What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

Uncut TV series DVD, 282 min. nonstop.

Trench, ever see the film The Enemy Below with Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens?
A German submarine duels to a draw with an American destroyer, a finely honed game of cat and mouse Chess.

 

[Fading Fast]

Trench, ever see the film The Enemy Below with Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens?
A German submarine duels to a draw with an American destroyer, a finely honed game of cat and mouse Chess.

I made a similar recommendation to our sub-film-fan Trenchfriend when I commented on "The Enemy Below" a few months ago (here #29133).

 

[Trenchfriend]

Trench, ever see the film The Enemy Below with Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens?
A German submarine duels to a draw with an American destroyer, a finely honed game of cat and mouse Chess.

Yeah, I saw it in the 90s. I think, two times. I remember Curt Jürgens saying "Made in Germany!".

And I saw Crimson Tide, one time. I remember the super-cast!

 

[Samson25]

The new 007...No time to die.
It sucked....RIP James Bond franchise.

 

[belfastboy]

"Pig" with Nicolaus Cage. Not my favourite actor by a long stretch but he was actually good in this movie. It gets great reviews but I thought it was a good premise, interesting narrative poorly executed. Cage was good but the others were a combo of being poorly drawn and very poorly acted. But it was the $1 of the week special on our cable channel and worth a buck and 2 hours of my life.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Octagon starring the Academy Award deserving actor, Chuck Norris. What an entertaining action packed quality flick! It is a shame they never made a sequel.
How in the heck did this movie get three stars. It is so awful. The acting and dialogue is pretty bad. The story is lame. The action scenes are laughable. And yet I kept watching. It is not as if I have to get up to turn the channel. It was the inner voice echo thing that they kept doing that finally chased me away.

 

[Fading Fast]

Crazed Fruit from 1956, a Japanese film


Crazed Fruit starts as an insightful but light commentary on the bored, rich youth of 1950s Japan that transitions, almost imperceptibly at first, into a destructive love-triangle tale fueled by deceit and biblical-level betrayal - and all in under an hour and a half.

When we meet the two late-teenage brothers Masahiko Tsugawa and Yujiro Ishihara, they are leaving for a summer vacation at their parents' beach house. The older one, Ishihara, is experienced with women, wine and song, but his only slightly younger brother, Tsugawa, is shy and innocent.

At the seaside community, they hang with a group of similarly bored, well-off, well-educated and disaffected teenagers. Like their rebellious-American-teen-spiritual cognates of that period (think The Wild One or Rebel Without a Cause), their dismissive comments say it all: "old ways are out," "we're not buying what they're selling," "Japan is a two-bit country," "it's a wasteland for the young," "we'll find our own way to live," "bored will be our creed."

As in America, for many, this is rebellion with a safety net as it all takes place from the comfort of their parents' upper-middle-class lifestyle and bankbook. All these kids are spending the summer, often unchaperoned, at their parents' very nice vacation homes. They have boats, sports cars and plenty of pocket money to spend their days water skiing and sunbathing and evenings going out to amusement parks and nightclubs.

1950s Japanese teen culture looks very similar to 1950s American teen culture (including the Hawaiian influences) with, naturally, Japanese characteristics. But as with older teenage boys everywhere, chasing girls is their main passtime. When younger brother, Tsugawa, meets a pretty and seemingly innocent young girl, Mie Kitahara, their chaste puppy love is made fun of by the more-experienced boys.

Then it all changes. One evening, when he's out nightclubbing with friends, older brother Ishihara sees Kitahara and she's with...wait for it...her American husband. Now the right thing to do is to tell your younger brother before he gets further involved.

Older brother Ishihara decides on another plan, which is to start sleeping with Kitahara who we now know is not even remotely innocent or sweet. Well, this is a big mess. Worse, proving the heart can be insanely stupid, Ishihara - who knows Kitahara's sordid morality - begins to fall in love with many-notches-on-her-bedpost Kitahara.

It's a brutal love triangle with a dotted fourth line to Kitahara's blind-to-it-all husband. (Spoiler alert) By the time it all spills out, as it always does, Ishihara is, against all better judgement, deeply in love with Kitahara, so much so, he deceives his brother right to the end when he tries to run away with Kitahara.

