What was the last movie you saw?

Khartoum (1966) Ch. Heston as a man whom the Brits send to somehow save the city from being overrun by the Mahdi (Laurence Olivier)'s army. LO's forces are fighting what they believe is a Holy War, and as such, are that much more eager to expel the foreigners from the Sudan. The English army, on the other hand, has no such belief supporting their effort. Also, they had not even arrived at Khartoum yet, and are miles away, still attempting to acclimate themselves to the tropical climate. CH is commanding a handful of defenders, awaiting the Mahdi's attack. Food is scarce, the people are hungry and afraid.

I disliked the black screen that preceded the opening credits sequence. There was music, but no picture. Annoying! Likewise at the ending, and at some point in the middle. Anyway, this was an engaging film. On several occasions, CH and LO met face to face, and discussed the situation. LO had great respect for CH, and did not want to kill him. He gave him a chance to flee the city, though I could not understand why.

The Music Box (1932) One of L&Hardy's funniest short films. They are attempting to deliver a piano to a house that seems to have only a long staircase as its access route. Even funnier than any two Robot Chicken episodes.
 
What was the last movie (poster) you saw?

This morning. Looks dumb, but I had to laugh at the tag-line. Don't think Uncle Ben would approve...

View attachment 50177

Coincidentally, I visited an interesting exhibition at the Brunei Gallery in London last night. In the late 80s, some Ghanaian artists and cinema owners found out their own localised versions of cinema posters increased cinema takings when compared to the originals. These are at least a few feet high, painted on canvas:

africa-gaze-canvas-film-posters-asassins-broken-arrow-goldeneye-bad-boys-pure-danger.jpg


There's quite a lot of horror stuff that may interest some folk in this forum, if they're around London...
 
Black Panther. The action and the dialogue was sometimes so fast and furious I wasn't entirely sure what was going on (plus the "Wakanda" accents didn't help), but I thought it was interesting how they put together a culture for Wakanda, not only shown in the things like the rituals and the history, but in what we caught glimpses of in the streets of the capital city. I did feel the hero was a bit over-shadowed by his female associates, who all three seemed more competent than he was.
 
Christopher Lee and Soho Strip Clubs of 1960 Double Feature:

Too Hot to Handle aka Playgirl After Dark (1960)

Jayne Mansfield stars as the oddly named Midnight Franklin in this British crime flick. She's the girlfriend and star attraction of almost-as-oddly-named strip club owner Johnny Solo. ("Solo by name and solo by nature," as he says. He calls her "Twelve O'Clock" sometimes, by the way.) Christopher Lee is his right hand man. He gets to introduce the strippers, but he also betrays his boss by helping a rival strip club owner extort him. Subplots involve an underage stripper who calls herself Ponytail and who meets a very bad fate, and a German stripper who is in the UK illegally. The story is interrupted by songs performed by Mansfield and surprisingly elaborate dance routines by the strippers. Fairly steamy for the time, with lots of scantily clad women, and a multi-girl cat fight near the end. Mansfield isn't bad during the dramatic scenes.

Beat Girl aka Wild for Kicks (1960)

Fifteen-year-old Gillian Hills, one of Roger Vadim's discoveries, stars in this melodrama, and darned if she doesn't come across as a British Brigitte Bardot. She's the beatnik daughter of a rich and famous architect. He's been divorced for a while, and comes back from a vacation with a young French wife. The rebellious teen doesn't like her new stepmother. By chance, she runs into a stripper who used to work with the stepmother when they were both in the same business. This leads the teenager into the clutches of strip club owner Christopher Lee, who comes on to her heavy despite her tender years. This all leads up to the film's sudden, violent ending. Along the way we get lots of jazz and rock 'n' roll, dancing, parties, and a dangerous game in which the teens place their heads on a railroad track in front of an approaching train, lifting them up at the last possible moment. Oliver Reed has a tiny role, but you can't miss him. Less stripping than the other movie.
 
Chosen Survivors (1974)

Odd little combination of government paranoia flick and animals attack movie. Starts off with an intriguing scene of several civilians being hustled off a helicopter by uniformed soldiers into an underground shelter in the New Mexico desert. After an elevator takes them way, way down, a recorded message from a cheerful young woman tells them (and us) what's going on. It seems that nuclear war has broken out, and this place is just one of many where people selected for their skills and health have been taken, against their will, to repopulate the planet when it's all over. That's enough of a story, you'd think, but pretty soon we get the real plot. The place is invaded by a bunch of vampire bats from an adjoining cave. (The story goes that the bats weren't in the original script at all, which would have made for a very different movie.) About halfway through we get a major plot twist:

There isn't any war; this is just a government experiment gone wrong.

