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Post by Prince Hal on May 31, 2016 10:49:44 GMT -5
Thanks, Prince Hal! I see I won't have to wonder what to watch for a good while, now! Enjoy, mon ami! Thought of an oldie but goodie about an American in the RCAF. Jimmy Cagney in Captain of the Clouds.Formula, but a great formula!
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 1, 2016 12:54:45 GMT -5
Monday night I watched They Were Expendable (1945) and last night I watched The Birds (1963). I could go on and on about both these movies. But I'll try to restrict myself to just a few sentences. John Wayne, Donna Reed and Robert Montgomery in They Were Expendable. They Were Expendable (1945) was released in December 1945 and didn't do such great box office. The war had been over for months and supposedly nobody wanted to see a war movie that ends in the early months of 1942 with 30,000 American personnel abandoned to the Japanese in the Philippines. We won that war. Remember? Apparently nobody was anxious to see a movie about one of the low points of the war just a few months after final victory. But the critics liked it. I like it too. It's one of my favorite war movies. Robert Montgomery and John Wayne are a couple of naval officers in a small group of motorized torpedo boats stationed in the Philippines. World War II starts and Brickley (Montgomery) and Rusty (Wayne) want to get into the action but the naval leadership thinks the little boats are only good for carrying messages and transporting the big brass to secret meetings. When they finally do get the OK for a real mission (an attack on a large enemy cruiser in Subic Bay) Rusty has a wounded hand and gets sidelined by Commander Brickley. Rusty is rather resentful, but a little less so when the doctor tells him he might have lost the hand to infection if he had come in a few hours later. He drowns his sadness by flirting with nurse Sandy (Donna Reed) and taking her to the dance when he's recovered. And then he's back with his group and they have their own little dramas and battles and retreats and incidents to deal with. If you know anything about World War II, you know that things went from bad to worse to dismal in the Philippines. Eventually, Brickley and Rusty and the remaining members of their little squad are among the refugees at the last U.S. airfield. They've lost their boats and several of the crew. And there's one last plane to safety and everybody else will have to stay. They have no idea what happened to Sandy. She was one of the nurses on Bataan, so she's hiding in the jungle or captured by the Japanese. Or dead. Brickley and Rusty have high priority because of their knowledge of gunboat tactics, and somebody in Washington thinks that they will be important in the war. So they take their places and fly to safety as thousands of their countrymen are left behind. And that's where it ends. We never find out what happened to Sandy. We never find out what happened to the crew of one of the gunboats after it went missing during a mission. I think that's why I like it. These guys on the gunboats have only a vague idea what's going on in the rest of the Philippines and the rest of the world doesn't even exist. They have no time to worry about stuff like that. People come and go, and you may never find out what happened to them. Robert Montgomery and Donna Reed are great. I also like John Wayne's performance a lot. He's very subdued. He's not in charge, Robert Montgomery is, so Wayne as Rusty has to swallow a lot of his ego and follow orders, and I think he's the better actor for it. Don't get me wrong, I like John Wayne's movies a lot, and I absolutely love Sands of Iwo Jima. But whereas Sands of Iwo Jima is an exciting war movie, They Were Expendable is something more than just a war movie, a rather subtle examination of men and women in war, not just for a battle, but for months and months of uncertainty and fear and desperation. My favorite non-Western John Wayne movie. By far.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 1, 2016 13:09:57 GMT -5
Tippi Hedren is awesome! I am kind of obsessed by The Birds. The last few years, I've been watching it once or twice a year. I don't know how many times I've seen it over the many years I've been watching it. I have very vague memories of being tripped out by the crows attacking the children when I was very young. Five years old or less! So I probably saw it for the first time in the late 1960s. What's not to love! Tippi Hedren! Rod Taylor! Veronica Cartwright (she was one of the doomed crew members in Alien!) Jessica Tandy! Suzanne Pleshette! And I love it that one of the girls at the school is the same girl that inherited Caesar the ventriloquist dummy in that famous episode of "The Twilight Zone" with Jackie Cooper! And birds, birds, birds! Yeah, I love this movie! It might be my favorite Hitchcock film. Either The Birds or Suspicion. Don't make me choose!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 1, 2016 13:24:41 GMT -5
