What was the last movie you saw?

DEADLY SHOTS ON BROADWAY - 1969 - Jerry Cotton FBI agent seeks to find where an undercover agent stashed stolen Federal Reserve gold before he was murdered. A crime boss who had plastic surgery and likes to throw grenades around is also seeking it.
 
So Sad About Gloria AKA Visions of Evil (1973)

Sedate psychological shocker. Young woman goes back home after years in an institution after seeing her father killed when she was a child. She's taken in by her uncle and stands to inherit a fortune. She meets a guy, falls in love, they get married. (Insert long romantic montage and sappy song.) In the meantime, some guy kills some woman with an ax. The newlyweds move into the house where ther murder took place. Woman hears music, has visions of a guy in old-fashioned clothes, cape and all, smashing open a chained crate in a train station. You can probably guess one of the Shocking Twist Endings already, but maybe not the other one. Final scene is the otherwise completely unexplained guy in cape, having smashed open the crate. Except for the extended and bloody ax murder scene, looks like a made-for-TV film.
 
The Lives Of Others (German with English subtitles) 2006
One of my all-time favourite movies. It's always a pleasure to revisit this quality piece of cinema and as moving to watch now as it was the first time around. A deserving winner of the best foreign film osar.
 
A Long Way Down 2014 - four strangers all turn up on the same building's roof on the same night to commit suicide. They don't. They make a pact not to do it again until Valentine's Day and over the next six weeks learn stuff together and live happily ever after. It passed 90 minutes agreeably I doubt if I will remember much about it in six weeks apart from the fact that Toni Collette was great in her part. She always is.
 
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The Female Bunch (1971)

Schlockmeister Al Adamson gave us this feminist classic. Starts off with a bang, as we see a woman and a man driving through the desert, chased by women shooting at them from a small airplane. The shooters manage to burst a tire, so the pair sets off on foot, only to be chased by several women on horseback. The man gets shot but survives, so the two seek refuge in a cave. This leads to a long flashback.

Our film's Good Girl was jilted by her fiancé, then got dumped by another guy. After trying to kill herself with an overdose, a friend told her about a ranch in the desert where men aren't allowed. The initiation ceremony for joining them is allowing herself to be buried alive, then dug up.

The Female Bunch spends their time away from the women-only ranch in Mexico, where they party hard with guys and also get drugs. The plot involves a man being smuggled into the ranch, which winds up with him being branded with a cross on his forehead. He comes back seeking revenge, only to be killed with a pitchfork. His Good Guy buddy shows up, which leads back to our opening scene as the Good Girl runs off with him.

Lon Chaney, Jr., is around as the one man allowed to work at the ranch. He's near the end of his life and his voice is extremely raspy. One of the Female Bunch is a very tall redhead with a deep voice. The actress was a transwoman, which is unusual for the time. (She had full sex reassignment surgery in 1962.)

Not a great film, but it does what it sets out to do.
 
Rocket Post (2004)- Okay, here's the pitch! Werner von Braun meets Katie Morag - and it's based on a true story! (Sort of.)

1938 a principled German rocket scientist and his totally not cast against type Nazi sympathiser assistant end up on a remote Scottish island to test an inter-island rocket mail system. The locals are wary at first but, as is traditional in these here parts, cultural barriers are broken down by the time honoured tradition of wandering around the scenery for hours on end, being good humoured when the butt of the locals' practical jokes, and falling in love with the only available piece of hot crumpet on the island. The obligatory cèilidh scene is less cumbersome than most but clumsily shoehorned into the script for no other reason than it's a film set in the Hebrides. Apparently it's illegal to make films set in the Islands without one. It's the law.

It doesn't end happily ever after as the scientist is forced to return to Germany and chooses to be executed rather than let his work be used for warlike purposes*.

And then it doesn't end at all because after he's shot there's what feels like another 20 minutes of wringing every last drop of symbolism and sentimental pathos out of whatever footage they had to hand of soaring eagles, flying rockets, symbolic letter opening voice over reading outs, swirling helicopter shots of lovers kissing on the beach, etceraterararara. Gods it got boring.

I did spend the last couple of minutes however admiring the dedication of the local postman. All through the film we had been endlessly told how remote this island was; it's on the wrong side of Harris (the Atlantic side). If you drew a line from London and the Island you would (if Google maps is to be believed) be halfway to Iceland. So the local postman; jovial type, keeps a bottle of whisky in his sack and rows a small boat from the mainland. Strange then to see turn up on the platform of the railway station to give our departing heroine the last letter from her German lover when the nearest station to Scarp was some 80 or so miles away at the Kyle of Localsh. That's some round.



