What was the last movie you saw?

His worst movie I think, and it is sad to say because it was made in my area--is The Keeper 1976. Worse than Meatcleaver Massacre or Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf.
His actor union told him not to make it because it was too amateur and he didn't get the note in time. Only role for Liev Schreiber's father Tell.
Lee runs an asylum and a detective visits him and uses a cover story that he has a family with seven generations of incest.
Lee's reaction here--is he acting?
 

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The Takedown (?2022) on Netfix. Funny French cop buddy movie. Different take on the subject from the usual Hollywood stuff. Stars Omar Sy, of Lupin fame, who is always worth watching. Recommended.
 
Die, Die! My Darling! (aka Fanatic) 1965
A pretty decent psychological thriller from Hammer with a few familiar names : Stefanie Powers, Yootha Joyce, Peter Vaughan and Donald Sutherland. By far and away the most outstanding of the cast is Tallulah Bankhead. She plays a wonderfully deranged mother intent on cleansing the soul of her dead son’s ex-fiance before sending her to join him in death.

My only criticism is the title.
 
Brute Force (1947)

Intense prison drama. Burt Lancaster and a bunch of familiar character actors are inmates in a badly overcrowded penitentiary. (Six prisoners in a tiny cell.) They plan a very dangerous way to escape. Along the way, we get flashbacks about the women in their lives, so we can have some actresses in the movie.

Dominating the film is Hume Cronyn, cast way against type as a sadistic prison guard who plots to force out the weak-willed warden and take his position. The short, slender, soft-spoken Cronyn is stunning as a fascistic psychopath. (It's no coincidence that he's listening to Wagner as he savagely beats a prisoner.) There's an amazing amount of violence for a Hollywood movie of the time. The inmates are no saints; they execute stoolies in horrific fashion. The climactic scene looks like something out of a World War Two movie. The prison's drunken doctor sums up the movie's bleak mood with the very last line: "Nobody ever escapes." Recommended.
 
Die, Die! My Darling! (aka Fanatic) 1965
What a weird-sounding movie! I looked it up on IMDB and it was a Richard Matheson screenplay. I'm wondering if the title was meant to evoke memories of 1964's Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
Die, Die! has Bankhead (and is based on a book named Nightmare), Hush...Hush has Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland, so maybe the films were marketed to similar audiences. I thought I might watch Die, Die!, but it doesn't seem to be on YouTube, oh well.
 
Die, Die! My Darling! (aka Fanatic) 1965
A pretty decent psychological thriller from Hammer with a few familiar names : Stefanie Powers, Yootha Joyce, Peter Vaughan and Donald Sutherland. By far and away the most outstanding of the cast is Tallulah Bankhead. She plays a wonderfully deranged mother intent on cleansing the soul of her dead son’s ex-fiance before sending her to join him in death.

My only criticism is the title.

The thing I remember impressing me most about this film was the production design. The sets were beyond great.
 
Brute Force (1947)

Intense prison drama. Burt Lancaster and a bunch of familiar character actors are inmates in a badly overcrowded penitentiary. (Six prisoners in a tiny cell.) They plan a very dangerous way to escape. Along the way, we get flashbacks about the women in their lives, so we can have some actresses in the movie.

Dominating the film is Hume Cronyn, cast way against type as a sadistic prison guard who plots to force out the weak-willed warden and take his position. The short, slender, soft-spoken Cronyn is stunning as a fascistic psychopath. (It's no coincidence that he's listening to Wagner as he savagely beats a prisoner.) There's an amazing amount of violence for a Hollywood movie of the time. The inmates are no saints; they execute stoolies in horrific fashion. The climactic scene looks like something out of a World War Two movie. The prison's drunken doctor sums up the movie's bleak mood with the very last line: "Nobody ever escapes." Recommended.
Library has a copy, just put it on hold and am first in line.
 
The Northman. Third movie by Robert Eggers. I enjoyed this one a lot. It's the bloody revenge story of Prince Amleth (which would inspire Shakespeare's Hamlet). Just when everybody thought we had enough of those, a newcomer brings us this masterpiece. With it, Eggers already stablished himself as one of this generation's best directors.

The only thing that made me cringe were the accents. They speak English with heavy nordic accents, although they didn't speak English there in the 9th century. The Hunt for Red October (1990) does the same thing. The dialects spoken in The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019) make sense because that's what they really spoke.
 
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I have been meaning to revisit Brute Force.
Hume Cronyn did stand out in that.

MOONRUNNERS 1975 -The inspiration for the Dukes of Hazzard series. Hicksploitation. Despite all the usual Southern yokel elements it is not a mocking depiction (of either the moonshiners or the police) and has a quite a bit of charm. One highlight is Arthur Hunnicutt who is probably best known for the Twilight Zone episode where he is a hillbilly who refuses to go to heaven without his dog. Here he plays a (surprise) hillbilly-- Uncle Jesse--one of many connections to the DOH series. James Mitchum is one of the stars--he sure resemble his daddy. I missed spotting Our Gang's Spanky in a supporting role, but there's a sub plot with a mule named Beauregard. Music by Waylon Jennings and Jerry Reed. Not a genre I want to watch often though. I never watched Dukes of Hazzard if I could help it.
 
Second Chorus. Leonard Maltin only gave it two stars but it’s better than that. Even the 40s jive talk wasn’t too uncomfortable to listen to. Burgess Meredith was perfect as Astaire‘s trumpet playing buddy/competitor.

 
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. I really tried to like this movie. There are some neat ideas in there, and a few nods to the original tv series (Marvin and Simon Jones were a nice touch), and the way they do Zaphod's two heads is interesting, but the movie is nowhere near as good as the original tv series, which managed to get Douglas Adam's vision spot on. There's nothing wrong with the movie, but it just can't stand comparison with the BBC series.
 
