What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

And recently, Bullitt. A movie I have come to appreciate more and more with each viewing. A solid cast that maybe gets overlooked because of the car chase of all car chases.

...or the Swanson's tv dinners. Steverino stacks them at the hood grocer's.
I like it that he doesn't cook and is probably a basic slob like me. Reheats his coffee too.

 

[Touchofevil]

...or the Swanson's tv dinners. Steverino stacks them at the hood grocer's.
I like it that he doesn't cook and is probably a basic slob like me. Reheats his coffee too.

He reminds me of Paul Newman’s character in Harper.

 

[Harp]

He reminds me of Paul Newman’s character in Harper.

Now that you mention it, yeah.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Das Boot - 1985 uncut TV series (282 min).

Always a happening.

 

[Fading Fast]

Captured! (1933) with Leslie Howard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Paul Lukas, and Margaret Lindsay


A British prisoner of war becomes imprisoned alongside his best friend from home, unaware that while he was captured, the friend began an affair with his wife. – Internet Movie Database


If you notice a contradiction in IMDb's plot summary of Captured!, you also get the entire rub of the movie: a best friend doesn't sleep with your wife while you're in a prisoner of war camp – it's almost tautologically impossible. Has it ever happened? Of course it has.

Talk about awkward:

"Any news from home?"
"Umm, no."
"How's my wife?"
"Howling like a banshee."
"What!"
"Oh, nothing, I said she's fine."
"Oh, okay."

Sure, the jokes write themselves, but not for Leslie Howard, who met and married his wife in all of six days before shipping out and soon finding himself in a POW camp. He gets worried, not suspicious when his wife's letters stop coming. "Sorry, dear, I was too exhausted to write."

When Howard's best friend, or so he thought, played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., is captured and brought to the same camp, Howard is excited for the companionship and news from home: ''How's my wife?" "Couldn't be more satisfied." "What?" "She misses you."

It's only funny in a cruel way, as Howard loves his wife and holding on to her is the one thing that's keeping him going in the hell of a POW camp. Fairbanks Jr. realizes what an outright scumbag he's been, but now doesn't seem to be the time to tell Howard – he may be right.

As that awful personal drama plays out, the men are also dealing with the horrors of living in a German POW camp in WWI. When a new camp commander, played by Paul Lukas, arrives, Howard as senior officer of the prisoners negotiates improved conditions.

In return for guaranteeing no escape attempts, he gets the men better accommodations, food, and recreation, but since trying to escape is an army (it can be murky) rule or expectation, can he even really do this? Who knows? But he does.

Fairbanks Jr., who walks into this highly unusual setup and is dying from the guilt of talking to Howard every day, plans to escape anyway, arguing with Howard, and probably rightfully so, that it's his duty. "What about schtupping my wife?" "Not a duty, but quite enjoyable." "Damn you."

Kidding aside again, Fairbanks Jr. escapes because some m*ron in German high command thought it logical to put a major air force base next to a POW camp, but an unbelievable set of coincidences leads to an intriguing, if not-that-believable, Act III.

So many things that are not believable happen in Act III, that you just have to go with it because the good core story (the best friend banging the wife and the two men ending up in the same POW camp) keeps you engaged.

You also stay engaged because it's a heck of a cast. Howard is always a bit Howard, but still an outstanding actor in that he captures, as he does here, something of his character in a complex way. Fairbanks Jr. is excellent, too, but part of his appeal is his ridiculous handsomeness.

On the other side of the, well, war is Lukas who never puts in a bad performance. Here, he's the WWI-style German officer of code and honor. He tries, like Howard, to make the best of an awful situation. What country, after all, ever has enough food and medicine during a total war?

The woman both men want, played by the lovely Margaret Lindsay, gets limited screen time and then has the awkward role of trying to justify cheating on her husband, a POW, with his best friend. She's pretty and has lovely diction, but that's a bridge too far for almost any actress.

Watch her scenes as she almost looks frightened. What approach could she take? Her husband did nothing wrong, but time, distance, and lust pushed him far enough out of mind for her to misbehave. It's almost understandable, but not defendable, and she knows it.