This US/Mexico co-production has an interesting premise, but often bogs down into dullness. The various Chosen Survivors don't have much personality to distinguish them. A feature film, but it has the feeling of a made-for-television movie.
 
The Social Network. Spoilt rich brats doing spoilt rich brat things. Yawn.

John Wick. Yes, I'd do the same if someone dared touch my dog.

Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles (1990) Saw it at the cinema when it first came out. Watched it many times. Still the best live action version.
 
A Star Is Born (2018)
Superb acting. Tough competition at the Oscars. Many years, this film would have collected more statues.
 
Kong: Skull Island An astonishingly bad film. The characters are dull and uninspiring, and what little story there is feels like a checklist of cliches pulling in too many directions. It made me long for Peter Jackson's King Kong.

I would rate Kong: Skull Island a must avoid.
 
Lisa and the Devil (1973)

Dream-like horror film from director Mario Bava. Elke Sommer is Lisa, a tourist in Spain. She sees a medieval fresco of the Devil taking souls to Hell. She wanders away from the tourist group into a shop, where she sees Telly Savalas buying a mannequin. Savalas looks just like the painting of the Devil. Sommer freaks out and runs out of the shop, only to find herself in an entirely different place. The few folks around don't say anything to her. She sees Savalas again, carrying the mannequin. Later a guy who looks just like the mannequin shows up, and calls her Elena. She freaks out again, knocking him down and maybe killing him. Still lost, she eventually gets picked up an older rich guy, his young wife, and their chauffeur. The car has trouble, so they stop at a spooky old mansion. The butler is Savalas. The inhabitants are a blind countess and her adult son. Pretty soon we find out that somebody else has shown up as well, and that there's an unseen somebody kept secluded in an upstairs room. Eventually there's a pretty high body count, and things happen near the end that completely change everything we've seen.

It's just as confusing as I've made it sound, although you can make sense of what's going on if you watch carefully and think about it a lot. Beautifully filmed, with many scenes that are darkly romantic. Savalas plays his part with a touch of sardonic comedy. Well worth a look.
 
My Gun Is Quick (1957)

Loosely based on the novel by Mickey Spillane. Misanthropic private eye Mike Hammer, awake for fifty-two hours, stumbles into a cheap diner for a cup of coffee. He meets a young woman down on her luck, buys her a bowl of soup, and gives her some cash so she can leave Los Angeles and head back home to Nebraska. (He also gets the chance to beat up a guy who comes in and bothers her. The movie can't spell things out, but the implication is that she's a prostitute and he's her pimp.) The woman happens to be wearing a big, fancy ring. She gets murdered by a hit-and-run driver pretty quick, and Hammer tracks down the killer. This involves some valuable jewels stolen from the Nazis at the end of World War Two. Pretty typical hard-boiled stuff, with seductive dames and brutal hoods. It's not bad for a low budget detective yarn.
 
Lisa is almost 4 hours long?! Savalas has time to be the butler who did it, satan, and a few detectives.
Here, I tried to watch Warp Speed, 1981, but it's largely blechh, except Adam West is the starship captain, so those parts are fun.
 
Ah. >> at 1:35> caption: 'As Lisa and the Devil never had a theatrical release, its trailer was never completed. The unfinished version is presented here.'
Then there's a different... version... steamier, and...what th-.. it goes on for another 2 hrs?? Apparently.
 
Two movies I’ve thought on, not entirely sure what to say about them, but inclined to think others here might find at least one of them of interest.


The Cured (2017): dir. David Freyne; starring Ellen Page, Sam Keeley

A zombie movie. An Irish zombie movie. A disheartened Irish zombie movie. With political overtones.

A plague created zombies and in its wake a scientist found a cure, though the authorities and most civilians are not truly confident in its effectiveness. The cured are kept in detention centers that look a lot like concentration camps until the authorities vet them and send them home. Once home they are supervised, essentially on parole with a military parole officer.

Those who weren’t infected are aware of what the cured did while infected and at least are wary of them, with many openly hostile. The cured survive by keeping their heads down and forming informal support groups. Senan returned home to his sister-in-law and nephew; his brother was killed by zombies after sending his wife and son away to a safer place. Senan has a menial job and tries to return to normal, but without much success; meanwhile other cured are not as content to wait for time to heal. Questions pile up: How much do the cured remember, if anything? How do you become “normal” after losing your agency, after being a walking, ravening appetite? Who can you trust? What side do you choose?

This is not an action-packed zombie movie; it is moody, thoughtful, carefully paced and less interested in gore and killing than in the consequences of the plague, how society contends with such a disaster and with those who have become outsiders? Also, how do outsiders contend with being outsiders, can resentment and even rage be pushed aside? What choices to you have? Because of that focus, the moments of violence may be more viscerally disturbing when they come.

Probably not for everybody, but worth a look-see if you’re interested in the permutations of zombie movies.



