What was the last movie you saw?

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Outstanding John Ford western about the O.K. corral and the events leading to it. Being Ford it’s realistic but being Hollywood historical accuracy is suspect. Still, beautifully filmed on location in Monument Valley, the kind of movie Sergio Leone would have made had he been directing in 1946. Walter Brennan superb as father of the doomed Clanton gang.
 
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A Walk in the Sun (1945)

Outstanding WWII movie, made while the war was still going on. A platoon of GI's lands on an Italian beachhead and makes its way inland six miles, eventually storming a farmhouse full of German soldiers. That's the whole plot, but what makes the film watching are the interactions among the Americans. (You barely see the enemy at all, just a few brief shots at the end of the back of their heads.) Between sudden scenes of violence, we get a lot of walking, a lot of talking about all kinds of things, and a lot of complaining. Clearly these guys hate being there and just want to get back home. Notable for having a sergeant suffer a mental breakdown from the stress of battle. There's a ballad about the stuff going on that sounds like a spiritual playing in some scenes; an unusual narrative technique which you may love or hate.

I am sure I have seen this, good, indeed!

The Chase (1946)

Offbeat film noir with some truly unusual plot twists. Robert Cummings is a decorated Navy veteran down on his luck; we first see him standing in front of a diner, watching the cook fry up bacon and pancakes, obviously without the money to buy himself breakfast. Looking down, he sees a wallet at his feet, full of cash. He spends a buck and a half on a meal, then tracks down the guy who owns the wallet, intent on returning it. At the guy's fabulous mansion, we see Peter Lorre as his right hand man, so we know that these are bad guys. Indeed, just about the first thing we see the boss do is savagely slap a manicurist who accidentally cuts him. Amused by Cummings' honesty, he hires him as his chauffeur. On their first drive, it turns out the boss has a gizmo that allows him to control the car's speed from the back seat, so Cummings has to try to keep control of the vehicle while going one hundred miles per hour towards a set of railroad tracks where a train is due. We also see Lorre and the boss kill a rival by locking him in the wine cellar with a vicious dog. The real plot begins when the boss's wife, desperate to escape her husband, gets Cummings to buy two tickets to Havana, from where they can then escape to South America.

First, and less bizarre, plot twist:

The woman is killed by the boss's henchmen in Havana, and Cummings is the prime suspect. He has to elude the boss and the Cuban cops.

Second, and more bizarre, plot twist:

Nothing after he bought the tickets actually happened! He seems to be suffering from what we now call PTSD, imagined the whole escape and murder, and now doesn't remember that he's supposed to help the woman get away. It's a race against time; will he regain his memory? Will the boss find out about the plan to escape, and stop them?

The film is based on the Cornell Woolrich novel The Black Path of Fear, which, by all reports, has the first plot twist but not the second. This major change in the story manages to keep the nightmarish feeling of a Woolrich plot. The ending, like the beginning, depends on Fate stepping in.

Chasing after the escaping pair, the boss uses the gizmo in his car to race against another train, this time losing, destroying himself and Lorre.

Nicely filmed, well acted. Recommended.

Hope Noir Alley will show this, as I could not find it on Prime.


The Last of the Secret Agents? (1966)

