What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

^ Looks a look. Second cup of joe and still half asleep but this catches attentive note
with dame and ***moll wrapped tight inside plausible ploy. With today's over top style pedestrian approach, the old tried and taunt line school of spy sleuth genre works best.

 

[Worf]

After a heart attack and angioplasty, I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about
the Jaguar Motors corporation when a nurse told me to rise myself out of my hospital bed
and walk around some. So, glancing out the window upon a cold drizzly overcast day, I saw
a Jaguar exit the parking lot across the street. I immediately concluded this was a sign from
Heaven telling me that God wanted me to get a Jaguar for myself... Veritas, veritas.....
I scoured Ebay Motors for all continental United States available makes and dates; focusing
high end dealerships that I knew wouldn't accept junk trade ins. McGrath-Lexus in Chicago had a '94 Jaguar XJS convertible available with an India 6 cylinder engine that only gave 15 miles per gallon but with a low odometer weekend ride tally. I nailed it for $5,400 and drove
it for four years until some engine trouble and a little misunderstanding with the IRS collided
my busy schedule, prompting a dealer offload sale for convenience sake. When you have Uncle Sam on your ***, you truly have someone on your ***.

I bought my one and only "vintage" car back when I first started working that was over 35 or 40 years ago... BEFORE acquiring a Wife, Mortgage and Child. I still have her..... A 1956 Ford Thunderbird Convertible. The only reason I mention her is At the time I could've bought a early to mid 50's Jaguar for the same basic price of around 13 Grand. However, I wasn't born yesterday. I knew that Jags were notoriously hard to keep running and this was pre internet. If I wanted parts I'd have to go either to Hemmings Motor news or some other equally obscure rag and Then try and find someone willing and able to work on the dang thing. I chose the Ford T-Bird instead. You could still get most parts for it at NAPA etc... Still wish I'd a bought that Jag!

 

[Harp]

^ Nice looking ride.
My cat drove well for four years on British Petroleum super unleaded and #4 Quaker State oil,
and I found a local garage that specialized in European jobs, but the internal ****** s..t took its toll.

 

[Edward]

I bought my one and only "vintage" car back when I first started working that was over 35 or 40 years ago... BEFORE acquiring a Wife, Mortgage and Child. I still have her..... A 1956 Ford Thunderbird Convertible. The only reason I mention her is At the time I could've bought a early to mid 50's Jaguar for the same basic price of around 13 Grand. However, I wasn't born yesterday. I knew that Jags were notoriously hard to keep running and this was pre internet. If I wanted parts I'd have to go either to Hemmings Motor news or some other equally obscure rag and Then try and find someone willing and able to work on the dang thing. I chose the Ford T-Bird instead. You could still get most parts for it at NAPA etc... Still wish I'd a bought that Jag!

View attachment 772514

Yeah, if buying bits for a Brit motor in the US is as markedly more expensive than a domestic option as is true of US cars over here, that's definitely the right call.

And TBH, such different beasts... much as I appreciate a MkII or an E Type, a 56 T Bird is such a different beast I can't really compare them. Money no object (feeding either of those here is the bigger cost, long term, than buying it in the first place), in truth I think the T-Bird has much more style.

 

[Fading Fast]

Man in the Middle (aka The Winston Affair) from 1964 with Robert Mitchum, Keenan Wynn, Trevor Howard, France Nuyen, and Barry Sullivan


Based on a novel by the popular writer Howard Fast, Man in the Middle is an outstanding military trial movie set in British India during WWII, embroiled in social issues that still resonate today, and with an impressive cast headed by Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum plays a lieutenant colonel brought in by the top brass to defend an American 2nd lieutenant colonel, played by Keenan Wynn. At the opening, we see Wynn – in front of witnesses – shoot an unarmed British staff sergeant. Wynn then confesses to the crime.

So what is the problem? The British want "justice," which means Wynn – hanged. The American brass is happy to give them "justice," but darn it, Wynn has an important brother-in-law, so the trial has to look legit. Hence, Mitchum is brought in to make the defense appear impressive.

Mitchum, a career officer, is all but guaranteed a promotion if he puts up a good defense, but not one good enough to get Wynn off on insanity. The army wants the Brits happy and the influential brother-in-law mollified. Life is hard when "justice" has to serve more than one master.

