What was the last movie you saw?

KGeo777 said:
CITY BENEATH THE SEA 1971 -- A tv pilot turned into a feature film. It is a little cheap for a feature of the era--but the sets look more impressive for a tv show of the time. Some of the FX of traveling through the sea with giant fish around are visually interesting. The fancy light displays of the underwater city probably looked very hi-tech in 1971--early computer graphic monitors with simplistic light patterns utilized as background decoration. Similar plot to ST-The Motion Picture --an admiral is returning to his command and the guy he had picked to replace him is resentful. They have to contend with a giant meteor from outer space. There's one character--a surgically-altered underwater breather--I can't call him a poor man's Spock because he's totally boring. Oh-except he swins like the Man From Atlantis. If you have seen that show, then this is years earlier-the same kind of wiggly swimming technique. This is an Irwin Allen production--alumni from his other projects appear in brief roles.
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Is that the one in which only gold bars were an appropriate shield against a certain type of radiation?




THE CONQUEROR (1956) One of if not the only weird role for John Wayne: Genghis Khan! I never thought of GK as the heroic-type, but, as far as I know, JW only portrays heroes.



PAGE MISS GLORY (1935) Two con men, "Click" Wiley (Pat O'Brien) & Edward Olson (Frank McHugh) are facing eviction from their high-priced hotel room, until they dream-up a fraudulent way of paying the bill. They will enter a non-existent woman in a beauty queen contest sponsored by the manufacturer of yeast products. Take the ankles of one, the legs of another, etc., put them together using photographic techniques, and win the contest. It works, but, eventually, everybody wants to meet the girl.

A young and newly hired chambermaid Loretta Dalrymple (Marion Davies), just happens to be in the bedroom, and trying on the gown made for the elusive contest winner, and just in time, is presented as Dawn Glory.

great supporting cast! Fun film. Though I do not know why the audience, myself included would accept frauds/con men as protagonists. I makes no sense.
 
Those Who Wish Me Dead
Ruthless killers hunt a kid and a park ranger amidst a raging forest fire.
Suspenseful enough, but no future Academy Award nominee. The fire gives the most memorable performance.
 
REBerg said:
Those Who Wish Me Dead
Ruthless killers hunt a kid and a park ranger amidst a raging forest fire.
Suspenseful enough, but no future Academy Award nominee. The fire gives the most memorable performance.
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Same (last movie I'd watched)

I work from home and I just kinda overheard somebody watching it and I was intrigued when I heard the father told his son that he was a forensic accountant yada yada. The magic word. I took a break and watched the film.

I really wanted to know what the dad found out. I watched till the end. It sucks not to know! The movie ended. Great fire. But still the questions stands, What did the dad find out about the crime boss? Why did so many people have to die for it? I get it that lots of people in authority, politicians, etc are in it. Or am I just too invested about not knowing what it was?
 
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Eversummer said:
Same (last movie I'd watched)

I work from home and I just kinda overheard somebody watching it and I was intrigued when I heard the father told his son that he was a forensic accountant yada yada. The magic word. I took a break and watched the film.

I really wanted to know what the dad found out. I watched till the end. It sucks not to know! The movie ended. Great fire. But still the questions stands, What did the dad find out about the crime boss? Why did so many people have to die for it? I get it that lots of people in authority, politicians, etc are in it. Or am I just too invested about not knowing what it was?
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Yeah! They really did not reveal what the short-lived dad had uncovered, or how a few "secrets" scrawled on paper would bring the boss down if the kid could get them to the media.
 
Tenent (2020)
Just a spelling tweak away from what might have been a intriguing documentary about the Tenth Doctor, this film further muddled all concepts I may have formed about time direction. It probably saved a bundle on special effects by running extensive fight and car chase footage backwards.
 
5E77F637-7286-4A5C-9825-9F1CE4C66B1E.jpeg

Top-notch.
 
REBerg said:
It probably saved a bundle on special effects by running extensive fight and car chase footage backwards.
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And using the same footage repeatedly, forwards and backwards.

I didn't think it lived up to the massive hype it had last summer. It was going to be the film everyone would see when the cinemas re-opened after UK lock-down. That didn't last long before they were closed again and it probably demands to be seen on the big screen.
 