Pretty lame spy spoof, although I've seen worse. The opening sequence is pretty clever, as we see about a dozen spies pass along messages and shoot each other in an elaborate, Rube Goldberg sort of fashion. Then things go downhill as we meet our heroes, the once popular comedy team of Allen and Rossi. Rossi is the singing straight man, a sort of poor man's Dean Martin. Allen is the goofy one, a little round guy with big, fuzzy hair who says "Hello Dere!" a lot. The two wind up working for the Good Guy Institute, fighting the villainous organization THEM. (The unexplained acronym is so we can have jokes like "Find them THEM guys.") The chief baddie is a guy who steals art treasures. He's got the arms of the Venus de Milo, so he wants the rest. The actor playing him is pretty good, underplaying the role in contrast to all the exaggerated mugging going on. (When he finally gets arrested, he calmly tells the cops "I'm the product of overcrowded public schools.") Nancy Sinatra is around to sing the title song, have a romance with Rossi, speak in a phony French accent, and have her dress accidentally torn off. There are a couple of breaking the fourth wall moments, but otherwise it's mostly silly slapstick. The heroes have an umbrella that's a radio, a pen that writes invisible ink, and shoots daggers. In a gag stolen directly from Get Smart, there's a beautiful, voluptuous actress who is supposed to be a man in disguise. (You can tell because her voice is dubbed by a basso profundo.) In a surreal moment, folks in a train change clothing completely whenever the train goes through a tunnel, even winding up looking like people in a Tarzan movie, complete with elephant. In an odd sequence, the heroes wind up taking part in a movie about Nazis; featuring Harvey Korman as their commander, this scene plays like a completely unrelated skit. And I've probably made it seem more interesting than it is.
The Black Castle (1952)

Entertaining swashbuckler with the mood of Gothic horror. Starts with a couple of servants about to bury a man and a woman. The supposedly dead man's narration lets us know he's only in a state of suspended animation, and we go into a flashback. It's late 18th century Austria. The hero goes to the bad guy's castle under an assumed name to find out what happened to a couple of his buddies. Among other attractions, the place has a black leopard, starved and released to be hunted (or to hunt down people) and a pit full of alligators. The hero and the bad guy's unhappy wife fall in love and plan to run off together. Complications ensue, leading to a plot to bury the lovers alive. Add in Boris Karloff, doing an excellent job as a physician who plays an important part in the plot, and Lon Chaney, Jr., as a mute, hulking brute. The one-eyed bad guy is quite an enjoyable villain, and he's got a couple of equally nasty aristocrats to add to the fun. Fine black-and-white cinematography and good production values add to the appeal. Recommended.
:LOL:
Damn! another one that Prime has not.

The Pit AKA Teddy (1981)

This is a weird one. Starts with a scene that will be repeated, in whole, in the middle of the film, so it's hard to tell what's going on. Oh, and there's a quick flashback inside this scene, so that adds to the confusion. Back at the real movie, we meet our main character, a messed-up twelve-year-old boy. He's got no friends, except for his teddy bear. He talks to it, and it talks back to him. At first, this could just be the kid's imagination, but we see the teddy bear's head move when he isn't around. His parents go off somewhere and leave him in the care of a college student. Just about the very first thing the kid does when she shows up is sneak a peek up her skirt. Later he'll watch her in the shower. Mind you, she doesn't take many precautions; walking into his bedroom in a very skimpy nightie, failing to lock the bathroom door or even close the shower curtains, washing the kid's back when he's in the bath, etc. I hasten to say that she's not leading him on, she just seems to lack common sense. By the way, the kid also plays a particularly nasty trick on another woman, when he calls her on the phone, via a tape recording, and claims to have kidnapped her niece, forcing her to strip in her window to get her back, so he can take Polaroid photos. All this preteen psycho pervert stuff isn't really the main part of the movie, because the kid also knows about some little furry meat-eating humanoid creatures living in a big hole in the ground. At first he just throws raw meat into the pit, buying it from the butcher with money he steals from his babysitter. Eventually, he starts pushing people he doesn't like into the hole. (This is where the footage we saw at the beginning of the movie is repeated.) He shows the pit to the babysitter, and she accidentally falls in. Upset by the loss of the object of all his stalking, he puts a rope into the pit, so the creatures can get out and start killing folks in the community. Meanwhile, the ghost of the babysitter shows up. We get the monsters attacking some skinny-dipping teenagers, and the cops attacking the monsters. Then we get our twist ending:

The kid meets a girl about his same age, she leads him to yet another pit full of flesh-eating monsters, and pushes him in.

It's not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but endlessly fascinating because of the outrageous plot elements.
Intriguing! But again, not on Prime. I might try youtube.:ROFLMAO:

I have not watched any films since last weekend. Hope to do so this weekend.
 