Mitchum doesn't like the assignment, but career officers do what generals tell them to do – the general in this case is played wonderfully by Barry Sullivan. After a little investigating, the good news for Mitchum is that Wynn looks guilty as heck; the bad news is he might be insane.

If he's found insane, he won't hang and the Brits won't be happy, nor will Sullivan. Making things more complicated, there was a psychiatrist who filed a report that said Wynn was insane, but the report was rejected by his superiors, who know how to play ball with Sullivan.

Throw into the mix a pretty, young local nurse, played by France Nuyen, who gives Mitchum an unsigned carbon copy of the now missing psychiatric report on Wynn, which of course can't be used as evidence, but can be used to make Mitchum's conscience work on him.

Until this point, the viewer feels Wynn is insane and Mitchum needs to step up, but the viewer also gets how hard that is. Now, though, with evidence of insanity, the viewer needs Mitchum to step up, but it takes Mitchum longer as "doing the right thing" will probably trash his career.

"Doing the right thing" sounds easy, but not when the entire US Army is trying to stop you – often quietly and subtly, but with every lever at its disposal. From here on out, Act III is everything you come to these military trial movies for.

The biased judge, the overly confident prosecution, a few witnesses who do their own thing, a defence witness who has an "accident" before he can testify, and finally Mitchum showing that the military system of justice gives a defense attorney options if he's willing to use them.

Floating in the background of the movie – but one assumes it was more prominent in the book – is that "sometimes ranting and at other times calm" Wynn is an arrant, ugly racist who might have killed the British sergeant because the sergeant was sleeping with "local" women.

So the final twist has Mitchum possibly wrecking his career for an utterly despicable man – but justice doesn't have an asterisk that says "not applicable to people we don't like." Give author Fast credit: he wrote a morally complex story.

Give credit also to the cast, starting with Mitchum who was born to play this type of character. Mitchum has a bearing that says military, but a mien that says rebel. He plays along until he's had enough. His scenes arguing justice with Sullivan are gripping viewing.

So too are his scenes with Trevor Howard playing the British officer who only gets involved after Mitchum half guilts him into it. Then, Howard walks away with the climactic trial scene as a man with little to lose and no patience for "playing along." It's acting at its best.

He doesn't care if the big American brass is angry at him. When Mitchum asks him about his credentials in psychiatry – after Mitchum has already exposed the prosecution's psychiatrist's skinny resume – Howard's weary deadpan delivery of his impressive list is quiet movie gold.

With a modest budget but with extensive shooting in India, the movie has a verisimilitude that no amount of studio shooting can accomplish. Director Guy Hamilton, later known for his James Bond movies, understands how to keep an action-light, dialogue-heavy movie engaging.

Today, there's also something fun watching the movie navigate the Motion Picture Production Code so that we all know Mitchum is sleeping with Nuyen – "Did you come for some more 'happy'?" – but with enough credible deniability to get by the censors.

At only ninety minutes and with few special effects but a story that grabs you from the start with its collision of the death penalty, insanity, racism, career pressure, military expediency, outside interference, and, yes, (somewhere) justice, Man in the Middle should be better known today.

The good news is that because it isn't, many old-movie fans have another excellently written, acted, and directed movie to discover and enjoy.

 

[Harp]

^ Almost watched this last month but placed it on the stove back burner. Dunno why now but recall
seeing Man In The Middle as a kid on television, before the Army, college, and law school. Insanity as defense is a labyrinth of illogic mixed deliberate intent deprave heart indifference. Will definitely look at this jewel.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Misleading Lady (1932) with Claudette Colbert, Edmund Lowe, and Stuart Erwin


In today's times, there's not much acceptable in The Taming of the Shrew, so there's not much acceptable in The Misleading Lady, a somewhat screwball riff on the Shakespearean tale.

Screwball comedy itself is a heavy lift for modern audiences, but add in a bunch of misogyny and idiotic gender stereotypes, as happens here, and it becomes an almost impossible sell. Oddly, it almost helps that it's so stupid at times as it's hard to take it seriously.

Still, even though there are some cute moments and scenes, it's not enough to justify the slog. On the good news front, lead Claudette Colbert starts out as an almost modern woman, wanting a career not marriage, but she goes about it in a deceitful manner.

