I Just Watched...

[Bronxgirl48]

Thanks, Tom!

Oooh, haven't seen WEIRD WOMAN in ages.   My memory is cloudy on that one except for a confrontation between Ankers and I believe Elizabeth Russell.

Wasn't Evelyn rather major in THE MAD GHOUL -- and nasty to David Bruce?   It's been forever since I saw it and the old Boomer brain is rapidly declining.

[TomJH]

32 minutes ago, Bronxgirl48 said:

Thanks, Tom!

Oooh, haven't seen WEIRD WOMAN in ages.   My memory is cloudy on that one except for a confrontation between Ankers and I believe Elizabeth Russell.

Wasn't Evelyn rather major in THE MAD GHOUL -- and nasty to David Bruce?   It's been forever since I saw it and the old Boomer brain is rapidly declining.

The only thing I recall about The Mad Ghoul is that David Bruce didn't quite look himself in it (which is putting it kindly). I forgot that Evelyn was in that film so maybe you're right. That's why it can be fun sometimes to go back and rediscover these little films because, when it comes to this little "B", my brain is foggier than the pea soup surrounding Skull Island.

"Confound this fog!"

[SansFin]

4 hours ago, TomJH said:

I have a friend was is an avid fisherman, trout, salmon, etc., but he always returns the fish to the water after catching them. 

 

I feel that that is insensitive and mentally cruel.

Imagine that poor fish going through the rest of its life with no one believing he was abducted by aliens!

"An unseen force pulled me. I thrashed and swam as fast as I could but it was relentless. Up and up I went. It raised me above the roof of the world. My body felt heavy. I could not breathe. Then an alien grasped my head and put something in my mouth. I tried to bite but it did not notice. It tore something from my lip. Then I was falling. I fell faster than anything could ever fall. Then I was through the roof of the world again and home."
"Sure, Ralph, sure. Maybe you should go talk to Bruce over there. He saw a shark in Miller's pond."

[EricJ]

7 hours ago, Sepiatone said:

It's "Pierogi"   like, ONE of those filled dumplings is just a "pierog"  and two or more are "pierogi".  NOT "pierogies" (ack!)  It's the hippopotamus/hippopotami type of thing.

Same with PACZKI.  Two or more are paczki.  One is a paczek.   

We have the benefit of a Polish farming demographic in our area--Which not only means an abundance of homemade kielbasa in the summer, but fresh paczki (plural) at the regional local-produce heavy supermarket bakery departments.

(For those who don't know, it's sort of a filled glazed Krispy Kreme.  😋 )

[King Rat]

We were able to see The Gold Rush with live accompaniment by a theater organist. Mercifully, this was not the version with narration. The audience loved it. Comedy, suspense, a little romance, a little pathos, great work by Chaplin as actor and as director.

[Fading Fast]

Cause for Alarm from 1951 with Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling and Irving Bacon

 

 

Cause for Alarm is an outstanding seventy minute TV-style drama that would have been one of the best Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes ever had it been produced for that series. As a motion picture, it's darn good too, but its production quality and style feel like a TV show.

 

No matter, its tense story and an incredibly engaging performance by Loretta Young quickly draw you in and hold your attention as the plot almost sneaks up on you. It opens in a "typical" 1950s suburban home, at least typical for how TV portrayed 1950s suburban homes (think of the TV shows Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver).

 

Cause for Alarm begins with housewife Young nervously caring for a sick husband with a weak heart who is cranky and difficult. Yet all seems normal for the situation as it is not unusual to be frazzled having to tend to someone all the time. The home itself, the neighbors and the doctor who makes house calls all, too, seem right for the time and place

 

But the husband, Barry Sullivan, is up to something. He believes his wife and his doctor - all three were friends during and after the war - are having an affair and are plotting to kill him. 

 

His passive-aggressive strategy begins when he writes a letter to the attorney general outlining his evidence (some circumstantial and some planted). Then, after he gets Young to mail the letter, he tells her of its contents so that she knows if he dies, she'll be suspected. 