Tippi Hedren is awesome! I am kind of obsessed by The Birds. The last few years, I've been watching it once or twice a year. I don't know how many times I've seen it over the many years I've been watching it. I have very vague memories of being tripped out by the crows attacking the children when I was very young. Five years old or less! So I probably saw it for the first time in the late 1960s. What's not to love! Tippi Hedren! Rod Taylor! Veronica Cartwright (she was one of the doomed crew members in Alien!) Jessica Tandy! Suzanne Pleshette! And I love it that one of the girls at the school is the same girl that inherited Caesar the ventriloquist dummy in that famous episode of "The Twilight Zone" with Jackie Cooper! And birds, birds, birds! Yeah, I love this movie! It might be my favorite Hitchcock film. Either The Birds or Suspicion. Don't make me choose! This movie is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies and I was very impressed by Suzanne Pleshette acting and of course Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor made it great. What impresses me that Tippi Hedren beat out Ursula Andress for Dr. No (1962) and Elke Sommer for The Prize (1963) for the most promising newcomer - Female in the Golden Globe Awards that year. I was shocked to see her defeating both Andress and Sommer for the prize. Jessica Tandy's role as Lydia Brenner was fabulous.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 1, 2016 13:25:51 GMT -5
Monday night I watched They Were Expendable (1945) and last night I watched The Birds (1963). I could go on and on about both these movies. But I'll try to restrict myself to just a few sentences. John Wayne, Donna Reed and Robert Montgomery in They Were Expendable.
Robert Montgomery and Donna Reed are great. I also like John Wayne's performance a lot. He's very subdued. He's not in charge, Robert Montgomery is, so Wayne as Rusty has to swallow a lot of his ego and follow orders, and I think he's the better actor for it. Don't get me wrong, I like John Wayne's movies a lot, and I absolutely love Sands of Iwo Jima. But whereas Sands of Iwo Jima is an exciting war movie, They Were Expendable is something more than just a war movie, a rather subtle examination of men and women in war, not just for a battle, but for months and months of uncertainty and fear and desperation. My favorite non-Western John Wayne movie. By far. LOVE this one, too. Well done, Hoozh. You probably know that Montgomery volunteered for the Navy in the wake of Pearl Harbor, became a Lt. Commander and participated in the D-Day invasion, which gave his performance that extra touch of gravitas. His role as "Brick" Brickley was based on the exploits of Medal of Honor winner John Bulkeley. (He also was at Normandy after his years in the Philippines and the Pacific) Montgomery also directed large parts of the picture for Ford, who broke his leg in a fall from a scaffold during the shooting.
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Post by berkley on Jun 1, 2016 17:39:37 GMT -5
I saw Luis Buñuel's Robinson Crusoé this weekend. I had no idea Buñuel had done that type of commercial movie! It was quite good, though Robinson himself is definitely something of a jerk (or a product of his era, if we're feeling generous). I imagine Buñuel would see the whole Robinson Crusoe scenario as representative of European arrogance during its colonial phase.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 6, 2016 12:22:52 GMT -5
I was having trouble with the Wi-Fi on Saturday and on Sunday, we had people over, so I fell behind on my movie comments. Way behind, actually, because it was very hot on Friday and Saturday, very very hot. And especially on Saturday. Aside from very necessary errands and chores, I didn't do anything except watch movies.
So here's a few short comments. There's quite a few here that I could go on and on about.
Suspicion (1941) - One of my longtime obsessions. Joan Fontaine is flawless. And in a career of amazing performances, I think Cary Grant never had as good a chance to show what a great actor he was. Johnnie Aysgarth is charming and irresponsible and sinister and perhaps a bit sociopathic. I watched it last year and kept it on the DVR to watch it again in a few weeks ... and I promptly watched it the very next day. Tied with The Birds as my favorite Hitchcock.
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) - One of the few Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies I'd never seen. Evelyn Ankers is in it! Also, remember when I was talking about the cast of Key Largo? Well, Thomas Gomez is in this movie!
