I Just Watched...

[CinemaInternational]

8 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

ALMOST FAMOUS is an excellent film, I’m genuinely surprised it did not get a best picture nomination. 

Most at the time were stunned at its missing a Best Picture nomination given how much everyone seemed to like it, but most people, after the dust cleared, pointed their fingers at Harvey Weinstein, who had managed, once again, to get a subpar film into the Best Picture lineup, in this case Chocolat, which had barely scraped past 60% decent reviews.

Chocolat to my mind is an offensive film: a co-opting of the basic plot thread of Mary Poppins to fashion a  "romantic comedy" saga where your heroine is implied to be a euthanasia practicing (she  deliberately gives a woman with raging diabetes a feast of chocolate deserts and the woman dies shortly thereafter),   pagan high priestess, and also a film where anybody who is against her is portrayed as a hypocrite or as intolerant. I think it must have been Jack Kervorician's  (sic) favorite film of 2000. (And the lovely Leslie Caron is wasted in a role that gives her less than 3 minutes of screentime and barely a line of diologue). I would have replaced Juliette Binoche's nomination with one for Renee Zellweger's tightrope wire of a performance in Nurse Betty, and would have handed Judi Dench's nomination to the wonderful Elaine May in Small Time Crooks.

The other films up for Best Picture in 2000 were Gladiator (which won Best Picture, albeit becoming the first film to win that prize without winning Directing or Script since 1949.), Traffic (which did get those two prizes, and thus must have been the runner-up. I have not seen it.), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (a big hit at the time), and Erin Brockovich (by far the most enjoyable of the four of the lineup I did see, and the only one I have seen multiple times)

Almost Famous was one of three films that  were likely close to a Best Picture nomination that year that didn't quite get there: the other two were You Can Count on Me and Billy Elliot. Almost Famous was the best of those three, but all three were good films that were better than much of the Best Picture lineup. 

But it was just a plain strange year for nominations in general. Steven Soderbergh became the first director with two directing nominations since 1938. Crouching Tiger, a foreign language film, had 12 nominations. Erin Brockovich was released in March.

It didn't help that many of the pre-fab Oscar bait films that year were dead on arrival with no award attention at all from the Oscars (Pay It Forward, All the Pretty Horses, The Legend of Bagger Vance,  Finding Forrester, State and Main, Thirteen Days, Dr. T and the Women, The House of Mirth, Nurse Betty, Chicken Run, Rules of Engagement, The Golden Bowl, Proof of Life) or were underperforming (The Contender, Cast Away, Before Night Falls, Quills, The Patriot, Wonder Boys). 

Pōllóck was arguably the only non-BP contender that year that overperformed.

It was really a harbinger of how stinky films would get after 2000

[LornaHansonForbes]

47 minutes ago, CinemaInternational said:

Most at the time were stunned at its missing a Best Picture nomination given how much everyone seemed to like it, but most fingers, after the dust cleared, pointed their fingers at Harvey Weinstein, who had managed, once again, to get a subpar film into the Best Picture lineup, in this case Chocolat, which had barely scraped past 60% decent reviews.

Chocolat to my mind is an offensive film: a co-opting of the basic plot thread of Mary Poppins to fashion a  "romantic comedy" saga where your heroine is implied to be a euthanasia practicing (she  deliberately gives a woman with raging diabetes a feast of chocolate deserts and the woman dies shortly thereafter),   pagan high priestess, and also a film where anybody who is against her is portrayed as a hypocrite or as intolerant. I think it must have been Jack Kervorician's  (sic) favorite film of 2000. (And the lovely Leslie Caron is wasted in a role that gives her less than 3 minutes of screentime and barely a line of diologue). I would have replaced Juliette Binoche's nomination with one for Renee Zellweger's tightrope wire of a performance in Nurse Betty, and would have handed Judi Dench's nomination to the wonderful Elaine May in Small Time Crooks.

The other films up for Best Picture in 2000 were Gladiator (which won Best Picture, albeit becoming the first film to win that prize without winning Directing or Script since 1949.), Traffic (which did get those two prizes, and thus must have been the runner-up. I have not seen it.), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (a big hit at the time), and Erin Brockovich (by far the most enjoyable of the four of the lineup I did see, and the only one I have seen multiple times)

Almost Famous was one of three films that  were likely close to a Best Picture nomination that year that didn't quite get there: the other two were You Can Count on Me and Billy Elliot. Almost Famous was the best of those three, but all three were good films that were better than much of the Best Picture lineup. 

But it was just a plain strange year for nominations in general. Steven Soderbergh became the first director with two directing nominations since 1938. Crouching Tiger, a foreign language film, had 12 nominations. Erin Brockovich was released in March.