(More spoiler alerts) Younger brother Tsugawa, having, along the way, lost his virginity to Kitahara (she's the Energizer Bunny of sex in this one), is also deeply and innocently in love with Kitahara. Now it's a Cain-and-Abel moment over the love of a harlot.

The ending of Crazed Fruit, which you want to see fresh, is powerful and shocking even in a movie that has already shifted from a light-hearted story about spoiled teens to a tale of biblical-like brother betrayal amidst Eve-like temptation.

Bored, spoiled rich kids and teenage love going horribly wrong are themes familiar to almost any modern culture, so kudos to writer Shintaro Ishihara and director Ko Nakahira for making an outstanding film of universal and timeless appeal. A film, one assumes, that also had to be deeply shocking to culturally reserved 1950s Japan.


N.B. For us today, Crazed Fruit is also wonderful time travel to Japan's upper-middle-class teen culture of the 1950s. The American influences are everywhere from the dress (very Western, including baseball caps and Hawaiian shirts, which were the craze in America at that time, too) to the seaside amusement park the kids visit with its large American signs like "Play Land," "The Casino," and "Try You Luck."

 

[Doctor Strange]

I also watched Crazed Fruit a couple of weeks ago. I had similar reactions to yours: how very Americanized fifties Japan was; and how it seems that disaffected young people everywhere in the 50s/early 60s experienced the same juvenile delinquent/incipient beatnik state, somehow knowing that big societal changes were coming. I was less impressed with the melodramatic plot and the Hayes Code-like resolution that felled the principal characters. Oh, and what a great title!

I also DVR'd and watched another "Japanese New Wave" film that TCM ran the same night: One Way Ticket To Love (1960). This was about the young generation trying to escape postwar poverty and establish themselves: a male saxophone player trying to break into the jazz club scene, and a young woman forced to work as a nude dancer, and the sleazy entertainment-biz world around them. Like Crazed Fruit, it was an eye-opener to a side of postwar Japan not seen in Kurosawa or Ozu's films.

 

[Edward]

Army of Thieves. A Netflix prequel to the Army of the Dead zombie picture that was released a while back. This follows Sebastian the German safecracker and shows how he got caught up in it. Not a zombie picture at all (save a couple of brief clips from one of Seb's nightmares, and a television news report showing the outbreak hitting Nevada in a brief, background shot). More of a heist piece, really. Lots of fun, some great character acting, and a predominantly European cast and setting.

 

[MisterCairo]

A belated Hallowe'en Horror night, as our crammed schedule caused a backlog of missed films.

Horror as in fun, with an opening act of TV, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, followed by Hocus Pocus, one of our favourites.

We understand a sequel is in the works. 28 plus years later!

The Sanderson sisters reincarnate in a nursing home perhaps???

 

[Edward Reed]

Had to get in my dose of Ginger today…
Bachelor Mother (1939)
Ginger Rogers, David Niven, and Charles Coburn.
a fun comedy with some fine acting by Ginger. She has a great “if looks could kill” moment! Such a wonderfully expressive face. You always know what she’s thinking!
-“Your party is right over there.”
-“Oh, don't leave me. I won't know how to talk to these people!”
-“Just say NO to the men, the girls probably won't talk to you anyway.”

 

[Fading Fast]

Had to get in my dose of Ginger today…
Bachelor Mother (1939)
Ginger Rogers, David Niven, and Charles Coburn.
a fun comedy with some fine acting by Ginger. She has a great “if looks could kill” moment! Such a wonderfully expressive face. You always know what she’s thinking!
-“Your party is right over there.”
-“Oh, don't leave me. I won't know how to talk to these people!”
-“Just say NO to the men, the girls probably won't talk to you anyway.”


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I really liked this one too (comments here: #27232) and, I agree, Rogers shines in it.

 

[Edward Reed]

I really liked this one too (comments here: #27232) and, I agree, Rogers shines in it.

Cool! Just read it! I’ll tell you what, Ginger Rogers never fails to impress me no matter how silly the film! She was really something special!