Shot on sets at Warners with a few sequences at the Glendale Grand Central Air Terminal standing in for the German air base conveniently located right next to the prisoner of war camp, you won't be fooled that you're in Germany, but Warners still knew how to make an A picture.

What is outright odd to us today, but was reasonably common back then, is to have the German officers all speaking in German with no translation of any kind. It is off putting to be watching an entire conversation take place in German and then have the movie return to English.

Movies like Captured! – mini morality tales – don't get made today, unless as an indie somewhere because all movies now are extravaganzas that aren't happy if they don't overwhelm you with too many entangled storylines, themes, characters, and action.

In the early era of sound, however, a one-trick pony movie could be embraced by a major studio and the public: best friend sleeps with best friend's wife while that friend is serving God and King locked away in a POW camp. It's simple, awful, and morally rattling.

It's nice today to watch a movie that has a theme, a message, and a plot that all naturally align. You don't want every movie to be like that, but complexity for complexities sake is an affliction too. KISS can apply in measured amounts to movies too.

 

[Harp]

^ I haven't been following The Iliad wokeness story or Supergirl box office bust, but it seems the corporate suite is lost beyond gravity's reasoned truth.

 

[Biff42]

The Odyssey was amazing. If people are avoiding it because they think the casting is "woke" they're missing out. The acting, effects, story were incredible IMO.

If any group can be upset about the casting are actual Greek people, because there seemed to be few (if any) cast in this Greek epic. Like, what about Billy Zane, John Stamos, etc?

 

[Harp]

The Odyssey was amazing. If people are avoiding it because they think the casting is "woke" they're missing out. The acting, effects, story were incredible IMO.

If any group can be upset about the casting are actual Greek people, because there seemed to be few (if any) cast in this Greek epic. Like, what about Billy Zane, John Stamos, etc?

Duuno wokitis aside Helen contro, but WTF, Brad Pitt as Achilles in Troy was a real drag.
...haven't seen Billy Z since his Titanic wuz.

 

[Touchofevil]

I am a David Goodis fan so I am currently watching “Dark Passage“ on TCM’s Noir Alley. I believe it is the third time I have had it on in the past couple/few weeks. A good Bogart flick with some nice shots of San Francisco circa 1947.

 

[Touchofevil]

On TCM, The Lady from Shanghai. A pretty near perfect noir ending.

 

[Fading Fast]

Ladies of the Chorus (1948) with Marilyn Monroe, Adele Jergens, Rand Brooks, and Nana Bryant


What is particularly enjoyable about Marilyn Monroe's first major role on screen is that she hadn't yet become "Marilyn!" the s*x symbol, so she doesn't do her breathy voice, nor does she walk like gravity is pulling at her in oddly asymmetrical ways.

Ladies of the Chorus is just a B musical from Columbia Pictures, which would shortly not renew Monroe's contract. Yes, that sounds like the worst decision ever made in the history of Hollywood, but who knows if Monroe would've become "Marilyn!" had she stayed at Columbia.

What's enjoyable here, in scenes in the chorus' dressing room or later when it's just Monroe and her mother, is seeing an actress – young, still learning her craft, but seemingly unaffected – who has yet to have been changed by an image that overwhelmed everything.

In what effectively is a Hallmark movie for its day, Monroe plays a chorus girl in a burlesque show who gets elevated to star, which leads to her meeting a handsome and wealthy bachelor, played by Rand Brooks, from – and this is the fly in the ointment – a socially prominent family.

The first to see this fly is Monroe's mother – a chorus lady herself – played by Adele Jergens. Jergens played the part of the young burlesque queen smitten by a handsome scion many years ago in her own life only to see it end in tears and single motherhood... of Monroe.

Young lovers, then, now, and forever, don't want to hear their parents or elders tell them why something won't work, so the kids persist despite the warnings. Eventually it's time to meet the parents, or in this case, the widowed mother of Brooks, played by Nana Bryant.

A worried Jergens secures a promise from Brooks that he'll tell his mother the full truth about her and her daughter's background before they meet so that there are no unpleasant surprises later. It's a good plan as long as one faithfully executes on it. Brooks, as we learn immediately, leaves out a key detail.