It didn't help that many of the pre-fab Oscar bait films that year were dead on arrival with no award attention at all from the Oscars (Pay It Forward, All the Pretty Horses, The Legend of Bagger Vance,  Finding Forrester, State and Main, Thirteen Days, Dr. T and the Women, The House of Mirth, Nurse Betty, Chicken Run, Rules of Engagement, The Golden Bowl, Proof of Life) or were underperforming (The Contender, Cast Away, Before Night Falls, Quills, The Patriot, Wonder Boys). 

Pōllóck was arguably the only non-BP contender that year that overperformed.

It was really a harbinger of how stinky films would get after 2000

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

❤️❤️❤️🔥🔥🔥👍👍👍👍
 

(PS-  you accidentally use the word “fingers” twice in your opening sentence. Outside of that though, flawless)

[LornaHansonForbes]

Anyone who uses the words “Harbinger” and “stinky “in the same sentence is a champ in my book

[CinemaInternational]

53 minutes ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

❤️❤️❤️🔥🔥🔥👍👍👍👍
 

(PS-  you accidentally use the word “fingers” twice in your opening sentence. Outside of that though, flawless)

Thank you. It helped matters a bit that even at my tender age back then, I was already paying attention to Oscar races. (I watched my first ceremony at age 4). 

[LornaHansonForbes]

25 minutes ago, CinemaInternational said:

Thank you. It helped matters a bit that even at my tender age back then, I was already paying attention to Oscar races. (I watched my first ceremony at age 4). 

A few years back when they announced that they were going to be expanding the best picture race  for up to 10 nominees, my very first thought was of the year 2000 where they had a hell of a time getting together five decent pictures. 

It was an odd, somewhat sorry lot of best pictures in the year 2000 And I don’t think any of them were as good as ALMOST FAMOUS. 

I may well make some of you very angry by saying this, but of the five BEST PICTURE nominees I feel like the best was ERIN BROCKOVICH- Which would’ve been a fifth wheel nominee in any better year.(TRAFFIC is good, But it doesn’t really feel like a movie to me, it feels more like a mini series.)

*I was not feeling CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON in the least. We’re simpatico on CHOCOLAT and GLAAAAAAAAAAAAADIATOR won’t nuthin special 

[LornaHansonForbes]

Ps- I will always refer to it as GLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADIATOR in honor of the late, great DAME ELIZABETH TAYLOR declaring  it the best picture- drama  winner at the Golden Globes in that distinct tone of hers that instantly brings to mind a well-worn fishwife who has freshly stepped upon a Lego.

[LornaHansonForbes]

Legend.

Icon. 
 

GLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADIATOR!!!!
 

 

[Fanime]

"Flashing envelope"  Legend indeed.

[King Rat]

On 8/22/2022 at 12:16 PM, CinemaInternational said:

Vanilla Sky (2001) -- 3/10

I have spent most of July and August wandering around with TV shows, finishing up two series, looking at some others, and generally having a good go of it. But I feel like I needed to get back to films. It got off to a rocky start last week with The Loved One (1965) , and this one here is worse. It reminds me why I really dislike investigating many post-2000 films.

Vanilla Sky is a remake of a surrealist Spanish film from 1997, and this Americanization still has the same leading lady, Penelope Cruz. The original was well reviewed I gather, so something must have been lost in translation. Tom Cruise is the lead as a spoiled playboy whose life has come undone, and the film shifts between reality and his nightmares, haunted especially by a former girlfriend (Cameron Diaz) and fears of facial deformity.

The leads are definitely glamorous looking, but the film itself is very lacking. Its very self-absorbed, very portentous, clammy, and ultimately has the triviality (and the visual flash) of a perfume advertisement. It is meant to have many jarring plot shifts, and there are big twists here, but they are meaningless because the characters are paper cutouts. Only one very abrupt and horrifying murder scene has any real emotional charge.

It's a pity that this whole thing is about as heavy and nutty as a Christmas fruitcake, because if it wasn't, this film would fly... albeit not for the way any filmmaker would want it to. The film has so much unintentionally laughable dialogue and situations that with less claustrophobic claptrap, this had the opportunity to become the Valley of the Dolls of the new century, ripe with so many ludicrous howlers that it would have been worth catching. The heaviness prevents it, but this is still worth a few good laughs.

But gee, couldn't everyone identify with the guy who's sleeping with Cameron Diaz and also sleeping with Penelope Cruz and still isn't HAPPY? Oh, yeah, maybe not. Bazillions of guys would like to try that kind of unhappiness! The Things of Life (Les choses de la vie) also has that problem. Michel Piccoli is married to Lea Massari, sleeping with Romy Schneider, and still isn't happy.