I watched both the movie and the TV series recently and they don't compare well at all.

I enjoyed the movie but it's very different in how it feels when compared to the TV show, which still holds up surprisingly well and remains very entertaining viewing.

I think there's an Englishness that is missed from the movie version.
 
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Les émotifs anonymes (Romantics Anonymous) (2010) - short (74 minutes) beautifully played, wonderfully shot, sweet, funny, polished gem of a feel-good romantic comedy. Two timid people fall in love. And they make some chocolates. That's about it plotwise. You know from the start how the film is going to end. There are very few complications though it does contain what the director described as "the slowest car chase in cinema" and it's a sheer bloody joy to watch. I loved it.
 
NO MAN OF HER OWN (1950) NOIR ALLEY. In a case of mistaken identity, one pregnant woman is presumed to be another, and is torn between confessing to her benefactors, and continuing the fraud, for the sake of her child.

Abandoned by the father of her child, Helen Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is taking a train & meets a young couple, & the man, gives up his seat. The wife, also pregnant goes with her into the ladies' washroom. Patrice Harkness (Phyllis Thaxter), apparently afraid of losing her wedding ring, asks Ferguson to wear it, while she takes care of business in the ladies' room. Just the, the train suffers a boo-boo, and the next thing Ferguson knows, is she is in a hospital bed, and nurses are calling her Patrice Harkness. Apparently still under the effects of drugs, her mind is far from clear, but she feebly attempts to make clear who she actually is. By the time she is released from the hospital, she is still using the other woman's identity.

The Harkness family is happy to welcome their dead son's wife into their family, and the have plenty of money to give her and her newborn son a comfortable life.

The noir element comes into play when the father of her child comes, hoping to cash-in on the wealthy family's money, & his old girlfriend's desire to keep up the fraud.

If this had not been featured on NOIR ALLEY, I doubt I would have watched it. But, it was well worthwhile.


Oh, the word 'WOMAN' was on the wall outside the washroom. I had thought that WOMAN was rather recently used in place of LADIES. Likewise, that GENTLEMEN had been replaced by MEN. So, I thought it odd that in 1950 they used WOMEN rather than LADIES. Anyway, I recall, long ago, I was desperately seeking the MEN'S room, when I saw those 3 letters, M, E, & N; too late did I realize I had overlooked the 1st 2 letters, W & O.
 
The novel on which No Man of Her Own is based, I Married a Dead Man by Cornell Woolrich, is worth a look. Like everything by Woolrich, it reads as if written in an emotional frenzy, and the ending doesn't make any logical sense, but it definitely grips the reader.

The same novel was adapted into a romantic comedy, of all things, called Mrs. Winterbourne, as well as the made-for-TV movie She's No Angel. There are also Brazilian, Indian, and French adaptations, so the basic plot gimmick is obviously a strong one. I don't think any of them are as dark as the novel.
 
Yesterday I rewatched Robot and Frank. It looks like they got ahold of a prototype Asimo to play the robot. It's a quiet movie about a man with dementia who gets a helper robot that tries to keep him grounded in the world.
 
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955) I had this on my DVR for several months; TCM ran it during its Sydney Poitier theme, & I finally got around to watching it. Just not too thrilled with Glenn Ford. Intense! So, the newly hired HS teacher Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) finds teaching is not so straight forward as he thought it might be, given that his students are not quite interested in learning as he expected them to be. In fact, none of them seem the least bit interested in a study of English. Violence, disrespect, etc., are the norm, until Dadier shows a JACK & THE BEANSTALK cartoon, & the class discusses the ethics of it.

The film opens with ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK, & as many times as I had heard it, seeing the captions, I had no idea what those 1st few words were, until yesterday. :unsure:

So, Gregory Miller (Sidney Poitier) is identified as a kid with influence among the others, a leader. O.k., I was not around in 1955, but I found that unusual, given the MLK stuff was what, ten years in the future? So, this in New York city, still-- I just do not know.

Delinquent Artie West (Vic Morrow) is one of the primary trouble makers, & several others, yet to be stars, are among the students.

What I find troubling, is the attitude of some of the teachers about the lack of discipline among the students.


BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, 01107.jpg

The one guy with the glasses (thought I recognized him, but was mistaken) had a much too casual attitude. So sad & surprising that way back in the '50s, they had such extreme trouble in schools.
 
Come Play

There are very, very few horror movies that I find scary - almost none made in the 21st Century. This film was... unsettling, and the jump shocks and scares - even those you could see coming - were effective. Even at 96 minutes, it's probably about 20 minutes too long, as there's really not that much to the story; as it is , it's still worth watching.
 
The Hustler (1961) - Outstanding film about the art of being a pool shark. This my first viewing of it. Being a Nine Ball player myself, I was mesmerized by the film.

The Color of Money (1986) - Excellent sequel to the 1961 movie The Hustler. Great follow-up.

The Book of Boba Fett (2021 TV series) - Critics were very rough on this show. I gave it a chance because I enjoyed The Mandalorian so much. After watching every episode, I also became a fan of this show as well. Sure it's comic bookish, but that's why I liked it.

Black Widow (2021) - Very cool, exciting and adds great depth to her character.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) - Another marvelous entry to the Marvel universe. The character is different than the original comic origin, but retooling my favorite Marvel martial art fighter is just fine by me.

The Batman (2022) - Speaking about retooling characters. The NEW Batman is an awesome action/drama. I'm not sure if kids will sit still for this one because of the important dialogue, as well as movie length. For me, I didn't notice the time because I was locked into viewing mode. Just as I was with the Marvel flicks.
 

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