What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Trenchfriend]

Pain & Glory (2019), now on Arte.

 

[Fading Fast]

Burn, Witch, Burn (AKA Night of the Eagle) from 1962 with Peter Wyngarde and Janet Blair


"The Rational Mind Versus Witchcraft" could have been a third title for Burn, Witch, Burn, also known as Night of the Eagle, a classic horror tale. Set in a small college in England where, as the cliché goes, the faculty politics are particularly ferocious because the stakes are so low.

Peter Wyngarde plays a young, star psychology professor – considered brilliant, also popular with his students – who with his wife, played by Janet Blair, lives in a beautiful college-provided gothic house. Life is going well for him as he's even up for promotion to department head.

Things seem a bit off with Blair, though, as he discovers she's practicing some sort of witchcraft, which she claims is protecting them from the "evil trying to hurt them." He, being an Aristotelian rationalist, dismisses her "hobby" as nonsense, until he sees how much it affects her.

The structure of the picture follows those two threads: one is his life at college, where there's plenty of jealousy, and the other is his life at home, where he keeps trying to get his wife off witchcraft, a witchcraft she insists they need.

In fairness to Blair, after Wyngarde gets rid of all her witchy paraphernalia – it's a creepy scene when he burns it all in the fireplace, but a presumed dead spider crawls out alive – things start to go a bit wonky at work for him, but who doesn't have ups and downs in his or her career?

Wyngarde is falsely accused of forcing himself on a female student (treated as a serious crime, hence another example of the past being less one sided than is often argued today). While his academic position starts to wobble, Blair drifts further away into her witchcraft world.

Eventually, things come to a head in a long Act III where Wyngarde, in desperation, tries to use witchcraft himself to save his wife from drowning, all while another source of witchcraft at the college is partially exposed in a fiery conclusion.

What the above high-level plot summary fails to capture is the haunting atmosphere of this horror-in-a-normal-place story. It is, though, a normal place populated with Gothic buildings dating back hundreds of years. Plus, it's England, so it's almost always drearily fog-shrouded.

Gargoyles, deep archways, foot-thick stone walls, huge wooden doors, and – at Wyngarde and Blair's getaway cabin – a cliff to the ocean and an underground vault full of sarcophaguses where, as noted, Wyngarde tries, in desperation and for the first time, to use black magic.

It's the old "there are no atheists in foxholes" aphorism come to life as Wyngarde – the disbeliever who mocks witchcraft and the supernatural – attempts to save his "possessed" wife from drowning.

It's also an outstanding scene in the dark woods at night: a storm whipping, a room of buried tombs discovered, and a man throwing logic and reason out the window as he plays with old pictures, matches, and herbs to try to summon otherworldly forces to rescue Blair.

Believing is no longer his issue, it's how to use the dark arts to get his life back in order. Blair's problem is a bit different as she's always believed, but her husband burned most of the tools of her craft.

Wyngarde is a good choice here as he looks normal, but there is also something off about him – something just not quite aligned with the boy-genius academic he plays. Think of him like an English version of Anthony Perkins from this era.

Equally well cast is Blair, who flips from regular professor's wife to demonic force with frightening ease. With the wonderful first name in this one of Tansy, she's a much more believable domesticated version of a witch than the silly versions on 1960s American TV.

There are several good surprises waiting in the climax that you'll want to see fresh, but nothing that, for regular horror fans, hasn't been riffed on since. Still, it's an engaging climax for the genre.

That is the entire crux of the movie – Burn, Witch, Burn is an excellent low-budget black-and-white horror film (something the Brits did in their sleep in this era). It's a potent mix of rationalism, dreams, beliefs, sorcery, evil, desire, and jealousy.

If you don't like the genre, pass, but if horror is up your alley and you haven't seen this one, it's a fun find – well, an eerily haunting one – that you'll probably be surprised you hadn't seen before.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Blade Runner - Final Cut, 2007s DVD.

