last movie you watched

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Re: last movie you watched

#1892340

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I've watched little in the way of film over the last few days, instead turning to Disney+ for the final season of Love Victor, which I confess I thought was pretty awful this time around.


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Re: last movie you watched

#1892922

Post by MikeFromHolland »

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Watched the 1942 version of “Jungle Book” as directed by Zoltan Korda, and I was amazed by the quality of it with regards to the cinematography. It looks very colorful, bright and even fresh. The story is fun for children I guess, but that’s not what kept me watching. “This was eighty years ago! This was during the Second World War!” These were the thoughts that kept me hanging on, while watching Americans dressed up like Asians.



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Re: last movie you watched

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MikeFromHolland wrote:
Sat Jun 25, 2022 11:59 pm
.

Watched the 1942 version of “Jungle Book” as directed by Zoltan Korda, and I was amazed by the quality of it with regards to the cinematography. It looks very colorful, bright and even fresh. The story is fun for children I guess, but that’s not what kept me watching. “This was eighty years ago! This was during the Second World War!” These were the thoughts that kept me hanging on, while watching Americans dressed up like Asians.



.
I haven't seen this in a very long time. It was a production by the Korda brothers - basically a UK film made partly in Hollywood. But the British film industry was in a very good place during WW2, and this fits into sumptuous films being made around that time over here - The Four Feathers, Henry V, Matter of Life and Death etc.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight I saw The Ghost Breakers, starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. It was an attempt to recreate the formula of The Cat and the Canary, but it fails, in my opinion, not least because the creepy atmosphere of Cat and Canary simply isn't present here - the film doesn't even reach the haunted castle until it only has about twenty minutes left to run! Hope and Goddard work well together, though, but one has to feel for Willie Best as Hope's black manservant, who is forced to play out virtually every stereotype you could possibly think of. It is cringeworthy in some places, despite the fact that Best was actually a talented comic actor. Kino's blu ray is solid enough.


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Re: last movie you watched

#1893275

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.

Watched “Whatever Works” by Woody Allen (2009) with Larry David in the Woody role. Loved it.



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Re: last movie you watched

#1893282

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007 YOLT , 55 anniversay (first 007 i ever saw back in '88 , back then it was a big deal to see Bonds , i recorded from TV as i couldnt always afford to buy vhs....it was amazing to watch this as a kid , the spectacle of it all.....and the music is playing in my head over and over , Barry was simply amazing)
007 TLD , 35 anniversary (just saw YOLT and this the other day , what a great 007 Dalton was......i curse the lawsuit that prevented fans from having 1-2 Dalton Bonds more >:(



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Re: last movie you watched

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Last night I saw Advise and Consent from 1962. Directed by Otto Preminger, the film stars Charles Laughton, Lew Ayres, Peter Lawford, Franchot Tone, and Henry Fonda in a story about a president trying to get his nomination for Secretary of State accepted by the Senate. Despite being sixty years on, this still comes across as a realistic depiction of the wheelings and dealing of American politics. There are some fine performances here, especially from a BAFTA-nominated Charles Laughton, but it's surprising watching the film now that it wasn't up for any Oscars. Also shining here is Lew Ayres in a very understated and quiet performance that was his first big screen appearance in nine years. Also worthy of note is Peter Lawford's turn as a senator with a conscience. Despite the subject matter and its length, the film isn't overly complex and it doesn't seem overlong either, and Preminger is a master of this kind of material. The film is most remembered now for another chipping away at the Production Code (and again it's a Preminger film that is doing the chipping). This 1962 movie is the first Hollywood film to contain a depiction of a gay bar since Call Her Savage, a Clara Bow vehicle released in 1933.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight I saw Disturbing Behaviour, a horror movie (kind of) which came out about twenty years ago and was quickly forgotten and not seen as anything of note. But in recent years, it's been getting some critical attention, partly because the theme of those in power not wanting teenagers to be able to think for themselves and question authority has become much more linked to the world we live in. This has an attractive cast including James Marsden, Katie Holmes and Nick Stahl (who is sadly underused in the second half of the film), but there is little character for them to work with. Most of this is due to cuts forced on the film by the studio. In all, 30 minutes were cut, and the Amazon streaming version seems to be shorter still at 80 minutes. But, despite that, it's an entertaining watch, and it still has something to say, even if it's not very subtle about it. Similar themes popped up in other horror movies of the 1980s and 1990s, including Zombie High (better than the title suggests) and The Faculty.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight's film was The Mystery of the Yellow Room, a 1919 French silent movie based on the book by Gaston Leroux (of Phantom of the Opera fame). The book was extremely successful when published, and was a significance on some of Agatha Christie's early works, particularly Murder on the Links. But the book has aged badly, and this film version has, too. Murder mysteries were often not successful in silent film because of the reliance on questioning of the suspects, and this one runs 75 minutes, but has close to 150 intertitles - many of them with enough writing to fill the screen. There's a good reason why it's not out on home video, but always cool to see an obscurity, all the same.


