What was the last movie you saw?

The Irishman. Martin Scorsese give us a look at the workings of crime surrounding unions from the 50's to 70's. While it's a good film it's not great. Robert De Niro is great but his age is showing and the one fight scene he has is weak and tired. I know Scorsese likes De Niro, but this should have been made with younger actors that could have given the story a more active approach. It could also have been an hour shorter with a few nip and tucks and the removal of the last half-hour.

Still, if you like Scorsese's stuff and have an afternoon to waste it's worth watching.
 
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948)
Is this the point at which 'Frankenstein' no longer refers to the mad scientist, but rather to his creation?

A&C are employed by a shipping company, which is shipping presumed wax figures of Frankenstein's monster and Dracula from Britain to a wax museum in the USA. Of course, these are the real deals, not just wax replicas. How Dracula survived the ocean voyage without preying on the ship's crew and any passengers, is unknown.

So, the shipping company actually delivers the crates to the wax museum, and the two chumps are to unpack them.

There is a routine in which Costello begins reading the legends of Dracula, as the coffin lid slowly begins to open & he becomes paralyzed with fear. Dracula emerges from the coffin, and hides in the shadows.
ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET F, 02302.jpg

Abbott comes along, and chides C for being superstitious, etc. He begins reading the legend of Frankenstein, and laughing about it, while Costello trembles in fear. He says "Do ya have to read that stuff?"

Bart Simpson's Dracula (Tree House of Horror IV (Simpsons s5, E1)) has Bart take the role of Costello while Lisa does Abbott's routine. The two incidents are merged into one:

Hey_Abbott_(Simpsons_S_5_01_251) (2).jpg


:giggle:
Lisa reads the legends, laughs about them, while Bart, paralyzed with fear sees Mr. Burns as 'Dracoolya' perform those acts.

But decades earlier, an animated cartoon from Japan known in the West as Astroboy had already merged those two incidents with two characters modeled on Abbott & Costello
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Tick (skinny) & Tock (Fat) . Episode 64, Count Bat (English Language Version: 55, Vampire Vale)

What a legacy!

They goofed with this one! Dracula's reflection is in the mirror! :ROFLMAO:

So, the Wolfman had phoned A&C & warned them about the scheme to bring the real D & F's monster to the USA, but A had answered the phone and dismissed it as a joke. W takes a room in the hotel across the hall from A&C, and asks C to lock him in his room until morning because at the full moon, etc. The poor little guy has run ins with all three 'monsters' while A has yet to realize the truth. So, a very attractive woman shows interest in C, wanting his simple-minded brain to replace the monster's current one, but C actually believes her interest in him is what it appears to be.

It never gets old!
 
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The Sorcerers (1967)

An elderly Boris Karloff stars as a hypnotist who convinces a bored young man to try out the electronic gizmo he's invented, promising him new sensations. The device allows Karloff and his wife to control the fellow's actions at a distance via telepathy. They also experience his sensations as if they were their own. Karloff wants to use the technology for good, but his stronger-willed wife wants to use it for illicit thrills. She makes the guy steal a fur, go for a dangerous motorcycle ride with his girlfriend, beat up his buddy, and so on. Let's just say that things get much worse from there, and end badly for everyone. Despite overly bombastic music during tense moments, it's quite a good film. (There's also some groovy rock music. The Swinging Sixties feeling of the film seems a little campy in retrospect, but the contrast between the young folks and the old folks actually adds to the movie's theme.) Recommended.
 
The Black Torment (1964)

Enjoyable Gothic melodrama. Starts with a woman being chased through the woods by an unseen somebody, only to wind up with her throat in the pursuer's gloved hand. Cut to the opening titles. The time is the 18th century. Sir Richard is bringing his new bride home to the family estate. He gets a chilly reception from some of the locals, because the woman we saw being killed said his name just before she died. Besides that, some folks claim to have seen Sir Richard while he was far away from home. Anyway, the new bride gets introduced to Sir Richard's father, confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak, except through signs, after a stroke; the sister of Sir Richard's deceased first wife, the only one who can interpret his father's gestures; Sir Richard's steward, whose name -- Seymour -- may amuse modern American viewers; and a bunch of servants, one of whom will fall victim to the same fate as the woman we saw at the start. Things get weird when the new bride finds a note bearing the family's Latin motto at the dinner table; the same message left by the dead first wife when she killed herself by jumping out a window because she was unable to provide Sir Richard with an heir. The infamous window is found opening by itself, what appears to be the ghost of the dead first wife appears, and people claim to see Sir Richard in two places at once. Some see him riding away from the dead wife's ghost, who shouts "Murderer!" at him. Adding to the mystery is the disappearance of the family Bible. This, and other clues, may make the Dark Secret at the heart of the mystery easy to solve, but it's fun watching it play out. Handsomely filmed, with a nifty swashbuckling sword fight at the end between the long-suffering Sir Richard (who shouts at the top of his lungs during most of the film, by the way) and the main villain. Worth a look.
 