 

[Edward]

Good Fortune (2025) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27543578/ A struggling gig economy worker, despairing at the state of his life, temporarily changes places with a Techbro at the arrangement of a bored, junior angel who aspires to achieve more than just spending his days preventing accidents caused by people texting while driving. Echoes of well known pictures like Trading Places and It's A Wonderful Life, while still being very much its own thing. It is, in the best possible way, quite an old-fashioned picture in that with very little tweaking you could lift it and set it just about any time in the twentieth century as readily as in the present day and it would still work. Keanu Reeves as an angel, particularly during the sequences when he discovers the human experience, is a joy to watch. A perfect casting in a role which, absent such a deft touch, could easily have fallen flat. A rare picture, too, with a conventional happy ending that doesn't feel something unrealistic or contrived. A lot of fun - and should anyone be considering taking on a remake of Wim Wender's classic Himmel Uber Berlin (distributed in English language markets as Wings of Desire), Keanu could easily stay in character from this film and step right into the lead - though I'd rather seem him play a version of himself as a substitute for the late Peter Faulk's turn in the original. Wenders certainly deserves a fitting tribute in a newer remake after the risible City of Angels, a remake worse even than that of The Wicker Man.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Schindler's List, on Arte.

 

[Fading Fast]

Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965) with Juliet Prowse, Sal Mineo, Jan Murray, and Elaine Stritch


Who Killed Teddy Bear fits neatly into no Hollywood box because it was made as a true independent film and because its dive into the seedy, s*xual underbelly of mid-1960s New York City is ahead of its time, uncomfortable, uneven, and creepy – but also somewhat engaging.

Juliet Prowse stars as the pretty, young New Yorker working in a discotheque at night to pay the bills – she makes the actress-audition rounds during the day. Then she starts getting obscene phone calls at night, which bring in a police lieutenant to investigate.

Played by Jan Murray, the lieutenant himself has been obsessed with these types of cases ever since his wife was r*ped and murdered years ago. Now his apartment is like a headquarters for a s*x-offenders unit, which exposes his preteen daughter to his s*xually explicit research.

When Murray tells Prowse she shouldn't stay alone, her boss, a middle-aged, hard-edged woman, played by Elaine Stritch, comes over to spend the night. Stritch makes a pass at Prowse, denies it, gets passive aggressive, and then leaves in a huff, half dressed.

Also in Prowse's orbit is a waiter at the discotheque, played by Sal Mineo. He has a mentally challenged sister who, through creepy flashbacks, we learn saw Mineo and possibly their mother having s*x. When she ran away from that, she fell and hit her head, which led to her brain damage.

The "plot" is Murray investigating the obscene calls while Prowse tries to get on with her life, even though almost everyone around her seems like a potential suspect. Of course, she kinda sorta starts dating Murray. It's a huge s*xual tangle.

You'll, of course, want to see the climax fresh, but like much in this movie, it's unsatisfying in a somewhat disturbing and somewhat sloppy moviemaking way. The point seemed to be just making the movie and getting it all out there, not having a tight story arc.

What is all that they wanted to get out there: s*xual deviancy, inc*st, r*pe, lesbianism, implied mast*rbation, and more at a time when the Motion Picture Production Code was losing its grip. This one did not help the Code hang on.

Shot in New York City in "guerrilla" style – no permits, just grab the cameras, shoot the scene, and move on before the police show up – the picture has incredible time-capsule value today. It captures the city far along in its transition to full-force 1970s urban decay.

Times Square is already a crowded, gritty s*x market of X-rated movie theaters and stores selling s*xual paraphernalia and periodicals that even five years earlier would never have made it to a movie screen except in a very controlled manner.

From a casting perspective, Prowse is the surprise in this one; if you didn’t know she was already on a downward career arc, you’d have predicted big things going forward for the quirky, pretty, and talented actress, but alas.

