What was the last movie you saw?

How It Ends (2018)

Boy, I love Forest Whitaker!

This is a great movie... with another bullcrap non-ending ending!

What the heck is it with movie producers nowadays?? Why can we no longer have endings to our movies??
 
It might be because some film groups are now looking at films like books and some TV shows - potential for continuation. If you can end a film on enough of a cliffhanger AND do well at the boxoffice you line yourself up easily for a sequel. Fail and you end up with a half-a-film that doesn't have a good ending (yet that can still work if you get a cult following build up over the years!)

Of course this is nothing new; there are plenty of older films that thought they had a sequel in the bag during production only to flop or fail or lose backing such as Nightbreed
 
Different studios at different time periods. RKO put Lewton in charge of a project he didn't want and pretty much left him alone to do it, so he made it his own. His movies were nothing like the Universal horror pics of the 1930s, avoiding established monsters. It strikes me as a parallel to the changes from Lovecraft/Weird Tales horror stories to something like Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost" and Robert Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper."

Further, Lewton chose his directors and at least two were new to directing (Robert Wise, Mark Robson), without whatever clout Polanski had because of his boy wonder reputation from Repulsion and Knife in the Water. Jacques Tourneur, according to IMDB, had more experience than I thought he had, but it doesn't look like he was an established director. And, too, I think Castle had the rep of being a hack, his gimmicks drawing more attention than his skill as a director.


Randy M.
Thanks, Randy M., I really knew very little of the role of producers, except from the film of that name, & that was a stage production. Yes, WC was known for his gimmicks. A wonder he thought he could direct R's Baby. I know that Mel Brooks made a drama, but was careful to avoid his name being associated with that film.

Solitaire Man (1933) In England, A reformed safe-cracker, Oliver Lane (Herbert Marshall) finds himself over his head, after trying to help another safe-cracker go straight. HM decides to return the necklace that the other guy Robert Bascom (Ralph Forbes) stole, since RB had been seen at the fancy party that evening, & being seen at the scene breaks their rule. He rebukes RB, and in the dark, opens the safe. As he is about to return the necklace, another burglar enters through the other window. OL retreats behind the drapery. As the other guy is opening the safe, a Scotland Yard detective enters through the door. The other burglar shoots the cop, And Ol goes out the window.

Hoping the incident will not catch up to him, OL boards an airplane for France. But one of the passengers Wallace (Lionel Atwill) confronts him. A fairly good pre-code crime drama; most of which occurs in flight.

Noir Alley: Scene of the Crime (1949) A rare MGM entry into the genre, Van Johnson as Mike Conovan, a police detective, looking for a crook with a withered or twisted left hand, and a blotchy complexion. Just watched it yesterday, but most details already elude me. :cry: I can say that it was very good.
 
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crapola flicks..... entropy folks, anything good, and profitable, will be swarmed till the absolute wrong people finally get in, using $$$$ or wha'ever, and movies are like gum cards now, disposable and demographisized to the point of duhhhh. i met a few of them and uhhhhh what are those drugs you lot take/ keep me away from it!
OCCUPATION 2018 - ET ships arrive, they blast away at a football crowd.... , armed ET humanoids come down, the humans flee to the woods, outshoot the ETs, and have them arrested at the end. ? I think that's what happened. Interstellar voyaging ETs show up and are out-gunned by small town regular folks. Mebbe I missed something.
 
Arrival 2016? ..... A pretty fair first contact movie where aliens come to the earth. On the positive side: (1) the aliens and their motives are inscrutable until the very end, and even then there is a sense of mystery. (2) the aliens are clearly not humans with masks or some such. (3) the human reaction to the first contact in what feels to me to be believable. (4) The problem with communication is not simplified, but the speed at which progress is made feels far too rapid to me. (5) It has genuine characters about whom I cared. Negatively I felt the ending was gimmicky and somewhat unbelievable.

Overall I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. If you like Science Fiction you will like this movie.
Presently available free on Amazon Prime.
 
Just watched The Last Jedi on Netflix. It was better than what I was led to believe. Not on par with the original trilogy, and too much Disney flavour (especially with the social message concerns). Still, I enjoyed it.
 