The Sorcerers! righty, got one-and-a-half-sentences into yer review and off to grabbit I go. Distant memories of that one.
The White Torment is happening outside, aka Snow.
 
Midway (2019)
The story of the Battle of Midway from WWII. It looked good but otherwise was just okay. I've only seen bits of the 1976 version, and that seemed to develop more of the Japanese side than the new version.

Ida (2013)
Polish film about an orphan nun who discovers a family secret as she's due to take her vows. The black and white cinematography was great, but otherwise I thought the film had much more potential. We didn't learn much about the main character.

In This Corner of the World (2016)
Anime set in and around Hiroshima during WWII. Highly-rated, but I found it boring and confusing. The characters weren't interesting. I couldn't tell which characters were which sometimes, and I wasn't sure what were and weren't supposed to be dream sequences.
 
The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971)

British anthology film of seven short comedy sketches.

"Avarice": Rich guy forces his chauffeur to go through all kinds of slapstick mishaps in order to retrieve a fifty pence coin from a sewer.

"Envy": Wife makes husband attempt all sorts of absurd schemes to make another couple sell their home to them.

"Gluttony": Guy who is supposed to be on a diet of nothing but eight "Slimmo" biscuits a day hides food all over his office, is frustrated by seeing people eating everywhere, and disregards the attempts of a stunningly gorgeous woman to seduce him, since he is more interested in her food.

"Lust": We overhear a fellow's thoughts as he tries to figure out how to pick up women. Lacks the female nudity and bawdy humor you'd expect, which is found elsewhere in the film, and has a surprisingly bittersweet ending.

"Pride": Two couples in cars find themselves facing each other on a narrow road. Both male drivers refuse to back up, while the women enjoy a picnic together.

"Sloth": Done as a silent, black-and-white film, this consists of several otherwise unconnected scenes (except that they almost all involve walnuts in some way) in which people go to absurd lengths to avoid doing simple things. Written by the great Spike Milligan, the gags are increasingly surreal and often laugh-out-loud funny. By far the best segment of the film.

"Wrath": Two guys in a park carry out various ridiculous schemes to kill the park keeper who bothers them about littering. Ends with a touch of fantasy.

Besides the brilliant "Sloth" segment, for the most part the laughs are few and far between.
 
Dracula's Daughter (1936). It's many years since I've seen this and it was interesting to watch again. Apparently Gloria Holden was not happy with the studio casting her in the lead role (like many of her time, she looked down on horror pictures) but, in the studio's defence, she produced a haunting performance that was based more in personal tragedy than in evil. As the Countess Marya Zaleska, she seeks a way to free herself of the vampire's curse but, like many addicts, the urge is just too strong a chain to break and she constantly spirals back into the darkness of her true nature. Can modern scientific methods help her to freedom?

It's a refreshing take and not without its flaws but, on the whole, I think it's better than the other Universal sequels that followed. Those movies ended up more like wrestling matches with monsters pitched against each other in a fight for dominance. Dracula's Daughter takes a different tack and is the better for it.
 
Aria (1987)

Bizarre anthology film in which ten directors offer short films featuring music from famous operas. Since my knowledge of opera is nearly zero, I'll just list the segments without talking about the music that goes along with them. The length of the segments varies from five minutes to fifteen minutes, more or less.

1. In 1931, King Zog of Albania goes to Vienna to visit his lover. Assassins try to kill him, but he shoots back at them. Apparently based on a real incident. Notable mostly for the fact that King Zog is played by Theresa Russell in drag and with a fake mustache.

2. The only black-and-white segment. Three kids apparently steal a car and crash it, as we see it burst into flames. We also see scenes of a statue of the Madonna and the kids watching TV.

3. Two young women, apparently working as cleaners, move around huge bodybuilders at a gym. The women are often stark naked, and sometimes wave a gigantic knife around.

4. In the longest and most straightforward segment, the only one with dialogue, and the only funny one, a movie producer leaves his wife, who is sick in bed, to go to a meeting; but she's not sick and he's not going to a meeting. They're both off to be with their lovers at the Madonna Inn, a real place in California with "theme rooms" decorated in the worst possible taste. An out-and-out bedroom farce.

5. The shortest segment. Two lovers lip-synch to the aria while naked in bed.

6. A bunch of folks in 18th century clothing, and extreme makeup of the period, act wildly at an opera performance. The implication is that they are inmates of an insane asylum.

7. Two young lovers drive through the desert to Las Vegas, have sex in a hotel room, and kill themselves.

8. Surreal scenes of a woman with costume jewelry all over her body, attended by people in costumes suggestive of ancient Egypt, turn out to be the fantasies of the woman, who is severely injured in a car crash and is undergoing surgery.