Watched this eye opening, mind blowing documentary by John Pilger:


The nuclear testing on Marshall Islands and experimenting on its people is just pure evil crime. :mad:
 
Cry of the Werewolf (1944); dir. Henry Levin; starring Nina Foch, Stephen Crane, Ona Massen, Barton MacLane

This plays like Columbia Studio's version of a Universal werewolf movie (there is a band of Romani; sorry, though, no Maria Ouspenskaya) merged with RKO's Val Lewton-style presentation -- at times the movie feels strongly influenced by Lewton's The Cat People.

Marie LaTour, leader of a Romani clan, lived well in New Orleans until her husband learned she was a werewolf. She killed him, then disappeared. Now her 20-year-old daughter, Celeste, is the clan's Princess, trying to keep her mother's secret safe from Dr. Morris (Fritz Leiber -- no, not him, his father), who is getting too close to learning the clan's secrets. Crane plays his son, Massen his assistant, and Foch plays Celeste, as well as being the model for Celeste's mother's portrait. Barton MacLane plays a detective because, well, Barton MacLane -- if you know '40s movies, you'll understand.

The wolf shows in the credits and then appears again in a not terribly convincing struggle with the leading man; the wolf is fine, but Crane was a stiff, still this is probably Crane's best scene because he didn't have to read any dialog. The transformation scenes are shown in shadow, and throughout there is a fair amount of noir-ish lighting to build atmosphere and it's fairly effective.

Didn't realize Leiber was in it when I started watching, which I did because I remember Foch as an elegant woman in her late-40s, early-50s when guest starring on TV shows. I can't recall ever seeing her as a young woman before. According to IMDB she would have been 20 at the time of this movie, already elegant and really quite good in what would have been disastrous for a lesser actress, and along with Massen offering a reason for watching the movie.

Randy M.
 
The Odessa File (1974) - John Voight

Screen adaptation of the book by Frederick Forsyth. John Voight uncovers a secret Nazi group in early 60s Germany. Sadly the intrigue of the novel has been replaced by frequent (and predictable) action scenes. Good acting by Voight and excellent on-location filming.
 
BENGAL TIGER (1936) Cliff Ballenger (Barton MacLane, better known for supporting roles in WB crime dramas) is the lion - tamer, who just cannot come to terms with the fact that the tiger Satan, is just not going to be tamed. One night, he comes home drunk, and goes into the arena with Satan, and is about to be killed, when his friend Carl Homan (Paul Graetz) comes to his aid, and takes the brunt of the attack. He dies. Learning of Homan's daughter, Ballenger takes it upon himself to support her, and even marries her; but she does not love him, and being introduced to the circus performers, falls for one. Ballenger, learns of it, and tries to murder the guy with the tiger.



Dark Tower (1943) Stephen Torg (Herbert Lom) is a hypnotist who rives a failing circus by hypnotizing a female acrobat so she can perform on a high wire without balancing aids. But, he seduces her, and all the performers hate him. Fairly good plot.



Hitler Kaput! / Hitler goes Kaput (2008) A Russian-made comedy about a Russian spy in the guise of an SS officer. I kept expecting that Python guy dressed as a British officer to show up, and complain about how silly it was. Even though it is set in the late 1944/early 1945 time, they have all the hi-tech gizmos of the current time, including laptop computers. Very silly.



ACROSS 110TH STREET (1972) Mafia guys are in run-down apartment in NY, making exchange of goods for money with Harlem gang guys, when guys dressed as cops break in & demand all the money. One has a sub-machine gun, and when a Mafia guy goes for his own gun, wipes them out. The thieves/ murderers scoop-up all the money, and run. The Mafia top guys cannot abide such a thing, and intend to get the perps before the cops can.

