What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

I've been fond of They Drive By Night ever since college where my roommate in the dorms had an LP compilation of classic dialogue bits from Warner Bros. movies of the '30s and '40. It had the truck stop banter between the various truckers and waitress Ann Sheridan. I wanted to see that scene and it took several years and the VHS era before I could manage it. As I've noted before, TDBN is two different types of movies riveted together. The first is a Warner Bros. hardscrabble slice of life. The second is early noir. I keep forgetting about the happy ending however.

I don't think this is the scene you're talking about because there is a later one where Sheridan really exchanges barbs with several of the truckers (haven't found that one yet), but this one has a couple of good lines:

Sheridan has the incredible ability to be one of the boys, but still the woman they want.

 

[AmateisGal]

Nobody Lives Forever (1946) with John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Walter Brennan. Decent film noir, but nothing special, though I do love Walter Brennan in anything I see him in. And I so hate that John Garfield died so young. He had a lot of talent. The blacklisting of him during the Red Scare did a number on his health, poor guy.

 

[Zombie_61]

I've been fond of They Drive By Night ever since college where my roommate in the dorms had an LP compilation of classic dialogue bits from Warner Bros. movies of the '30s and '40. It had the truck stop banter between the various truckers and waitress Ann Sheridan. I wanted to see that scene and it took several years and the VHS era before I could manage it. As I've noted before, TDBN is two different types of movies riveted together. The first is a Warner Bros. hardscrabble slice of life. The second is early noir. I keep forgetting about the happy ending however.

You've hit the problem with this movie right between the uprights. The wife of Producer Mark Hellinger read and liked the script, but he thought "nobody would pay money to see a bunch of truck drivers" so the writers added the "intrigue" with Ida Lupino's character. Trouble is that the shift in story and tone is rather ham-fisted and doesn't really work, but it's still an interesting movie to watch and one I enjoy.

 

[1967Cougar390]

My youngest son and I over the past week have watched the Home Alone series of movies. I had seen the first two but not three and four. Number five is on schedule for tomorrow evening. Each of the movies are good in their own right. We have had good laughs so far watching them.

Steven

 

[Fading Fast]

The Prisoner of Second Avenue from 1975 with Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft based on a play by Neil Simon

• Watching this was a spur of the moment decision as the opening credits are superimposed over street scenes of New York City, so I gave it a shot as I enjoy seeing how places I know in the city looked in the past

• And the street scenes throughout were wonderful time travel - thoroughly enjoyed them as they even included one of the office buildings I worked in years ago - but the rest of the movie, despite being billed as a comedy, was only occasionally funny and often times grating

• I'll admit, I'm not a big Niel Simon fan (I like some of his stuff), but this was a miss if comedy was its purpose. The premise - a middle aged couple, Lemmon and Bancroft, living in downwardly spiraling 1970s NYC, question their reason for staying especially after Lemmon loses his job - led to a movie of anger not humor

• Fair enough, living in a failing city and losing your job are reasons to be mad, but that did not seem to be the intent of the movie; however, Lemmon played it genuinely angry most of the time, so it was hard to laugh as his jokes came across as bitter and snide. Maybe that was the intent; if so, mission accomplished

• Also, it's hard to adjust to Bancroft, who played the uber-WASP woman - emotionless even during sex - in The Graduate, play, in this movie, a kinda neurotic NYC wife, running the gamut of human emotions often in just one scene

• As noted, there is great NYC time travel here to a not-fun-but-real period in NYC history - bell bottoms and polyester suits, garbage-strewn sidewalks, graffiti everywhere and street hustling you can see and feel - but the rest just wasn't my cup of tea

• N.B. There is a fun scene with a just-pre-Rocky-fame Sylvester Stallone

 

[1967Cougar390]

I was looking for a great classic comedy and I found “ I Married a Witch”. The movie stars Veronica Lake. She plays a witch from colonial Salem named Jennifer who is burned at the stake alongside her father. The pair are re-awakened hundreds of years later when lightning strikes a tree on the site where they were put to death. Before her death, Jennifer casts a spell on the family of the man who burned them, cursing his descendants to always have terrible romantic lives. Once she and her father are free, they set out to seek revenge. Jennifer tries to seduce the latest descendant, a politician named Wallace Wooley, with a love potion so that he will fall hopelessly in love with her. “I’ll treat him like a slave! I’ll make him suffer, body and soul!” she exclaims. Of course, her wicked plan goes off course almost immediately when she ends up drinking the magic potion after a painting falls and hits her on the head. After drinking the potion she falls in love with her nemesis Wallace Wooley, much to her father’s chagrin.