*In reality he was deported by the British, served in the Luftwaffe during the war, and died in 1985. the now archived Encyclopedia Astronautica describes him as a 'German rocket enthusiast and fraudster. In 1931-1934 toured Germany and UK with bogus 'operational' and postal rockets. Caused a death in a rocket explosion in 1964, resulting in ban of private rocketry in Germany.'
 
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Hundra (1983)

Italian/Spanish/American sword and sorcery flick with a feminist twist. Statuesque, athletic blonde actress Laurene Landon is Hundra, last surviving member of a tribe of women who live without men, visiting them only for reproductive purposes. In true Conan the Barbarian fashion, the bad guys slaughtered all her people. I said last surviving, but there's an elderly wise woman living in a cave who tells Hundra (after she has easily killed the sixteen male warriors chasing her) that she must bear a girl child to continue the tribe. That means finding the right man, of course, which is a problem, as they all seem to be vile monsters in this universe.

After some time fighting off various rotten men, Hundra finds our movie's nice guy and immediately tells him they need to make a (female) baby. He demurs until Hundra learns girly ways from the woman who becomes her BFF. In return, she teaches the BFF to fight. (This sequence adds some comedy, as the barbaric Hundra tries to figure out how to do things like eat with utensils.)

Baby girl arrives, but the bull-worshipping bad guys, who keep hordes of miniskirted young women as sex slaves in their "temple," kidnap the infant. Will Hundra submit to save the life of her daughter?

The film has campy aspects, to be sure, but it's pretty entertaining. Landon isn't the world's greatest actress, but she's a convincing action heroine. The mixture of accents from the various characters is cause for some amusement. There are tons of fight scenes, many of which go on too long. Nicely filmed, with some nice outdoor scenes. Music by the great Ennio Morricone helps.
 
The Tunnel AKA Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

Early science fiction film about the building of (you guessed it) an underwater tunnel linking the USA and the UK. The soap opera plot involves the head engineer neglecting his wife and son for his work, the wife being blinded by a mysterious gas while working as a nurse in the tunnel's infirmary, a financier's daughter falling for the engineer, the son growing up to work in the tunnel, etc. There are are also financial shenanigans, ending in a murder, and disasters costing hundreds of lives. Mostly notable for really nifty retro-futuristic sets and models. Worth a look.
 
Hundra seems like the prototype for Xena in some ways.


HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT - 1980 -- James Caan stars in and also directs the story of a working stiff whose children are whisked away into the witness protection program because his ex-wife hastily marries a criminal who decides to snitch on the mob. Caan hires a lawyer (Danny Aiello) to fight the government before taking matters into his own hands. Based on a true story.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
The Female Bunch (1971)

Schlockmeister Al Adamson gave us this feminist classic. Starts off with a bang, as we see a woman and a man driving through the desert, chased by women shooting at them from a small airplane. The shooters manage to burst a tire, so the pair sets off on foot, only to be chased by several women on horseback. The man gets shot but survives, so the two seek refuge in a cave. This leads to a long flashback.

Our film's Good Girl was jilted by her fiancé, then got dumped by another guy. After trying to kill herself with an overdose, a friend told her about a ranch in the desert where men aren't allowed. The initiation ceremony for joining them is allowing herself to be buried alive, then dug up.

The Female Bunch spends their time away from the women-only ranch in Mexico, where they party hard with guys and also get drugs. The plot involves a man being smuggled into the ranch, which winds up with him being branded with a cross on his forehead. He comes back seeking revenge, only to be killed with a pitchfork. His Good Guy buddy shows up, which leads back to our opening scene as the Good Girl runs off with him.

Lon Chaney, Jr., is around as the one man allowed to work at the ranch. He's near the end of his life and his voice is extremely raspy. One of the Female Bunch is a very tall redhead with a deep voice. The actress was a transwoman, which is unusual for the time. (She had full sex reassignment surgery in 1962.)

Not a great film, but it does what it sets out to do.
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I watched about half of this a few years ago. It is quite odd. The ranch was apparently Charles Manson’s place in the desert.