Mineo's career and personal ups and downs are well recorded, but here he shows an intensity that explains his earlier success. Murray, a bit of a Hollywood oddity, provided the right contrast as the tall, square-jawed, and serious cop, whose character has his own f*tish issues.

The other actress to note is Stritch, whose six-decade career speaks for her talent: a talent on display here as a closeted lesbian wearing a cool baker's boy cap and running an early discotheque with her ahead-of-its-time, don't-mess-with-me woman attitude.

That discotheque – really a bar, restaurant, and discotheque combination – says mid-1960s. The music is basic rock and roll, like the dancing, but the vibe has an advanced beatnik aloofness that is one step away from the late-1960s style. Again, a heck of a time capsule.

If you come for a normal movie, you've made a mistake, but if you come to Who Killed Teddy Bear to see an early "indie" that pushed the boundaries of s*xual content in movies, with Prowse and Stritch providing an extra kick, you've come to the right picture.

 

[Harp]

^ Vague Prowse recollect. Sharp gal. And caught Elaine Stritch once or twice in Law and Order.
Recall film title but never saw flick.

 

[Callawegian STITCHERY]

Callawegian STITCHERY

 

[Fading Fast]

Drunken Angel (1948), a Japanese film


Drunken Angel is Director Akira Kurosawa's dirge for a postwar Japan struggling to find its identity, where mood, atmosphere or maybe mise-en-scène – or all three – give this tale of a gangster dying of tuberculosis a disturbing emotional depth and intense visual richness.

In the immediate postwar years, a generation of young Japanese men – raised on a samurai cult and extreme nationalism – had to reinvent themselves on the fly. Some, sadly, transferred their warped beliefs and misguided loyalty to the Yakuza (the Japanese mafia).

Before you meet the characters, Kurosawa pans over a fetid pool of water in the center of a poor Japanese town – it looks like industrial wastewater. It establishes an atmosphere of filth, ill health, and moral rot. The symbolism is intentionally not subtle.

An alcoholic doctor, played by Takashi Shimura – the kind that finds a town like this and the kind a town like this can afford – is working hard to help a teenage schoolgirl beat her tuberculosis. She's upbeat and follows the doctor's orders, but it's a hard disease to defeat.

Shimura then treats a young gangster, played by Toshirô Mifune, for a hand wound but suspects he also has TB, which is soon confirmed by an X-ray. Mifune, a local "territory" leader, is no school girl willing to follow doctor's orders. But TB doesn't care how "tough" you are.

Shimura and Mifune's combative relationship sits at the center of the film. The doctor pings from trying to save Mifune to, when Mifune misbehaves, dismissing him as not worthy of his effort. Mifune ignores the doctor, until he gets sick again and then comes crawling back.

The middle-aged doctor, fighting the bottle, knows he has wasted his life, but maybe he can still do some good in this cesspool of a town. Mifune, however, is young and was enjoying the spoils – s*x, booze, partying – of his ill-gotten gains until TB begins to take him down.

Their scenes of struggle – the doctor trying to convince Mifune to follow his treatment regimen and Mifune fighting or temporarily agreeing only to stray later – are the heart and soul of the picture and, of course, are also a symbol of Japan's postwar struggle.

The doctor's young female assistant, whose heart was already broken by a gangster, now falls quietly for Mifune, but he doesn't see her – and what good would it do if he did? A lot of people make bad choices in this one.

If there is a plot, it's Mifune losing his grip on power as the disease slowly overwhelms his physical strength, which is part of his success. It's hard to be a mob boss spitting up blood every time you cough.

The real albeit shadow plot, however, is Mifune choosing whether or not to fight his TB, which feeds the theme of illness as a metaphor for postwar Japan. To wit, will Japan fight its way back to being a respectable developed country or just continue symbolically spitting up blood?

None of this would work in the hands of a lesser director. Kurosawa knew the story he wanted to tell and used his fetid swamp, dispiriting town – the prostitutes have the nicest things and their stuff still looks like junk – and illness metaphor to frame and advance his theme.