If you are looking for a feel good comedy around Halloween, I Married a Witch fits the bill.

 

[Fading Fast]

View attachment 262836
I was looking for a great classic comedy and I found “ I Married a Witch”. The movie stars Veronica Lake. She plays a witch from colonial Salem named Jennifer who is burned at the stake alongside her father. The pair are re-awakened hundreds of years later when lightning strikes a tree on the site where they were put to death. Before her death, Jennifer casts a spell on the family of the man who burned them, cursing his descendants to always have terrible romantic lives. Once she and her father are free, they set out to seek revenge. Jennifer tries to seduce the latest descendant, a politician named Wallace Wooley, with a love potion so that he will fall hopelessly in love with her. “I’ll treat him like a slave! I’ll make him suffer, body and soul!” she exclaims. Of course, her wicked plan goes off course almost immediately when she ends up drinking the magic potion after a painting falls and hits her on the head. After drinking the potion she falls in love with her nemesis Wallace Wooley, much to her father’s chagrin.

If you are looking for a feel good comedy around Halloween, I Married a Witch fits the bill.

Couldn't agree more - fun movie. You can feel the roots of TV's "Bewitched" in it, plus Veronica Lake is just so darn cute.

 

[1967Cougar390]

Couldn't agree more - fun movie. You can feel the roots of TV's "Bewitched" in it, plus Veronica Lake is just so darn cute.

I thought the same thing about Bewitched. Veronica Lake is a classic Hollywood beauty, breathtaking and innocently sexy. I was shocked to read her biography. A sad and tragic early death.

Steven

 

[Fading Fast]

I thought the same thing about Bewitched. Veronica Lake is a classic Hollywood beauty, breathtaking and innocently sexy. I was shocked to read her biography. A sad and tragic early death.

Steven

I read it too. It's sad. She did not have the life you wish she had.

 

[Bushman]

Antebellum, which only came out last night. I heard a great review on from Michael Phillips (of the Chicago Tribune) on NPR while driving to work yesterday morning, so I had to give it a watch. The whiplash time change was a real surprise, but a welcome one for sure as it went back and gave me the context to finish the movie. I actually enjoyed it very much.

 

[Touchofevil]

Gilda on TCM playing in the background.

 

[Fading Fast]

Gilda on TCM playing in the background.

Doing the same.

 

[MisterCairo]

The 2020 edition of the Cairo family's Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror has started early, with an episode of The Munsters (Herman's twin brother Charlie shows up to scam money to pay off a debt using a fake uranium extracting machine), followed by Frankenweenie, Tim Burton full version of his short film.

Included in the bluray is his originL short which curiously we had never seen. Really young Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall, I had no idea they were in it!

And it still makes our daughter cry, even at 14!

 

[Touchofevil]

Doing the same.

It seems that we do that often. School has kept me busier than ever this year, but a morning with the door open, a Memories candle burning, a cup of coffee, and TCM playing creates a perfect mood while grading papers or tweaking lesson plans.

 

[Fading Fast]

It seems that we do that often. School has kept me busier than ever this year, but a morning with the door open, a Memories candle burning, a cup of coffee, and TCM playing creates a perfect mood while grading papers or tweaking lesson plans.

I sometimes think of you doing the same thing I am especially during Sunday's Noir Alley. I'll admit this, I recorded "Gilda" today (as, like you, I'm doing some work), but not to see the movie as I've seen it recently, but because I want to hear the host's comments. I like Eddie Muller and enjoy his insights on the movies.

 

[Touchofevil]

I sometimes think of you doing the same thing I am especially during Sunday's Noir Alley. I'll admit this, I recorded "Gilda" today (as, like you, I'm doing some work), but not to see the movie as I've seen it recently, but because I want to hear the host's comments. I like Eddie Muller and enjoy his insights on the movies.