Colbert plays a wealthy young socialite engaged to a rich, young, handsome man, but she's bored and wants to go on the stage (a conceit of many young women of that era). To convince a producer she can act, she bets him she can make a bachelor in their set fall for her quickly.

Her prey, played by Edmund Lowe, starts out as a reasonable guy who falls for Colbert's charade and asks her to marry him. Then the truth spills out in a publicly embarrassing way for Lowe, which motivates him to, effectively, kidnap Colbert.

He takes her to his cabin in the woods and proceeds to humiliate her by having her strip in front of him and later (now clothed) he chains her to his fireplace mantle. One assumes, even precode Hollywood thankfully saw r*pe as a bridge too far, so he never does that.

Amidst all the viciousness – Colbert is completely wrong in what she did, but Lowe's response is even more completely wrong – there are a few subplots. One has Stuart Erwin playing an escapee from (using that era's terminology) a lunatic asylum showing up at the cabin.

If the plot sounds thin, that's because it is. Act Three, including the climax, descends into screwball stupidity on steroids. Lowe sends Colbert away; Erwin takes Lowe hostage; Colbert's fiancé shows up at the cabin demanding Colbert; and two of the insane asylum's attendants come for Erwin.

There is also a lot of running around, a g*nshot or two, general confusion, Colbert's return, and a forced ending that will have you shrugging if you're even still engaged enough with the characters and story at that point to care.

Soon after, Colbert's career would take off and she'd settle into a very manicured look – perfect hair, she only wanted to be filmed from her "better side," etc. That makes it nice to see her not fussy here where she looks normal and pretty versus her later tightly controlled look.

Her acting is a bit shrill, but the role calls for her to scream a lot. Unfortunately, when she's being stripped or chained, her screams sound childlike and petulant, not mature, desperate, or – if it had worked for her – aroused. It's odd to say, but her screaming is off.

Lowe is miscast as the nice guy who becomes a misogynist jerk after he's publicly humiliated. His entire being reads thoughtful, not angry and definitely not the type to kidnap and abuse a woman. Clark Gable, on the other hand, would have sunk his teeth into this role.

Maybe that would have worked in the 1930s, but today, nobody wants a male lead who can "sink his teeth" into being a misogynist. Non-fiction cultural records argue highly against this film representing a normal 1930s worldview either. Yes, women had less freedom, but not like this.

Colbert and precode completists will want to see The Misleading Lady – and maybe a hardc*re fan of screwball comedy, the one or two on planet Earth – but otherwise, it's difficult to recommend this unimportant and out-of-touch film today.

 

[Harp]

^ Shakespeare was Irish, not English, so Kate the shrew Colbert forced to strip pays the ticket.
But the ''thou must be married to no one but me,'' soliloquy doesn't cut mustard amidst sylvan setting.
Liz was perfect in this role.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lady with a Past (1932) Constance Bennett, Ben Lyon, and David Manners


The premise of Lady with a Past is that a wealthy and pretty young society woman can't get a date because men find her conversation boring.

The conceit of the movie is that anyone will believe beautiful Constance Bennett – here, playing a character with a huge bank account – can’t attract men. Please.

Watching the movie requires a little suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to just go with it. So beautiful Bennett, spurned by the young male scions of New York – in particular David Manners, playing the boy she really wants – takes a trip to Europe to try to change her luck.

There she meets a down-and-out, handsome young man, played by Ben Lyon, whom she hires to show her around and to "tutor" her on how to make herself interesting to men (again, you just have to go with it – in the real world, most men wouldn’t care if Bennett couldn’t even speak).

With Lyon's help, Bennett becomes popular with the Europeans and the American expat set, but she stays close to Lyon – who oddly shows little interest in her beyond being her social sherpa – even as other men begin to express interest.

Manners, visiting Paris, is now interested in Bennett because other men are interested. She plays it a bit coy, as does he, but they get closer. On his last night, she sidesteps his proposal, telling him she'll give him an answer when she returns to New York.

A social scandal then breaks in Paris involving Bennett – she's innocent but gossip trumps truth – followed by another one when she returns to New York – again, she's innocent, but gossip still trumps truth. All this turns Manners off to her, but they both, deep down, still want each other.