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Re: last movie you watched

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It's been a week of TV watching so far, although I have a stash of blu rays piled up ready for watching.

First up was Love and Anarchy season 2, which is on Netflix. This Swedish series is really very good, although probably not for the prudish. Unhappily married Sofie works at a publishing company where she meets 22 year old Max, who handles the firm's IT, and when he sees Sofie in a compromising position, they begin a game of dares that has ramifications for their personal lives and the firm itself. Some of it is intentionally squirm-inducing, but much is also very funny. The second series goes on a more serious path than the first, but is still very good.

Then I went back and rewatched Heartstopper, also on Netflix. It's quite rare for me to watch TV series twice, especially soon after watching it the first time, but Heartstopper is, I think going to have huge ramifications on not only coming out stories but the way teen dramas are made generally. I wanted to go back and see how it worked and fit together. Blog post on this beautiful little series here:

https://silentmovieblog.wordpress.com/2022/07/07/grounded-in-reality-and-the-ordinary-the-wonders-of-heartstopper/

Also really chuffed to come across an Amazon marketplace store selling a load of Kino, Milestone, and Flicker Alley blu rays (region A) as £12.98 each. I've been playing over £20 recently. So, I managed to bag:

Filibus, a 1915 Italian adventure drama.
The Spiders, a Fritz Lang Indiana Jones-style silent serial.
FP1 Doesn't Answer, an early 1930s German futuristic film in both the German and English versions
The Black Sheep. A supposedly-awful horror movie from 1956 featuring Rathbone, Lugosi, Carradine, and Chaney Jr!
The Audie Murphy Collection. 3 films including Duel at Silver Creek, Ride a Crooked Trail, No Name on the Bullet
Child's Play. 1972 thriller starring Robert Preston and James Mason
Dr Cyclops. 1940 horror/fantasy in technicolor.

I'll see how that affects my bank balance before I decide to go back for more!


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Re: last movie you watched

#1895545

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007 TSWLM 45 anniversary today , wonder what E thought of the movie



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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight was the original version of Invaders from Mars. It seems outrageous that a classic of this kind has yet to have a blu-ray release - and the streaming version on Amazon (that I saw tonight) is pretty awful, with half of the film so dark that it's impossible to make out what's going on. Awful treatment for an iconic film.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Another 1950s movie tonight, this time Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets, in which a man pulled from a river is found to have the plague, and a doctor and a police captain combine their efforts to find his contacts before an outbreak occurs that will devastate the city and beyond. There were a number of these clock-ticking movies being made at the time, both in America and the UK. Panic in the Streets is excellent, and boasts a fine performance from Richard Widmark. However, for me, the British movie Seven Days to Noon (where the clock is ticking to find a scientist before he blows up London) is the best in the cycle. Signal One's blu ray is good.


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Re: last movie you watched

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In 1982, Stephen King issued Different Seasons, a book containing four novellas. In 1986, the one called "The Body" became the classic movie "Stand By Me." In 1994, the film of "The Shawshank Redemption" was released. Both became instant classics. It was therefore no surprise when a film of another of the novellas appeared in 1998: "Apt Pupil," which I saw tonight for the first time in ages.

Apt Pupil tells the story of a high school student who is obsessed with the holocaust and spots a Nazi war criminal living in his small town. The boy goes to see the old man, wanting to hear his stories, and a friendship develops that swings drastically from the boy holding all of the power to the old man having power over the kid. The film stars Brad Renfro as the boy, in what was possibly his finest role. Ian McKellan plays the war criminal. It's a chilling and very dark tale that didn't do very well on release, either critically or at the box office. But it didn't deserve that fate, as there is much to commend the film once you can get your head around the subject matter. McKellan won plaudits for his performance, but for me it's Renfro who excels. Rarely, we actually have a sixteen year old playing someone who's sixteen, as opposed to a 25 year old playing one, as is normal for Hollywood movies. Online rumours suggest that Renfro was 14 during filming, but this seems unlikely given there are a couple of nude scenes (unless a body double was used). Either way, having someone the right age playing the part adds to the intentionally-uncomfortable viewing experience. It is a fine (if flawed) movie, but it certainly leaves an uncomfortable taste in the mouth.