The Sound of Horror 1966 Spanish b and w
A mysterious map, a cursed cave, and some people who are gonna dig and blast their way in to where the treasure is.
They find a mummified body, and a large egg, which seems to be ancient, but a short time later it starts to hatch on the mantlepiece and
they have to bash it with a poker and throw it into the fire in order to stop the awful screeching noises it's making. In the cave, yes, an invisible monster, never clearly seen, also prone to shrieking and screaming a lot. It has nasty pointy claws and it dispatches a few of the cast while our superstitious local woman tells them I told you so a number of times, until she becomes the next victim. A guy goes into the cave alone and is slashed, dynamite goes off and the cave is sealed. Time to escape but the car won't start so they are forced to use a sack of flour which, spread out in a field, allows them to see the beastie's feetprints as it approaches the house, and axes are flung, with good accuracy, and the bleeding monster retreats. Now the car starts and they are off but uhoh the monster is on the roof of the car and it starts hacking its way in. Our professor, his leg already injured by the beast, stays in the car as everyone else runs away, and he sets off the dynamite in there and after a few more screeches - happy ending. Not bad. ;)
 
CATCH-22 (1970) I had read the book before the first time I saw the movie version on tv. Re-watching it now, un-edited-it is much darker than I remember it to be-there's a particularly gory sequence that is surprisingly realistic. A horse is whipped on the ground (simulated). In fact, what captured my attention was how expensive this film looked for the day. And yet, I just knew this film would alienate audiences and from what I read, it did not do well (it was among the top ten in Box Office but that doesn't mean much if it only got half its budget back). There were dozens of smaller films which probably did get their money back at the same time. This was the period of New Hollywood which was praised for its daring negative themes but if you examine them, you ask yourself who were these films intended for? Did they actually expect to turn a profit or didn't care about that?
In a few years they shifted focus to B-movie stories with big budgets but you have to wonder, if the marketplace is everything, why they were so slow to catch on to what the smaller companies were making money from.
There are a number of famous faces who appear in roles--Jon Voight, Charles Grodin, but what caught my eye was Ken Clark in a blink and you miss him role as a military policeman-he left Hollywood for Europe and starred in a number of western, spy, and peplum films--so it was ironic to see him back in a Hollywood movie but in a role that would usually go to a bit player. I guess this was a sequence shot in Italy and he happened to be there. IMDB doesn't have him listed for the film either.
 
More "Great Adaptations":

The Iron Mask (1929) -- Direct sequel to The Three Musketeers (1921) with many of the same actors, sets, etc. So much so, that I'm surprised there's such a long gap between them. Anyway, Douglas Fairbanks (Senior) swashbuckles his way through this silent epic. Very nicely filmed. Notably, almost all the main characters are dead by the end of the movie. A farewell to the silent era?

Esther and the King (1960) -- Joan Collins has the title role (not the king, silly) in this Italian/American Biblical epic. Very, very loosely based on Scripture, so it's really just a typical sword-and-sandal flick. Palace intrigue, battles, dancing girls, etc.

David and Goliath (1960) -- Orson Welles has top billing as Saul in this Italian Biblical epic. Since the meeting between the two title characters takes only a few minutes (one slingshot) the rest of it is palace intrigue, battles, dancing girls, etc.

Alexander the Great (1963) -- Failed pilot for a proposed television series. William Shatner in the title role, and Adam West as the apparent second lead, although he has very little to do here. Palace intrigue, battles, (one) dancing girl, etc.
 
"This was the period of New Hollywood which was praised for its daring negative themes but if you examine them, you ask yourself who were these films intended for? Did they actually expect to turn a profit or didn't care about that?"

It was a period when no one knew who was going to the cinema or why. They lost contact with the audience. The old studio bosses were making huge expensive show films that no one was bothered about seeing - Hello Dolly being a prime example - while cheap counterculture stuff like Easy Rider made a MINT. No one wanted to make the next Hello Dolly; everyone wanted to make the next Easy Rider. and for a while it was worth studios financing lots of small films in the hope of having one humongous that would pay for all the others and turn a profit hit, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket of a box-office bomb. Spread betting.
 
Just watched two documentaries. Both grabby.

Zappa on the unique musician and, in his later days, fighter against censorship.
Always liked his well known stuff. His experimental atonal music is beyond me.
It's on HULU.

Ray Harryhausen, the great stop-action animator. Both his work and his influence. Available on Amazon.

Both full length features.
 
JunkMonkey said:
It was a period when no one knew who was going to the cinema or why. They lost contact with the audience. The old studio bosses were making huge expensive show films that no one was bothered about seeing - Hello Dolly being a prime example - while cheap counterculture stuff like Easy Rider made a MINT. No one wanted to make the next Hello Dolly; everyone wanted to make the next Easy Rider. and for a while it was worth studios financing lots of small films in the hope of having one humongous that would pay for all the others and turn a profit hit, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket of a box-office bomb. Spread betting.
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They knew that audiences liked James Bond films (United Artists--not considered one of the Hollywood majors even though they were busy). Yet Hollywood only did a few spy comedies in response. They did not jump on that band wagon. Yet they were still funding dramatic bombs. Some of these films look like bombs on paper and then they did bomb--they could have looked to companies that were successful and wonder but they didn't--they didn't seem to care what the smaller competition did-even if they were distributing them.