 

Here's where the plot sneaks up on you. The same day Young mails the letter and right after her husband reveals his plan to her, he dies of an apparent heart attack. In that one second, Young's typical and safe world is shattered as she goes from being a suburban housewife to a potential murder suspect.

 

Frantic that she'll be accused of just that, Young tries to chase down the mail carrier she gave the letter to earlier that day, as everything she did or does now looks suspicious to her spinning mind. 

 

Her exasperating encounter with the talkative self-absorbed mailman is Tarantino like as the mailman drones on about rules and regs, while Young all but loses it on him knowing the letter he holds in his hand could determine her fate.

 

When he sends her to the Post Office supervisor to request the letter back, she first returns home only to unintentionally behave suspiciously to her neighbors and an aunt. This "regular" woman was not trained to be a meta-thinking manipulator. 

 

She's a nice, innocent housewife stuck in an extraordinary situation with her default decency only making things worse as she doesn't know how to think deviously or lie with conviction. It's painful to watch this kind woman flail about. 

 

The Post Office supervisor is pleasant enough, but his bureaucratic mindset, effectively, won't let the letter go. Back she returns to the house with her not-reported-to-the-police-yet dead husband still lying upstairs. The viewer knows she's innocent, but she has made herself look guilty if that letter is delivered.

 

Even to her friend, the family doctor who shows up in the afternoon to check on his, unbeknownst to him, dead patient, she starts spinning a web of unnecessary lies in her harrowed state trying to protect both of them. Despite knowing she's innocent, at this point, if you were on the jury, you'd vote to convict. 

 

The "surprise" ending is gimmicky, but enjoyable in a TV mystery-story sort of way. Kudos to the writers and director Tay Garnett for leveraging a small budget, a small cast and a simple suburban setting into a pretty tense and entertaining seventy-minute movie. 

 

Even bigger kudos is owed to Loretta Young who carries Cause for Alarm on her lithe shoulders showing a range of emotions she only rarely got to display in her other roles. 

 

 

[David Proulx]

I just watched The Highlander. I enjoyed the series when it was on, but I'd never seen the movie. It was considered a cult classic, and I just never got around to it. Tonight I did. Disappointing. I love the plotline, but I thought the execution (pardon the pun) was not good. The acting and the dialogue were pretty awful and the story was full of holes. Maybe it's the concept of it that made a cult classic, or maybe heads being chopped off appealed to the lowest common denominator (kind of how I feel about the insanely popular John Wick movies. Terrible, but lots of action). Other than that, not a good movie. The series was much better, I thought. It was good to see Sean Connery in it, though. No complaints on him. He helped it for the relatively short time he was on screen.

[EricJ]

6 hours ago, David Proulx said:

I just watched The Highlander. I enjoyed the series when it was on, but I'd never seen the movie. It was considered a cult classic, and I just never got around to it. Tonight I did. Disappointing. I love the plotline, but I thought the execution (pardon the pun) was not good. The acting and the dialogue were pretty awful and the story was full of holes. Maybe it's the concept of it that made a cult classic,

Mostly.  That, the Queen soundtrack, and Russell Mulcahy being a new stylistic-flavor director fresh off the Duran Duran MTV videos.

(Which he did a more coherent job of demonstrating with The Shadow (1992).)

The sequel, btw, is one of the legendary Worst Movies of the 80's, but I never saw that--I only saw the home-theater "Renegade" cut that put the story scenes in order.

[Fedya]

19 hours ago, Bronxgirl48 said:

Is that the one with the dancing caterpillar?

Yes.

[TomJH]

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Thunderstorm mysteries set in eerie old houses were a staple of countless poverty row studios during the 1930s. That's why it's such a pleasure to see this kind of old fashioned material done up right by RKO and producer Dore Schary in this plush "A" production.

Set in a small New England town at the turn of the century the film deals with a serial killer who has murdered two women (and soon after the film's opening there will be a third), all of those women with physical afflictions. Dorothy McGuire plays a mute woman working as an assistant in a large house just outside town. Several people fear, because of her condition, that she could be the psychopathic killer's next victim.

