What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Harp]

Among others, Easy Rider makes my list. Except for the cemetery scene in New Orleans it has held up well against time.

Check out the cemetery scene at the end of The Thomas Crown Affair-Steverino/Faye Dunaway
version. Iconic for its continued effect on females, and, which in today's asinine political
correctness couldn't be shot as witness its 1999 remake featuring Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo.
Some classics should simply be left alone.

 

[Fading Fast]

^ Chuck Norris said McQueen told him when The Blob came out, he was so embarrassed
he kept inside his house for a whole week. I only recall its ending with the Arctic parachute
drop ''The End. Or is it?''

Gollygeewilokers but a guy needs to start somewhere.

I mentioned it in my comments, but he has absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about as his performance is by far the best one in the movie / he made the movie better than the script. That said, since he was just starting out, I could see him not being able to judge himself honestly and see what I just noted.

 

[Harp]

^ What has always drawn me to McQueen is his credibility, a remarkable innate trait
few actors birthright own and strive to possess. Richard Harris also had this quality,
but Steverino had it in spades; yet, perhaps inwardly doubted himself. His quip to Norris
might be indicative an inner angst known only to himself.

He also is the only guy who wore a plain deal coffin trench coat and made it a sartorial
statement beyond doubt. He definitely single handedly killed the traditional 1917 trench.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Aliens - 1990 Special Edition, Blue ray

 

[Edward]

Been years since I saw the Blob. It nade a biv impact, though. As I recall, there's an episode of M*A*S*H in which it's the movie of the week for the 4077th, the sort of oops that you'd never get away with on television now.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Right now listening to the isolated Aliens soundtrack on the Blue ray. Yes, a different experience, seeing the scenes with music only and I can highly recommend it!

 

[mcskeletor]

Mildly embarrassed to admit this, but I just finished watching the 1997 "classic" I Know What You Did Last Summer. Nostalgia factor was strong, but I think it held up ok all things considered.

 

[dimchick]

Currently visiting San Francisco on my way back from Yosemite - just finished watching The Rock… had to!

 

[Harp]

^ Go out and tour Alcatraz.

 

[mcskeletor]

Currently visiting San Francisco on my way back from Yosemite - just finished watching The Rock… had to!

That is such an entertaining film, love it. I also gotta shout out one of my all-time favorites, Escape from Alcatraz. If you've never had the pleasure, do yourself a favor and dust that old classic off.

 

[lina]

Saw Pawil Pawlikowski’s Fatherland the other day. Really well done. A slow burn, but fantastic actors and filming.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Train (1964) with Burt Lancaster, Jeanne Moreau, and Paul Scofield


The Train is loosely based on a true WWII story, with an emphasis on "loosely" for the details, but at a very high level, it's somewhat accurate. Still, it's best to just watch it as a movie, know there's some truth in there somewhere, and enjoy Hollywood going to town on it.

Burt Lancaster plays a laconic French trainyard worker whom the Germans use to, well, keep the trains running, while, covertly, he's in the resistance. In French lore, practically every Frenchman/woman was in the resistance – it's amazing the Germans held France for so long.

At the opening, the Allies are, at most, days away from liberating Paris, so the Germans are trying to steal all they can before hopping on the last train out with hundreds of famous French paintings that one art-obsessed German colonel, played by Paul Scofield, wants.

When Lancaster is given an order to stop the train and he learns what's on it – art – he now ponders a real-world trolley car problem, but there are only lives on one side and artwork on the other. Of course, France's "national treasure" is worth lives, but whose?

That's what makes these problems so fascinating. At a high level, we understand that protecting treasures like Renoirs and Van Goghs at the cost of lives makes sense, but bring it down to the specific: Who wants to die for a painting?

That is the question Lancaster – explicitly and implicitly – never stops asking. Would you give your life to save the Mona Lisa? Maybe in the heat of the moment, you'd put your life on the line, but what about right now: your life ends this second or the Mona Lisa is burned?

How many people sitting on their sofa with their spouse, binge-watching something, would give up their lives at that second so that the Mona Lisa isn't burned? An angry Lancaster tries to comply without costing lives, but Germany's WWII-era leaderships have made French lives cheap, so it's a tall order.

After a friend and mentor of Lancaster's is executed on the spot for small-ball sabotage, without even a show trial, and right in front of Lancaster, he wants revenge on Scofield, the man who callously ordered the execution. Lancaster now wants to stop the train to punish Scofield.

You're never quite sure of Lancaster's motivation as he seems to switch around a bit during the movie, but you know he doesn't like Germans and he specifically doesn't like Scofield. So he puts into place an incredibly elaborate plan of deception to stop the train.

At one point during all the obfuscations, Lancaster is put under soft house arrest in a hotel where the proprietress, played by Jeanne Moreau, is a Frenchwoman angry at the world, but still, there's a decency under her hard shell. She owns every scene she's in.