Capt. Mattelli (Anthony Quinn) is a racist/old 3rd degree, style- type and is nearing retirement. he resents Lt. Pope (Yaphet Kotto) who is the new guy, and is in charge of the investigation. Plenty of conflict between the two gangs, and, likewise between the Capt. & the Lt., both because of rank & race. Very intense!




MANIAC (1963) Hammer film; remains very intense, despite its age. Man rapes girl, her father kills him with acetylene torch, goes insane asylum instead of prison. 4 years later, along comes the hero, Jeff Farrell (Kerwin Mathews) who becomes interested in the girl, now 19, but her stepmother seduces him, and lures him into a plot to help her husband (the maniac) escape from the nut house.
The ending was very satisfying!
 
Midway. It tries to do a bit of Fleischer’s Tora Tora Tora but it’s simply not in the same league. I’m a sucker for a good naval battle though and thought the ones here (it covers from Pearl Harbour until June ‘42 rather than just Midway itself) were pretty decent.

It was generally panned by the critics and it has a lot of faults. But, as I say, put me in front of a movie filled with big ships and loads of planes and I’m usually a pretty happy bunny. Not one to tax the brain.
 
Cry of the Werewolf (1944); dir. Henry Levin; starring Nina Foch, Stephen Crane, Ona Massen, Barton MacLane

This plays like Columbia Studio's version of a Universal werewolf movie (there is a band of Romani; sorry, though, no Maria Ouspenskaya) merged with RKO's Val Lewton-style presentation -- at times the movie feels strongly influenced by Lewton's The Cat People.

Marie LaTour, leader of a Romani clan, lived well in New Orleans until her husband learned she was a werewolf. She killed him, then disappeared. Now her 20-year-old daughter, Celeste, is the clan's Princess, trying to keep her mother's secret safe from Dr. Morris (Fritz Leiber -- no, not him, his father), who is getting too close to learning the clan's secrets. Crane plays his son, Massen his assistant, and Foch plays Celeste, as well as being the model for Celeste's mother's portrait. Barton MacLane plays a detective because, well, Barton MacLane -- if you know '40s movies, you'll understand.

The wolf shows in the credits and then appears again in a not terribly convincing struggle with the leading man; the wolf is fine, but Crane was a stiff, still this is probably Crane's best scene because he didn't have to read any dialog. The transformation scenes are shown in shadow, and throughout there is a fair amount of noir-ish lighting to build atmosphere and it's fairly effective.

Didn't realize Leiber was in it when I started watching, which I did because I remember Foch as an elegant woman in her late-40s, early-50s when guest starring on TV shows. I can't recall ever seeing her as a young woman before. According to IMDB she would have been 20 at the time of this movie, already elegant and really quite good in what would have been disastrous for a lesser actress, and along with Massen offering a reason for watching the movie.

Randy M.


My own review, from five years ago:

Even at sixty-three minutes, there are some pretty dull stretches, and the comedy relief cops are excruciating. The film's biggest flaw is the fact that the "wolf" is very, very obviously a friendly dog. The leading man is pretty bland.

On the other hand, the back story is interesting, the (entirely fictional, I'm sure) Gypsy lore is intriguing, a couple of the smaller roles are nicely acted (I enjoyed the tour guide, the guard who speaks sweetly to the cute cat, and the mortician), and many scenes are nicely shadowy and atmospheric.

Best of all, the rivalry between the two female leads was fascinating. Nina Foch may be a little too all-American (even though she was Dutch-born) as the Gypsy werewolf, but she has a certain power in the role. I was quite impressed by the more exotic Osa Massen as the Good Girl, whose "Transylvanian" (actually Danish) accent was charming. In particular, the scene near the end when Foch uses hypnosis of a sort in an attempt to transform Massen into her "sister" werewolf was nicely done.
 
Stuff I watched at home during my usual week away from the computer at work:

Shadows (1958)

One of a set of independent, improvisational films from John Cassavetes. This one deals with interracial relationships among some folks in New York City. By its very nature, not plot-driven, although the main story is about a light-skinned African-American woman and her disappointments in love, as well as the struggles of her two brothers.