While there is a familiarity to this kind of material, Robert Siodmak's masterful direction, in combination with Nicholas Musuraca's stunning black and white photography, create an eerie Gothic atmosphere that has decided elements of horror in its presentation. Indeed, if this film is less successful as a whodunit (many will undoubtedly pick out the killer in advance) it succeeds often quite wonderfully as an atmospheric exercise in suspense and terror.

The production benefits from wonderful art direction (the old house almost becomes a character on its own) and a superior supporting cast. George Brent plays a sedate professor in the household, with Gordon Oliver as his restless half brother. Rhonda Fleming is a beautiful secretary who is having an affair with Oliver.

Any house as large as this one needs a staff, of course, with Elsa Lanchester as a kitchen worker who likes a nip of brandy once in a while, along with Rhys Williams as her handyman husband. There is also Sara Allgood as a nurse. Then, seeming to rule over the household even though she is confined to her bed upstairs, is Ethel Barrymore, in an Oscar nominated performance, as the mother of Brent and Oliver and a bit of a spooky old dame who knows when a new murder has been committed even though no one tells her and she never leaves her room. Also in the cast is Kent Smith as the town's new young doctor who cares about McGuire and hopes to marry her.

While the male actors in the film are adequate in their roles, it's the actresses that really stand out. McGuire is appealing and vulnerable in her role as the mute. Barrymore may ham it a bit but she has a number of effective scenes (particularly one in which she talks of having once witnessed a murder in which she saw a killer who was still as a tree when a helpless girl came along and "the tree moved"), and the wonderful, delightful Lanchester, who brings warmth, a bit of obstinance and gentle humour to her role.

But it's a film, in the final analysis, that largely belongs to Siodmak and cinematographer Musuraca. One of the highlight scenes is near the beginning when McGuire is walking back to the house alone as a thunderstorm strikes. As she rushes across the estate property towards the front door we suddenly see the outline of a man emerge from one of the trees, watching her and ready to pounce as she drops some keys and fumbles for them on the ground. It's a highly suspenseful, beautifully shot sequence, though, since it occurs at the beginning of the film, we know that nothing can really happen to McGuire then.

But there will later be a sequence that really matches this one, probably even surpassing it in suspense, when Rhonda Fleming has to walk, candle in hand, through the house's dark and creepy basement. This, if anything, is an even more terrifying sequence since it occurs late in the film and we know that Fleming's supporting character is expendable.

  

Finally Roy Webb's musical score deserves to be acknowledged, not only for the loveliness of its gentle "love theme" but, even more so, for the eerie effects of his score whenever we see a creepy closeup of the killer's eye peering at someone within the house. That eye, by the way, belonged to director Siodmak.

If the murders featured in this film are theatrical in their presentation (both times the director concentrates on the hands of the victims which behave in a manner completely abnormal for someone being strangled) the scenes still work well as suspense melodrama.

There is a decent looking copy of The Spiral Staircase currently available on You Tube.

3 out of 4

[chaya bat woof woof]

Re-watched The Sting last night.  Newman and Redford (plus Robert Shaw), along with a great cast.  Also loved the Ragtime music (Scott Joplin arranged by Marvin Hamlisch).

[Sepiatone]

16 hours ago, EricJ said:

We have the benefit of a Polish farming demographic in our area--Which not only means an abundance of homemade kielbasa in the summer, but fresh paczki (plural) at the regional local-produce heavy supermarket bakery departments.

(For those who don't know, it's sort of a filled glazed Krispy Kreme.  😋 )

Why not show 'em what we mean?   

I prefer the lekvar(prune) myself.

Sepiatonczek

[EricJ]

6 hours ago, chaya bat woof woof said:

Re-watched The Sting last night.  Newman and Redford (plus Robert Shaw), along with a great cast.  Also loved the Ragtime music (Scott Joplin arranged by Marvin Hamlisch).