Just watched The Last Jedi on Netflix. It was better than what I was led to believe. Not on par with the original trilogy, and too much Disney flavour (especially with the social message concerns). Still, I enjoyed it.

You know Last Jedi got pounded by some fans, tho it did good box office, I thought it was an awkward , sot of kind of, rework of The Empire Strikes Back, but then they have been recycling SW lore to closely in these films. However I thought it was OK , not clear what SW fans want??
I thought Rouge One and Solo were better as stand alone. Solo was not a great sidebar for SW but I was surprised at the poor box-office.
 
Solo is just now passing $400m. The total cost to film and distribute the movie was an estimated $400m. So it is turning a profit. Not much of one, but neither is it the total failure so many say about it.
 
Upgrade (2018)
Surprisingly clever take on the revenge thriller with twists and turns you won't see coming. Recommended.
 
You know Last Jedi got pounded by some fans, tho it did good box office, I thought it was an awkward , sot of kind of, rework of The Empire Strikes Back, but then they have been recycling SW lore to closely in these films. However I thought it was OK , not clear what SW fans want??
I thought Rouge One and Solo were better as stand alone. Solo was not a great sidebar for SW but I was surprised at the poor box-office.

What confuses me is the new Thrawn book. Disney kinda cancelled the expanded universe and Heir to the Empire. Then there is a Thrawn book, but no Thrawn in the movies. How's that going? Have you read the new Thrawn book?
 
The Idiot (1951) Akira Kurosawa directed; Toshiro Mifune & Takashi Shimura; but neither are Samurai. "It is based on the novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky" (wiki). Masayuki Mori as Kinji Kameda, the idiot, Toshiro Mifune as Denkichi Akama, who is competing for the love of a woman with the idiot. Wikipedia says that 100 minutes were cut from the film, but TCM showed it & it ran just short of 3 hours.

I guess I have seen maybe 1 of Kurosawa's films that did not involve killing, but even this one, though I would compare it to FOREST GUMP, had some killing in it. It is mostly about a guy who had been identified as a war criminal after WWII, and sentenced to death. He was exonerated of the charges as he was waiting his turn facing the firing squad. He described the eyes of one who went before him, & that was very intense. So, he was apparently so relieved to be freed, he lost his sanity.

There are two young women whom he loves, one of which has a bad reputation, The conflict between these two spans most of the film. Both find the idiot pure, etc., & that seems to be their main attraction to him. He also has inherited a ranch, & this is mentioned several times.

Interesting film, not the least bit slow, despite being nearly 3 hours.
 
Boar 2018 - homophonically correct title - and proof that Aussies can make bad monster movies too.
Safe 2018 - actually irritating, this one, it starts with some NSA nonsense - and hey - the dog will attack the baby if I give the signal.... and - just don't bother.
 
The Idiot (1951) Akira Kurosawa directed; Toshiro Mifune & Takashi Shimura; but neither are Samurai. "It is based on the novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky" (wiki). Masayuki Mori as Kinji Kameda, the idiot, Toshiro Mifune as Denkichi Akama, who is competing for the love of a woman with the idiot. Wikipedia says that 100 minutes were cut from the film, but TCM showed it & it ran just short of 3 hours.

I guess I have seen maybe 1 of Kurosawa's films that did not involve killing, but even this one, though I would compare it to FOREST GUMP, had some killing in it. It is mostly about a guy who had been identified as a war criminal after WWII, and sentenced to death. He was exonerated of the charges as he was waiting his turn facing the firing squad. He described the eyes of one who went before him, & that was very intense. So, he was apparently so relieved to be freed, he lost his sanity.

There are two young women whom he loves, one of which has a bad reputation, The conflict between these two spans most of the film. Both find the idiot pure, etc., & that seems to be their main attraction to him. He also has inherited a ranch, & this is mentioned several times.

Interesting film, not the least bit slow, despite being nearly 3 hours.

We got this one some time ago because we were trying to get a different version of the novel. (The Russian miniseries version, by the way, is extremely faithful to the book, and very good.) It was odd to see 19th century Russia translated into 20th century Japan, but it was interesting.
 