All starts off well when the families – Monroe and Jergens, and Brooks and mother Bryant – meet for a several-day stay at Bryant's stately house. Still, mom doesn't know that sweet Monroe and her lovely mother are some of that era's down-market s*xually titillating dancers.

Here, too, it's nice to see Marilyn seemingly uninhibited or bending to an image, but instead just trying, pretty successfully, to convince you she's a character in a movie. Watch for the scene when she and her mother fake that they haven't seen each other in days – it's pure fun.

You've never seen a movie, and have definitely never seen a romcom, if you don't know that the truth about the women's past will not only eventually spill out, but it will spill out in the worst way and at the worst time possible – which it does in the climax of Act III.

There's a neat double twist that happens that's worth seeing fresh, but credit Bryant with walking off with the movie in the best way possible. Plus, Bryant seemed to have a blast doing it.

This is all Hallmark, just adjusted for 1948 norms. Class differences blocking romance is a theme in regular rotation in Hallmark's current list of romantic plot challenges. Even the resolution can often be similar, just tweaked for seventy-plus years of cultural change.

Without Monroe in the cast, this is just a silly movie that one watches for an hour of very lighthearted diversion, but being a B movie from a major studio, it's still not cheap or embarrassing. Jergens, Brooks, and as noted, Bryant are all professionals who elevate this average plot.

But with Monroe and for us today, it's like discovering a small piece of Hollywood archeology, a fossil to dust off from the past of "Marilyn!" Here she's young, pretty, and sweet, but not overtly s*xy or kittenish, other than the fact that God kind of made her that way.

She also gets to sing a couple of songs, thankfully, not in that breathless style that would come to define her voice and reach its ridiculous apotheosis at JFK's birthday party. Instead she just sings like a nice young lady with a fine albeit not exciting voice.

Watching Monroe act like an actress and not a s*x kitten makes one wonder whether, in a parallel universe, there wasn't once a Monroe who went on to have a solid Hollywood career at a much lower temperature, but with real roles, less attention, and less personal destruction.

Today, Ladies of the Chorus – and a few other pre-"Marilyn!" movies say that is possible, but alas, all we have is an icon of the midcentury who still has currency today but who also ran over whatever real person was inside the icon.

 

[Harp]

^ Years later at Brando's for a barbeque, Marilyn had something of a breakdown revealing
her angst lost self amidst Hollywood royalty. A cry for help no one heard.

 

[Touchofevil]

Marathon Man, again. Cannot get the Mad Magazine version out of my head. Read the Mad version many years before I ever saw the movie and it still sticks with me. A very enjoyable movie every time I watch it. A strong cast and entertaining story.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I went to the first showing of The Odyssey - a story that's been important to me since I was a little kid. I've read multiple translations (always preferring Robert Fitzgerald's) and seen most of the previous adaptations. Between all the internet squabbling and the critical raves, I had to go see for myself what Christopher Nolan has wrought.

Spoilers follow, though with a three-thousand-year-old story, it's not exactly a mystery! This is gonna be a long post, feel free to move on if you don't care...

The bottom line is: this is Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, not Homer's Odyssey. And I run hot and cold with Nolan, loving some of his films and feeling totally Meh about others. For me, his almost-Kubrick-ian chilly style does not match well with the needs this project. I didn't hate the film - of course it's well made - but I couldn't warm to it. Here are some reasons:

Odysseus is not heroic. This is not Matt Damon's fault, it's the screenplay's. We see virtually no evidence of "wily Odysseus" here. Odysseus - when he's not amnesiac from eating lotus flowers - seems to plod along from plot point to plot point, not exactly being a great leader. He shows no emotion as his men are picked off one by one, and while he makes noises about wanting to get back to Ithaca, his primary emotion is grief and PTSD for having been "the hero who sacked Troy" and killed thousands of innocent Trojans. This doesn't make sense for a hardened warrior who'd spent 10 years fighting the Trojans.

And re his alleged cleverness, it's not shown. We don't even get his dialog with the cyclops where Odysseus tells him that his name is "Nobody" so that later the cyclops can't convince his brothers to help him after he's been blinded because when they ask who hurt him, he says, "Nobody has hurt me!"