Okay, my response about Lalo Schifirin's arrangements of Scott Joplin (and Jackie Gleason & Mac Davis making a good college try in an otherwise lost cause) in The Sting II (1983), complete with soundtrack YouTube clip as Exhibit A, was somehow seen fit to be removed by the moderator.

If anyone on the board has any remote theories WHY, please feel free to share.     I'm pretty sure I posted it.

[Fading Fast]

 

Point Blank from 1967 with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn and Carroll O'Connor

 

 

Early on, Point Blank's style, an of-the-moment psychedelic collage of rock music, drug culture and tie-dye, overshadows the story, but before the second half, the style calms down and the good story takes over. 

 

Style issues notwithstanding, from beginning to end, this is Lee Marvin's movie playing a gangster shot and left for dead by his partner during an inside job to steal from the mob.

 

After that early scene, the rest of the movie is Marvin, literally, blasting his way up the mob's chain of command in search of his money - the cut from the job he was nearly killed over. 

 

Marvin's good friend, John Vernon, is the one who double crossed him. Not only did Vernon steal Marvin's money and leave him for dead, he also stole his wife. That's cold. 

 

Not surprisingly, Vernon is also the first one Marvin goes after for his money. When that doesn't work and he, kinda, accidentally kills Vernon, Marvin just keeps pushing higher into "the organization" (the mob) and killing anyone who doesn't give him his money.

 

Along the way, Marvin recruits (sorta) old friend Angie Dickinson for his get-the-money quest. In Point Blank, Dickinson always looks as if she's just had sex, but didn't have time to wash up. 

 

Yet it works for her in this role in a I-get-what-this-woman-is-about way and it isn't baking cookies. Also helping Marvin, but from the shadows, is Keenan Wynn for reasons we don't learn until the last minute of the movie.

 

One of the enjoyable angles to all of this is Marvin almost innocently asking everyone to just give him his money. Like any mob pro, he doesn't kill for fun or psychosis, as you believe, if someone would just give him the damn money, he'd happily leave the organization he is slowly destroying alone.

 

With most of the organization's "leadership team" having already been killed by Marvin, in the movie's best sequence, Marvin meets up with the number two guy, Carroll O'Connor. Marvin, once again, tells O'Connor to just give him his money and he'll happily go away.

 

O'Connor, bemused, tells Marvin the mob no longer deals in large sums of physical cash, so effectively, it's not easy for O'Connor to get Marvin his money, unless he'll take a check. Despite a string of dead bodies, for a brief moment, the entire plot seems to pivot on a humdrum payment-processing challenge. 

 

Of course, it's more duplicitous than that, which leads to the tensely enjoyable conclusion of O'Connor, theoretically, trying to get Marvin his money, while shadowing Keenan Wynn reappears to bring (maybe) some clarity to the loose ends of the story. 

 

Point Blank has its style challenges, but from a present-day perspective, it's an amazing time capsule of mid-1960s Rat-Pack gangster-style cool on the cusp of giving way to the flower power counter culture. Plus, Lee Marvin delivers a career performance as the man who simply wants the money owed to him, but his collection efforts just keep getting more and more complicated. 

 

 

 

[chaya bat woof woof]

Last night, re-watched Big Night with Stanley Tucci and Tony Shaloub (and a great cast and story line).  Then watched about ten minutes of that salute to the Oscar dancing with Darren and Julianne Hough.  It was terrible (as was the movie La La Land).  So many great dancers they forgot (and I am tired of all these weepy hugs and kisses - in this case about Dirty Dancing - which was okay.  Also, the Houghs would be nowhere without Dancing with the Stars (and I don't think they were actually ballroom dancers like Tony D. (He is a not so nice dancer in Shall We Cance with Richard Gere).

[Shank Asu]

Licorice Pizza over the weekend.  Started off strong with quirky characters but it lost me in the end.  Too long and with a different stories in the two halves.  Surprised this was nominated for best picture.  Feel like this is the second straight year of weak films.  

