What was the last movie you saw?

[Al Jackson]

I know nothing of this actor, & cannot recall seeing him other than in this film, but he does seem to have the character just about right.

Yeah Robert Newton died 'young' at the age of 50 in 1956. He became well known in the 20s and 30s as a stage actor in England and in the 40's as both a leading man and a 'character actor' in film in England.
I remember him in Laurence Olivier's remarkable version of Henry V.
He seems to only remembered as playing a pirate in Treasure Island and Blackbeard.
A really great actor who got type cast.

 

[Al Jackson]

Speaking of those British Disney Movies , they were all pretty good. Not sure if this was Disney's first live action films but there were all a bit unusual. There were these four:

1950 Treasure Island
1952 The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men
1953 The Sword and the Rose
1954 Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue

After Treasure Island they all stared Richard Todd a fine British actor and 'handsome' leading man.
I am not entirely clear why?

The Robin Hood movie is a bit stage bound , so to speak.
These were good , sort of modest scale films, helped by having first class British actors.
The best was probably The Sword and Rose which had Richard Todd and Glynis Johns , two actors who I wonder if anyone remembers?

 

[Randy M.]

For what it's worth, I remember Glynis Johns mainly because she had a wonderful purr in her voice. She was in Marry Poppins and added some class to one of the best Danny Kaye, movies The Court Jester.

Randy M.

 

[dask]

The Finger Points (1931) is a somewhat overly simplified story of a newspaper reporter becoming corrupted by organized criminals. He takes a very large payoff to dissuade him from doing his job, & begins living luxuriously despite his meager salary. Breckenridge Lee (Richard Barthelmess) is that reporter, and Louis Blanco (Clark Gable) is the mobster who 1st introduces him to the lucrative business of reporting some crimes, but not others.

This occurs because he initially did do his job, and was beaten because of it. Emerging weeks later from the hospital, he found his $35 / week salary insufficient to pay the medical bills. Asking the paper to cover them, gave him a brutal surprise: he was on his own; these were not considered expenses related to his job.

Clark Gable as the villain? Inovative casting, sounds cool. Going to have to look this one up.

 

[Randy M.]

Clark Gable as the villain? Inovative casting, sounds cool. Going to have to look this one up.

I'm not sure of that for that time. He wasn't really Clark Gable yet. He was still a year or two away from major star status, I think, those early scoundrel roles bringing him attention, particularly from female viewers.

Meanwhile, Cary Grant was about two years away from stardom, and Gary Cooper -- the other leg of the '30s-'50s trinity of male box office kings -- was already a star and had been since near the end of the silents.

Poking around IMDB, I didn't realize Cooper and Grant were in the same movie, Devil and the Deep (1932), with Charles Laughton. None of them had top billing, though; that was Tallulah Bankhead.

Who?

Yeah, well, fame is fleeting. Her fame mostly resided on Broadway. She still had enough heft in 1944 that she starred in Hitchcock's Lifeboat.

Randy M.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Joan Collins, Scream Queen Double Feature:

Dark Places (1974)

Slow-moving but effective combination of suspense and ghost story. An elderly man in a mental hospital leaves his estate to a fellow who works there. Upon the rich man's death, his unexpected heir goes to live in the huge, crumbling mansion. He knows that there's a huge amount of cash hidden somewhere in its walls. Joan Collins and her physician brother (Christopher Lee) know about the money as well. So does the lawyer (Herbert Lom) handling the inheritance. They're all scheming to get the cash. The promiscuous Collins -- she even teases her brother by asking him if he wishes she weren't his sister -- seduces the heir, and the siblings make it look like the place is haunted. So much for the suspense part of the plot. It turns out that some of the weird stuff going on isn't their doing. The heir gets possessed from time to time by the dead man, and we see flashbacks of what happened years ago, with the same actor playing both parts. (The transitions from present to past are quite well done.) Suffice to say that Very Bad Things happened back then. Jean Marsh has a very good part, if a small one, in the flashbacks as the dead man's wife. It's a nice little thriller, if you don't mind the sedate pace.

