in the Glenn Ford role, plays the leader and sole member of a gang who is caught in a small town because he stayed around too long after a holdup to have sex with a barmaid – the exact same plot pivot used in 1957.

Capturing a notorious gang leader in a small town, though, is one thing, getting him to prison is another. Knowing Crowe's professional gang of killers will be coming to free him, few men are willing to help the sheriff.

A $200 fee entices a local, financially struggling family man and farmer, played by Bale, in the role originally played by Van Heflin, to escort Crowe to the train, the titular 3:10 to Yuma, that will take Crow to the Yuma prison.

With the plot now set – two men on a journey with opposite goals – the movie becomes a battle of wills, smarts, and skills as Bale tries to take his prisoner, Crowe, to Coventry – an overnight trip on horseback – to meet the train to Yuma the next day.

As in the original, Crowe is a master manipulator of people and gets inside Bale's more linear brain – a brain suffering from insecurities due to a leg he lost in the Civil War, his failing farm, and his less-than-respectful son.

It's a long night and then a longer day as Bale, with help – a Pinkerton, his son, a sheriff, etc. – along for parts of the trip, tries to deliver Crowe to the train. Crowe, however, tries to escape; his gang tries to ambush them; and other obstacles that would break a normal man come and go.

It all climaxes in Coventry in an incredible battle of wills, head games, and one heck of an exciting – if not particularly believable – gun battle. Even as a viewer, you're exhausted like Crowe and Bale are when it's over.

The only uncertainty about the acting of those two is which performance is more impressive. Crowe brings an incredible joie de vivre, intelligence, and Machiavellian strategy to his character, which is matched by Bale's "my entire life is tied up in this mission" passion.

While there are several other strong supporting performances, the standout one is Ben Foster, playing Crowe's second in command. If you ever find yourself running a gang of outlaws in the Old West, Foster's psychotically devoted-to-you character is the one you want as your second.

His portrayal of a man with a singular focus – to free his boss – but done with a full-picture strategy, Olympian-level gunslinger skills, and absolutely no respect for anyone's life but his and his boss', makes him frighteningly effective. Foster creates a memorable character.

Movies today are almost always more complicated. You need a Venn diagram to keep Bale's emotional issues straight and the gun battles are long choreographed routines with more bullets fired than in all of WWII, but that doesn't make the movie better.

The 1957 3:10 to Yuma engages with its tense but simple tale of two men set on a journey where only one of them will like the outcome. There is emotional baggage and head games, but also a "point A to point B" overarching narrative that keeps the story sharply focused.

The 2007 version is incredibly engaging, but it's so complicated and packed with action that you sometimes lose sight of the simple mano-a-mano story. It is, though, an outstanding movie and an honorable remake of a midcentury Western classic.


Link to my comments on the 1957 version of "3:10 to Yuma:" #31,342

 

[Fading Fast]

The Crime of Helen Stanley from 1934 with Ralph Bellamy, Gail Patrick and Vincent Sherman


Television shows and series existed before television, they were just called B-movies, shorts or serials and were shown in movie theaters before the main feature from the 1930s through the 1950s.

The Crime of Helen Stanley is both a B movie and a serial as Ralph Bellamy played the same character, Inspector Steve Trent, in four hour-long movies where he has to solve a complex mystery. It was effectively a four-episode TV show made in the 1930s.

In The Crime of Helen Stanley, Trent is called in to investigate the murder of a female Hollywood star who was shot on the set during the filming of a scene, possibly because real bullets were used instead of blanks in the prop gun. Once again, we see that very little is new.

The murdered actress, played by Gale Patrick, was shot as she was playing a dancer in a ritzy nightclub. The case seems to be solved immediately as the man who shot the prop gun was Patrick's estranged husband. He admits to the crime just before dying from a suicide attempt.

Smart Bellamy is suspicious, so he has the bullet that killed Patrick checked and it doesn't match the prop gun that the husband used. It is thus back to investigating for Bellamy, where he discovers a clown car of suspects spilling out.

Patrick was a prima donna star with many enemies. Her sister and the sister's fiancé, the latter is also Patrick's ex-boyfriend and current cameraman, both make the list as Patrick opposed the marriage and tried to get the fiancé blacklisted in Hollywood.

Patrick's business manager also makes the list, as there's a little "confusion" about a missing $60,000 of Patrick's. Also under suspicion is the imperious director of Patrick's current movie. He is a Viennese expat living in America on an expired visa, a detail Patrick knew about.

Last up is Patrick's bodyguard and chauffeur, who was blackmailing Patrick. Bellamy learns some of this from Patrick's diary; a diary that almost every suspect was trying to find and destroy after Patrick's murder.

This all plays out like an early TV show with Bellamy speed pushing through everyone's lies and obfuscations, while he has to dodge an attempt on his life as a heavy prop is nearly dropped on his head. It is very much like a 1960s/70s TV-detective drama.