Why shoot in IMAX if the color palette is almost entirely grays and blacks, not to mention borderline too-dark lighting in many cases? While some of the sets and locations are impressive, the overall look is dull and dour - far from the "classic Hollywood ancient world epic" look that some folks are claiming this film revives.

Nolan is not comfortable with the supernatural. The film dutifully checks the boxes for appearances by the cyclops, sirens, the witch Circe, the ***** Calypso, the goddess Athena... but it isn't interested in any of them. While there's real visceral horror in some of the sequences, notably the terrifying cyclops and Samantha Morton's Circe viciously turning men into pigs, in general, the film's loopy pacing and editing doesn't support them. While Athena appears next to Odysseus and speaks to him, it's left vague whether she's actually a goddess or only a manifestation of his guilt about Troy.

The film doesn't even give us a closeup on to see, or let us hear, the sirens. That sequence all transpires in distant mist, and afterwards Odysseus tells us what he heard. And don't get me started about the visit to the Underworld. It's just a goddam beach at dusk. Calypso is never identified as a *****, it's just Charlize Theron in a diaphanous dress hanging around an empty beach prodding him into flashbacks.

The pacing and editing is generally terrible: important scenes are rushed through, and their import isn't given room to breathe. Perhaps the most heartbreaking moment in the story - when the disguised Odysseus returns to Ithaca and his ancient hunting dog Argos, who's been waiting for him to return 20 years, dies contentedly under his hand - is actually carefully set up when we see the dog as a puppy in one of the flashbacks-within-flashbacks (of course)... but the death scene needs another 15-second reaction shot or two to really land. But no, it cuts away immediately.

Another note re the editing: when Odysseus finally reveals himself and slays the suitors, the fight choreography and editing reminded me of Batman Begins - edited too fast and too blurred to actually see anything. Whether or not this is done to try and sell Odysseus single-handedly killing dozens of men or not, there's simply no excuse for weak fight scenes in Hollywood epics these days.

Don't get me started on the alleged musical score. It's mostly headache-inducing noise. And if you're gonna have a bard start off the story by singing it in Odysseus' palace, how about doing it in something approaching the way these epics were sung? But no, we get: <bangs staff on floor> A man! <bangs staff> A war! <bangs staff>, A trick... This guy would have been thrown out on his *** if he "performed" this way in ancient Greece.

The decision to use very familiar actors and - especially - modern colloquial American English (vs. Thor-like archaic speech, or English accents as in most ancient-world films) is disastrous. Having Tom Holland as Telemachus petulantly arguing that "My dad is coming back!" reads as Peter Parker, not Telemachus. Only a couple of actors, notably Robert Pattison as a mwa-ha-ha villain, seem to be having any fun.

Frankly, there's zero fun in the film. There's no sense of epic adventure, no sense of heroism or glory. No alluring fantasy scenarios amazingly brought to life. Jason and the Argonauts or Troy this ain't! The prototype adventure story has been reduced to a flat slog about a bunch of seriously depressed, way-too-contemporary actors.

Mind you, I didn't walk out of the film hating it. But I was disappointed. No doubt this will movie will be hugely successful, and for many folks who don't know the Odyssey, it will be a perfectly serviceable adaptation. But as a lifelong fan of this particular mythos, I expected more from Christopher Nolan.

 

[Harp]

^ My understanding is that an alternative feminist version of The Odyssey served literary foundation for this picture instead of the Homeric magnum opus; therefore setting stage for a less faithful film.
Something Mouse House corporate suite asinine antics seen woke Snow White, so there it most certainly is folks.

 

[Fading Fast]

Them! (1954) with James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, and Joan Weldon


To appreciate Them! today, you need a perspective on where the horror genre was in the early 1950s and what Them! brought to it, or you can ignore all that and just enjoy a good old-fashioned "giant radioactive bug" horror flick. The latter is the more fun approach.

Deep in the desert, a six-year-old girl is found wandering in shock. The police, including an officer played by James Whitmore, find her, and after some basic investigating, they discover that something destroyed her family's vacation trailer and her parents and brother are missing.

In the nearby town, Whitmore and his partner then investigate a general store that has been smashed up, but the money is still in the register, the owner is dead, and some sugar has been taken. It's no normal robbery, but what is it? And what is that high-pitched sound they hear?