I Don't Want to Be Born AKA The Devil Within Her (1975)

Ridiculous mixture of Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and It's Alive. Starts with Joan Collins undergoing very difficult childbirth. As the doctor (Donald Pleasence) remarks, "This one doesn't want to be born." I guess he read the opening titles. The baby is unusually big and strong, but otherwise a perfectly ordinary infant. We find out right away that something is wrong with the kid, because it somehow manages to scratch mommy's face badly, drawing blood. It also freaks out (screaming horribly, the way that all babies do) when they try to baptize it. Hammer Glamour favorite Caroline Munro, in the role of mommy's BFF, shows up to talk to Collins, launching us into a flashback. It seems that Collins was a stripper. (Her act shows her completely dressed. Munro is in the same business, but also keeps her clothes on. Other actresses in tiny roles as strippers aren't so modest.) A dwarf who works at the same nightclub makes crude advances to her. She rejects him, he curses her to have a baby that will be "as big as I am small, and possessed by the devil." We leave the flashback. The baby kills people, either completely offstage so we don't know how it accomplished the murders, or in completely absurd ways. (A tiny hand reaches out of a perambulator and pushes a woman into a river, drowning her.) Collins is married to an Italian fellow (British actor Ralph Bates with an accent) whose sister is a nun. Yes, you guessed it -- the movie ends with the nun performing an exorcism. (I thought only priests could do that.) The decision to have the monster baby always look like nothing other than a typical newborn makes all of this ludicrous in the extreme.

 

[Matteo]

Last night, I finally got around to watching Star Wars - The Force Awakens. I'd managed to avoid all spoilers - and even trailers (other than a few seconds) - so was surprised in the "right" places.

I enjoyed it but it wasn't great. Having just read the assigned thread here, I'd agree with most of the criticisms so won't repeat them all here; there were a few conveniences, the story was familiar, and it felt rushed. However, I also think that a lot was being set up for the next two films which could excuse some of its weaknesses. And it was nice to see The Force being mystical again. Looking forward to the next film.

Oh, and it was a bit rich that Mark Hamill got second billing!

 

[Anthoney]

Aquaman. This movie was made for LSD.

 

[Boaz]

@Randy M. Glynis Johns is great. Now that you've seen her sweet side opposite Danny Kaye and David Tomlinson, you need to watch The Ref. With Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey going all out and Dennis Leary in full anger mode, Glynis Johns steals every scene. It's my favorite holiday (not Christmas) movie.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

T-Bird Gang (1959)

Low budget crime flick that's not as bad as it might be. A night watchman is shot to death by crooks during a robbery. His son vows revenge. He winds up being recruited into the gang after beating one of the members in a fistfight. The rest of the film details the way he works with the cops while trying not to be found out by the crooks. The title comes from the white Thunderbird the boss drives. Ed Nelson does a good job playing the boss as a smooth, sophisticated, chess-playing, classical-music-listening guy. The other crooks are just punks. Very simple plot, and it runs just over an hour. Notable for a jazz soundtrack that really sounds improvised.

 

[biodroid]

Aquaman - fantastic movie, better than some MCU movies and the best DC movie since the Dark Knight trilogy

 

[Al Jackson]

Last night, I finally got around to watching Star Wars - The Force Awakens. I'd managed to avoid all spoilers - and even trailers (other than a few seconds) - so was surprised in the "right" places.

I enjoyed it but it wasn't great. Having just read the assigned thread here, I'd agree with most of the criticisms so won't repeat them all here; there were a few conveniences, the story was familiar, and it felt rushed. However, I also think that a lot was being set up for the next two films which could excuse some of its weaknesses. And it was nice to see The Force being mystical again. Looking forward to the next film.

Oh, and it was a bit rich that Mark Hamill got second billing!

You know both this film and Solo got unwarranted knocks against them which seem to come from SW fans, but I found both films entertaining enough. Tho both had somewhat lackluster stories and were a bit fragmented (tho not as much as most comic book movies!) . I thought Solo was a tad better than Force Awakens. I thought both were better than Last Jedi and Rouge One was better than any of those others released so far.

 

[J-WO]

I keep watching Chimes At Midnight on my phone (One day I want to see it on the big screen but I don't know if that'll ever happen). I love the audacity of smashing a load of Shakespeare plays together and making a new one about Falstaff. And, as a fantasy writer, I love the medieval world Orson Welles creates (on a budget!), all the shadows and light: the royal court is as sinister as the Death Star and the bawdy tavern is really warm. Then there's the battle, which went on to inspire Game Of Thrones' Battle Of The B*stards and Braveheart and all the other muddy, gritty sword fights of cinema. Welles only had a hundred extras but with a smoke machine and lots of fast editing he made it seem like thousands.
I've really fallen it love with Chimes, despite its occasional faults. It's a movie with so much love poured into it.

 

[Randy M.]

@Randy M. Glynis Johns is great. Now that you've seen her sweet side opposite Danny Kaye and David Tomlinson, you need to watch The Ref. With Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey going all out and Dennis Leary in full anger mode, Glynis Johns steals every scene. It's my favorite holiday (not Christmas) movie.

I did see it years ago, remember little about it except liking it, and had totally forgotten Johns was in it. Thanks, Boaz. I'll have to re-watch it.

Randy M.