Manners is reticent, but other men aren’t. The irony – at least the one they were trying to create – is that Bennett was “boring” when she was a nice, moral girl, but now she – the same girl – is interesting and exotic because she has some “scandal” associated with her.

If the plot sounds thin and forced that's because it is. Still, Bennett is near the peak of her beauty and star power, so she almost carries this modest effort on her screen presence alone. Plus, it's often a pleasant movie despite its slightly precode tawdriness.

The one mystery – and one can't help wondering if there is a different path in the book it is based on – is why the Lyon-Bennett option is never really explored? It's somewhat explained, but not really.

Of the two men, Lyon’s personality sparkles, and he and Bennett have genuine screen chemistry, while Manners is simply a nice, handsome young man saying his lines adequately. The writers want us to see Manners as her true love, but you're really rooting for her and Lyon.

Hallmark would never make this mistake with its obvious but deep understanding of the romcom formula. It knows that the MacGuffin boyfriend or girlfriend should never outshine the real one.

Even for a 1932 movie, being shot entirely on sets with very little framing footage feels a bit cheap for a film that’s supposed to take place in New York and Paris. Conversely, Bennett's extensive and chic wardrobe elevates the style verve – almost like it's a Kay Francis picture.

Lady with a Past starts off with the ridiculous premise that men won't be interested in a pretty and wealthy young woman because she's boring; it then drives right past the better romcom coupling; but still, for Bennett or Lyon fans, it's harmless, modest, and fun entertainment.

 

[Worf]

Yeah, if buying bits for a Brit motor in the US is as markedly more expensive than a domestic option as is true of US cars over here, that's definitely the right call.

And TBH, such different beasts... much as I appreciate a MkII or an E Type, a 56 T Bird is such a different beast I can't really compare them. Money no object (feeding either of those here is the bigger cost, long term, than buying it in the first place), in truth I think the T-Bird has much more style.

Ah but a Jag is a JAG! Speed standing still! Prefer the XK's with their long nose and slab sides! Sigh born with Minor Royal desires on a Pleb budget!

Worf

 

[ryanparker]

The last movie I watched was Top ***: Maverick. Really enjoyed it!

 

[Harp]

Ah but a Jag is a JAG! Speed standing still! Prefer the XK's with their long nose and slab sides! Sigh born with Minor Royal desires on a Pleb budget!

Worf

eBay Motors is the shopping site I chose to find my Cat, narrowly focusing high end dealers
whom I knew wouldn't take junk trade ins. I'd advise a sniper last-second shot, which admittedly I didn't use. Once I bit with a bid several days away deadline date, the sale price began climbing, a phenomenon I attributed dealer sales staff, not outside competition. I was too eager to land a bid bet down and it cost. Lotza Jaguar iron riding cement and warehouses, but hover the high end dealers just be more patient trigger finger than I was.

 

[Zombie_61]

I bought my one and only "vintage" car back when I first started working that was over 35 or 40 years ago... BEFORE acquiring a Wife, Mortgage and Child. I still have her..... A 1956 Ford Thunderbird Convertible...

View attachment 772514

She's a beauty! I had an uncle who liked Ford's T-Birds so much that they were the only cars he ever owned/drove. Even by the late-1960s when the T-Bird had began to become as oversized and ugly as almost every other American made luxury car, he complained about the way Ford ruined his favorite car but still bought 'em because, as he put it, "I still can't find a better made car."

 

[Fading Fast]

Men in White (1934) with Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Jean Hersholt, and Elizabeth Allan


Men in White is a precode A picture from MGM about the medical profession that has held up quite well as a movie, a discussion about medical ethics, and as a comparison to what we prioritize today in "health care" versus in the 1930s.

Clark Gable plays a star intern about to study abroad in Vienna for a year before returning to New York to work for a giant of the medical profession – played by Jean Hersholt. Gable is also engaged to a young, somewhat flighty, and selfish socialite, played by Myrna Loy.

In this era, interns work very long hours for little pay, but are expected to be grateful just for the opportunity. This doesn't sit well with Loy who wants her fiancé to get off that low-pay prestige treadmill and into private practice so he can earn "real" money and they can have a normal life.

