What was the last movie you saw?

The Muppets Take Manhatten (1984) When I was a kid, I had a Rowlf, my younger brother had a Kermit, and youngest brother had a Cookie Monster. :giggle: At that time, the Muppets were seen occasionally on variety shows, & I guess they were on Sesame Street. This was long before The Muppet Show, and as such, they were not as well-known. So, time passes, Jim Henson makes some weird Muppets for SNL, & eventually, there is The Muppet Show.

So, this film is about when the troupe decides to go big-time, & pursue a Broadway appearance. So, they all go to the city, and find that it will not be as easy as they had hoped. Everyone goes away, each to a different place, hoping to make enough money to reunite and hire the necessary talent to take them big-time. Of course, complications occur, etc. A fun film.
 
COLD EYES OF FEAR 1971 -- Lawyer picks up prostitute in London bar--they walk around the streets at night (interesting to see how it looked back then), they go back to his place and are attacked by a thief and then a cop shows up (Frank Wolff) who isn't what he appears to be. The ending is a little too obvious social class commentary for me. It has a suspenseful moment with a bomb being diffused and a cat who almost triggers it.
 
Fear No More (1961)

Efficient little mini-Hitchcockian thriller. Woman gets sent on a train trip by her boss, is immediately confronted by a guy with a gun and a dead woman. Guy knocks her out, she wakes up accused of murder. She manages to escape from the cop, nearly gets run over by French-accented guy. He helps her get back to her apartment, where there's a dead man. A confrontation with the woman's boss contradicts everything she claims happened. By the way, the woman was just released from a mental institution . . .

That's just the start of a convoluted plot where few things are what they seem to be. The movie wastes no time moving the story along.
 
The Secret Ways (1961)

The first movie based on a novel by Alistair MacLean (original UK title The Last Frontier), released just a little bit before The Guns of Navarone, is a Cold War espionage thriller. Apparently the film doesn't follow the book (retitled The Secret Ways in the USA) very closely at all.

Down-on-his-luck fellow (Richard Widmark) needs lots of money badly to pay off gambling debts. He gets hired to get a guy out of Hungary. This effort starts with tracking down the guy's daughter, living in Austria. After getting beaten up and threatened, he finds her. She wants to go with him to find her father. They sneak into Hungary, not without some trouble, as journalists. The trouble is that her father, part of an underground resistance movement, doesn't want to leave. After more spy stuff, Widmark, the daughter, and the father are captured by the Hungarian police. Will they escape in time to reach the plane that will take them out of Hungary?

Starts off slowly, although the last twenty minutes or so are pretty tense and exciting. It's a real Widmark project; he not only starred in it, he produced and took over direction (without credit.) Not only that, but his wife wrote it; her only credit. Very nice black-and-white cinematography and use of location filming in Austria (which doubles as Hungary.) The first film music credit for John Williams. A cast full of European actors helps. A decent enough non-Bond spy flick, even if the plot is muddled.
 
THE HUMAN FACTOR 1975 - What could be the ultimate George Kennedy experience---he is a computer analyst at NATO command in Naples--when he isn't playing racing car video games with his co-worker John Mills, he is programming a computer for death rate scenarios on military war games. But after his family is massacred, he seeks revenge even though the computer says he has an 8% chance of getting them. The first half of the film is him and Mills using the 1970s military internet to track down the killers. They clue in that the terrorists are using babysitter ads to find American families to massacre so he goes to warn the next family. Only problem is they are in some witness protection program and think he is some kind of mob hitman. He has to shoot their phone and hold a gun on them to keep them from shooting him as he tries to warn them that a van load of killers are coming. And they do come.
After he spoils their murder spree they change their MO and hold a NATO supermarket (yes that's right--a NATO supermarket) hostage.
But they don't know George Kennedy.
The finale is just bonkers but I think any movie where Kennedy is in a chair holding a doll that looks like a Raggedy Ann crossed with the Muppets' Beaker and screaming his head off in anguish is something profound.
 