On 8/22/2022 at 8:08 AM, LornaHansonForbes said:

I like ANDIE MACDOWELL'S hair, it seems like it's working overtime to compensate for the lack of anything interesting coming from her performance(s)

...because she also sucks in FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL.

ps- and it's not the accent. if you people could hear me talk in real life, you would be blown away by how prominent my NORTH CAROLINA ACCENT Is- i sound like i oughtta be pumpin gas in Mayberry- so I'm used to it...it's just how awful her line reads are.

i still don't dislike her, the way I really dislike some other bad actors.

Lorna, sorry but I like Andie MacDowell. Not a great actress, but she's beautiful, radiates a genuine sweetness, and I love her accent. Whereas Ali MacGraw seems coarse, unpleasant, and not all that pretty.

Not a huge fan of Erin Brockovich, but it's OK, despite the extremely weird casting of Albert Finney. Except in his early films, Finney is too hammy for my taste.

[LornaHansonForbes]

ANDIE MACDOWELL may actually be the most likable bad actress of all time. 
 

I mean, even I want to hate her, but no. She’s charming. utterly incapable  of inflection, but earnestly, genuinely charming. 

[LornaHansonForbes]

“Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed.”

[CinemaInternational]

1 hour ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

A few years back when they announced that they were going to be expanding the best picture race  for up to 10 nominees, my very first thought was of the year 2000 where they had a hell of a time getting together five decent pictures. 

It was an odd, somewhat sorry lot of best pictures in the year 2000 And I don’t think any of them were as good as ALMOST FAMOUS. 

I may well make some of you very angry by saying this, but of the five BEST PICTURE nominees I feel like the best was ERIN BROCKOVICH- Which would’ve been a fifth wheel nominee in any better year.(TRAFFIC is good, But it doesn’t really feel like a movie to me, it feels more like a mini series.)

*I was not feeling CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON in the least. We’re simpatico on CHOCOLAT and GLAAAAAAAAAAAAADIATOR won’t nuthin special 

My reaction was pretty muted to Crouching Tiger, and Gladiator was fine enough for its genre but not Best Picture material. I know you really disliked Roger Ebert, but I think I should note that Gladiator was the only Best Picture winner he covered in his career (1967 to early 2013) that he gave a bad review to, so that speaks a lot right there. Ebert's favorite film of 2000 was Almost Famous.

Erin Brockovich, I liked more than you. I know I am pretty salty on post-2000 films and have not seen as many as most, but I'd hold it up as one of the best films of the last 22 years: a message film that is greatly entertaining and not preachy with two dynamite performances and crackling diologue. That makes it an endangered species anymore.

Ironically, the first year when they expanded Best Picture, 2009, was like 2000, a very weak year. The films were largely enervated due to the lengthy writers strike in 2007/2008 resulting in a raft of supine pictures. The winner was The Hurt Locker, the Iraq war film held over from the 2008 festival circuit, brought to you by Kathryn Bigelow, the woman behind Point Break and Strange Days.  She won directing over her ex-husband James Cameron.

All of the Best Picture lineups since have seen at least one truly bad film up for Best Picture ever since, so I do not think it was the right move.

1 hour ago, King Rat said:

But gee, couldn't everyone identify with the guy who's sleeping with Cameron Diaz and also sleeping with Penelope Cruz and still isn't HAPPY? Oh, yeah, maybe not. Bazillions of guys would like to try that kind of unhappiness! The Things of Life (Les choses de la vie) also has that problem. Michel Piccoli is married to Lea Massari, sleeping with Romy Schneider, and still isn't happy.

Lorna, sorry but I like Andie MacDowell. Not a great actress, but she's beautiful, radiates a genuine sweetness, and I love her accent. Whereas Ali MacGraw seems coarse, unpleasant, and not all that pretty.

Not a huge fan of Erin Brockovich, but it's OK, despite the extremely weird casting of Albert Finney. Except in his early films, Finney is too hammy for my taste.

It's not just Cruise's wealth and girlfriends that make Vanilla Sky go kaput. From the very start, none of the characters move in a fashion that is recognizably human.  It's a film where illusions should blend with reality, but since they are both unrealistic, the whole thing goes down.

I rather like Andie McDowell despite all the flack she gets (on another movie website they have a poll going for who was the biggest "Felicia/Feliciano"[ AKA most forgettable screen presence] of the 1990s, and sadly she was near the top, just behind the likes of Claire Forlani , Chris O'Donnell, and Jennifer Love Hewitt). McDowell gives exceptional performances in Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Short Cuts, she was very funny in Hudson Hawk, strong in Green Card, and she managed to still give a good performance in the otherwise dreadful The End of Violence.  She also has a warm presence.