And Easy Rider came after a number of other biker films which also had Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson. They all had done at least one biker film previously. But those films did not have big marketing or distribution.

Peter Biskind wrote the opinion that 1960s foreign films were getting audiences in the US because of less restrictions on nudity. That's a dismissive analysis of the many foreign films that were getting audiences. Was there nudity in Godzilla imports, or A Fistful of Dollars?

I think they were greasing the wheels of the machinery and who knows what else while smaller companies were more engaged with their target audiences and often turning a profit.
 
Another "Great Adaptation":

Home Town Story (1951)

Not an adaptation of anything, as far as I can tell. I'm tempted to dismiss this in a few words as a mediocre B drama, but there are so many odd aspects to it that I feel compelled to say more.

First of all, going into this blind, it takes a long time to figure out what this movie is about. Our main character comes home after failing to get re-elected as a state senator. (This seems to be the Midwest; the name of the state capital, we're told, is Capitol City. Talk about generic!) Just about the first thing he does after getting off a plane is punch his campaign manager really hard. He'll later almost punch some guy who makes a remark about his loss. Touchy politician!

Then we meet his mother and his tiny little baby sister, who is in third grade. (There seems to be at least a couple of decades age difference between the siblings, and Mom doesn't seem much older than Son.) He gives the kid a puppy. There's also his girlfriend, who has been engaged to him for seven years (five while he was in the military, two while in was in Capitol City.)

Family drama? Love story?

The guy goes back to what was, apparently, his old job as a newspaper editor. Along for the ride are the Skipper from Gilligan's Island as a pipe-smoking, wisecracking reporter, a young Marilyn Monroe in a tiny role as a curvaceous secretary, and a spinter-ish woman as the reporter at the "Distaff Desk" (women's news, it seems.)

Newspaper drama?

The guy investigates a company, with which his political rival is involved, that may be polluting the local river.

Muckraking drama? Political scandal drama?

It turns out the company doesn't discharge anything into the river, so the guy launches a crusade against companies making big profits. That brings the lovable head of the local company (familiar character actor Donald Crisp, just exuding benevolence) to explain that when companies make profits, consumers profit as well. (The weird logic is that the things people buy are actually worth more to them than what they pay for them. Oh, really?)

Capitalist propaganda film? Bingo!

The movie pretends to have a plot when the guy's girlfriend, the teacher of the third-grade class that his tiny sister attends, takes the kids on a field trip to a local quarry/mine/cave/something-or-other. Multiple safety rules are violated, as the little girl takes the puppy along, and follows it into an abandoned mine shaft (that has no barrier or warning sign.) The boy with her fools around with an old lantern attached to a wooden beam, that causes a huge cave-in. Everybody works like crazy with heavy equipment to rescue the kid. She's badly injured (the dog is OK) so the saintly business owner flies her in his private plane to Capitol City (apparently the only town that can provide proper medical care) to save her life. Our main character changes his tune, and sings the praises of business corporations.

The story goes that General Motors sponsored this thing to promote Big Business. Was the good old USA really so close to a socialist revolution at the time that this was necessary. As a movie, it's eminently forgettable. As a cultural phenomenon, it's eye-opening.
 
Sonic the Hedgehog, finally. It was all right, the highlight being Jim Carrey and the fact that they changed Sonic's design.
 
Jeffbert said:
PAGE MISS GLORY (1935) Two con men, "Click" Wiley (Pat O'Brien) & Edward Olson (Frank McHugh) are facing eviction from their high-priced hotel room, until they dream-up a fraudulent way of paying the bill. They will enter a non-existent woman in a beauty queen contest sponsored by the manufacturer of yeast products. Take the ankles of one, the legs of another, etc., put them together using photographic techniques, and win the contest. It works, but, eventually, everybody wants to meet the girl.

A young and newly hired chambermaid Loretta Dalrymple (Marion Davies), just happens to be in the bedroom, and trying on the gown made for the elusive contest winner, and just in time, is presented as Dawn Glory.

great supporting cast! Fun film. Though I do not know why the audience, myself included would accept frauds/con men as protagonists. I makes no sense.
Click to expand...

Somone else whose seen Page Miss Glory! I can only concur it's a great wee film.
 
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