Joe (1970)

I saw this a long time ago, so revisiting it was pretty much a new experience. In a state of rage, a rich guy kills, more or less accidentally, the drug dealer who addicted his daughter. He meets the title character in a bar, and he reveals his secret to him. The bigoted, hippie-hating Joe approves of the man's action. Together they hunt for the missing daughter, with tragic results. It's a very hard-hitting film, with a strong performance by Peter Boyle as Joe. Very much a portrait of its time. Notable is the contrast between the upper class man and the blue collar Joe.

All Night Long (1962)

The basic plot of Othello told in modern terms. Our Iago is Patrick McGoohan, as a jazz drummer trying to break up the marriage of a jazz pianist and a jazz singer during a big bash for their first anniversary. His motive is strictly financial; if the singer leaves her husband, she'll go back to singing, and the drummer can make a deal to have her join his group. McGoohan's performance is a revelation for those used to seeing him in Danger Man/Secret Agent or The Prisoner. Notable for the presence of jazz greats like Charlie Mingus and Dave Brubeck.

The League of Gentlemen (1960)

Heist film in which the leader gathers a group of WWII veterans, all with criminal backgrounds, in order to rob a bank in the style of a military operation. First they have to steal firearms from an army base, so it's really two heist movies in one. As you'd expect, the carefully planned robbery goes wrong, due to one little factor. A good example of the genre, if not groundbreaking.

Little Women (2019)

The newest version of the much-filmed novel. This one is obviously a big budget, lush production, with every scene a visual feast. The narrative structure is unusual, as the film constantly jumps back and forth in time. Other offbeat ways of telling the story include people talking directly to the audience to let us hear what they write in letters, and a sequence which is repeated from the beginning in order to reveal that the first time it was a dream, and that the reality is very different. Adds a touch of gentle feminism, and includes some post-modern self-reference. The novel that Jo March, the main character, publishes is called Little Women, and she only agrees to have the protagonist get married at the end at the insistence of the publisher. This may indicate that the movie's conclusion, in which Jo gets married, is itself a fiction added to the "real" story.
 
The Incident (1967)

Intense little film in which two creeps (a very young Tony Musante and Martin Sheen) start off by robbing a guy at knife point, then beat him senseless when the crime only yields eight bucks. We then cut to various scenes establishing the soap opera problems of our other characters. They're somewhat one diensional -- you've got the recovering alcoholic, the bickering married couple, etc. -- but a bunch of very familiar character actors bring them to life. They all wind up on the same subway car with the two hoodlums, who psychologically torment them, strictly for kicks. They start off with the easiest victims, the ones whom the others won't help -- the sleeping homeless man, the gay man, the elderly couple, and so on. After this goes on for a while, a soldier with a broken arm (an equally young Beau Bridges) finally gets fed up and fights them by himself. In a bitterly ironic touch at the end, when the cops finally show up, they immediately assume the trouble was caused by the only African-American man on the subway. It's a brutally effective look at how most of us become ineffectual cowards when things go bad.
 
Le Mans '66 [aka Ford versus Ferrari]
I'm assuming it is at least historically accurate enough not to get sued by those involved.
Matt Damon was good as Carroll Shelby but Christian Bale was outstanding as Ken Myles, even with his slightly dodgy Black Country accent.
The passion for cars came through and the racing was almost visceral.
I even liked the politics inside Ford and around Ferrari.
And for once the cars while racing felt like cars racing. I don't know how much if any CGI there was, but it felt like there was none. The photography looked lush, almost height of Hollywood lush. This was a romance with pistons and exhausts.
 
My own review, from five years ago:

Even at sixty-three minutes, there are some pretty dull stretches, and the comedy relief cops are excruciating. The film's biggest flaw is the fact that the "wolf" is very, very obviously a friendly dog. The leading man is pretty bland.

Yes to all that.