9. An elderly woman performs the aria, intercut with what are apparently memories of her youth. (Do you notice that I use the word "apparently" a lot? This is not the most linear film in the world.)

10. This segment is broken up into small pieces, shown between the other segments. An aging opera singer goes back to an empty theater, puts on makeup, sings, and dies.

The whole thing is gorgeous to look at, if nothing else. Imagine a mixture of "Opera's Greatest Hits", the Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Opera, Doc?, MTV back when they showed music videos, softcore porn, Fantasia, and an extended Saturday Night Live skit, and you have a small idea of what you're in for.
 
Rambo, Last Blood -- 2019 the new one. Sly really gets some revenge in this one. Boy, does he ever. Whoa, you don't want to be one of the bad guys in this movie, cos Rocky really does them in but good, after they do some very bad naughty things - Rambo just mangles them all to bits. It's bloody brutal, and then we get some flashbacks, no spoilers, but you know he just decimates all bad guys, he's had a lot of practice, and it shows. )
 
Solitary. A woman develops Agoraphobia, a fear of the outdoors. Then her husband disappears and the delusions begin. Whst.s going on?? Even r with a shrinks help see is lost. Then a revelation and an ending that will knock you socks off.. Highly recommended.
 
A Prize of Arms (1962)

Tense British heist film. Three guys pull off an elaborate robbery of cash from an Army base at a time when the soldiers are being sent overseas during a political crisis. Lots of little details threaten to mess up their plan right from the start, so there's considerable suspense. (This is one of those crime dramas where you wind up hoping the bad guys get away with it, even though they're not sympathetic characters at all.) The robbery itself is quite a dramatic scene; let's just say that a flamethrower is involved. The end is just as explosive.


A Place to Go (1963)

I thought this would also be a heist film, but that's really just a small part of the plot. It's more of a kitchen sink drama. Mum, Dad, unmarried adult son, married (and pregnant) daughter, and her husband all live in a small home in a working class section of London. The unmarried son, the main character, is part of a plot to rob a factory for the local crime boss. He enlists his brother-in-law as a driver, but he backs out at the last second, leading to his lorry being set on fire by the bad guys and the protagonist getting badly injured trying to save it. Besides this plot, we've got the fact that the family's home is being torn down as a slum, to be replaced by new flats; the father quitting his job on the docks to be a street entertainer with a not-very-good escape act; and the main character's on-again/off-again romance with Rita Tushingham. There are a couple of happy little songs performed by the protagonist and some comedy, which really seem out of place. Worth a look as a portrait of a place and time, but don't expect a thriller.
 
Girl in the Headlines AKA The Model Murder Case (1963)

This British whodunit starts with our heroes, a Chief Inspector and a Sergeant, investigating the murder of a fashion model. Clues include a gun hidden in a toilet tank, a diary saying she was meeting with someone known only as P, and a ballpoint pen with a coded message inside. We soon meet the fey television actor who lives in the flat above her; a model who worked with her; that model's temperamental husband, an artist; the artist's brother, who works for the director of a private gambling club where the dead model often went with lots of different men; an opera singer who lost her voice during throat surgery; and other suspects and red herrings. One of the folks I've mentioned above gets murdered also. Mostly a sedate police procedural until near the end, when there's some fistfights and gun play. A little more risque than most American films of the time, with the dead model called a "nympho" and an important scene taking place at a nightclub for gay men. An OK way to pass the time.
 
Aquaman (2018) dir. James Wan; starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II

Entertaining escapism about the least well-known and beloved of DC's major superheroes. The plot is simple -- imminent war between the sunken Atlantis and the above-water humanity, with Momoa as half-Atlantean, half-air-breather and so the one to bridge the gap if he takes over his mother's Atlantean throne by saving the magical MacGuffin. The stars acquit themselves nicely: Heard is in the Jean Arthur role, feisty, prickly, snarky and capable of defending herself until she's not and needs Aquaman to help; Kidman has such ease in front of a camera she can make you believe she's an abused wife in Big Little Lies or in this case a queen of Atlantis; Wilson is as intense as if this were a great war film; and Dafoe is an excellent Pat Morita -- er -- mentor to the young Arthur (Aquaman), giving his role as vizier a sort of low-key Shakespearean dignity. Abdul-Mateen ably populates a subplot that feels a little tacked on to allow Aquaman a chance to be humble, but in the flow of the movie it works well enough and fuels a late action sequence that's pretty impressive. Props for a couple of in-jokes I recognized (there may be others I missed entirely), at least one already mentioned in this thread: A quick glimpse of a book, The Dunwich Horror, which ties into humans and not-humans mating, sort of (seems like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" would have been more apropos); and one faction of Atlanteans having a King Ricou, as in Ricou Browning, choreographer of underwater action in the Bond thriller, Thunderball, and more to the point, the guy in the creature suit in underwater sequences of The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Randy M.
 
