What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Doctor Strange]

Rebel in the Rye - recent biopic about J.D. Salinger with Nicholas Hoult.

Salinger was never one of my favorite authors, but I liked the film, largely because it has a great supporting cast (Victor Garber, Hope Davis, Sarah Paulson, Kevin Spacey, etc.) and it's an interesting story of a talented but very messed-up iconoclast. It's also one of the better attempts at explaining/demonstrating the writing/publishing process - lots of other films about authors have utterly failed at this. Good thirties-to-fifties production design too. Recommended... if you're at all interested in this kind of thing.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rebel in the Rye - recent biopic about J.D. Salinger with Nicholas Hoult.

Salinger was never one of my favorite authors, but I liked the film, largely because it has a great supporting cast (Victor Garber, Hope Davis, Sarah Paulson, Kevin Spacey, etc.) and it's an interesting story of a talented but very messed-up iconoclast. It's also one of the better attempts at explaining/demonstrating the writing/publishing process - lots of other films about authors have utterly failed at this. Good thirties-to-fifties production design too. Recommended... if you're at all interested in this kind of thing.

Thanks for the heads up / it's right up my alley / just dropped it in our Netflix queue (that word has a lot of vowels and total letters for one syllable).

 

[Fading Fast]

...Dark, but what a bravura performance from Cage - a real poke in the eye for anyone who denies he can act!



Have you ever seen Inglorious Bastards - the film to which Tarantino purchased the rights in order that he could repurpose the title for his own Inglorious Basterds? It's basically a Dirty Dozen pastiche, but quite fun with it. I rather enjoy the anti-hero aspect of this sort of thing.

I have never said a bad word about Cage since "Leaving Las Vegas," nor Elizabeth Shue for that matter.

I loved Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds -" I know or the arguments against it, but I was engaged and entertained throughout.

 

[Edward]

I have never said a bad word about Cage since "Leaving Las Vegas," nor Elizabeth Shue for that matter.

Yes, she was also great in it. As I recall, it was a surprisingly mainstream release for something that was actually quite high-brow. Cage is an interesting player. I still kinda wish we'd gotten to see his Superman.

I loved Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds -" I know or the arguments against it, but I was engaged and entertained throughout.

I adored it too. I'm something of a fan of his work anyhow despite it going rather out of fashion among cinephiles, but this really was one of his finest. Not only for the blending of the spaghetti western and WW2 genres, but for the satire on the classic WW2 pictures and their tendency to take extreme liberties with the historical facts!

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Winslow Boy" 1948

When they say they don't make movies like they used to, this one could be exhibit A as it's a story-driven movie with three-dimensional characters, solid acting and several narrative climaxes. There are no action scenes, no murders, no sweeping dramatic camera angles or gorgeous vistas or, even, much yelling - basically no Hollywood histrionics - just a tight and gripping story.

Set in England in the the early 1900s, a young cadet is expelled from a military academy for stealing and his middle-class father, believing his son innocent, engages in a multi-year legal battle - hinging on the right of petition (that's it, that's the depth of my knowledge of English law) - to clear his son's name. Along the way, the fight nearly bankrupts his family, forces another son to quit school to work and breaks up the engagement of his daughter.

This family drama is a second but equal narrative to the legal case as we watch each family member either buck up or flag under the intense financial and social pressure the high-profile legal case places on the family. And a wonderful thing happens here where a seemingly minor character and story line becomes, arguably, the strongest part of the movie by the end - in this case, the daughter, in supporting her father's fight, loses her fiancee (he won't take the financial and social hardship marrying her would now bring - he's not evil, just weak) but bucks up her dad and grows independent and strong herself. It's a nice twist and strong story telling as it upends your expectations.