This also wouldn't work in the hands of lesser actors. Shimura is a decent man, broken by alcohol and who knows what else, struggling to do good amidst the wreckage of his life and country. Had fate turned differently, he'd probably have been a prominent professor of medicine.

Mifune, too, might have been a good man – he shows flashes of kindness and honor – had the conflict not made his prewar belief system the wrong software for the postwar operating system. An ability to smartly adjust to changing realities is the greatest of all life hacks.

Both of these actors had long, successful, and high-profile careers because they could become the character they were playing and because the camera just loves them. Acting success requires the same skill and God-given luck in every culture.

Shot in black and white – they'd probably have had to sell off half the country to afford color film at that time – and on obvious sets, the look of the sets is still incredible as you feel the poverty, the decay, and the near hopelessness. It's a visually moving picture.

Kurosawa, though, is too smart a director to completely close the door on hope. Shimura's teenage schoolgirl patient – young, cute, wearing a nice school uniform, and optimistic – floats in and out just enough to periodically tap the viewer on the shoulder and say, "But wait, there is hope."

So take out of Drunken Angel what you want. Is Japan a fetid cesspool of corruption fated to remain a country permanently suffering from TB, or can its younger generation fight the disease and lift the country out of the swamp? Is it a future of smart school kids or gangsters?

History has given us the happy news that the school kids won, but credit Kurosawa for seeing that option in 1948 when many had written Japan off for the rest of the 20th century. Yet by the late 1980s, American businessmen were taking notes at Japanese management conferences.

Drunken Angel, which can suffer occasionally from its lack of a strong plot, more than makes up for it with its sneaky glimmer of hope. But today, it also provides an incredible time capsule of postwar Japan that is more effective than ten documentaries.

 

[Harp]

^ Kurosawa and the true and truthful power of film objective strength.

Years past, after a surf bum sojourn in Hawaii's windward Kaneohe, I returned to Chicago with tuberculin
infection courtesy a Honolulu Makkikki Heights seedy studio apartment crash pad. A hospital clerical job
mandatory TB screening caught the bug. A year spent on Izonizid and chest x-rays. The drug kicked my azz,
but it killed off the bug. Must see this film.

 

[The Connector]

Holy Motors (2012) by Leos Carax, I watched it yesterday night.
A surrealistic musical I could call it, a weird journey.
From the description...
A man boards a limousine to be driven to his day's work: nine mysterious "appointments."

 

[MonsieurTK]

Project Hail Mary (2026), starring Ryan Gosling, is a masterpiece and likely my new all-time favourite movie.

It had everything from thrilling/intense scenes, to comedic and heart-warming moments. I'd truly recommend it to everyone of all ages, though sci-fi lovers will fully enjoy this.

 

[Fading Fast]

White Woman (1933) with Carole Lombard, Charles Laughton, Charles Bickford, and Kent Taylor


White Woman is another movie that makes one thankful for the precode era; not because it's a great movie – it isn't, it's just a good one – but because it got made. That would not happen once the Code was enforced by the second half of 1934.

Set in the East Indies under British colonial rule, Carole Lombard plays a scorned woman owing to her husband's su*cide, and "another man." Now an outcast in "proper" society, she barely survives as a torch singer and probably a woman for, um, hire.

Enter Charles Laughton playing a wealthy rubber plantation owner who, against logic, marries Lombard and takes her up river to his home. The logic then becomes clear as Laughton only hires people, like Lombard, with marks against them, allowing him total control.

He rules his plantation with fear and intimidation in a psychotic manner. It is another impressive performance from Laughton: you hate him, but you can't not watch him enjoying being cruel in a sociopathic, almost mirthful way. He creates a memorably bent and evil character.

Lombard is physically repulsed by her husband – for a nuanced bit of acting, look for the scene where he first shows her their bedroom and you can see her skin crawling. Unsurprisingly, she eventually "takes up" with one of Laughton's overseers, played by the handsome Kent Taylor.