[NickAndNora34]

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here; for the sake of brevity I will spare you all the drivel I've watched this year so far and will instead focus on the things I've really enjoyed: 

The Searchers (1956) 

I've gotten rather fond of Westerns and this one was no different. The visuals were all very stunning, and the storyline was decent, albeit a tad contrived, and I enjoyed the myriad of characters on display. 3.75/5 

Dances with Wolves (1990)

Unfortunately, I have developed a sort of crush on Kevin Costner... That man can't act but boy do I enjoy his films. Another Western; I thought it was a very pleasant story and not quite what I was expecting. Despite a longer runtime, it seemed to fly by. 4/5 

The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

I have no idea what happened in this film; I had to rely on the Wikipedia page synopsis for the entirety of the runtime, as I don't typically do well with operettas... However I will say this is certainly one of the prettiest movies I have ever seen. Powell and Pressburger really knew how to use Technicolor to their advantage, as evidenced by this film as well as The Red Shoes (1948). 3.75/5 

[David Proulx]

They just showed Good Bye Mr. Chips. It's about maybe the 4th time I've seen it. What a great feel good movie. I do loves me some Greer Garson too. Some movies just fill you up whenever you watch them. The Big Chill comes to mind for that too.

[EricJ]

5 hours ago, NickAndNora34 said:

The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

I have no idea what happened in this film; I had to rely on the Wikipedia page synopsis for the entirety of the runtime, as I don't typically do well with operettas... However I will say this is certainly one of the prettiest movies I have ever seen. Powell and Pressburger really knew how to use Technicolor to their advantage, as evidenced by this film as well as The Red Shoes (1948). 3.75/5 

P&P were still in ballet mode after The Red Shoes, and Hoffman seems to be as much ballet as opera.

Which only emphasizes that the best tales of Hoffman were done better in The Nutcracker and Coppelia.

[Tikisoo]

Really catching up on my unseen 80's movies, I just watched Sally Field starring in PLACES IN THE HEART '84.

The poster sets the story up nicely-a story about a Mom trying to keep her life& family afloat during the Depression. I saw it had John Malkovich in it & I was curious to see him in a "western".

The story is rather obvious & contrived, even I knew the result of the opening scene (husband is killed) ...and I'm not very clever!  So the plot consists of the Mother (Sally Field) Edna's struggle to support herself & her family...add on charactors that help too, in their own ways.

Danny Glover plays a itinerant whom Edna refuses to hire, but gives him a free meal. After working off his meal chopping wood, he offers to manage her farm in turn for meals/board....just like IMITATION OF LIFE. Not knowing more than housewifery, she is cornered into farming her property as the only means of income available.

John Malkovich plays Mr Will, a blind man practically dumped at her door as a boarder who canes chairs for a living. My family took in boarders- one, a blind woman who strung beads! (I still have several hanks of them) Malkovich deftly adds a unique color to the drab story-nothing's better than the scene of a blind man wielding a pistol to defend his friend from the "hoodies"!

There is a tawdry affair between two charactors, Edna's brother-in-law (played by Ed Harris) and the schoolteacher. Unlikeable side plot, unlikeable charactors, don't know what this adds. In contrast, there's an awesome tornado scene which I found realistic & scary.

Notice how the 3 principle charactors cling to each other? That is the real story here. There is plenty of racism & cruelty in the story, but not on Edna's Farm.

Trite? Maybe. But I enjoyed this movie. It captured the look & feel of the time, injustice of racism/sexism & the struggle to survive. And it only worked because of the strong performances of the talented trio in the center of the story.

I don't know why people dis Sally Field. She really is a talented actress, a natural pro who can carry a film. And no amount of dowdy clothing or dirt can hide her beauty.

 

 

[LuckyDan]

1 hour ago, TikiSoo said:

I don't know why people dis Sally Field. She really is a talented actress, a natural pro who can carry a film. And no amount of dowdy clothing or dirt can hide her beauty.

I like Sally's acting, too. You can watch her in Gidget and see her talent. I think the nun show and then the Burt movies lowered her status in the eyes of many, then her Oscar thing, and if you watched Live Aid, her too-often replayed and highly emotional appeal for contributions. But otherwise, yeah, very strong ability. 