 

[Allegra]

Watched Colette (2018), biographical drama of French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Excellent performance by Keira Knightly and the leading actor.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Psychic (1977)

Intriguing giallo with more emphasis on mystery and suspense than gore. The brief prologue shows a woman in England killing herself by jumping off a cliff in England. Her young daughter, at school in Italy, has a vision of her mother's death at the same moment. Oddly, this really has nothing to do with the plot except to establish the main character as a psychic. Eighteen years later, the little blonde girl has grown up to be dark-haired Jennifer O'Neill, looking particularly beautiful here. While driving, she has mixed-up visions of ordinary things -- a broken mirror, a cigarette, a magazine -- as well as a murdered woman and the sobs of a woman being sealed up behind a wall. These various images are explained, one by one, as the plot goes on. O'Neill is newly married to an Italian fellow, and on her way to restore her husband's mansion, long abandoned. Her visions lead her to find the skeleton of a young woman walled up a couple of years ago. When the cops figure out who the victim was, the husband admits she was a former lover. Of course, this makes him the prime suspect, and he gets thrown in jail. With the help of a parapsychologist, his assistant, and the husband's sister, she turns amateur detective to clear his name. The story takes all kinds of twists and turns, with clues that turn out to mean something other than they seem to indicate at first. The original Italian title, Sette note in nero (seven notes in black) refers to a little tune that a wrist watch plays, which proves to be of major importance at the very end of the film.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

The Oval Portrait (1972)

Low budget adaptation of the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The Poe tale is very short. Guy paints a picture of his wife so lifelike that she dies when it is finished. The film pretty much ignores this. Shortly after the American Civil War, folks gather at the home of a retired Union officer who has just died. Right away we get our spooky stuff, as our heroine gets freaked out by a woman she sees, assuming she's a ghost. Under the titles, we see the portrait in question, which changes from that of a young woman into a corpse; a pretty effective touch. The heroine freaks out in other ways, fainting and such. The vaguely spooky housekeeper gives her (and the viewers) the back story, and we go into a flashback that takes up most of the film. During the war, a wounded Confederate soldier shows up at the officer's home. The housekeeper and the officer's daughter hide him while the officer is away. The daughter and the soldier fall in love, they almost get married but the Yankees catch him and take him away. The officer comes home to find his daughter pregnant. He throws her out of the house, she loses the baby, he goes catatonic, she dies. Her lover comes back after the war to find her dead and goes insane. Back in the present, we spend the last fifteen minutes watching the movie go crazy. Lots of haunted house stuff, the Confederate soldier making out with his lover's desiccated corpse, a sudden revelation of the relationship between two of the characters that comes out of nowhere. It's all very amateurish, and until the berserk climax it moves with all the speed of a glacier. I can't call it good, or even competent, by any means, but it kept me watching. (Weird bits of trivia: This is a Mexican movie filmed in English. The IMDB claims that One Minute Before Death is an alternate title, but a little research reveals that's an entirely different film made by the same folks with the same actors. From the online reviews I found, some folks watching copies of One Minute Before Death got that movie -- something about a woman falling down stairs, seeming to be dead but only paralyzed, and getting buried -- and some got this one.)

 

[J Riff]

The Evil 1978 - 70s horror movies are generally better'n new stuff by a mile, and this one is okay. Some nice people get trapped inside a house that decides to lock them in, and there's the spirit of a person who lived there, of course, and a diary, and something, the evil!- in the cellar that gets loose.
People get flung about, and abused by invisible forces, the dog disappears after getting arful mean... and characters are disposed of until no less than the horned guy shows up, looking a bit hillbilly, and the usual couple left alive have to deal with him. It never gets really scary, this one, which is fine, it's good vs. evil with some very stereotypical dialogue and dumb characters who probably deserve what they get.

 

[Jeffbert]

Amusing posts, but none of those films appeal to me. Thanks, guys!

The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941) James Cagney as a pilot whose hopes of self-employment are about to evaporate because the guy who is to repossess his plane Hinkle (Edward Brophy) is constantly knocking at the door. He learns of an eloping couple who want him to fly them to Reno, and the bride's papa (Eugene Pallette), who agrees to pay him to prevent the elopement & marriage. So, sending the would-be bridegroom on a fake errand, JC takes off with the would-be bride (Bette Davis), telling her he is kidnapping her.

That is when this film earns its screwball comedy label. Who'd a thunk JC would be in one of those? So things happen as BD attempts to escape. William Frowley (better known as Lucy & Ricky's neighbor, Fred Mertz or something like that) is the sheriff of a CA county who tries to arrest JC, who when convenient, says that the ghost town where they ended-up is in Nevada, & when convenient, its in California.
Suffice it to say, the line "Top o' the world, ma" is not in this film. Very well done screwball.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Re-watched Monster's University. This time paying attention to the character design and artwork .