I too have recently seen Gilda most likely on TCM. I did turn the volume up at the end to listen to Eddie. I read a couple of his novels a number of years back and would check in on his website from time to time so I was pretty happy when he came to TCM. He is no Robert Osbourne, but Muller brings something kind of like what Osbourne did to TCM.

 

[Fading Fast]

I too have recently seen Gilda most likely on TCM. I did turn the volume up at the end to listen to Eddie. I read a couple of his novels a number of years back and would check in on his website from time to time so I was pretty happy when he came to TCM. He is no Robert Osbourne, but Muller brings something kind of like what Osbourne did to TCM.

So, I just listened to his comments. His view that a bisexual love triangle is the movie's Rosetta Stone is interesting and, now, I want to watch it again to see if it aligns to that view as well as he argues. Some of it is obvious as we all guessed more was going on between those three than the code allowed, but it will be neat to see if it all fits inside Muller's explanation. Plus, it's another excuse to watch the movie again.

 

[Bushman]

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse - a tad overly vibrantly colored for my taste, but I love the animation style reflecting comic panels, and it was great seeing Miles Morales in his first cinematic appearance. The rest of the voice cast was fantastic too, including Nicholas Cage and Jake Johnson!

 

[1967Cougar390]

I watched the romantic comedy, Blithe Spirit from 1945. The movie stars Rex Harrison, Kay Hammond, and Constance Cummings. It’s a great movie filmed in technicolor.
After novelist Charles Condomine invites a self-proclaimed medium to his home for a séance, with the hope of gathering material for his new book. The hapless psychic he invites accidentally summons the spirit of his late wife, Elvira. After Elvira arrives from the hereafter, the fun begins between the wives vining for his attention.
I highly recommend technicolor this classic.

Steven

 

[Fading Fast]

Stage Fright from 1950 with Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Todd, Michael Wilding and Alastair Sim

All Hitchcock-directed movies carry the weight of being "Hitchcock films," which is probably why this solid movie is not particularly well known as it's generally regarded as one of his "lesser efforts."

And maybe it is, but few pick a movie based on the director and, away from the Hitchcock mystique, this is a fine and entertaining film. It also feels more like his earlier 1930s efforts than the "big" movies still to come in the 1950s or even his very tight films from the 1940s like "Suspicion" and "Rebecca."

Jane Wyman, an aspiring actress, tries to help her boyfriend, Richard Todd, who is accused of killing the husband of his paramour, Marlene Dietrich. While that's enough to unravel, since this is Hitchcock, there's more: Dietrich is nearly twenty years Todd's senior (making Dietrich a cougar before the word took on that meaning) and appears to have killed her husband and set Todd up to take the fall...or not.

Despite finding out at the same time that her boyfriend has been cheating on her with a woman nearly two decades older than she and that he also might be a murderer, Wyman doesn't pause to risk her own life and freedom trying to exculpate her boyfriend.

From here, the movie is very Hitchcockian as innocent people do more and more illegal things trying to prove their own or someone else's innocence, thus getting into deeper and deeper trouble with the police. Also in classic Hitchcock fashion, Wyman befriends the detective on the murder case to gain information and direct his investigation, but then begins to fall for him. This makes for a quite interesting love triangle as, as noted, her boyfriend is also the prime murder suspect.

Early on, Wyman reaches out to her father, Alastair Sim, a member of the upper class who has drifted Bohemian and, thus, enjoys both helping his daughter in her illegal sleuthing efforts and tweaking the police. And Sim becomes the joy of the movie as he insouciantly guides his much-more-serious-than-he daughter's efforts while seeing and joyfully smirking at all the silliness and hypocrisy around him. He owns every scene he's in and you miss him when he isn't there.

The rest of the movie plays out as you'd expect. Things get worse for Todd and Wyman while Dietrich seems to be getting away with everything. Along the way, we get some near-missed opportunities to expose Dietrich, the police ploddingly but effectively putting the pieces together (a classic Hitchcock touch), a creepy doll used for psychological effect, a harrowing chase scene, a Hitchcock cameo and then, literally, the final curtain falling.

The acting is top notch, the story is serviceable and, while there are tense moments, like many of the master director's efforts, the overall feel is almost light and joyful - it's as much about love and family as it is about murder and mayhem. Yes, it's fair to say this is not Hitchcock's best, but as a run-of-the-mill movie, it's better than many.