The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978)

Short and unfair synopsis: The American version of The Wicker Man.

Two-part miniseries based on the novel Harvest Home (1973) by actor-turned-author Thomas Tryon. My better half says it is quite faithful to the book. (Our copy seems to have been taped off of the TNT network, and seems to be the full version, although the quality of the copy was poor. Apparently there is a severely edited VHS version out there.) Lots of subplots and red herrings, but the basic plot is simple. City couple and teenage daughter move to what seems to be an idyllic, old-fashioned farm community in Connecticut. There is, of course, the promised Dark Secret involving the young man selected as the Harvest Lord and the young woman selected as the Corn Maiden. No big surprise as to what happens at the ceremony, which involves "what no man may see nor woman tell." Pretty good for TV horror.
 
Corbin Nash (2018)

If I'd never heard of Corbin Nash, I would probably have turned this movie off after about 3 minutes.

The movie begins with an actor (I can't recall the actor's name, but the voice sounded like that of the star of Rescue Me) giving a near-monotone info dump. explaining things. A big turn-off.

There was good dialogue and acting between poorly done action (fight) scenes.

Nash is fighting transvestites demons er, vampires. The twist wasn't predictable... it's just been done before - in some very famous movies.

If you've got 90 minutes to waste, there are worse ways to spend it. But keep your money in your pocket. :)
 
Convicted (1950) Essentially a remake of The Criminal Code (1931), which, itself is based on a play of the same name. In the noir version, Glen Ford is convicted of manslaughter by a DA (Broderick Crawford), who regrets that the defendant has incompetent counsel, knowing that an attorney who specializes in defense, could easily have cleared him. Walter Huston as Mark Brady the DA in the 1931 version seemed more intense, if I recall correctly. Anyway, the wiki page for Convicted is short on details, while the one for The Criminal Code, has plenty.

Sentenced to 1 to 10 years, the guy goes to a prison where the DA who sent him there, eventually becomes the warden.

I much prefer the 1931 film, if for no better reason than that Karloff is in it. The character he plays (Ned Galloway), who kills the snitch, is portrayed by Millard Mitchell (Malloby) in the Noir version. I know I have seen this guy somewhere else, but nothing comes to mind. I see a few familiar titles in his Wiki page's filmography, but still I cannot recall anything specific.

Both films: The protagonist tries to steer clear of trouble while in prison, but is in the wrong place at the wrong time, just after Mitchel (Malloby) / Karloff (Galloway) kills the snitch. Now comes the difficult part: the warden must hold someone responsible for the death, but The Criminal Code forbids him telling on the murderer.

Sadly, this was not a NOIR ALLEY presentation. :cry: I would really have liked to hear what Muller would have said about it.

Oh, Grandpa Walton-- Will Geer was in the credits, but, if not for his voice, I would not have recognized him as one of the protagonist's cellmates.


Dr. X (1932), another of the Lionell Atwill day films. Lee Tracy is the nosy reporter and the protagonist who keeps Dr. X and his students annoyed. 2 strip color, very good horror, though rather than UNIVERSAL, this was made by Warner Bros. Too bad Vincent Price did not do a version of this one, as well as the Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). :LOL:

Dark Passage (1947) Bogart was not even seen until after the plastic surgery, like playing DOOM, it was shown from his perspective.. So this one is a bit strange, at least in that respect. Bacall picks him up after he escapes from prison, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. So he must go about clearing himself, while evading the police & others who would hinder him. His new face helps, but fear of capture remains.

I have seen this one before, currently watching it in the PIP. This was the next to the last NOIR ALLEY presentation before the August SUMMER UNDER THE STARS causes a month without it! I am starving!!
 
The last movie I watched? no idea.

Last movie I watched in the theatre? Jurassic World 2 - it was kind of underwhelming, actually.
 
The Big Sleep (1946). One of the most famous head scratchers ever filmed. Great irreplaceable cast, clever dialog that never grew tiresome, stunning photography, jaw-dropping dames. Magical movie making at its best.
 

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