Director Gordon Douglas does an excellent job of building suspense: you don't know you are in a giant mutant ant movie until about thirty minutes in, after the FBI and a father-daughter team of research scientists, played by Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon, are called in.

Gwenn, one of the great supporting actors of the era, and Weldon, who is outstanding in the role, bring an impressive scientific gravitas to the effort – which helps to avoid any campy feel. They present as genuine PhDs investigating a frightening theory, not horror movie actors.

They are also two actors who have great screen chemistry – they feel like a close father-daughter team. Watch, in particular, for the scenes where they are researching the ants; it feels like they've worked like that hundreds of times before. It's outstanding acting talent on display.

Finally, thirty minutes in, when the FBI agent and Weldon are in the desert examining evidence, the first ant appears, coming up over a sand dune emitting an eerie high-pitched sound. Even today, it's still a bit scary, but it must have frightened the bejesus out of 1950s audiences.

Now the movie shifts from a "what is it?" mystery to a "what the heck do we do about it?" mystery with Gwenn and Weldon at the forefront, as they are the only ones who somewhat understand the mutant ants. Quickly, it comes down to killing all the queen ants and their eggs.

The logic is sound: no more queens, no more mothers, no more eggs, no more next-generation giant mutant ants, but it takes some work to hunt down all the queens and their nests, as it's no good just to kill the queen if she's already laid her eggs. There's always one more thing to do.

Eventually, there is one last nest of eggs in one of Hollywood's favorite places to film, a large municipal storm-drain system, in this case, the one in Los Angeles. Also, the ants have killed the father of two young boys and either killed the boys or taken them hostage.

Gwenn, Weldon, Whitmore, and a phalanx of police officers, FBI agents, and Army soldiers descend on the tunnels to try to find the boys and kill the ants and any eggs. How many of the soldiers going into the tunnel with flamethrowers were thinking, "I never signed up for this?"

You can guess the outcome, but there are a few neat twists anyway. Cue a little anti-A-bomb philosophizing, perhaps a jab or two at the Cold War, and Them! is finito. It's always easy to be philosophically against the bomb, but who isn't glad Germany or Japan didn't get it first?

It's also easy to be philosophically against the Cold War, but who wants to live in a world that looks like Soviet Russia or Mao's "Great Leap Forward?" Away from the usual Hollywood moral preening, the movie is mainly a good what-have-we-unleashed story.

It works, and still works today, for the same reason all good movies work – you care about the people. Giant ants get old quickly unless they are threatening a cop you like, or a father-daughter research team who are devoted professionals you quickly come to care about.

It helps, too, that the movie isn't camp; it is deadly serious. It's a very early "giant mutant insect" movie worried that the huge ants could easily take over the world and end mankind. Maybe that's silly, but it's not written that way, and watching it, you (mainly) won't feel that it's silly.

Despite a small budget, the production doesn't come across as cheap for the era. Apparently, there was little enthusiasm from studio head Jack Warner for the effort. Still, the final ants-vs.-man battle in the tunnels has a lot of extras and some good special effects.

The movie might have benefitted from the small budget as, without elaborate special effects, it needed what it got: a strong story and a strong cast to carry the unconventional idea forward. Even the black and white feels right as color, back then, often was too loud for thoughtful drama.

It would've been neat had they not shown the bugs at all, as the fear was greater when you only saw the results of the ants' destruction, while hearing their sound and seeing their shadows. But this was no Harvey; audiences would have revolted had they not eventually seen the ants.

Credit Whitmore for carrying the movie almost single-handedly early on and Gwenn and Weldon taking it up another notch when they're brought in. It's also nice to see that, even in 1954, young female scientists were very good looking... at least in Hollywood.

Them! kicked off the "giant mutant bug" horror subgenre that aligned closely enough with two of the era's fears: the atomic bomb and the Cold War. Art always reflects its times, so big bugs were used as metaphors for hubris and war.

Today, Them! is all those things if you want it to be, and film students can go to town stealing papers about it from AI. For the rest of us, it's still a fun movie where you can kinda buy the story if you kid yourself, but really you just enjoy the acting and the 1950s horror-genre style.