The movie's writer, Terence Rattigan, who also wrote "Separate Tables" and "The Browning Version," has a talent for showing regular people at life changing moments either break or grow stronger. You might not have had the exact same challenge, but the people are so familiar and the situations so similar to things we all face, that you see yourself, your family and your friends in his movies. It's these "simple" stories that Hollywood doesn't do often anymore.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Fortune Cookie" 1966 with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthou

An on-field NFL camera man (Lemmon) is accidentally run into by a player during a game and, despite having no real injuries, is importuned by his shyster brother-in-law to sue claiming (trumped up) medical issues.

Sure, Lemmon does it for the contrived reason of trying to win back his ex-wife and not the money, but he still comes off as sleazy. Thrown into this mix is the good-hearted and, now, guilt-ridden NFL player who all but becomes Lemmon's nurse, the kinda floozy ex-wife, an overwrought mother, a bumbling private eye and some corporate insurance sharks who all do what's expected of their stereotype. You can pretty much guess the rest.

I wanted to like this movie and I get what director Billy Wilder was going for - a bit of a tongue-in-cheek / the audience is in the joke movie about ambulance-chasing lawyers, insurance fraud and corporate venality, but he, IMHO, overplayed his cheeky hand.

From the wink-wink title cards before many scenes to Walter Matthou's intentional mugging for the camera, it felt forced and off key. It's one of those movies that's not bad, but you keep waiting for it to get better but it never does and, while waiting, the too-obvious ticks become annoying.

Wilder is still one of my favorite directors, but like Tarantino, he has his misses too.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Wilder is one of my favorite directors too, but after the awesome one-two punch of Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, it's mostly downhill. All the brilliant sophistication and subtlety gives way to the obvious and overdone in films like The Fortune Cookie and Irma La Douce. (Though I do like The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.)

Re The Winslow Boy... Okay, now check out the 1999 David Mamet adaptation and tell us how it stacks up!

 

[Doctor Strange]

"Fahrenheit 451" - Wow did this thing suck. The casting for Montag was awful, the dirty sell-out of a girlfriend was awful and the premise is indistinguishable from the book I read as a kid. It stunk. Don't waste an hour plus of your precious time on this one. The whole society without books works fine pre-internet... less so now. What a fricken' mistake this was.

Worf

Preach it, brother! This thing is nearly a complete trainwreck. The best I can say about it is that Ray Bradbury died before having to watch it.

Quick thoughts:

While I always enjoy Michael Shannon chewing on the scenery, so much about his character made no sense. What's with the writing quotations on cigarette papers? Why does he seem to know minute details about every banned work he's allegedly never read, like he'd been an English or Philosophy major?!? (I mean, tossing off Plato's Cave like it's nothing.) There was a strong indication that he too had a secret fascination with banned literature... but it was a red herring that went nowhere.

Making Montag a media star instead of an average Fireman... jettisoning his wife (who represents the narcotized, pointless life of the average person)… giving him a contrived, traumatic backstory of a book-hiding father... having him be a martyr rather than escaping to join the Book People after fake televised reports show him killed to glorify the status quo... All of these are disastrous mistakes.

You know, the 1966 Truffaut film is far from a perfect adaptation, but it gets a lot more right than this one, and it's got those tremendous Nicolas Roeg visuals and Bernard Herrmann score. Even Oskar Werner's placid underplaying - which I never liked - seems more appropriate than Michael B. Jordan's jockish portrayal.

Geez, what a stinker! Only worth watching for morbid fascination.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Street Scenes" 1931 - early talkie, definitely pre-code, feels stagey, but it works because of its honesty.

Set, for the most part, on the stoop of a Hell's Kitchen tenement during a heat wave, the lives of the tenants play out during a "bunch of important things happen" twenty-four-hour period. But it's less a plot movie than a slice-of-life movie and, being pre-code, it lays it all out there.

And "all out there" includes ethnic stereotypes - Italians talking with their hand, Jewish socialists, Irish drinkers, etc. - but it is not seen through today's unforgiving standards where anything less than perfect is a high crime, as there's a humanity to all of it.

Yes, some of it is ugly, but some of it is also just matter of fact, some of it is kidding and some of it is already seeing past the "Old World" ways of thinking and some of it out right denounces racism (this generation doesn't have a first dibs claim on that piety despite what it might think).