Gable, who is clearly on his way to becoming a brilliant physician, wants to stay on that path and marry Loy – hence the movie's central conflict. Hersholt tells them that a doctor's work for "humanity" is more important than their individual lives. Gable is somewhat on board; Loy is not.

Things get interesting when Loy, amidst a fight with Gable, rejects his pleas to get together one evening. This leaves him alone in the hospital dormitory (yup, that's how it worked then) with a comely nurse, played by Elizabeth Allan, who's been crushing on him.

You can guess the precode rest, which leads to the Act Three climax where everything spills out in a spasm of melodrama that would make any modern medical soap opera blush – but darn it, it's good too. Movies often have to speed things up and exaggerate to bring out life's central conflicts.

It works here because it is professionally done. These are top actors – Gable could later coast as the "King of Hollywood" if he wanted to (which he rarely did), but here he's a young, talented, and hungry actor who sinks his teeth into a meaty role.

Hersholt, one of the highly talented, now-forgotten, outstanding supporting actors of the era who usually played "fatherly" roles by the 1930s, is excellent as the experienced physician with a moral compass that knows its north star.

Loy and Allan, too, are good as the women circling Gable. Allan, in particular, is sympathetic as the lonely nurse crushing on a doctor she knows she can't have... or can she? Loy, as always, has something in her that just sparkles on screen, even when she's being mean.

Where Men in White shines is in not bending to the easy storyline: it's not clear which one, if either of the young, pretty women, Gable will end up with, but your evolving sympathies might surprise you as the movie progresses.

The hospital where all this happens is "Hollywood 1930s Art Deco" beautiful. A huge spiral staircase, sleek lines, high ceilings, and – despite claims of budgetary problems – a large staff in pristine white scrubs give the sets a dreamlike atmosphere of medical perfection.

Despite all the style and acting talent, it still comes down to a common-era dilemma: how much of one's personal life and income should a doctor sacrifice for "the good of the profession?" Many era movies like Arrowsmith (1931) and The Citadel (1938) tread similar ground.

The focus in the 1930s is on all the advances – advances that help "humanity" – that have been made and will be made by these super dedicated doctors – doctors shown here as having careers that combine laboratory research with in-hospital patient care.

We've "solved" this tradeoff today through money and compromise. Interns and research doctors have better lives, work fewer hours, and make more money vis-a-vis their 1930s peers. Plus, now that we've broken private practice for the average doctor, that too is less of a draw.

While there are movies in the 1930s that focused on "access," especially for the needy, the solution then was a bifurcated system of advanced for-profit research hospitals for those able to afford care and health clinics for the poor. It wasn't perfect, but neither is it now.

Today "access" and "affordability" dominate the discussion as the "advances," which still miraculously come, are almost taken for granted because we only want to fight about the first two. The system is so hated and broken that few movies are made about it.

Which leads us back to Men in White, an engaging picture made by a confident precode-era Hollywood willing to tackle the hard issues of its day. Being precode also means the solutions aren't always easy – like the ones made here – but they feel real.

 

[Doctor Strange]

NOT RECOMMENDED: Fackham Hall (2025)

This was HBO's big Saturday premiere last weekend. I hadn't heard of it, but a spoof of Downton Abbey (and the like) with actors I dig like Damian Lewis, Katherine Waterston, and Thomasin McKenzie sounded fun. But NO, this is surely the worst film I've seen in a long time.



For starters, this is another case of a satire/parody arriving too late, well after the excitement of the original is passed and the zeitgeist has moved on. (Though it's beloved now, this is how Spaceballs felt when it premiered in 1987... when the Star Wars trilogy was years behind us with no talk of future films yet.) But the main problem is that the gags aim so low, as if it's 15 years ago, the era of those lame cheap-jack spoofs like Meet the Spartans and Superhero Movie. A couple of examples:

The estate tenants and nearby village residents hate the aristocratic family, and they all pronounce Fackham Hall as "F*ck 'em all!"

The family crest includes the legend "Incestuum Ad Infinitum". And yeah, first cousins marrying to keep the estate in the family is a supposedly funny plot point.

One of the house guests in the great house is J.R.R. Tolkien - played as a stereotyped bumbling professor - and he strikes up a friendship at the village pub with one of the local characters... named Bill Bobaggins. "Hmm, nice name."