She-Wolf of London (1946) - I've seen this a few times just because it's included on the Universal "Werewolf" collection. It's not one of the better Universal horror movies. But Svengoolie was showing it! I'm finding Svengoolie to be a lot of fun and I watch it every two or three weeks. And I also think June Lockhart is fairly hilarious.
June Bride (1948) - TCM showed a marathon of three obscure Bette Davis movies and I DVRed them all and, so far, I've been pleasantly surprised! June Bride is a rather light-hearted comedy with Bette Davis as the editor of a magazine called "Home Life" and Robert Montgomery is her old boyfriend, assigned to write a story about a couple about to get married in Indiana. Very amusing. I'd never heard of it but I was glad I recorded it as it was fun to watch Davis paired with Montgomery.
Payment on Demand (1951) - Hell hath no fury like Bette Davis scorned! Payment on Demand is completely different from June Bride. Barry Sullivan wants a divorce from Bette Davis, and boy o boy, does she make him pay. But in the end, she finds out that she didn't really get the best end of the bargain. I was unexpectedly blown away by this. It's one of her better movies.
The Man from Laramie (1955) - This is one of the almost-legendary Westerns directed by Anthony Mann and featuring James Stewart. It's damned good! It's been a while since I saw Winchester '73 but I think The Man from Laramie is in the same class. And I saw The Naked Spur not so awfully long ago, and I might prefer The Naked Spur to The Man from Laramie, but not by much! I especially liked Cathy O'Donnell, an actress who doesn't get nearly enough credit. You might remember her from They Live by Night.
The Lower Depths (1957) - I don't even want to get started on how great this is! Another great movie from Akira Kurosawa! You just have to watch it.
Darby's Rangers (1958) - An OK war movie based on the specially trained American unit that trained in Scotland and fought in North Africa and Italy. Fun to watch. With James Garner and Jack Warden.
Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1972) - OMG! I love this movie way beyond any reasonable assessment of the film's actual artistic qualities. On my eighth birthday, my mom took me and my brother and several of my friends to see this at the Castle Theater in New Castle, Indiana. Geez Louise! I remember loving it and being FREAKED OUT by the scene where the guy is in the club and he has a hallucination and everybody in the club has a fish head! (I'm sure Hunter S. Thompson appropriated some of his famous drug imagery from this movie.) But really, this movie is a bit of a mess and has some really silly moments, notably the sequences where Godzilla flies by aiming his radioactive breath at the ground! As stupid as it is, this movie's heart is in the right place and it is frequently hilarious!
Sleeper (1973) - Here's another one that I've loved for years! I saw this on late-night TV in the 1970s when I was 11 or 12. It was my first Woody Allen movie! Within a year or so, I had seen What's Up Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. I hadn't seen Sleeper for a very long time, but it's still hilarious. I was particularly happy to see the scene where Diane Keaton is doing Stanley Kowalski (from A Streetcar Named Desire) because I don't think I'd seen Streetcar the last time I saw Sleeper.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 6, 2016 15:40:52 GMT -5
Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1972) - OMG! I love this movie way beyond any reasonable assessment of the film's actual artistic qualities. On my eighth birthday, my mom took me and my brother and several of my friends to see this at the Castle Theater in New Castle, Indiana. Geez Louise! I remember loving it and being FREAKED OUT by the scene where the guy is in the club and he has a hallucination and everybody in the club has a fish head! (I'm sure Hunter S. Thompson appropriated some of his famous drug imagery from this movie.) But really, this movie is a bit of a mess and has some really silly moments, notably the sequences where Godzilla flies by aiming his radioactive breath at the ground! As stupid as it is, this movie's heart is in the right place and it is frequently hilarious! The song along is worth the price of entry! SAVE THE EARTH!