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956) As I had both versions in my DVD queue, I thought both had arrived, but no, just the Heston version on 2 discs. A 3 1/2 hour run time made me glad I went the DVD way, rather than streaming, as 1.1x, 1.2x considerably shortened the run time.

Anyway, I recalled E.G. Robinson in the role of Dathan, but was pleasantly surprised Vincent Price had the role of Baka (which in Japanese, means 'fool') the guy in charge of construction, who also was the guy who abuses a Hebrew & is slain by Moses. Robinson's role was expanded to place him in many scenes that occurred before the Exodus, though as I recall, his name was not mentioned until after the crossing. As I understand it, this role made him lifelong friends with Heston, a friendship that endured until his death. Heston's tears were real in that scene in Soylent Green. :cry:

John Carridine was Aaron; for a guy who is best known for silly B-grade horror/science fiction films (other than his most infamous role as R. Heinrich), 2 episodes of TTZ, this was a breath of fresh air. But his distinctive voice could, perhaps should have been the voice of God. He also portrayed a prison guard in a film about Dr. Mudd, who was caught in a torrent of arrests following. Lincoln's assassination. My memories are b-grade sci-fi.

Sir Cedric Hardwicke was the Pharaoh Sethi, who adopted Moses and considered him his son, along with Ramses (Yul Brynner) . This guy was in few films I have seen. Much of the film's 1st 2 1/2 hours were embellished [is that the right word?], & CBD introduced the 'film' by stating that many of the scenes were from Roman historians, but, I doubt they provided anything anywhere near what was depicted here. I never watched Gone with the Wind, which, I believe had a similar run-time. Just too long, for me, though TCM showed it more than a few times in the past year. I might try it on DVD, seeing how well this worked for me.

Yul Brynner was Ramses, whose role was greatly expanded/embellished to give him enough time in front of the camera to satisfy his ego. Very dramatic, indeed.

Oh, I was about to [submit] this, without saying anything about Heston! So, at the last minute, I place this here in the middle. Though the main Character, even his role was heavily embellished, his own son as infant Moses; good way to reduce costs, given the cast of thousands! This guy was the Schwarzenegger / Stallone / big strong tough guy of his time, long before there was an action genre as we now know it. The films actually had plots that were not merely stitched between big action scenes in which the hero has to outdo everything the last guy did in the previous block-buster action film. Along with others, such as Victor Mature and Victor McLaglen, though the latter was at his prime during the 1930s, and end of career in the 1950s.

Demille spiced it up with romantic scenes that, in my opinion, should have been brief, if not cut altogether, since this film was about twice as long as most other A-grade films. But, I suppose CBD wanted to give all the big-name stars a good bit of screen-time.

Yvonne De Carlo, whose name I associate only with The Munsters, was Moses' wife. I am sorry, I just am unfamiliar with most other actresses in this film.

For a three and a half hour film titled THE TEN COMMANDMENTS , it sure took its time getting around to the title scene. Make no mistake, I enjoyed it. I am not saying it should have cut to the chase the way that MPFC did with The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots, :ROFLMAO:!

Clearly, the most impressive scene was crossing the Red sea (or was it the Sea of Reeds?). When I was a Pentecostal, they encouraged us to read the Bible once a year, even gave us a bookmark with check boxes and chapters on it. Started with Gen. 1-3, etc. So, I am rather familiar with the Bible, after 20 years or so in that Church.

Anyway, now the silent version is at the top of my queue. Not sure I will run the commentary, though it will be interesting.

A great film, even for Agnotstics, such as myself!
 
Mummy's Boys (1936) Comedy about two good for nothing guys, who need to get out of town quick in order to avoid arrest for some offense, who sign on to an expedition to return artifacts to the tomb of ??? in hopes of avoiding the mummy's curse. So, there is the one guy who was part of the original expedition who had discovered a secret chamber filled with loot that he wants to hog all for himself. So, he needs another expedition to the tomb without letting anyone know the real reason.

Wheeler & Woolsey were similar to Abbott & Costello, in that the one guy (with the glasses and cigar) was always leading the other into trouble, while the other guy who was much younger, had the naivete to go along with his schemes. Unlike A&C, the idea guy was not trying to take advantage of the other guy. The younger guy often sings & gets the girl in the end.
 
Yesterday (2019) A charming comedy by Richard Curtis about a very unsuccessful musician who wakes up after a strange accident to discover that the Beatles never existed and that he is the only one who knows their music. What is basically an interesting wish-fulfilment fantasy really succeeds because it remains grounded in the humanity of the main character, who is genuinely nice guy full of uncertainty, a sharp script, and some very dry situational humour, including a clever appearance by Ed Sheeran.
 

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