Laughton sends Taylor "farther up river" to run operations there to separate him from Lombard. This leads to Act III where the new overseer, played by Charles Bickford, comes in and proves less malleable to Laughton's command, even though Laughton has the goods on Bickford.

Bickford, playing to his brand, is all machismo, trying to get Lombard to go for a tumble while openly mocking Laughton. The climax – no spoilers coming – has Laughton trying to punish Lombard, Taylor and Bickford, but Bickford is no pushover – and the natives are no friends.

Being a 1930s movie, the natives aren't treated with respect, but in truth, they aren't treated much at all, as this is a story about a white woman and, eventually, three white men jockeying for control in this claustrophobic, steamy, and demoralizing plantation.

While their customs and ways are offhandedly dismissed, the natives also prove resilient and smart in their own battle against Laughton. It's just another reason this movie wouldn't get made after the Code was enforced.

Lombard is good as the beaten-down woman fighting for a tiny thread of happiness; Taylor is adequate as another 1930s "handsome man" outshined by less-pretty-but-more-masculine Bickford – but this is Laughton's movie, as he owns every scene he's in.

Filmed entirely on sets that are obvious – "the river" looks like a water tank in a studio – there's something kitschy about the "fake" jungle today as it almost foreshadows the fake tiki bars of the 1950s. Heck, the studios in the 1950s could have sold Trader Vic's their leftover set decor.

The story itself boils down to, as always, s*x and power tightly tangled up. Men want power to get women to have s*x with them; women use s*x to equalize that power; and only occasionally does love break through this tussle and make the story interesting.

White Woman shows that dynamic playing out in, for that day, a remote and forbidding part of the world where audiences could imagine the rules of civility breaking down or never having existed. Toss in an engaging performance by Laughton, and the movie still entertains today.

One year later, and this movie can't get made this way. The casual attitude toward s*x; the natives defeating the colonists; and the fallen woman not getting punished simply wouldn't happen under the Code – you have to turn to precode Hollywood for that kind of honesty.

 

[Harp]

Carole Lombard. David Niven recounts having a farewell dinner at the Gables' before leaving for the war in his memoir, The Moon's A Balloon. Carole gifted him one of her stockings. Later, in England his wife would embrace a sobbing Captain Clark Gable out on the terrace, weeping for his lost love.

With Hollywood having sunk so deep in muddy political correctness mire with its current film fare so despoiled, how easy it is to forget the pre code substantive period when actresses like Carole Lombard still live today.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Little Giant (1933) with Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Helen Vinson, and Russell Hopton


Playing to and riffing on his gangster image at the same time, Edward G. Robinson delivers an enjoyable performance in The Little Giant, a movie that missed emphasizing the lightning in the bottle it captured but seemed not to recognize: Robinson and Mary Astor's on-screen chemistry.

Robinson plays the head of a Chicago bootlegging mob who planned ahead for the end of Prohibition by salting away a lot of money. With repeal coming, he closes up shop, pays off "his boys," and heads west with his right-hand man, played by Russell Hopton.

Robinson plans to settle in swanky Santa Barbara and "join society." The little guy has even haphazardly studied up on manners, but of course, as a fish out of water, he struggles to find a way in with the "right" people.

The street-smart, cunning, and ruthless gangster thus gets taken in by the sc*m artists who prey on the rich because he's completely out of his element and just assumes all "society" people are honest. Good God.

At the center of the con game is, of course, a pretty girl, played by Helen Vinson, whose bankrupt family has ****med many Santa Barbara families out of money, but then lost the money themselves. Robinson falls hard for her; she sees his bankroll; and the swindle begins.

Afraid he's not fitting in by living at a hotel, Robinson rents a big old estate from a real estate agent, played by Mary Astor, whose family had owned the house until they lost all their money to Vinson's family's sc*m. Astor, to avoid embarrassment for all, keeps this to herself.