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 6, 2016 16:21:58 GMT -5
Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1972) - OMG! I love this movie way beyond any reasonable assessment of the film's actual artistic qualities. On my eighth birthday, my mom took me and my brother and several of my friends to see this at the Castle Theater in New Castle, Indiana. Geez Louise! I remember loving it and being FREAKED OUT by the scene where the guy is in the club and he has a hallucination and everybody in the club has a fish head! (I'm sure Hunter S. Thompson appropriated some of his famous drug imagery from this movie.) But really, this movie is a bit of a mess and has some really silly moments, notably the sequences where Godzilla flies by aiming his radioactive breath at the ground! As stupid as it is, this movie's heart is in the right place and it is frequently hilarious! The song along is worth the price of entry! SAVE THE EARTH! I watched it in Japanese with English sub-titles. And they didn't translate the lyrics! But who could forget the "Save the Earth" part anyway? I've been humming it all day.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 6, 2016 20:35:58 GMT -5
I was having trouble with the Wi-Fi on Saturday and on Sunday, we had people over, so I fell behind on my movie comments. Way behind, actually, because it was very hot on Friday and Saturday, very very hot. And especially on Saturday. Aside from very necessary errands and chores, I didn't do anything except watch movies. So here's a few short comments. There's quite a few here that I could go on and on about. She-Wolf of London (1946) - I've seen this a few times just because it's included on the Universal "Werewolf" collection. It's not one of the better Universal horror movies. But Svengoolie was showing it! I'm finding Svengoolie to be a lot of fun and I watch it every two or three weeks. And I also think June Lockhart is fairly hilarious. Sleeper (1973) - Here's another one that I've loved for years! I saw this on late-night TV in the 1970s when I was 11 or 12. It was my first Woody Allen movie! Within a year or so, I had seen What's Up Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. I hadn't seen Sleeper for a very long time, but it's still hilarious. I was particularly happy to see the scene where Diane Keaton is doing Stanley Kowalski (from A Streetcar Named Desire) because I don't think I'd seen Streetcar the last time I saw Sleeper. I just watched She-Wolf of London (1946) off of my DVR and I enjoyed it to an extent and I watched it on Svengoolie that I recorded off of my DVR and finished watching it and I find June Lockhart and Don Porter quite entertaining and they complimented each other nicely. Sleeper (1973) is so underrated and I totally agree with your assessment and I feel that this is the best Woody Allen movie of all time. I haven't seen this movie in eons and I'm glad that you have a chance to see it.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 7, 2016 12:02:20 GMT -5
If you want to see Nina Pens Rode (the Danish Monica Vitti) staring into space and telling her troubles to the script supervisor, then Gertrud is the movie for you! Gertrud (1964) is a film by Carl Dreyer about a very listless Danish women who has no regrets about her many disastrous affairs with listless Danish men. I didn't have trouble sitting through it until the last 20 minutes. So Gertrud wasn't as boring as I'd heard. Not quite. Still, I didn't like it too much. It's a highly acclaimed film, but it goes into the category of highly acclaimed films that I don't get. (It's not the only Dreyer film in that category.) It's like an Ingmar Bergman project that was given to Luis Bunuel for a script revision. And then somebody at the studio thought it was too long and all the good parts were taken out and given to Antonioni. In case you were wondering why I watched it, it's one of the films on the 1001 Movies List, and I'm trying to see all the films on that list for 1964 (the year I was born). TCM helpfully scheduled Gertrud a few days ago, so I DVRed it because it might be hard to find otherwise. (It might be on YouTube.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 9, 2016 11:24:44 GMT -5
This movie is so weird. Nothing makes me happier than coming across a Bogart movie that I've never seen before and it turns out to be very entertaining. In the last two or three years, I've seen Conflict, Crime School, King of the Underworld and Isle of Fury. Last night I watched It All Came True (1940), and it was another good one, a gangster/comedy/musical mixture that gets a lot of points for being so weird. I'm not going to describe the plot. I'm just going to list the elements I like about it. Humphrey Bogart. Ann Sheridan. She's magical! She charges right into this movie and doesn't seem to be the least bit confused about how strange this movie is. She sings! She has several musical numbers. It's all very enchanting and weird. Sometimes, her eyebrow is a little arched and it makes me think she fully realizes how bizarre this movie