It is disappointing, though, that the resolution, no spoilers coming, could not be solved by the viewer as there's no clue dropped in early. You feel a tiny bit cheated when Bellamy figures it out as you can't have either an "I knew it" moment or a "how'd I miss that" moment.

The added fun in this one is the inside view of the real Columbia studios, here playing the part of the fictional "True-Art Pictures" movie studio. Back then, a movie like this gave the public a look at a studio in action; today, it's a time capsule of 1930s movie making.

It's also fun to see Bellamy and Patrick at the start of their careers, when they are still learning their craft. Also, famed director Vincent Sherman pops up as an actor, playing the blackmailer. The entire effort is a cool curio for fans of early movies.

The Crime of Helen Stanley is not even close to being a great picture, but it wasn't trying to be. It was trying to be an hour of modest entertainment before the featured movie was shown. Just like a good early TV show, it succeeds in its humble aspirations.

 

[Fading Fast]

Bhowani Junction from 1956 with Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers, and Francis Matthews


"The only people who face reality are too dumb to duck when they see it coming."


Bhowani Junction is an underrated movie that uses the backdrop of Indian independence in 1947 to frame its tale of love, lust, and race. For its time, it's a thoughtful and sensitive look at issues of cultural identity that, sadly, still buffet our politics today.

Unwinding an empire is hard work as the British try to exit India and India tries to become independent, with – both hoping – some dignity intact. But empires don't unwind – nor do countries assemble themselves – by fiat with ease.

At the center of what becomes the love quadrangle used to highlight all these issues is Ava Gardner playing the half-Indian, half-English, and wonderfully named Victoria Jones – a "chee-chee" in the slightly derogatory slang of the day.

With the British pulling out, "Anglo-Indians" like Gardner become people without a country as Mother England isn't their home – and doesn't want them – but neither does the new India trying to rid itself of its colonial vestiges.

A WAC in the British Army, Gardner is pursued hard romantically by another Anglo-Indian, played by Bill Travers, who is trying to out-English the English, but of course, it's a contest his mixed blood will never allow him to win.

Gardner is stationed at Bhowani Junction, a key rail depot that is a swirl of Indian passive resistance, defiance, and outright terrorism as different factions in India try to "expedite" the British exit, while jockeying for control in the new India.

Stewart Granger, playing a British colonel, is sent to Bhowani Junction to keep the trains on schedule by capturing the terrorists and tamping down the non-violent protests and defiance that are wreaking havoc with the railroad.

Granger is all business – fair but gruff. An early event, where he makes a tough call against the non-violent protesters, turns Gardner's sympathies against him, but she was already in the miasma of a personal and cultural identity crisis that sees her cool officer facade shaken.

Gardner will eventually try on every identity: proud "chee-chee" dating a "chee-chee," proud Indian dating an Indian (played by Francis Matthews), and even a proud British officer dating Granger, but none are an easy fit, for none can be an easy fit for this woman without a country.

Her struggle is an intentional microcosm of India's struggle. The country will no longer be a British colony, but it, like Anglo-Indian Gardner, can't just pretend its English heritage never existed as the country and its people try to define what a new India will be.

So much happens it's challenging to distill it down as an attempted rape, possible manslaughter, an ammunition train being raided, and terrorists and communists battling for power – as Gandhi's non-violent movement gains momentum – are all in the mix.

Unfortunately, in the film's one weakness, director George Cukor has Granger doing multiple voice-over narrations to explain the story. It takes the viewer out of the movie so often that it undermines the "feel" of watching a story unfold, though it does help to clarify a confusing narrative.

Cukor's decision to film in Pakistan subbing in for India helps tremendously as it gives the movie a genuine look and feel for the region that no backlot and army of LA-based extras could come close to achieving.

Also kicking this one up several notches are nearly uniformly impressive performances, with the exception of Travers who loudly overacts. Granger gives one of his career best as the strict but fair British officer trying to balance too many factions in a political tsunami.

He and Gardner have palpable screen chemistry, so much so, you can even feel a little attraction when they are in their I-hate-you phase.

Gardner herself is on fire in this role: She elevates every one of her scenes by thoughtfully and passionately playing the smart, calm woman realizing there will soon be no firm ground under her feet.

Her emotions rarely explode, but there's feeling in her every nuance as she desperately tries to find a home for her homeless heritage. It's a moving, often heartbreaking performance that argues Gardner's acting talent might even have exceeded her prepossessing beauty.

Today's politics are strident and unforgiving, but so were India's in 1947, which makes Bhowani Junction feel modern in a way yet dated for those who can't abide anything but "perfect" ideology.

For those who can, the picture – flaws and all – offers an insightful look at the end of an empire and the beginning of a country. It is an epic from "Old Hollywood," which in 1956, could still assemble an impressive array of resources and talent to capture a defining historical moment.