She doesn't care if Lancaster starves, but she brings him some food anyway. When he disappears for hours to sabotage the Germans and they come looking for him, she blandly covers for him, but again, she doesn't care. You'll want to marry her before the picture's over.

Eventually, as had to happen by Hollywood scriptwriter rules, Lancaster and Scofield effectively go mano a mano with the train as the arena. It comes down to a series of trolley-car-like decisions, with Lancaster's morality showing much better than Scofield's.

Director John Frankenheimer shot in beautiful black and white and on location in France. The movie also doubles as a visual documentary of steam trains: monstrous metal beasts that, owing to their huffing and puffing sounds and the steam they give off, look alive.

Frankenheimer understood that his movie, titled The Train, needed to really show the train in all its glory, so watch for the scenes of the men running it – quite a complicated affair – or even of the men just repairing the train or the tracks, which is cool too. It is all railfan heaven.

Also watch for the gut-wrenching scene near the end (no spoilers coming) that, as noted, graphically displays the moral dilemma of people versus art, with, once again, Lancaster choosing people and then looking for another way to stop the train.

While Moreau owns her scenes, this is Lancaster's movie and the big actor shows why he was a star. Firmly masculine, he looks equal to the massive steam engine he drives. Frank Sinatra made a WWII movie about a train, too, but he rides on it; Lancaster wills his forward.

Frankenheimer never shows you much of the Allies' advance: his story is about the retreat and what the Germans are trying, at the last minute, to steal from the French. The tension here is in that odd wartime interregnum when the occupation is nearly, but not yet completely, over.

That makes every death a greater tragedy, as each one is so pointless now. The Germans can continue killing – they seem to like it, especially in their pique over losing a war they had been winning handily – but nothing will change.

And Lancaster? He grows and expands in The Train, but his morality doesn't change: life matters, even one anonymous life, more than art. You may disagree, but then again, are you ready to die this second – right this second – for the Mona Lisa?

Hopefully, when the dust settles, Lancaster will go back to Moreau's hotel and see if the spark was indicative of something real. Plus, she looks so adorable in her French print cotton dresses, he should go back just to see her in one again.

 

[Harp]

^ A gal pal of mine absolutely adores Burt Lancaster. Ruth is the widow of a physicist who
hair's breadth lost the Nobel Prize-I only told this by others-and her first intimate comment
after our introduction was ''Burt Lancaster is my guy.'' And she patted her heart sighing.
She's a Sabra, native born Israeli, and those gals do not kid around.
For Xmas I got her a From Here to Eternity cd with Burt and Deborah Kerr locked torrid surf swept embrace.

 

[Zombie_61]

Been years since I saw the Blob. It nade a biv impact, though. As I recall, there's an episode of M*A*S*H in which it's the movie of the week for the 4077th, the sort of oops that you'd never get away with on television now.

Well, it was only a five year goof (i.e., The Blob was completed five years after the Korean War ended) and they probably figured no one would pay much attention to that anyway, especially considering M*A*S*H's version of that war lasted 11 years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Edward]

Well, it was only a five year goof (i.e., The Blob was completed five years after the Korean War ended) and they probably figured no one would pay much attention to that anyway, especially considering M*A*S*H's version of that war lasted 11 years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yip. Pre-web it's the sort of thing nobody really noticed.

 

[Fading Fast]

D*ck Tracy (1945) with Morgan Conway, Anne Jeffreys, Mike Mazurki, Mickey Kuhn, Lyle Latel, and Joseph Crehan


In the 1930s and 1940s, the comic strip section of the newspaper was populated with many strips that no sane parent would let their children read, like D*ck Tracy, which was full of gruesome deaths, warped characters, and a general mayhem that still feels brutal today.

Bringing D*ck Tracy or any of the beloved comic strips to the big screen also presents several challenges, with the most obvious being that everyone has an image in his head about how the characters look, which will only rarely align with the actor chosen.

In RKO's D*ck Tracy, Morgan Conway, a regular on the B-movie circuit, brings the iconic detective to life. Does he look like the comic strip Tracy? Shrug – yes, no, maybe; does it matter much? To some, yes, but be a bit forgiving and he's fine.

The story, too, is fine. The strip has an emphasis on warped criminals with Tracy's personal life floating in the background, but the movie puts Tracy and his personal life more forward, with the criminal, Splitface here, played by Mike Mazurki, floating in the background.

As crazy as it sounds, one assumes the Motion Picture Production Code had something to do with this, as the gory murders, extreme violence, and general viciousness of the strip go way beyond what the Code allows in other movies. That might also help explain the shift in focus to Tracy's personal life.

Part of Tracy's personal life includes his "always waiting for him to take her to dinner" girlfriend, Tess Trueheart, played by Anne Jeffreys, and Tracy's ward, Junior, played by Mickey Kuhn. Anne Jeffreys, however, doesn't look like a woman who would wait long to be taken to dinner.