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Virgin Witch (1972)

You know what you're in for when the title sequence for this British film features several nude women. The minimal plot involves two sisters. One gets a job as a model at a mansion in the country, the other tags along. It seems that the guy who owns the house, the lesbian head of the modeling agency, and the photographer are all part of a coven of witches. White magic only, the rich fellow explains. The model sister eagerly joins in the initiation ceremony. Rivalry rears its ugly head between the photographer and the lesbian, who both lust after the model, as well as between the lesbian and the rich guy for control of the coven. Meanwhile, the model develops her own magical powers, manipulating the sister into being initiated and taking control of the coven. Really, it's all just an excuse for nudity and sex scenes, with a tiny bit of supernatural stuff. The oddest thing is that the lesbian insists that the model change her name from Christine to Christina. Despite the sleaze, it's pretty slow and dull. Time is wasted with a nightclub song.
 
Napoleon Dynamite (2004) - First time viewing and I LOVED it. I don't think I've ever seen teenagers so realistically rendered on celluloid. It was cringey, awkward, sweet, mortifying and hilarious.
 
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT (1941) Part of a Bogart month, showing prime time Thursdays. One of my favorites, plenty of prominent supporting actors, humor, drama, etc.

So, ex criminal Gloves Donahue (Humphrey Bogart) enters the scene, in which his underlings are having a mock battle using toys bought by Sunshine (William Demarest), arguing tactics with the waiter Louie (Phil Silvers; whom the wiki page calls simply 'waiter'). Gloves wants his brand of cheesecake, & Louie has none, as the daily shipment from MILLER'S HOME BAKERY has yet to arrive. 10 minutes later, Donahue in seen kneeling over a dead man Joe Denning (Edward Brophy), whom he had just been publicly threatening.

Eventually, Gloves and his friends/employees find themselves dealing with Nazis & sabotage.

Very entertaining!
 
Barbarian (2022): I want to tell you what I hated about this movie, but that would spoil it. I have no idea as to why it's gotten glowing reviews.
 
THE CAINE MUTINY (1954) 16 x 9?? Another Bogart film filled with supporting talent, including some yet to be stars, such as Horrible (Claude Akins), Meatball (Lee Marvin) & LT Jorgensen (James Best; though I could not find him).

So, this seemingly poorly run minesweeper, the Caine, gets a new captain, a by the book, starched collars-type LCDR Philip Francis Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), who is not going to tolerate sailors with their shirt tails out, & other such things. LT Steve Maryk (Van Johnson) immediately dislikes him, and he, along with several other officers are influenced by the intellectual would-be novelist LT Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray) to scrutinize the Captain in everything he does. He nearly leads them to the Admiral, with accusations of incompetence against the Capt., but, he, loses his nerve at the last minute, or, is it, that he just wanted the others to take responsibility and any heat that resulted, while he remains an uninvolved spectator?

Keefer has the other officers, especially Maryk looking for incompetence in their captain, when, during a typhoon, the Capt. and Maryk have a disagreement in the need or no need to turn the ship into the waves. Maryk, having been conditioned by Keefer to expect poor decisions from the Capt. relieves the Capt. of command, fearing the ship might capsize.

Later, there is a courts martial proceeding against Maryk, while Keefer, the instigator, remains merely a witness.

Saw this once, long ago; by far, not among my favorites, but still a great film!
 
The Disappearance (1977)

If you went into this without knowing anything about it, you'd assume it's a domestic drama. Donald Sutherland comes home to his fabulous apartment (at the futuristic complex known as Habitat in Montreal; this Canadian/British production makes use of its locales proudly) to find his wife gone. Flashbacks reveal their complicated relationship, sometimes passionate, sometimes bitter. (By the way, the character's stunningly beautiful Francophone wife is played by Sutherland's real wife.) About ten minutes into the movie, we find out Sutherland is a highly paid professional assassin. His contact pressures him to take on another assignment. Sutherland agrees, although it smells fishy. He's not given the target's identity, and he has to fly to England. Meanwhile, he tracks down his missing wife's lover. Will these two parallel plots come together? You bet.

Much more of an art film than a thriller, this nonlinear film takes its time and is mostly quiet. When violence occurs, it's sudden and over in a second. Don't expect to be on the edge of your seat, but appreciate fine acting, gorgeous cinematography, and a plot that relies as much on human relationships as it does on gunshots.
 