As for Ali MacGraw, I feel a point must be made. From all accounts, offscreen she is a genuinely kind person.  She was actually very good as the shallow beauty in Goodbye Columbus, and later in her doomed guest arc on Dynasty, she seemed more relaxed and genuinely likable. But Love Story was not a right fit for her. She just played it too tense, and the character's constant use of the word shït didn't help her one bit.  (And Ryan O'Neal had been better on Peyton Place than he was in that film) She was obviously cast because she was married to the studio head at the time, but he could have found better material for her. Unfortunately it was a big hit. MacGraw also seemed acutely aware of all the bad notices she received. One of her few post -70s films was 1980's Just Tell Me What You Want, a loud, brassy comedy from Sidney Lumet where she played the erstwhile mistress of an egomaniacal executive played by Alan King. On that set, MacGraw was typically terrified to go before the cameras always stating how she thought she was doing a poor job and would let everyone down. Myrna Loy, who played King's secretary in her final theatrical film, often had to console her between takes.

[Tikisoo]

12 hours ago, King Rat said:

sorry but I like Andie MacDowell. Not a great actress, but she's beautiful, radiates a genuine sweetness, and I love her accent. Whereas Ali MacGraw seems coarse, unpleasant, and not all that pretty.

Not a huge fan of Erin Brockovich, but it's OK, despite the extremely weird casting of Albert Finney. Except in his early films, Finney is too hammy for my taste.

Glad someone piped up here about Andie - I love her despite how wooden or stilted some find her. Somehow she comes across as sincere & natural....kind of the opposite of hammy, eh? 

10 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

I should note that Gladiator was the only Best Picture winner he covered in his career (1967 to early 2013) that he gave a bad review to, so that speaks a lot right there.

I also have always disliked Roger Ebert as a critic, so glad you mentioned that (since I thought I was the only one) 

10 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

I know I am pretty salty on post-2000 films and have not seen as many as most, but I'd hold it up as one of the best films of the last 22 years: a message film that is greatly entertaining and not preachy with two dynamite performances and crackling diologue.

THANK YOU. I share your post-2000 saltiness but will make a point of seeing that one. Glad you also gave a frank opinion of CHOCOLAT, a movie that confounded me as I left the theater. Glad I never bothered with GLAAADIATOR.

ALMOST FAMOUS and HIGH FIDELITY were two movies I was told I'd love because of my background in the music biz, but was underwhelmed by both. Sometimes revisiting movies like that can bring a new appreciation from a different time/perspective/lower expectation or just reinforces your initial opinion.

Time to go to my un-castle-like library.

[Shank Asu]

18 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

Most at the time were stunned at its missing a Best Picture nomination given how much everyone seemed to like it, but most people, after the dust cleared, pointed their fingers at Harvey Weinstein, who had managed, once again, to get a subpar film into the Best Picture lineup, in this case Chocolat, which had barely scraped past 60% decent reviews.

Chocolat to my mind is an offensive film: a co-opting of the basic plot thread of Mary Poppins to fashion a  "romantic comedy" saga where your heroine is implied to be a euthanasia practicing (she  deliberately gives a woman with raging diabetes a feast of chocolate deserts and the woman dies shortly thereafter),   pagan high priestess, and also a film where anybody who is against her is portrayed as a hypocrite or as intolerant. I think it must have been Jack Kervorician's  (sic) favorite film of 2000. (And the lovely Leslie Caron is wasted in a role that gives her less than 3 minutes of screentime and barely a line of diologue). I would have replaced Juliette Binoche's nomination with one for Renee Zellweger's tightrope wire of a performance in Nurse Betty, and would have handed Judi Dench's nomination to the wonderful Elaine May in Small Time Crooks.

The other films up for Best Picture in 2000 were Gladiator (which won Best Picture, albeit becoming the first film to win that prize without winning Directing or Script since 1949.), Traffic (which did get those two prizes, and thus must have been the runner-up. I have not seen it.), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (a big hit at the time), and Erin Brockovich (by far the most enjoyable of the four of the lineup I did see, and the only one I have seen multiple times)

Almost Famous was one of three films that  were likely close to a Best Picture nomination that year that didn't quite get there: the other two were You Can Count on Me and Billy Elliot. Almost Famous was the best of those three, but all three were good films that were better than much of the Best Picture lineup. 

But it was just a plain strange year for nominations in general. Steven Soderbergh became the first director with two directing nominations since 1938. Crouching Tiger, a foreign language film, had 12 nominations. Erin Brockovich was released in March.