 

[Fading Fast]

Edge of Darkness from 1943 with Ann Sheridan, Errol Flynn and Walter Huston


As with so many things, the term propaganda was bent, even broken, by Nazi Germany. Originally, the word had a neutral connotation and meant the spreading of one's views and ideas, but by the time the Nazis were done with it, it became a derisive word meaning a dishonest or deceitful promotion of one's viewpoint.

Yet, propaganda can, or at least used to be able to, serve a noble purpose as seen in the many Hollywood WWII propaganda movies, which supported the Allies' war effort, promoted democracy and inspired hope the world over.

Edge of Darkness is one such positive propaganda effort. Set in a small fishing village in occupied Norway during WWII, there is an uneasy modus vivendi between the Norwegian citizens and the German garrison. When the movie opens, Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan are leading an aborning underground Norwegian resistance movement.

While most of the Norwegian citizens are with them, a few are "Quislings" (traitors) such as the owner of the local cannery who just wants to keep his profits flowing, Sheridan's brother who lacks the fortitude of character to resist and a polish woman who keeps company with a German officer as she just wants life to be "nice" again.

There are also those who aren't collaborating, but who don't want an active resistance. Sheridan's father, the town's doctor, played by Walter Huston and the town's priest both want to avoid "useless" loss of life. Right or wrong, they have a point arguing that German reprisals aren't worth it (the Germans kill multiple Norwegians for every German soldier that is killed). They believe that Norway should just wait out the German occupation.

The resistance itself is waiting for a shipment of arms from England who supposedly is supplying the entire Norwegian coast so that a coordinated uprising can take place at one time. Meanwhile, tensions in the town increase as the German commander claps down by shutting the cannery and shipping out to Germany most of the food and other necessities of daily life.

Edge of Darkness captures the fear and humiliation of being occupied even if most of the characters are archetypes and the dialogue speechy. But fitting the somber tone of the movie and their roles as serious resistance leaders, Flynn and Sheridan keep their star personalities in check.

After Sheridan is brutally raped and beaten by a German soldier - this is no soft-touch Mrs. Miniver propaganda movie - Flynn and many others in the movement want to launch the attack. Yet calmer heads, led by Sheridan, prevail as the resistance members decide to wait for the coordinated effort. At several critical turns in Edge of Darkness, women are fighters and leaders (the past was never as black and white as is often believed today).

(Spoiler alert) When the attack comes, everyone, including the old men and women and the former fence sitters, join in the dramatic and bloody battle that sees most of the town and most of the garrison wiped out. In the closing scene, Flynn and Sheridan lead the remaining resistance fighters into the surrounding woods where they will stage guerilla raids on the newly arriving German troops.

Edge of Darkness is propaganda at its best. The world was, well, on the edge of darkness, with large and small democratic countries back on their heels as evil totalitarian regimes advance. Movies like these draw stark but not unfair lines while encouraging and inspiring the free people of the world to support the war effort however they can.

Edge of Darkness' director, Lewis Milestone, is famous for being the director of one of the most passionately anti-war films ever made, 1930's All Quiet on the Western Front. By subsequently directing the pro-military, pro-resistance film Edge of Darkness, he effectively embodied the well-known quote (sometimes mis-attributed to John Maynard Keynes), "When the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, sir?"

Sitting in the safety of a movie theater in America in 1943 or your home in 2021, Milestone's Edge of Darkness forces you to ask yourself the same question Milestone clearly asked himself: what would I do? Maybe that's propaganda, but any movie that can challenge you so directly, even nearly eight decades after it was made, is also art.


N.B. A much-deserved hat tip to WWII historian and FL member @AmateisGal for this recommendation.

 

[Doctor Strange]

So, I went back to a theater for the first time in two years to check out Eternals...

Okay, I've been a Marvel fan since the sixties/seventies, and have mostly been very impressed with how Marvel Studios has managed to reproduce the comics' original sixties innovations across their films/series - the "more realistic characters with problems", the superior continuity detail handled elegantly across characters and stories, the huge cosmos with rippling timelines and alternate dimensions, the all-star mega-crossover...