Robinson even turns to her for advice about fitting in with the Vinson family and courting their daughter Helen. Eventually the Vinsons take Robinson for a massive sum of money as the scales finally fall from his eyes. Then he calls in his "boys" from Chicago for Act III.

The Little Giant is not really a gangster movie, but a life-after-gangsterhood movie, with Robinson struggling to make a place for himself in society – something any normal person could have told him would be all but impossible. It's his version of Hyman Roth's retirement in Florida.

The fun here is the culture clash. It's seeing Robinson use the wrong words or pronounce them incorrectly despite having tried hard to study up. It's also seeing the swells – some, not all of them – looking down on him, but still being willing to take his money.

It's additional fun to watch short, squat, uncouth Robinson trying to learn how to play polo to impress Vinson, or watch him present her with the wrong gifts, or in the wrong way – or see Robinson not knowing what to do with the toothpick left over from a hors d'oeuvre.

It's the age-old lesson that money will take you far in this world, but not all the way, if all the way for you is the upper crust of society. It's also the age-old lesson that the upper crust of society isn't all that impressive when you see it up close.

The rather thin plot plays out with a backbeat of Astor seeing something good in Robinson that he doesn't see in himself. Their scenes – two actors you wouldn't put together on paper – are the movie's gold as their chemistry and affection for each other leap off the screen.

Astor plays these scenes brilliantly. Robinson bloviates a lot, but she uses subtle looks and nuanced tones to calm him down or steer him in the right direction, with it only slowly dawning on him that she is a special girl.

He looks like a garden gnome and sounds like a frog, while she is quietly beautiful, with a voice that sounds like it never knew a moment of hardship. But having been knocked back hard on her heels, you can see how Astor would respect and appreciate a man like Robinson.

That's pretty much it for the story away from the climax, which you'll want to see fresh. While there is some precode punch to the movie – unpunished criminal activity and implied bed hopping – tweaked a bit, this story could almost be turned into a Hallmark movie today.

Robinson's character would have to be an ex-con, but it could employ the same plot: a former criminal tries to ingratiate himself into the upper class only to learn that the people in the upper class aren't anything special, but that the woman he didn't notice for most of the movie is.

The Little Giant is a nice diversion precode if you get worn out from the arrant gangsterism, Depression misery, or general licentiousness of the precode world and just want to enjoy a lighter movie, made ten times better because of lovely Mary Astor.

 

[Harp]

^ Although aware Robinson had an earlier pre WWII impact, my attentive focus the man lies squarely his role in McQueen's vehicle, The Cincinnati Kid wherein he just nailed Lancy Howard down, period end of discussion.
Cannot believe he went Oscar-less.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ Although aware Robinson had an earlier pre WWII impact, my attentive focus the man lies squarely his role in McQueen's vehicle, The Cincinnati Kid wherein he just nailed Lancy Howard down, period end of discussion.
Cannot believe he went Oscar-less.

Wonderful movie with two very attractive young ladies, but you might want to go back and visit some of his earlier work too. His character as the insurance claims adjuster in "Double Indemnity" is one of my favorite characters of all times.

 

[Harp]

^ Will do. A bucket film listing, which innate procrastination bane interferes.

...speaking of the Kid, read book, and film equitable match, though always felt something left table untouched.
Ann and Tuesday were nice eye candy, but Joan Blondell drowned them in her luminous feminine allure; easily eclipsing both ingenues with tornadic charismatic intensity. She and Lancy Howard shared past entangle that film's director failed capitalize; leaving discernible absence echoing throughout picture, despite some rather evident tension. Always believed Joan aged rather remarkably well, much more alluring with maturity.

 

[Lost_Doublestuffed]

TOP *** part 1 in the movies theater........the sound track is so good, if you like classic 80's music

his boots when riding the motor cycle seemed pretty loud, red and white??

anyway, was good to see it on the big screen

 

[WithBongInHand]

Thunderball. The recent 4k restoration.

Not the greatest Bond film but certainly not the worst.