On the other hand, the back story is interesting, the (entirely fictional, I'm sure) Gypsy lore is intriguing, a couple of the smaller roles are nicely acted (I enjoyed the tour guide, the guard who speaks sweetly to the cute cat, and the mortician), and many scenes are nicely shadowy and atmospheric.

Best of all, the rivalry between the two female leads was fascinating. Nina Foch may be a little too all-American (even though she was Dutch-born) as the Gypsy werewolf, but she has a certain power in the role. I was quite impressed by the more exotic Osa Massen as the Good Girl, whose "Transylvanian" (actually Danish) accent was charming. In particular, the scene near the end when Foch uses hypnosis of a sort in an attempt to transform Massen into her "sister" werewolf was nicely done.

The tour guide I know I've seen before and he had a voice made for radio, so probably that, too. The movie had some nice moments, some lapses in logic, and Foch and Massen would probably both be more appreciated as actresses today than they were then.

Randy M.
 
Perry Mason: The Case of the Shattered Dream (1959) Raymond Burr, etc..

Rare TV episode that easily could have been stretched into a movie. What makes Shattered Dream so good is that its one of the more film-noirish episodes of Perry Mason: big jazzy soundtrack, off horizon camera angles (both low and high,) gangster heavies, femme fatales, cigarettes, double crosses, and a twisted plot with everyone in it for themselves.
 
Lake Placid vs Anaconda. It was on TV. Randomly had a dude from Hollyoaks (British soap) in it.

Bascially, Danny Lomax from Hollyoaks gets swallowed alive by a giant CGI anaconda. He lets off a grenade in its stomach. Snake blows up. Danny Lomax from Hollyoaks's randomly decapitated head flies out.

It's brilliant.
 
Well, - Sputnik, a new SF/Horror movie from Russia , it - (spoilage)>>>> kinda tries to be Alien. We have a parasitic lifeform, it latches onto one of our returning astronauts. He's a hero of the Soviet Union etc. and there's vague subplottage about his deceased wife and orphan kid --- but this lifeform actually comes out of his body at night, and crawls round. It eats Cortisol... so it wants to scare you before it croaks you... and our Cosmonaut becomes one with it... the evil regime feeds it a few convicts. Like that, it's a monster movie, very dark scenes, lots low-pitch synth tones... and the monster comes on out every night, and eventually it kills some of the bad guys, then is killed...and it almost, it sort of is all right, this one, it keeps ya watching, but it could have been better, Comrades.
 
Penda’s Fen (1974)
Commissioned by BBC in 1974, it’s rarely been seen since and perhaps the biggest question is ‘what is it?’

Stephen Franklin is a friendless individual with a love of Elgar and all things English. His typical grammar school upbringing is bookended by his religion and his very conservative view of the world. The cauldron in which his character is formed is his home - a small, sleepy town surrounded by rolling hills. It seems to be a place for for a postcard, where Jerusalem is sung regularly at school and Stephen plays the organ in church where his father is the local parson.

It is a troubling time for the teenager as his emerging sexual awakening takes hold. He suffers from guilt ridden dreams as he seeks a place and a purpose for himself in the world. Personal identity struggles to survive as life foundations begin to crumble, and amongst all of this turmoil rises the legend of Penda, last of the pagan lords to fall before the advance of Christianity.

A thought provoking and mysterious piece.

Thought provoking and mysterious is not a phrase I would use to describe Birds Of Prey.
I thought Margot Robbie was brilliant in I Tonya but here, she’s just wasted. This boring, cliched movie caused me to keep looking at the clock, wondering how much longer it would last.

The biggest mystery about Birds Of Prey is why it got such good reviews.
 
Mortal - A movie set in Norway about a drifter who is the reincarnation or descendant of Thor. I am not giving anything away by saying this as it is pretty obvious from the get go.

Directed by the guy who did Troll Hunter it is an excellent origin movie and I hope it gets a sequel. Mortal is both subtitled and in English. Also as a bonus it is only 100 minutes long. Too many movies are far too long these days. Not looking at you Marvel Franchise.
 

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