Anyway, it's truly terrible. Not even fun in a so-bad-it's-entertaining sense. The actors all have a desperate, deer-in-the-headlights look, because they know that they're trapped in a trainwreck. Don't say you weren't warned...

 

[Edward]

NOT RECOMMENDED: Fackham Hall (2025)

This was HBO's big Saturday premiere last weekend. I hadn't heard of it, but a spoof of Downton Abbey (and the like) with actors I dig like Damian Lewis, Katherine Waterston, and Thomasin McKenzie sounded fun. But NO, this is surely the worst film I've seen in a long time.

View attachment 774693

For starters, this is another case of a satire/parody arriving too late, well after the excitement of the original is passed and the zeitgeist has moved on. (Though it's beloved now, this is how Spaceballs felt when it premiered in 1987... when the Star Wars trilogy was years behind us with no talk of future films yet.) But the main problem is that the gags aim so low, as if it's 15 years ago, the era of those lame cheap-jack spoofs like Meet the Spartans and Superhero Movie. A couple of examples:

The estate tenants and nearby village residents hate the aristocratic family, and they all pronounce Fackham Hall as "F*ck 'em all!"

The family crest includes the legend "Incestuum Ad Infinitum". And yeah, first cousins marrying to keep the estate in the family is a supposedly funny plot point.

One of the house guests in the great house is J.R.R. Tolkien - played as a stereotyped bumbling professor - and he strikes up a friendship at the village pub with one of the local characters... named Bill Bobaggins. "Hmm, nice name."

Anyway, it's truly terrible. Not even fun in a so-bad-it's-entertaining sense. The actors all have a desperate, deer-in-the-headlights look, because they know that they're trapped in a trainwreck. Don't say you weren't warned...

Eeps, sounds like you really took one for the team sitting through that. I have a vague recollection of seeing a trailer in passing and not being impressed (though to be fair I was not impressed with the actual Downton either, so).

 

[Fading Fast]

Great Day (1945) with Flora Robson, Eric Portman, and Sheila Sim


Just when you think you're in the middle of a Hallmark-style propaganda film about an English village pulling together to welcome Mrs. Roosevelt on a goodwill tour, a real movie about life's "small" problems breaks out and lands an emotional wallop when you're not looking.

Great Day starts out fun enough as the "Women's Institute" (informal clubs of homefront women that served the war effort) learns that Mrs. Roosevelt is coming the next day, which throws the women into a frenzy to prepare and get things "tickety-boo." (God luv the Brits from this era).

The real movie turns out not to be about the visit but about the mini dramas going on in the lives of several villagers, most prominently one small "average" family with a mom, a dad, and a late-teen daughter, played respectively by Flora Robson, Eric Portman, and Sheila Sim.

Robson is the woman who quietly gets things done while others take credit and make noise. She's the vice-president of the Women's Institute, which means she does all the work, while the snooty president, played by Isabel Jeans, takes all the credit.

At home, Robson has an even harder lot as her husband is a drinker who hasn't held a steady job since WWI when he was a respected captain. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to make the transition back to civilian work as it would have been "a step down from commanding men."

Robson and Sim – the latter, like her mom, is a get-things-done hard worker. Here she's a "farm girl." She also helps to keep the house going and the family respectable looking in the village, in part by regularly bucking up Portman whose fragile ego needs constant care.

The last piece of the puzzle is that Sim is now secretly engaged to Jeans' brother who owns the farm where Sim works. He's much older, but they seem to have a nice relationship. Still, Sim would effectively replace Jeans as "lady of the manor" in the village's prominent family.

That's the setup that seems modestly troubling until, deep in Act II, the problems quickly spiral owing to a few events you'll want to see fresh. By Act III, in this all of seventy-five minute movie, two of the problems blast into the open in dramatic fashion.

Playing on in the foreground is the propaganda of a village "doing its part for the war" – making preserves, knitting clothes, working the farms, minding the stores, and billeting and serving the troops that move through – despite all the personal dramas playing out behind the nice facade.

These personal dramas have emotional weight because all three leads are outstanding. Robson, an unsung pro of countless movies, plays a working-class Mrs. Miniver with so much sincere dignity your heart aches for her. Women like her kept Britain going through the war.