It didn't help that many of the pre-fab Oscar bait films that year were dead on arrival with no award attention at all from the Oscars (Pay It Forward, All the Pretty Horses, The Legend of Bagger Vance,  Finding Forrester, State and Main, Thirteen Days, Dr. T and the Women, The House of Mirth, Nurse Betty, Chicken Run, Rules of Engagement, The Golden Bowl, Proof of Life) or were underperforming (The Contender, Cast Away, Before Night Falls, Quills, The Patriot, Wonder Boys). 

Pōllóck was arguably the only non-BP contender that year that overperformed.

It was really a harbinger of how stinky films would get after 2000

Wow, that's a good recap of films from that time.

I won't let my wife or mother in law se your comments on Chocolat however.  They love that horrible film.

[CinemaInternational]

6 hours ago, Tikisoo said:

Glad someone piped up here about Andie - I love her despite how wooden or stilted some find her. Somehow she comes across as sincere & natural....kind of the opposite of hammy, eh? 

I also have always disliked Roger Ebert as a critic, so glad you mentioned that (since I thought I was the only one) 

THANK YOU. I share your post-2000 saltiness but will make a point of seeing that one. Glad you also gave a frank opinion of CHOCOLAT, a movie that confounded me as I left the theater. Glad I never bothered with GLAAADIATOR.

ALMOST FAMOUS and HIGH FIDELITY were two movies I was told I'd love because of my background in the music biz, but was underwhelmed by both. Sometimes revisiting movies like that can bring a new appreciation from a different time/perspective/lower expectation or just reinforces your initial opinion.

Time to go to my un-castle-like library.

Admittedly, Erin Brockovich is a film that earned its R rating due to language (Erin herself swears a lot), but she's smart, tough,  lovable, and just a great person in general.  Julia Roberts takes it on with vigor,  sparking up great bantering chemistry with Albert Finney, who is simply a joy to watch here.

The film did have one unusual controversy though. The original script of the film had been written by a woman named Susannah Grant, but it had been found lacking, so the script was nearly entirely re-written by a top scriptwriter in Hollywood at the time,  Richard LeGraviance (of The Fisher King , Bridges of Madison County, The Horse Whisperer, and The Mirror Has Two Faces) Despite all his rewrites, he went uncredited and Susannah Grant ended up being the credit on the film as well as the one with the script nomination.

Almost Famous is worth a rewatch. High Fidelity just didn't quite click for me, although certain elements worked just fine. Far from the worst film out there though.

------

Anyway, tackled three films today.

1976's St. Ives is a classier Charles Bronson vehicle than usual, and it gets off to a good start, but becomes too muddled and confusing by the end , becoming a lesser neo-noir. Jacqueline Bisset makes a good femme fatale, and there is typically good work from John Houseman and Maximilian Schell. 

 

The Crowded Sky (1960) is a bit hokey, but its fun. It's the missing link between The High and the Mighty and Airport, telling the soapy sagas of the people aboard an airliner and a Navy jet before they accidentally collide 12 minutes before the end of the film. Most of the characters survive. There are longeurs but it is filled with all sorts of familiar faces, all of them professional. Its more of a soap opera than a disaster movie. Favorite cast member: Patsy Kelly in a small but delightful part as a wisecracking Hollywood agent.

And then there is 1968's The Detective. It feels like a film straddling two eras. On the one hand, it is the saga of a policeman investigating the brutal murder of a gay man commited by a self-loathing closeted man and it has a scene of a wrongfully accused man getting fried in the electric chair in close-up. The cast includes Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Duvall, who would come into their own in the New Hollywood. But on the other hand, the world-weary detective is played by Frank Sinatra, and he gives an exceptional, low-key performance that ranks as one of the best acting jobs of his career. Perhaps it was due to the  real-life break-up of his marriage to Mia Farrow at this time (he wanted her to take the smallish Bisset role, but she went for Rosemary's Baby), but he fully captures the heartbreaking feel of a man who feels increasing disillusionment with his job and regret over his crumbling marriage to a man-hungry Lee Remick (looking much like a porcelain doll). His performance is mostly able to paper over the trashy quality of the story and to make it seem more refined, but a late film flashback to what actually happened is not good, and drags things down a bit. Its still worth catching for Sinatra's work, and Remick, Bisset, Al Freeman Jr. and Jack Klugman are solid in supporting roles.

[Fading Fast]

Cry Terror! from 1958 with Inger Stevens, Rod Steiger, Angie Dickinson, Jack Klugman and James Mason

 

 

Cry Terror! is a gripping crime-drama story of the "home invasion" type with engaging character development and outstanding acting that keeps this low-budget effort moving along from tense scene to tense scene right up to the last minute. 