There is documentary on Al Adamson on Netflix or Prime.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Hundra (1983)

Italian/Spanish/American sword and sorcery flick with a feminist twist. Statuesque, athletic blonde actress Laurene Landon is Hundra, last surviving member of a tribe of women who live without men, visiting them only for reproductive purposes. In true Conan the Barbarian fashion, the bad guys slaughtered all her people. I said last surviving, but there's an elderly wise woman living in a cave who tells Hundra (after she has easily killed the sixteen male warriors chasing her) that she must bear a girl child to continue the tribe. That means finding the right man, of course, which is a problem, as they all seem to be vile monsters in this universe.

After some time fighting off various rotten men, Hundra finds our movie's nice guy and immediately tells him they need to make a (female) baby. He demurs until Hundra learns girly ways from the woman who becomes her BFF. In return, she teaches the BFF to fight. (This sequence adds some comedy, as the barbaric Hundra tries to figure out how to do things like eat with utensils.)

Baby girl arrives, but the bull-worshipping bad guys, who keep hordes of miniskirted young women as sex slaves in their "temple," kidnap the infant. Will Hundra submit to save the life of her daughter?

The film has campy aspects, to be sure, but it's pretty entertaining. Landon isn't the world's greatest actress, but she's a convincing action heroine. The mixture of accents from the various characters is cause for some amusement. There are tons of fight scenes, many of which go on too long. Nicely filmed, with some nice outdoor scenes. Music by the great Ennio Morricone helps.
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Both my daughters adore Hudra (as do I) - my hippy, arty, peace-loving number two daughter punched the air when Hundra stopped running, turned and slaughtered her pursuers. Not sure I would call it a Sword and Sorcery flick though - I would put it more into the adjacent Barbarian category.

"...and that doesn't help." has to be the best line.
 
Arena (1989)

Boxing drama. Our hunky blond hero is forced to become a fighter in order to keep a crime boss from killing his buddy, who grabbed some money during a raid of the crime boss's casino. Fortunately, he's darn good at it. Our hero falls for a sultry nightclub singer, but doesn't know she's really working for the crime boss. Can he win the Big Fight, even though the singer has slipped him a mickey and the crime boss has a plan to have his slimy assistant fix the fight?

Oh, did I mention that this takes place aboard a space station full of weird-looking aliens?

The combination of boxing movie cliches and science fiction elements works pretty well, despite a modest budget and the inherent silliness. Sets, costumes, and makeup look inexpensive but imaginative. Most aliens are people in suits and/or with prostheses, but there's one huge, truly bizarre creature that's impressive. Good mindless fun.
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
Arena (1989)

Boxing drama. Our hunky blond hero is forced to become a fighter in order to keep a crime boss from killing his buddy, who grabbed some money during a raid of the crime boss's casino. Fortunately, he's darn good at it. Our hero falls for a sultry nightclub singer, but doesn't know she's really working for the crime boss. Can he win the Big Fight, even though the singer has slipped him a mickey and the crime boss has a plan to have his slimy assistant fix the fight?

Oh, did I mention that this takes place aboard a space station full of weird-looking aliens?

The combination of boxing movie cliches and science fiction elements works pretty well, despite a modest budget and the inherent silliness. Sets, costumes, and makeup look inexpensive but imaginative. Most aliens are people in suits and/or with prostheses, but there's one huge, truly bizarre creature that's impressive. Good mindless fun.
Click to expand...
Interesting. Scripted by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, who would go on to create the 1990's The Flash TV show, and the movie, The Rocketeer. No wonder it was fun. The title makes me think it was a variation on Fredric Brown's "Arena," but I don't see a credit for him.
 
The Cat and the Canary (1927) dir. Paul Leni; starring Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale

Seen on Prime. Not a restored print, I think; grainy and sometimes streaked.

Old chestnut stage play adapted to film twice more in 1939 (Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard), and 1978 (Honor Blackman, Michael Callan). Dying man feeling his relatives watching over him, waiting for him to die to get their hands on his money (thus cats to his canary), leaves a will to be opened twenty years after his death. All gather at the old, large, gloomy mansion at the appointed time. If the heir is found to be insane, then another relative gets the wealth. A violent storm and reports of an escaped lunatic keeps them locked in the house for the night. So, now's the time to drive the heir batty ...