is. Una O'Connor. She plays Ann Sheridan's mother. I hope we all remember her as the discontented, bewildered housekeeper from Bride of Frankenstein and as the innkeeper in The Invisible Man. Also, Zasu Pitts is in it! Bogart is hiding out in a boarding house that looks like a museum about the 1890s. He has to stay in a room that was previously occupied by a zoologist and the room is decorated with stuffed monkeys and birds. Bogart is kind of freaked out by them. It's very amusing. One of the boarders is an old vaudevillian with a walking poodle. The poodle is hilarious. They end up converting the main room of the boarding house into an 1890s-themed nightclub! With a floor show! So we get a wonderful series of musical numbers at the end. Geez Louise! They are all pretty good. I recommend this for Bogart fans and for everybody who appreciates wacky Warner Brothers films of the 1930s and 1940s.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jun 9, 2016 12:46:30 GMT -5
If any of you are lucky enough to be in Portland this summer, you'll have the immense pleasure of meeting me, and also: The Northwest Film Center's "Bette and Joan" series - Bette Davis and Joan Crawford movies, in a theater like they're supposed to be! The schedule: Grand Hotel - July 8 Dangerous - July 10 Jezebel - July 17 Dark Victory - July 23 The Women - July 24 The Letter - July 31 The Little Foxes - August 1 Now, Voyager - August 6 Mildred Pierce - August 7 Humoresque - August 12 Possessed - August 14 Daisy Kenyon - August 15 Beyond the Forest - August 20 All About Eve - August 21 Sudden Fear - August 26 Johnny Guitar - August 27 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? - August 28 More details: nwfilm.org/film-series/bette-joan/I'm a member of the NW Film Center but will not be able to go to all of these. Which ones would you recommend?
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 9, 2016 13:08:59 GMT -5
If any of you are lucky enough to be in Portland this summer, you'll have the immense pleasure of meeting me, and also: The Northwest Film Center's "Bette and Joan" series - Bette Davis and Joan Crawford movies, in a theater like they're supposed to be! The schedule: Grand Hotel - July 8 Dangerous - July 10 Jezebel - July 17 Dark Victory - July 23 The Women - July 24 The Letter - July 31 The Little Foxes - August 1 Now, Voyager - August 6 Mildred Pierce - August 7 Humoresque - August 12 Possessed - August 14 Daisy Kenyon - August 15 Beyond the Forest - August 20 All About Eve - August 21 Sudden Fear - August 26 Johnny Guitar - August 27 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? - August 28 More details: nwfilm.org/film-series/bette-joan/I'm a member of the NW Film Center but will not be able to go to all of these. Which ones would you recommend? There's not one film here that doesn't have something to recommend it, Rob, but if I were froced to pick just a couple for each star to show their range, I'd choose for Crawford The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Johnny Guitar. For Davis (tougher choices), I'd pick Jezebel, The Letter, Now, Voyager and All About Eve. Then I'd fudge and watch Baby Jane. But there are a lot of very good movies there, though. Btw, Beyond the Forest is an unrivalled camp-fest. Davis played Rosa Moline, a small-town Madame Bovary, as if she were a drag queen version of herself. She was pissed at Warner Brothers for not re-signing her and had to make this as her final picture for them. The classic line,"What a dump!" that Martha imitates in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf originated here. Rosa compalins about how dusty her house is and says something like, "It's so dusty ya can writecha name in it," as she proceeds to write with her finger on the top of a table. It's quite clear that she writes the word "shit." Come to think of it, jsut go every week, Rob.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 9, 2016 18:53:18 GMT -5
What kind of a Bette Davis retrospective is this? They're not showing Front Page Woman!
Seriously, that's a heckuva line-up! The only movie listed I've never seen is Humoresque, and that's probably a very glaring blind spot for me.
If I was going to pick just one, I'd pick Dangerous because I love it so and I'm betting chances to see it on a big screen are very rare. When the movie is over, the entire audience retires to a nearby dive bar and everybody takes turns reciting Shakespeare and collapsing in a heap.
And speaking of Bette Davis, I finished Winter Meeting (1948) today. I saw the first 40 minutes a few nights ago and I hadn't felt like watching the rest. I sort of forced myself to finish it. I hate to say this because I love Bette so much but this is kind of boring. And dumb. When they finally revealed why Lieutenant Novak is moody and grumpy and prone to tantrums, this viewer was tempted to set a building on fire.
The next time I hear someone say "Old movies are stupid and boring," I'll wonder if the only old movie they've ever seen was Winter Meeting.
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