"All out there" also includes sex - some in marriage, but much outside of it - young "loose" girls (one who clearly missed the invention of the bra), serious couples not yet wed, bosses and young secretaries (#Metoo ain't new either) and a copious number of straying husband and wives. The heatwave did not discourage horizontal passion (with some conducted vertically as well).

Throw in the usual family conflict - too lenient or too strict parenting, filial respect versus pursuing one's own dreams, money, better jobs, forgotten promises and flagging hope - and it's a wonderful window into one moment in NYC and America's history. And being pre-code, it's pretty unvarnished - no spit-shined Andy Hardy families here.


N.B., My money says this one would get the Lizzie seal of approval.

 

[Fading Fast]

...You know, the 1966 Truffaut film is far from a perfect adaptation, but it gets a lot more right than this one, and it's got those tremendous Nicolas Roeg visuals and Bernard Herrmann score. Even Oskar Werner's placid underplaying - which I never liked - seems more appropriate than Michael B. Jordan's jockish portrayal.....

And it has Julie Christie, but unfortunately, Julie Christie was digital before its time as her performance in a movie either lifts off the screen and sparkles or fades into the background which is what happened to her "Fahrenheit" performance.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Street Scenes" 1931 - early talkie, definitely pre-code, feels stagey, but it works because of its honesty.

Set, for the most part, on the stoop of a Hell's Kitchen tenement during a heat wave, the lives of the tenants play out during a "bunch of important things happen" twenty-four-hour period. But it's less a plot movie than a slice-of-life movie and, being pre-code, it lays it all out there.

And "all out there" includes ethnic stereotypes - Italians talking with their hand, Jewish socialists, Irish drinkers, etc. - but it is not seen through today's unforgiving standards where anything less than perfect is a high crime, as there's a humanity to all of it.

Yes, some of it is ugly, but some of it is also just matter of fact, some of it is kidding and some of it is already seeing past the "Old World" ways of thinking and some of it out right denounces racism (this generation doesn't have a first dibs claim on that piety despite what it might think).

"All out there" also includes sex - some in marriage, but much outside of it - young "loose" girls (one who clearly missed the invention of the bra), serious couples not yet wed, bosses and young secretaries (#Metoo ain't new either) and a copious number of straying husband and wives. The heatwave did not discourage horizontal passion (with some conducted vertical as well).

Throw in the usual family conflict - too lenient or too strict parenting, filial respect versus pursuing one's own dreams, money, better jobs, forgotten promises and flagging hope - and it's a wonderful window into one moment in NYC and America's history. And being pre-code, it's pretty unvarnished - no spit-shined Andy Hardy families here.


N.B., My money says this one would get the Lizzie seal of approval.

Yep, that's a prime piece of quality Early Talkie. It feels stagey because it's a pretty literal transcription of the Broadway play of the same name, which was a big, big Pulitzer-winning hit in 1929, and which helped to inspire a lot of the edgy fire-escape drama that characterized the work of Clifford Odets, Sidney Kingsley, and the like. Elmer Rice was a fine progressive playwright whose works are too rarely revisited. His "We The People," written in 1933, goes even further down the the same sort of themes.

 

[Harp]

Last night I watched The Dirty Dozen, I have seen it many times before but it’s still entertaining to me...
I’m sure I’ve missed some of the more subtle nuances of the film, but what’s most important is how the story builds and draws you in to cheer for this group of misfits to do what seems impossible. I already can’t wait to see it again.

The Dirty Dozen is based on Eric Nathanson's novel of same title; genesis of which was the 1st Demolition Section,
506th PIR, 101st Airborne whose members bore a certain reputation within the division that burnished with time
became legendary. Nathanson, a skilled writer, embellished his story with theatrical slant, penning a memorable
novel that does stand literary focus for its very exceptional writing. A more telling book, The Filthy Thirteen
later published which was based on a 1st Demo veteran's reminiscence.