Certainly not the best or funniest silent comedy I've seen, but an okay hour's pastime. Neither star became big, but La Plante, according to IMDB, was offered the role of Nora Charles in The Thin Man and turned it down. So, pretty well-known in her time, though you wonder how often she kicked herself for letting that one get away.
 
Origin (2023)
Ava DuVernay filmed a fictionalized bio treatment of the writing of the book Caste by Isobel Wilkerson.
That book was listed by the NYT as one of the ten best books written this century. The book and the movie make the point that separations between peoples and assumed superiority go beyond simple racism. Of course in the US that is its major form, but the movie also deals with documentary and acted sequences of the German Jewish Holocaust and the Dalits (Untouchables) of India. The NYT lists it as one of the top films to watch on HULU. For me it is difficult to watch horror, either documentary or fictional, but this film was exceptional.
Quoting the Times. "DuVernay successfully crafts a necessary work that grapples with the fullness of oppression, throughout various cultures and histories, and when all the threads come together at the conclusion, it’s frankly breathtaking. Our critic wrote, “Few American movies this year reach so high so boldly.”
 
Hearts and Minds (1974) A documentary about the Viet Nam war. Actual film clips show attitudes of U.S. people, not just politicians and military. Also shows the horror inflicted on the people who lived in that nation. I was broken-hearted at one particular scene, in which they had just lowered a coffin into a grave, and a woman, either wife, or mother jumped in after it, She resisted being pulled out of the grave. I will never watch this again! :cry: :cry:

Another of TCM's 100 most significant political films.

Not covered in this film:
After the end of WWII, many previously colonized nations found themselves free of foreign domination for the first time on who knows how long. Their former European masters were busy rebuilding, etc., but one in particular would soon return to both Indochina & North Africa. Until then, local groups fought for dominance. Could call this a time of civil wars. After the horror of centuries of foreign domination, WWII, the struggle for supremacy among local groups, then comes the return of the foreign colonialism. :eek::cry:
 
Le deuxième souffle (1966) I guess I will never understand French spelling, as the 'le' is silent.

Anyway, this was yesterday's NOIR ALLEY film. 2.5 hours, and though Muller said it has a rather slow pace, I found it very entertaining! Muller mentioned that star Lino Ventura was 23rd among the "100 greatest French people of all time", though he was Italian & born in Italy.

Anyway, convict Gustave Minda (Lino Ventura) and two, count 'em, 2 others attempt escape from prison. One dies in the attempt, the other 2, get away. Gustave Minda, who goes by 'Gu,' wants to live a normal life, but has certain business to complete before leaving France. Enticed by the hopes of big money from an easy job, he signs-on.

On the side of the law, is Commissaire Blot of Paris (Paul Meurisse; best known for his role in Les Diaboliques; which I, also have seen & enjoyed :devilish:).

Of even more interest, the guy who wrote the story, José Giovanni, was a collaborator during WWII, on the opposite side of the guy who directed this film, Jean-Pierre Melville, who was among the Resistance. Muller talked about all that & more. I wish the other TCM hosts would be half as in-depth as he is!

Anyway, the target is a van carrying a very large shipment of platinum, escorted by two motorcycle cops, along a rather desolate road. I think this is the 2nd time I have seen this film, but unsure.


For fans of classic manga, Ventura is one of many Western actors whom Osamu Tezuka added to his own studio system, though the manga 丸首ブーン (Marukubi Boon) makes Ventura seem skinny by comparison.
 
Jeffbert said:
Hearts and Minds (1974) A documentary about the Viet Nam war. Actual film clips show attitudes of U.S. people, not just politicians and military. Also shows the horror inflicted on the people who lived in that nation. I was broken-hearted at one particular scene, in which they had just lowered a coffin into a grave, and a woman, either wife, or mother jumped in after it, She resisted being pulled out of the grave. I will never watch this again! :cry: :cry:

Another of TCM's 100 most significant political films.

Not covered in this film:
After the end of WWII, many previously colonized nations found themselves free of foreign domination for the first time on who knows how long. Their former European masters were busy rebuilding, etc., but one in particular would soon return to both Indochina & North Africa. Until then, local groups fought for dominance. Could call this a time of civil wars. After the horror of centuries of foreign domination, WWII, the struggle for supremacy among local groups, then comes the return of the foreign colonialism. :eek::cry:
Click to expand...

I have vivid memories of watching this many many years ago. I'm glad I watched it but, as you say, not an experience I ever want to repeat.
 
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