Eternals is a late (1976), totally whacked-out Jack Kirby solo creation that takes the warring good and evil gods of Thor, and his DC New Gods books, to a more serious level, putting the ancient astronauts theory right up front. The Eternals, many of whose names and powers are variations on familiar Greek, Babylonian, Mayan, etc., mythologies (Ikaris, Thena, Sersi, Gilgamesh) have been here hidden among us for millennia, helping human evolution and innovation along, but mainly fighting the Deviants, a race of ravening monsters.

This was never going to be an easy film: it introduces TEN new heroic characters and flashes back and forward over 7000 years of history. It's got some really hard-sell cosmic stuff, like the Celestials - the original gigantic beings who created the universe and the Eternals, who are literally planet-sized. Thanos and Infinity Stones, time heists and multiple timelines... are all lightweight compared to this stuff. (Yes, I know Kurt Russell was revealed to be a living-planet Celestial in Guardians, Vol. 2 - but that was just a test drive.)

Anyway, I liked it, but it has problems. It was a smart move to cast strong actors and select an Oscar-winning director known for her intimate, human films. The human drama is mostly well handled... but it's often overwhelmed by the action and effects, not to mention the constant backstory info dumps. The film is beautifully photographed and designed, with an interesting new effect for the Eternals' magic/tech that's like organically growing gold and silver filigree, different from all the sparkles and coruscating light beams used before. And I won't kid you, as someone who's been fascinated by the ancient astronaut idea since I first encountered it (way back in 1967, in that Star Trek ep with Apollo!), I got a kick out of seeing Eternals teaching Sumerians and Babylonians how to use better tools and more productive agriculture.

But at the end of the day, this is a much more specialist Marvel movie that won't please the masses like the earlier films did. It's so conceptually huge, so much more intellectual and contemplative, even with all the spectacular CGI fighting. But you know, I'm very pleased that Marvel has leveraged their success to spend a lot to make something this weird and offbeat. Just finally seeing the "Eternals Created by Jack Kirby" title was a thrill to this old-school comics fan!

 

[MisterCairo]

Eldest and I out last night to see Dune. Mum and youngest away at a basketball tournament.

Really enjoyed it, never having read the book or having seen the earlier flick. Ending just right for a film meant to have a second part vice sequel, Canadian director Denis Villeneuve planning to film only the first half or so of the lengthy novel. It could have acted as a standalone story, in the event part two was not green lit (it has been).

Daughter was keen on seeing g Chalumet, I have never seen his work but was fairly impressed by his character.

Always great to see Javier Bardem, Oscar Isaac and Jason Momoa in films. Rebecca Ferguson is new to me, and she was fantastic in her role.

We had been thinking of seeing the Eternals, but reviews here not great, and the obscure characters do nothing for us. Likely an eventual streaming view. Maybe.

 

[Edward Reed]

The Big Sleep (1946) Humphrey Bogart; Lauren Bacall; Martha Vickers; Dorothy Malone
I’m not much for noir films so I never bothered to see this one until today… I’ve learned to appreciate Humphrey Bogart but this movie is just loaded with hot dames and amazing zingers!!!
( I think I need to start hanging out at bookstores! )
seems every woman he met in this movie was ready to get down at a drop of his hat! Lucky bum! LOL!
Philip Marlowe: “She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up.”

“Go ahead, scratch.”

 

[Trenchfriend]

Le Train (1973)

Woohoo!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Wow, that was a happening!

8/10

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Across the Pacific (1942) dir John Huston, with Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sidney Greenstreet. Artillery captain Bogie gets court-martialed for something to do with Army payroll- or does he? First part of the story takes place on a Japanese steamer headed from Canada down the east coast to the Panama Canal and Los Angeles, then the story finishes in Panama.

Set just before December 7th, 1941, with Chinese actors playing the Japanese parts and stumbling over their Japanese dialogue. Indicative of the times, a hip-talking Nisei turns out to be a Japanese agent, which fits in with the fear and distrust of the times of Americans of Japanese descent. Nevertheless, a well-done production of wartime Hollywood.