Compulsion (2016) dir. Craig Goodwill; starring Analeigh Tipton, Marta Gastini

I’m even less sure about this one. Compulsion is an erotic thriller and I’m not sure it’s a good one. Not having watched Eyes Wide Shut I can only guess that this has that movie as a working model, since some scenes appear to echo clips I’ve seen from Kubrick’s film. I think it somewhat succeeds though its scores on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes indicates others may not agree with me; perhaps it’s more derivative than I realize.

Sadie has published a successful novel based on her experiences with a cult devoted to erotic pleasure. And maybe to sadism. (Sadie. Get it? –Subtlety isn’t a strong suit, especially when overloading imagery implying erotic asphyxiation.) Oh, and maybe to murder.

Early on Sadie admits that she was carried away the last time with her former lover, Alex, and that’s why she left him and his coterie. Still, in spite of finding a stable new love, she craves the pleasures Alex provided as host for the “parties” his guests indulge in. When he reappears at a reading she decides to join him once again at an isolated villa (Really, Sadie? Come on! Haven't you ever watched a horror movie?), intrigued by his newest acquisition, Francesca. Francesca is an aspiring actress, in one scene offering Sadie a reading she used in her audition video and for which the end credits thank the Anais Nin trust. Sadie is smitten. She’s also drugged and so ensuing events are witnessed through a haze of passion, of drugs and alcohol, and possibly of impending madness.

This could have been a sleazy movie.

No. Wait. This is a sleazy movie and the only reasons to stick with it are the acting, the cinematography, the framing and filling of scenes; it’s one of the best looking sleazy movies I’ve seen, well-shot and well-edited. Meanwhile, I was baited to stick with it by the implication of something supernatural at work behind all the intrigue: Alx is intent on getting Sadie to admit how much she loves and needs the pleasures he provides, including but not limited to Francesca. But why? His speech indicates possessiveness but not love, and a kind of gamesmanship the triumph of which would make Sadie a trophy.

Analeigh Tipton is convincingly vulnerable as Sadie, able to convey Sadie’s intelligence, her wariness of her ex and his motives; she’s also twitchy enough to make believable Sadie’s addiction to the excitements and enticements of her ex’s offerings as well as calling into question the accuracy of her perceptions. As Francesca, Marta Gastini is believable bait for Sadie and also believable as her role in the proceedings expands.

What’s impressive, though, is the look of the movie: It’s a decadents’ dream. Early on a lingering overhead shot follows the car with Sadie along a night-time road leading to the villa hosting her ex’s party to reveal a huge, impressively lit castle-like structure, and after the scenes are filled with the villa’s background, the statuary, the paintings, the scrollwork and intricate molding, the curtains and vases and … and … just and. Visually the movie supports the sensuality the story calls for, even when the situation is dangerous. And when they get to the nitty-gritty the framing and lighting of late scenes effectively merge the sensuality with the threat of violence and destructiveness inherent in the unrestrained sensuality that the devotees are addicted to and that beckons Sadie.

It’s an interesting and I think effective transference to film of decadent imagery, but I don’t really know if it’s any good.

Randy M.
 
My Gun Is Quick (1957)
I never even heard of Robert Bray, though the title seems familiar.

Twilight of Honor (1963) is about a young ex-serviceman (Nick Adams) on trial for murder, in what seems to be a kangaroo court. Everybody wants him convicted. David Mitchell (Richard Chamberlain) who lacks experience as a defense attorney is given the job, despite his protests. Art Harper (Claude Rains), his mentor is wheelchair bound, and is coaching him. He also vicariously enjoys RC's work. Norris Bixby (James Gregory) is the prosecutor, & seems to enjoy the judge's favor.

So, the story is visually retold from various witnesses POVs. Briefly, Nick Adams & his young wife were hitchhiking and picked up by an aging rich guy who had eyes for the wife. NA killed the guy, & his own wife turned him in. Any more details would spoil it. This is essentially what RC as defense attorney was told before interviewing NA.

Very intense courtroom drama! CR was a supporting character, but he really shines.
 
I never even heard of Robert Bray, though the title seems familiar.

I didn't sync up the name until I saw the face: I remember him from Lassie. And I remember Whitney Blake from Hazel, neither of which is preparation for imagining them in a movie based on Mickey Spillane's work.

Blake also was mother to Meredith Baxter, whose anecdotes suggest Blake wasn't really the motherly type.

Randy M.
 
Got a copy of Willow on Blu-ray. It’s been over two decades since I’ve seen it, and it’s everything I remember it to be. It’s a movie with a lot of heart and some fun action.
 
The Beyond
Wow. This is a thought-provoking and inspirational film. Its documentary style gives it a sense of reality I've not felt in a movie featuring space mystery and cyborg astronauts.
 

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