 

Rod Steiger plays the leader of a gang that dupes Steiger's former army buddy, played by James Mason, into building small but highly explosive time bombs for him under the ruse that it could lead to a military contract for Mason's company, but Steiger's real plan is to use them to blackmail an airline with the threat of blowing up a plane in flight.

 

Once the plan is in motion and the airline knows it's being extorted, Steiger's gang takes Mason, his wife, played by Inger Stevens, and their daughter hostage to keep them from going to the police. 

 

From here, the movie is Steiger trying to keep the intricate, precisely timed plan working, which includes using Stevens to pick up the extortion money, while the police and FBI work to solve the crime.

 

It's a good story, but it only fully engages you, and it does, because it has outstanding character development. Steiger plays the psychotic genius mastermind behind the plan with a menacing calm that only cracks when he realizes, but can't fully accept, that his big brain is being defeated.

 

His gang, equally well developed, includes Angie Dickinson, surprisingly as a brunette, playing a gunmoll with plenty of brains and greed, but no humanity. 

 

Rounding out the gang, Jack Klugman plays an amoral henchman clearly cowed by Steiger and Dickenson and Neville Brand plays a psychotic sexual deviant hopped up on Benzedrine.

 

But this is Inger Stevens' movie and she is more than up to the task as she shows a range of emotion and screen presence, even in one-on-ones with acting force-of-nature Steiger, that convinces you a much-bigger career was hers if not for the personal challenges in her life. 

 

Her scene with sweating-from-drugs Brand, trapped alone with him in his small, filthy and claustrophobic house, where she learns he was arrested once for **** a girl at knifepoint, has blonde and beautiful Stevens convincingly pinging back and forth between crumbling in sheer terror and employing cunning survival instincts that keeps you on edge throughout. 

 

Playing on, initially in the background, is the FBI, whose methodical investigation - including using a discarded piece of gum to trace Dickinson's bitemark through her dental records - ultimately leads to the climatic scene as the plan begins to break down and the gang realizes it's every man or gunmoll for him or herself. 

 

Surprisingly, James Mason as the husband and dupe, all but disappears in this one until the end, but even then, he doesn't pop off the screen the way he usually does. Maybe that's not his fault as Steiger, Klugman, Dickinson and, most impressively, Stevens have the bigger and better roles, with each one creating a memorable and captivating character that you love or hate, but regardless, are deeply vested in.

 

Cry Terror!, filmed in beautiful black and white and with some wonderful location shots (confusingly, though, with some mixing up of Los Angeles for New York), punches way above its modest budget and by-the-numbers story. Andrew L. Stone's writing and directing, which doesn't waste a moment  of screen time, creates a tension-filled and highly engaging movie from the first scene to the last. 

 

 

N.B. Check out this eerily foreshadowing exchange the airline executives have when they realize the threat they are facing:

 

Airline executive #1: "A bomb this small could be planted anyplace."

Airline executive #2: "We can't search every passenger, every inch of the plane, every piece of luggage."

Airline executive #3: "He could paralyze the whole system."

[Det Jim McLeod]

2 hours ago, Fading Fast said:

Her scene with sweating-from-drugs Brand, trapped alone with him in his small, filthy and claustrophobic house, where she learns he was arrested once for **** a girl at knifepoint, has blonde and beautiful Stevens convincingly pinging back and forth between crumbling in sheer terror and employing cunning survival instincts that keeps you on edge throughout. 

A shocking, frightening scene in a film loaded with agonizing suspense. I believe Inger Stevens gives her best performance ever. Neville Brand has played many menacing villains before and after this but not as scary as the degenerate he portrays here.

[Fading Fast]

5 minutes ago, Det Jim McLeod said:

A shocking, frightening scene in a film loaded with agonizing suspense. I believe Inger Stevens gives her best performance ever. Neville Brand has played many menacing villains before and after this but not as scary as the degenerate he portrays here.

I agree, it's a shocking scene, especially for 1958 and kudos to both actors for convincingly pulling off such a long tension- and emotion- filled scene. After seeing the movie, I was surprised I hadn't heard about it beforehand . I would rank it much higher than it seems is the general consensus around this movie. 

[LornaHansonForbes]

16 hours ago, CinemaInternational said:

Admittedly, Erin Brockovich is a film that earned its R rating due to language (Erin herself swears a lot), but she's smart, tough,  lovable, and just a great person in general.  Julia Roberts takes it on with vigor,  sparking up great bantering chemistry with Albert Finney, who is simply a joy to watch here.

