Last Movie you Watched?

Loomis wrote:

I guess THE THING is one of those sacred cows of movie geekdom that I just don't "get", however much I try, like THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

Oh my goodness.

I like THE THING much more than I like HALLOWEEN.

I greatly enjoy the film. I would call the characters the weak link. They mostly sorta blend together, where as ALIEN had seven very distinct people.

But I love the tone, the music, the effects, the story. I love the uncompromising bleakness. It really feels like the end of the world.

Loomis, it might be a film that takes a couple of viewings to "get." Maybe not this Christmas, but next, when we're all recovering from Skyfalltosis and our knobs are falling off.

Having Wilford Brimley yell "I'll keeeeell yooooouuuu!" makes it great.

Strangers On A Train

Such an ugly film. Couldn't stand to look at it.

Vesper wrote:

Strangers On A Train

Such an ugly film. Couldn't stand to look at it.

Disco Cary has words for you.

The Incident

not too shabby TV-movie with Walther Mattau playing a small-town lawyer in WWII having to defend a German accused of murdering the towns doctor. Spooks' Peter Firth as the German in question, the late Harry Morgan as the visiting Federal judge with an axe to grind and Matthau in decent form. Features young Ariana Richards pre-Jurassic Park and obscurity.

Final Destination 5

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1622979/

3/5


The Bedford Incident (1965)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058962/

5/5

j7wild wrote:

The Bedford Incident (1965)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058962/

5/5

Correct weight.

After tackling some festive Frasier episodes, time for the first festive movie

Holiday Inn

decent fun, muddled by Bing Crosby being screwed over by Astaire throughout but Bing comes up trumps when needed.
Alas, onto Elf.

Cat Run (2011)



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446147/

dumb movie with a few funny, quirky moment accented by sudden spurts of bloody violence and full female nudity and a decent performance by all actors and actresses involved considering the paper thin script they had to work with

I give it 3.5/5

Five Star Final (1931) Dir. Mervyn LeRoy

Wow. A mix of wit and sleaze with crushing drama in fantastic pre-code fashion, all done with the extremely sure hand of Mervyn LeRoy - who's a sorely underrated director who rarely lets me down.

Eddie G's a newspaper editor for a rag paper, who because of pressure from head office over flagging sales, drags up an old scandalous murder story from 20 years ago, this time to write the "true story". With an extremely unethical Boris Karloff as his head man, plus some hot-dame reporter who slinks in off the street, they track the woman down. Problem - she's now married with a daughter who doesnt know her past, and tomorrow the daughters marrying into fair respectability. And its all going to come crashing down, with nobody out of the crossfire.

Top performances all round - its also got George E. Stone as a petty crim of a reporter, and the debut of Aline MacMahon as Eddie G's secretary. Fantastic stuff.



Tiger Shark (1932) Dir. Howard Hawks

Apparently this film was the genesis for one of the most re-used plotlines in history - the story of two best mates, one an older, eccentric ugly guy and a younger, more attractive silent type mate. Ugly guy gets girl out of pity, but because threes a crowd, girl ends up in love with younger guy, who is too much of a mate to do the dirty. However ugly guys ends up dying and forgiving them, so we're all good. The DVD box even says this was reused for SLIM in 1937 (with Pat O'Brien and Hank Fonda) and MANPOWER in '41 (again with Eddie G, and George Raft).

So Eddie G's the ugly guy, spoting a moustache as dodgy as his accent, Richard Arlen's the straight guy, the chick's some nobody called Zita Johann (though she later married John Houseman). Its pleasant enough fun, but the interesting sequences come from the action - these guys are Portugese fisherman, and we get some real cool location shots of the Santiago docks, as well as fishing out in the sea, which is pretty awesome stuff.



Tight Spot (1955) Dir. Phil Karlson

I'd been reading about this film recently, but when I rented it out I couldnt remember why - and it wasnt because I knew it starred Eddie G. It was something else, which I realized as soon as the opening credits rolled.

It's directed by Phil Karlson. Oh yeah. 8)

Looking at the DVD box, I saw it concerned a mobster and a D.A. The box seemed to hint Eddie G was the D.A and Brian Keith was playing the mobster. I was a bit skeptical. Turned out Eddie G was the D.A., but Keith was playing a badass cop, and the mobster they want in jail's being playing by an extremely sinister Lorne Greene. And the person in the middle? Ginger Rogers - a bit too old for the role but otherwise perfect - as a good time girl gone bad who's been in jail for 4 years. Eddie G and Keith offer her a deal - testify against Greene, and the sentence is commuted. And since she and Keith strike up a fairly bitchy romance, she might have some more incentive. But will she live to tell the tale? Will she tell it at all? Are Keith and Eddie G all that they seem?

A pretty good thriller ensues with some more nice style from the Karlson, and theres a hilarious potshot at the boring nature of 50s television. Gotta love it.

Interestingly enoguh, considering all the 50s films I watch and the Eddie G's I've seen (those 3 brought the tally up to 23), this was my first Eddie G film from the 50s. And theres a fair few more I cant wait to get to, like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (eventually) and HELL ON FRISCO BAY. 8)

And last night...



The Cobweb (1955) Dir. Vincente Minnelli

Sure, I like Minnelli. Sure, I like Rosenmann. Sure, I like Widmark. Sure, I love Grahame.