Young women like Sim, too, kept the country going. She's a late teen, full of energy, who puts her all into the war effort, but darn it, she wants a life too. Later, when she explains why she'd marry a man decades older than she is, you'll understand the scars her father has left on her.

That's real life playing out behind the scenes, which also leads us to Portman. He gives a career performance playing a broken man who by now is a prisoner to his own ego. When his world starts to completely break, his portrayal of a man crumbling is painful to see.

His raw and honest scene with Sim – she plays the parent to his child – is "small" moviemaking at its best. You forget it's a film as you just see a father and daughter, quite possibly, having the first honest conversation they've ever had. You'll know the scene when you get there.

Yes, Great Day is a propaganda movie with, naturally, a stoic approach – English resolve, the playing fields of Eton, a stiff upper lip, and all that – solving almost intractable problems, but there's more grit to this one, which makes it a small gem well worth seeking out.

Preserving, knitting clothes for the troops, manning coffee "wagons" for army units passing through, farm girls, factory girls, the women's institute, and the general vibe of the village all show the WWII homefront deeply integrated with the war effort.

Propaganda films can get a bad name either by taint of Germany (the "Propaganda Ministry" shame) or by the general belief they are mindless rah-rah pictures, but talented writers, directors, and actors often made smart movies, like Great Day, valuable time capsules.


N.B. #1 For fans of Eleanor Roosevelt, just know that she's only a MacGuffin in this one to set the village in a tizzy over her visit. Otherwise, she's unimportant to the picture and, of course, never appears

N.B. #2 There was a PBS Masterpiece TV series Home Fires – which ran in 2015/2016 and was based on the book Jambusters – that focused on a fictional women's institute like the one here. The stories' overlap is so obvious, one imagines the TV show's writers first saw Great Day.

 

[Worf]

eBay Motors is the shopping site I chose to find my Cat, narrowly focusing high end dealers
whom I knew wouldn't take junk trade ins. I'd advise a sniper last-second shot, which admittedly I didn't use. Once I bit with a bid several days away deadline date, the sale price began climbing, a phenomenon I attributed dealer sales staff, not outside competition. I was too eager to land a bid bet down and it cost. Lotza Jaguar iron riding cement and warehouses, but hover the high end dealers just be more patient trigger finger than I was.

I got mine the Old Fashioned way... A classified in an issue of "Hemmings Moto News" the Old Car Bible at the time for parts etc... This was pre-internet. You read the ad, called or wrote. Sent a check then waited for the car to be delivered, hoping all the while you hadn't been hoodwinked or robbed. Now I bid on Ebay for bass guitars etc... but never an automobile.

Worf

 

[Harp]

^ Honorable mention, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Some years ago, while seated in the waiting lobby for an appointment at Edward Hines VA Hospital,
a volunteer wheeled a ''free books for veterans'' cart towards me and invited my solicit. I had once found
a Kierkegaard, an Alexander Woollcott and a Cicero; also, a University of Illinois ancient Virgil text in these freebies, so I plunged right in, finding The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. A delightful jewel of a book that takes place on the island of Guernsey during and just after the Second World War. Made into a film
I've yet to see, though its box office did respectable enough. And critics generally gave it a Roger Ebert
'thumb's up.'' Admittedly, a book largely found by chance and not my usual shelf pull, but an extraordinarily lucky find. Definitely a 'cosy'' to read and see.

 

[Harp]

I got mine the Old Fashioned way... A classified in an issue of "Hemmings Moto News" the Old Car Bible at the time for parts etc... This was pre-internet. You read the ad, called or wrote. Sent a check then waited for the car to be delivered, hoping all the while you hadn't been hoodwinked or robbed. Now I bid on Ebay for bass guitars etc... but never an automobile.

Worf

eBay Motors offers ease and a thorough recon of all makes and models. I was surprised by all the nationwide offerings Jaguar owners proffered. One guy inherited his Jag from a deceased relative then warehoused it for seven years, telling me he had decided to sell it because his wife nagged him. Luckily, I found a '94 XJS convertible in Chicago from tony McGrath Lexus. I should have snipered it but bagged the Cat. And at 15 miles a gallon with British Petroleum super unleaded, I knew what I was getting my wallet into.