 

[Doctor Strange]

And it has Julie Christie, but unfortunately, Julie Christie was digital before its time as her performance in a movie either lifts off the screen and sparkles or fades into the background which is what happened to her "Fahrenheit" performance.

Yes, she's subdued in both her roles in this one. There's also the matter of Truffaut directing his first film in English, and the performances definitely suffer for it.

BTW, my paperback of the novel is the 1966 film Ballantine tie-in edition, with a cover picture of Oskar Werner flanked by the two Julie Christies. Original price 60 cents!

 

[Fading Fast]

...BTW, my paperback of the novel is the 1966 film Ballantine tie-in edition, with a cover picture of Oskar Werner flanked by the two Julie Christies. Original price 60 cents!

I've seen that version - cool in a '60s way. And regarding that 60 cents price, the smart economists at the Fed can say all they want about "good" inflation and its salubrious effects, but it's all nonsense. Inflation is exactly what it is - a tax on savings and earnings and a distortion for the entire economy. When I notice old prices on things like a paperback and compare then to today - that book would probably cost about $11 - I know that inflation isn't a dial for the Fed to arrogantly adjust but just a punishment for the average worker and retiree.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Going to Hollywood" 1933 with Bing Crosby and Marion Davies

• An early entry in the "MTV wasn't really new" argument as this is basically a serious of music videos held together by an off-the-shelf story
• Bing's voice is incredible here - definitely in a style of the period, but ridiculously powerful and sonorous
• I always think of Marion Davies as half of the Hearst-Davies San Simeon power couple and almost forget she was a talented actress in her own right, so movies like this are good reminders that she was a real movie star
• Not a great movie - silly and predictable story - but fun for the music, Bing and Davies

 

[LizzieMaine]

Those early Crosby pictures are all a lot of fun -- the "Bing" character pretty much settled by 1933, and while he got bored early on by the role, that just seemed to add to his air of "cool detachment."

 

[Formeruser012523]

It being travel season, I've watched a bumper crop of movies of late, including:

Black Panther - en joyed it much more this second time on the plane than in the cinema, chiefly because this time I didn't fall asleep halfway through and miss most of the plot!

Honestly couldn't believe the hype on this one. The best thing about this movie (at least to me) was Martin Freeman. Full stop. And I almost fell asleep too.

 

[Edward]

Honestly couldn't believe the hype on this one. The best thing about this movie (at least to me) was Martin Freeman. Full stop. And I almost fell asleep too.

There was a fair degree of hype, though that was inevitable given its significance. t was nice to see a Marvel feature that was non-US centric - a real rarity in the superhero genre in particular.

 

[Fading Fast]

Honestly couldn't believe the hype on this one. The best thing about this movie (at least to me) was Martin Freeman. Full stop. And I almost fell asleep too.

They hyper hype [] on this one worked, as much hype does, to turn me off and I still haven't seen it. To be fair, I pick and choose amongst superhero movies anyway, so the very loud hype on this one just served to pushed me into the "pass" camp. I'll probably watch it on cable five years from now.

 

[Doctor Strange]

A critic I nearly always agree with takes down HBO's Fahrenheit 451:

http://moria.co.nz/sciencefiction/fahrenheit-451-2018.htm

And regarding Black Panther, speaking as a dedicated MCU fan who sees (and enjoys nearly) all their films... I found this a typically well done, three-star Marvel Studios film. Not really better than the MCU films released on either side of it (Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War), but hyped to the skies as an event.

And it is inarguably an important leap forward, just as next year's Captain Marvel will be (as the first female-starring MCU film). Black Panther is very good, but to put it atop the list of best superhero films - as on many lists I've seen on various entertainment sites recently - is to confuse its historical importance with its actual quality as a superhero film.

While it does feature a more complex, interesting villain and real cultural nuance, and shows us fascinating things we've never seen before, I don't consider it a four-star MCU film. (And just to show that I'm not an uncritical fanboy, out of the nearly twenty MCU films, I think only The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier deserve four.)