But apart from John Kerr, and some interesting moments with the cinemascope lenses, this picture is tripe. Utter tripe.

As i said, I liked Kerr, I liked Strasberg, but Boyer is woeful, Gish is a pain in the ass, Bacall's character is in and out of the picture, then just gets tossed away in tears at the end, thankfully we get to see a fair bit of Grahame cleavage because her character is humourously a bitch, Oscar Levant makes me laugh but also pisses me off (I still havent forgotten HUMORESQUE) and although I applaud Widmark, its not his best role. Although his toughly cynical demeanor made him one of the big stars of the 50s, it was mostly done by playing crooks, soldiers or cowboys. Trying to play a 50s man doesnt completely work for him, I enjoyed MY PAL GUS because its so sweet but he doesnt quite pull this off. Though he's far from the worst in it.

But what made this even more ludicrous was that everything went to shit because of some curtains! I mean, come on! FATE IS THE HUNTER knew how to make something of very little; it turns a pilots-need-cupholders stroy into an intriguing meditation on fate and friendship. This is just trash. Occasionally fun trash, but trash.

Your Highness....

urrghh

3/10 (mainly for Portman's sexy turn and Franco's singing)

The Thing (2011) - pretty good, the sense of paranoia was put across well and the SFX were suitably gruesome.

Easy Virtue

Argh, meh and ugh. Like a poor man's Gosford Park with the murder being that of a dog and without the delight that is Julian Fellowes. Actually both had Kristin Scott Thomas (former beau of Herr Clarkson).
Here Colin Firth begins the genesis of his Oscarworthy Oscar win in terms of pitch and dialogue. Or maybe that's just Firthster. All hail HM King George VI, pip pip and all the rest.

one for the neither here nor there column.

Glad you liked Five Star Final, Colly. Really a film that is excellent on all counts, but the standout factor for me is the ensemble. Karloff, McMahon, Warner and Robinson in particular.

What I love is that LeRoy can tell the story economically, and yet it's still packed to the brim with content. It's a rare talent, and I think he only really ran into trouble when he got older, and lazier, and his films were bloated by nature, like Quo Vadis and Gypsy. Mind you, I haven't seen a heap of those later films, and Mister Roberts is really superb, although I don't know how much of it was Ford.

Ford was about the first week on set before he and Fonda had their punch on, to my knowledge.

Halloween (1978)

5/5

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077651/

In these days of gory horror movies that are more gross than scary, this 33 year old film made on a shoe-string budget of $320,000, still have the power to scare you and tug at your deepest fear, with very little gore and blood.

The General Died At Dawn (1936) Dir. Lewis Milestone

Inconsistent, but exciting sort of adventure/espionage flick starring Gary Cooper as O'Hara, an American who sympathises with the Chinese peasants stuck under the thumb of violent warlord Akim Tamiroff - so much so that he's in charge of carrying a large sum of money from the provinces to Shanghai, to pay for weapons. Complicating matters are enemy agents Porter Hall and his daughter, Madeleine Carrol, who get Coop catpured, leading to an hours worth of various escapes, betrayals, shootings, and a very dialogue heavy climax.

Odd glitch at the start, either the DVD doesnt have the scene or they never actually filmed one, but we never see Coop and Carrol meet. Its agreed she'll seduce him onto the train (where Tamiroff can capture him), but we never see them meet before the train, and they're suddenly in love. For such a crucail scene never to be seen really took me out of the pic for a fair while.

Hmm, unless I'm much mistaken you have indeed signed up for the library Colly. Either that or there are some odd coincidences here. ;) I was wondering why I had to return Heat Lightning so promptly...

I can't remember that problem with The General Died at Dawn, but I thought it was probably towards the stronger side of that Cooper set (if that is indeed what you're working from). Beau Geste is king, though.

I have indeed - joined last Friday. Unhappily enough they only gave me a week before I have to return the DVDs. But I was pleased THE COBWEB was there, thought you might have returned it that morning. ;) Also unhappily enough after this weeks batch I probably wont be able to rent any for more than a month. Alas...

On the topic of the Cooper boxset, DESIGN FOR LIVING sounds great, so Im rather looking forward to that.

Speaking of rentals...



The Sheepman (1958) Dir. George Marshall

A film in the vein of Donen's CHARADE and ARABESQUE, which parody their genre while remaining entertaining, serious adventures in their own right. Helmed by George Marshall (who did DESTRY RIDES AGAIN), Glenn Ford stars as a stranger to a town, just off the train. He spends the first 5 minutes being an absolute dick - swindling Edgar Buchanan out of his horse, breaking a shop's saddle, and beating up the town heavy. Why? Because he's pre-empting the trouble that'll arrive when it turns out he's bringing a herd of sheep into pristine cattle country. And those town people arent going to take that lying down. No siree.

The scope looks great (though its obvious the actors didnt go beyond the set of the town), the Warner print still looks good, there's some good action, and alongside Ford are two interesting names: A young Shirely MacLaine playing the good girl in the middle, and a young Leslie Nielsen playing the villain (!), an old friendly adversary from Ford's past who's become big man in town.

Good fun. :)

Well, you should be able to renew until someone else requests a given item.

But they close for a couple of weeks over Christmas anyway.