Rounding out the Tracy universe is Lyle Latell, playing Tracy's, as shown here, slightly bumbling sidekick Pat Patton, but he is not portrayed that way in 1945 in the strip. Tracy's titular boss, Chief Brandon, played by Joseph Crehan, is, however, reasonably true to the strip.

The movie kicks off with several murders by knifing, often accompanied by an extortion note – pay or you're next – that becomes more serious when the mayor himself receives a threatening note. Now he really wants Tracy to stop Splitface, the man believed to be behind the murders.

It takes Tracy and team about halfway into this hour-long effort to identify the murderer, and they back into it with brains and a few lucky stumbles. From there, the movie is a straightforward "find the killer [Splitface]" effort before he can kill again, especially the mayor.

Splitface – so named for the disfiguring scar he has down his forehead and across one cheek – isn't, however, standing still waiting to be captured. He's still trying to kill and, when necessary, he comes after Tracy indirectly.

In a good climax, a lot of threads and characters are tied together as – as it had to be – Tracy and Splitface go mano a mano in one of the era's favorite places for climactic battles: "The old rundown waterfront." One assumes this was a repeat-use set at RKO.

Despite what appears to be a modest budget (or someone has some missing receipts to explain) and being shot, except for some modest framing footage, seemingly almost entirely on sets, the cinematography and atmosphere are good in a very basic 1940s dark B-movie crime-drama sort of way.

Even though Conway only somewhat looks like Tracy – how many men really have a granite jaw and shoulders broader than a door frame? – and has a bit of a reedy voice, he captures some essence of Tracy. It helps that he plays it low key and not like a "super detective."

Mazurki, too, underplays his psychotic villain Splitface, but then Mazurki is a giant of a man with an imposing face sporting a massive disfiguring scar; had he not underplayed it, it would have been cartoonish.

Credit also goes to director William Berke for not leaning heavily into the movie's comic strip roots. Instead, he made a solid B-movie mystery/crime-drama, but with characters many in the audience knew from the "funny papers."

No one steals the movie, but Jeffreys' scenes as Trueheart are the most fun because they lighten the heavy mood of the movie a bit as the poor woman, who knows exactly who Tracy is, just wants a meal now and then. Her exchanges with Tracy are the spice in the recipe.

Oddly, the very pretty Jane Greer has a supporting role as the daughter of one of the men threatened by Splitface, which has Tracy protecting her and Trueheart trying to protect her relationship with Tracy against this new threat. It's a fun brief triangle that Tracy never sees.

Keep your eye out for every time Trueheart sees Greer get near Tracy to witness that territoriality is not just something our four-legged friends practice.

In 1990, Warren Beatty brought a big-budget version of D*ck Tracy to the screen that received mixed reviews, with plenty of appreciation for its style but less enthusiasm for its narrative, as it tried to make Tracy more than what he was in the papers: a really smart, laconic detective warped a bit by his job.

RKO went on to make a total of four Tracy movies: one more with Conway as Tracy and then the two final ones with Ralph Byrd reprising his role as Tracy from the earlier Republic D*ck Tracy serials. Byrd certainly looked more like the comic strip Tracy, which presumably helped make him an easy choice to bring back.

Today, these old movies like D*ck Tracy are fun curios for those who like 1940s culture. You can still watch and enjoy it if you don't know who D*ck Tracy is, but you'll miss a lot and might wonder why the darn movie was made as if the characters were pre-ordained.

Still, you'll probably enjoy it as you would any reasonably well-done 1940s B-movie mystery/crime-drama, which, at its core, is what it is.

 

[Touchofevil]

Currently visiting San Francisco on my way back from Yosemite - just finished watching The Rock… had to!

Was on a school field trip in San Francisco when the movie was released. We were on Alcatraz as they were setting up for the movie’s premiere. It was a fun energy for the kids.
I loved Yosemite as a kid; spent a lot of time there. Also took the kids/students on a weeklong camping trip to Yosemite early in my teaching days. A lot of bear activity in and around the campsite and vehicles.
Good memories.

 

[Touchofevil]

^ A gal pal of mine absolutely adores Burt Lancaster. Ruth is the widow of a physicist who
hair's breadth lost the Nobel Prize-I only told this by others-and her first intimate comment
after our introduction was ''Burt Lancaster is my guy.'' And she patted her heart sighing.
She's a Sabra, native born Israeli, and those gals do not kid around.
For Xmas I got her a From Here to Eternity cd with Burt and Deborah Kerr locked torrid surf swept embrace.

Not a huge fan of Lancaster, but I did enjoy his performance in Sweet Smell of Success.

 

[Touchofevil]

Breakdown (1952) on TCM’s Noir Alley. First time viewing it. Entertaining enough, but nowhere as entertaining as The Set-Up (1949) starring Robert Ryan. Boxing and gangster/corruption make for entertaining noir.