The Crowded Sky (1960) is a bit hokey, but its fun. It's the missing link between The High and the Mighty and Airport, telling the soapy sagas of the people aboard an airliner and a Navy jet before they accidentally collide 12 minutes before the end of the film. Most of the characters survive. There are longeurs but it is filled with all sorts of familiar faces, all of them professional. Its more of a soap opera than a disaster movie. Favorite cast member: Patsy Kelly in a small but delightful part as a wisecracking Hollywood agent.

I wish ALBERT FINNEY had won the Oscar for BROCKOVICH, but that was EL ANO DE BENICIO DEL TORO, so there was nada to be done.

I'm surprised at your subdued reaction to THE CROWDED SKY, a film which utterly tickled me when I first saw it (not too terribly long ago.) It is a MASTER CLASS in BAD DIALOGUE, and it makes the FIGHT BETWEEN THE MALE AND FEMALE ANNOUNCERS ON THE AIRPORT INTERCOM IN the FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF "AIRPLANE!" even funnier once you see it. it also features a terrible performance from one of my least favorite actors ever: JOHN KERR.

[Det Jim McLeod]

Young Tom Edison (1940) TCM On Demand-7/10

The early life of the great inventor.

Rooney gives a good performance in the lead and this is a highly entertaining mini-biography from MGM. I am not sure how much is actually true but I do recall reading in a library book in elementary school about Edison's early years, Two incidents I read about occur in the film-Tom being kicked out of school because they thought he was "addled" and he lost his part of his hearing due to being pulled up by ears by a train conductor. Again, not sure if these are true. The film came out just 9 years after the real Edison's death so I don't know if he was telling those stories himself. 

The supporting cast helps too. George Bancroft (just one year after Stagecoach) and Fay Bainter (Oscar winner for Jezebel 1938) are Tom's parents. Virginia Weidler steals a few scenes as Tom's spunky sister, this was the same year she played another little sister in The Philadelphia Story. Bobby Jordan, one of the Dead End Kids, plays the school bully. One of my favorite character actors, Eugene Pallette, is the gruff train conductor who first employs Tom. He has a funny line later on when Weidler asks him about the train whistle she hears in the distance, he says "Certainly I hear it, do you think I'm DEEF?" in his hilarious  bullfrog voice.

 

[LornaHansonForbes]

[Mr. Gorman]

More SPY STUFF . . .

Into the humble VCR went the 1965 spy satire THE SECOND BEST SECRET AGENT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD starring Tom Adams as 'Charles Vine'.  When James Bond is busy the 2nd best secret agent in the world must spring in to action!  And so he does!  This movie was released on video here in 1986 by 'CHARTER Entertainment'.   It's not a cartoon-like comedy spoof of James Bond films; lots of people get killed -- mostly by gunfire.  An innocent old man gets blasted near the end by a Russian baddie and left to die on the street.   There are lots of 'in-joke' references to James Bond movies.

Then directly after viewing the first film I watched the sequel WHERE THE BULLETS FLY (1966-UK) with Adams returning as 'Charles Vine' to untangle a mess of espionage, mind control and airplane sabotage!   More 'in-joke' references to James Bond movies +plus+ the '60s TV show "The Avengers" -- one of the main characters has a bowler hat and umbrella and looks like Patrick Macnee.  Except this character is a very bad guy instead of a 'Good Guy'.   One of the 'in-jokes' is that Charles Vine's boss now had a puddy tat whom he pets much like Blofeld has a kitty.  There REALLY are a lot of bullets that fly at the end with dead people all over the place!  There's also a shootout in the city morgue where Sid James is the attendant and there's bullets flying there, too, and more dead people.  But, hey, what better place for a bunch of people to get killed than the City Morgue, eh?  👍

"Where the Bullets Fly" was released on video in 1979 by the 'Magnetic Video Corporation'.  Considering the videocassette was 43 years old I'd say it played rather well.  I'm 49 and the tape I watched is only 6 years younger than me . . . those old MAGs are *grainy*, but they are built like ▬ video bricks ▬ !  You could actually beat someone up with those cassettes they're so heavy.   

[CinemaInternational]

4 hours ago, LornaHansonForbes said:

I wish ALBERT FINNEY had won the Oscar for BROCKOVICH, but that was EL ANO DE BENICIO DEL TORO, so there was nada to be done.

I'm surprised at your subdued reaction to THE CROWDED SKY, a film which utterly tickled me when I first saw it (not too terribly long ago.) It is a MASTER CLASS in BAD DIALOGUE, and it makes the FIGHT BETWEEN THE MALE AND FEMALE ANNOUNCERS ON THE AIRPORT INTERCOM IN the FIRST FIVE MINUTES OF "AIRPLANE!" even funnier once you see it. it also features a terrible performance from one of my least favorite actors ever: JOHN KERR.