[Sepiatone]

3 hours ago, TikiSoo said:

nothing's better than the scene of a blind man wielding a pistol to defend his friend against the ****!

 

Against the what?

You mean to tell me "uptight Otto" the auto-censor "starred" out KLAN?   Now, that's going too far.  

As for Sally's acting, it should be more than apparent she proved her mettle in SYBIL.   

Sepiatone

[Tikisoo]

47 minutes ago, Sepiatone said:

Against the what?

You mean to tell me "uptight Otto" the auto-censor "starred" out KLAN?   Now, that's going too far.  

As for Sally's acting, it should be more than apparent she proved her mettle in SYBIL.   

Yup, I changed the previous 3 lettered name to "hoodies".

Thanks for mentioning Sybil, she was good in that. I think not unlike Debbie Reynolds, Sally Field's cute baby face & petite physical size & voice seem too childlike for some to take seriously, as a mature woman.  Valerie Bertinelli is another one. Betty White killed the stereotype of her pretty sweet face with bawdy humor, making her a beloved charactor.

[CinemaInternational]

8 hours ago, TikiSoo said:

Really catching up on my unseen 80's movies, I just watched Sally Field starring in PLACES IN THE HEART '84.

The poster sets the story up nicely-a story about a Mom trying to keep her life& family afloat during the Depression. I saw it had John Malkovich in it & I was curious to see him in a "western".

The story is rather obvious & contrived, even I knew the result of the opening scene (husband is killed) ...and I'm not very clever!  So the plot consists of the Mother (Sally Field) Edna's struggle to support herself & her family...add on charactors that help too, in their own ways.

Danny Glover plays a itinerant whom Edna refuses to hire, but gives him a free meal. After working off his meal chopping wood, he offers to manage her farm in turn for meals/board....just like IMITATION OF LIFE. Not knowing more than housewifery, she is cornered into farming her property as the only means of income available.

John Malkovich plays Mr Will, a blind man practically dumped at her door as a boarder who canes chairs for a living. My family took in boarders- one, a blind woman who strung beads! (I still have several hanks of them) Malkovich deftly adds a unique color to the drab story-nothing's better than the scene of a blind man wielding a pistol to defend his friend from the "hoodies"!

There is a tawdry affair between two charactors, Edna's brother-in-law (played by Ed Harris) and the schoolteacher. Unlikeable side plot, unlikeable charactors, don't know what this adds. In contrast, there's an awesome tornado scene which I found realistic & scary.

Notice how the 3 principle charactors cling to each other? That is the real story here. There is plenty of racism & cruelty in the story, but not on Edna's Farm.

Trite? Maybe. But I enjoyed this movie. It captured the look & feel of the time, injustice of racism/sexism & the struggle to survive. And it only worked because of the strong performances of the talented trio in the center of the story.

I don't know why people dis Sally Field. She really is a talented actress, a natural pro who can carry a film. And no amount of dowdy clothing or dirt can hide her beauty.

 

 

It is mostly a good film. Strong work from Field, Glover, and Malkovich helps the film a lot, but the whole subplot with the cheating brother-in-law is inexplicable. (Although, as an added irony, Ed Harris who plays that character actually married the woman who plays his mistress in the film, Amy Madigan shortly after this was done, giving this some weird shading). I think that the oscar win for the script was likely because it was a real passion project for director Robert Benton, who I believe based the Sally Field character on his own mother.... but due to that subplot, I think that the script prize, out of the official nominees, should have gone to Broadway Danny Rose, where there was barely a wasted moment

[Swithin]

I watched Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939) last night. I hadn't seen it in ages. Great movie, so fitting that Robert Donat won the Best Actor Oscar in a very competitive year (also nominated: Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Mickey Rooney, James Stewart). One awkward thing: it jumps too quickly from the young teacher to middle-aged man with moustache.

It would have been nice to have had Terry Kilburn introduce it. He'll be 96 later this year.