When Eight Bells Toll (1971)

Alistair MacLean adapts his own novel into this Bond-style thriller. Anthony Hopkins stars as a Royal Navy Commander (like Bond) who is the guy to call for special assignments. It seems somebody has been hijacking freighters full of gold bullion, stranding the crew, and then vanishing. The movie starts with Hopkins in wet suit climbing up a ship's anchor. Two agents were secretly placed aboard a ship likely to be targeted so they could signal its position. Hopkins finds the two dead and has a huge battle with the hijackers, finally diving overboard to save his skin. At least he now knows the bad guys are hiding the gold somewhere on the coast of Scotland. He and his bespectacled intelligence agent buddy hang around the area, pretending to be oceanographers. Fistfights, gunfights, explosions and such follow.

The action never stops. There are the usual MacLean plot twists, with the guy who seems to be the major Bad Guy turning out to not be the Bad Guy and the movie's Bad Girl switching sides more than once. This being a Bondian film, there's also a Good Girl. This being MacLean, there's only a tiny bit of sex appeal and no wild gadgets. Robert Morley, as always, plays Robert Morley as Hopkins's boss, although he also, amazingly enough, gets to do some genuine heroics. A reasonably entertaining action film.
 
Vacation Days (1947)

The women of Rifftrax helped me survive this oddball B movie. Apparently it's one of a series of films about high school students (played by twenty-somethings.) In this entry, they graduate and a teacher who has just inherited a ranch out west invites them to join her for the summer. Her real motive is to have a male teacher she has a crush on come along. (Middle-aged romance = comedy!) As soon as they get there, they witness a bank robbery, right out of the 19th century but with cars. (This whole thing is a weird mixture of Old West and the jitterbug era.) It seems one of the "teenagers" happens to look like a notorious outlaw called "Baby Face Harrigan" so he gets blamed for the robbery. Meanwhile, a guy who killed a sheriff and got the absent Baby Face blamed for it thinks the kid is Baby Face, too, and tries to rub him out. Thus, we have a musical comedy with lots of attempted murder and lynching. There are some annoying songs from the guy who is thought to be Baby Face, as well as some pretty good swing music. (That part is strange. The "teens" dance to the swing music, as you'd expect, but then stop and stare at the clarinet player like zombies.)
 
THE CAINE MUTINY (1954) 16 x 9?? Another Bogart film filled with supporting talent, including some yet to be stars, such as Horrible (Claude Akins), Meatball (Lee Marvin) & LT Jorgensen (James Best; though I could not find him).

So, this seemingly poorly run minesweeper, the Caine, gets a new captain, a by the book, starched collars-type LCDR Philip Francis Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), who is not going to tolerate sailors with their shirt tails out, & other such things. LT Steve Maryk (Van Johnson) immediately dislikes him, and he, along with several other officers are influenced by the intellectual would-be novelist LT Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray) to scrutinize the Captain in everything he does. He nearly leads them to the Admiral, with accusations of incompetence against the Capt., but, he, loses his nerve at the last minute, or, is it, that he just wanted the others to take responsibility and any heat that resulted, while he remains an uninvolved spectator?

Keefer has the other officers, especially Maryk looking for incompetence in their captain, when, during a typhoon, the Capt. and Maryk have a disagreement in the need or no need to turn the ship into the waves. Maryk, having been conditioned by Keefer to expect poor decisions from the Capt. relieves the Capt. of command, fearing the ship might capsize.

Later, there is a courts martial proceeding against Maryk, while Keefer, the instigator, remains merely a witness.

Saw this once, long ago; by far, not among my favorites, but still a great film!

Great movie, and you are always left with the nagging suspicion that with a more cooperative second in command, things may not have gone the way that they did.
 
A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

I watched this last night. I wasn't going to, as I really know nothing at all about Mr Rogers, and I suspected that I wouldn't understand most of the references or the love and affection Americans hold for him.

But there is a reason why Tom Hanks is such a great actor; and that is because a single expression or inclination of his face can speak a thousand words. And suddenly I knew what made Mister Rogers so special. This is a magical story, and one that I was very glad to have had the pleasure of watching; I can't imagine how marvellous it must have been for anyone who grew up with memories of the man, and the scene in the subway carriage was truly beautiful.
 

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