Benicio Del Toro had been a steamroller of a candidate that year, although notably, he was run leading instead of supporting at the SAG awards, and won leading over future Oscar winner Russell Crowe (who prior to winning the Oscar, had not been doing well; he lost the Golden Globe to Cast Away's Tom Hanks and lost Britain's BAFTA to Billy Elliot 's 14-year-old Jamie Bell). Finney won supporting there, as he should have. In Del Toro had been run lead at the Oscars, I am sure that Finney would have repeated the SAG win.

By the way, above, you compared Traffic to a miniseries. It actually was based on a British miniseries that had aired on Masterpiece Theatre in the early 90s. I guess that even with the change of venue to America, it couldn't shake the episodic feel.

As for The Crowded Sky, yes, I found it to be a bit hokey but likable enough to minimize its issues. Some of the diologue wasn't the best, but it was near masterfully written compared to the howlers I heard in Vanilla Sky earlier this week (i.e. "We'll be together in our next life, when we are both cats"). Maybe if I hadn't gone through Vanilla Sky, I would have noticed how bad Crowded Sky's diologue was. (As for John Kerr, he did have a very sgort career, so you lucked out on disliking him. I do think though that Tea and Sympathy is a very moving film)

 

-----

Two more films to jot down: The late late night Jacqueline Bisset-goes-down-the-tubes double feature: Believe in Me (1971) and The Grasshopper (1970). In the earlier film, she gets hooked on drugs, in the latter film, she does a few of those, but ends up as a battle hardened prostitute in Las Vegas. 

The Grasshopper was the earlier of the two films, and its one of those films of the time that really wants to flaunt its lack of inhibitions at you as Hollywood left the Hays Code era. It features a near titanic amount of nudity through see through showgirl outfits, shower scenes, sex scenes, and even a male only pōrnô magazine . The sleaze of the world of Vegas showgirls, escorts,  and prostitution laced with rape, beatings, and the shockingly abrupt murder of one character is quite vividly portrayed.

it is remarkable then that the script was co-written by Garry Marshall, who would be making The Odd Couple at ABC by years end, and who would direct a far less seamy tale of a prostitute, Pretty Woman, 20 years later. The film though is very episodic as Bisset flits from one man and catastrophe to another. She's good, but its a bit too unwieldy for anyone to carry. Jim Brown is surprisingly good as the man who is briefly  her husband (a very early example of interracial on screen marriage). Joseph Cotten , as a married executive Bisset has an affair with, has only 5 minutes of screentime.

 

Believe in Me is kind of like a drug version of Days of Wine and Roses, and has a very similar ending. Even in spite of graphic scenes of drug injections, it is hardly as hard hitting as The Panic in Needle Park was the same year. Bisset and Michael Sarrazin play a pair of young lovers on the path of grave self-destruction due to "Speed" and heroin. The film is short at 86 minites, as hands-on MGM executives shore 50 minutes off of the film (including a scene that had Geraldine Fitzgerald as Bisset's mother), so it is compact. There are some strange moments, like the scene where Sarrazin forces Bisset to drink a whole bottle of chocolate syrup. But both leads are able to outshine the material and give strong perfomances even if Bisset still looks a bit too clean cut to be an addict. They were actually companions in real life at the time, so their rapport is palpable. This is an extremely rare film. The print last night was pan-and-scan and it appears that this was the film's first legal appearance in the US since its first release in 1971, as until last night it was one of the few MGM films never to appear on TCM.

[LornaHansonForbes]

34 minutes ago, CinemaInternational said:

Benicio Del Toro had been a steamroller of a candidate that year [IF] Del Toro had been run lead at the Oscars, I am sure that Finney would have repeated the SAG win.

 

I dunno.

I know that FINNEY did not attend the 2001 ceremony, I am not sure if he ever attended any of the 6(?) times he was nominated. (5?...i'm getting old)

[I get the feeling that ALBERT genuinely could not have cared less about such things, but i could be wrong)

Also HOLLYWOOD has the memory span of a gnat, I'm thinking even then a majority of voters had not seen some of his best work.

if SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE hadnt DRAGGED ON, WILLAM DAFOE would've been a bigger contender.

[Shank Asu]

A lot of films over on Criterion from their Pre-Code and Myrna Loy collections for the month:

Penthouse (1933)

Manhattan Melodrama (1934)

Stamboul Quest (1934)

The Red Pony (1949)

Whipsaw (1935)

Love Crazy (1941)

The 30's is probably my weakest decade for film, so i've been enjoying these films.  And Myrna Loy really was quite a looker.