It was in many ways the high point of Renfro's career, although he is also superb in the controversial "Bully" from a few years later. Just ten years after "Apt Pupil" he was dead, at the age of 25 through a drug overdose - just days before Heath Ledger's death.

The region B blu ray on the film from Umbrella looks very good.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Last night, I saw the original TV movie version of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which is currently in a promotion in HMV. It has a reputation of being one of the best horror TV movies ever made, but I am not sure if that's really the case. It terrified me when I was a kid, but watching as an adult, the idea of a house having weird and evil little creatures living behind the fireplace seems very silly indeed. It was remade in 2010 with Katie Holmes in the lead, although I haven't seen that version. The exclusive HMV blu ray looks excellent.

Tonight, I finally got to see Deluge, which I have been wanting to see for a long time. This is a 1933 (pre-code) film that starts off as a disaster movie as the earth is ravaged by tsunamis following a series of earthquakes. I'm not sure how audiences of the time would have viewed it - would they have noticed that all of those sequences was done using miniatures? It seems so obvious now, but did it then? I think it probably was obvious - especially as The Hurricane came along just four years later, and had stunning storm sequences. Anyway, after the storm, the film focusses on a couple of groups of survivors, one of which is a group of extremely horny men who are intent on basically raping any girl they can find, and the other group is out to kill them. It's a bizarre film, and not particularly good, but quite shocking to modern audiences who don't know what to expect from pre-code movies. This one is certainly more daring/unpleasant than most. The film only existed in an Italian dubbed version until recently, when the original English version was found in 2016 and released on blu ray by Kino. Some have called it the first Hollywood disaster movie, but I'm pretty sure Noah's Ark from 1928 (directed by King Creole's Michael Curtiz) could easily fit into that category, too.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight's film was the Warner Archives blu ray of the Judy Garland/Gene Kelly musical, Summer Stock. This ended up being Garland's last movie for MGM and her last musical comedy. It's true to say that it's not the best musical Hollywood ever made. The put-on-a-show musical throws back to the days of Garland and Rooney, of course, and Rooney was originally slated to star alongside Garland instead of Gene Kelly, but MGM didn't think he had the box office appeal at the time. Would the renewal of the two working together again have brought in the crowds? Hard to say. Either way, Kelly and Garland were a good pairing, and they work well together here. The biggest problem is that the new songs aren't very memorable. One is so terrible that it could have come from Kissin Cousins (or maybe Paradise Hawaiian Style). See below. The Gene Kelly dance routine with the newspaper is the stand-out, and there is the wonderful Get Happy number for Garland at the end. I think we tend to forget how good a dancer she was, too, and she does get to show that in the film.

This is the awful Heavenly Music number, complete with dogs. Garland was meant to be involved in it, too (she's seen wearing the costume at the end of the film), but she failed to turn up to rehearsals and shooting. I really don't blame her.



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Re: last movie you watched

#1897157

Post by Walter Hale 4 »

Don't Say A Word (2001)



Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy, Sean Bean, and Jennifer Esposito


For the most part the script/plot was psychological thriller. The movie certainly has it's moments but i found it to be anti-climatic and could've had a better ending. 'nuff said.

Spoiler alert...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0260866/




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Re: last movie you watched

#1897159

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Taxi 2004

remake of french comedy movie , stars Fallon/Latifah/AM/Jen Esposito/model Bundchen.....not a great movie but i kinda enjoyed it nonetheless

Fallon is a clumsy cop , Latifah is a cab driver , Jen is Fallons boss & Bundchen is the leader of bank robbers



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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight's movie was the 1952 film noir, Scandal Sheet, about a newspaper editor who commits murder, and then has to sweat it out while his protege reporter try to solve the case. Broderick Crawford is the editor, and John Derek (man, was this guy handsome) as the reporter. Donna Reed has a solid supporting role, too. It's a good watch, and over and done with in a snappy 80 minutes.


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Re: last movie you watched

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The postman today is my new beat friend...
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Re: last movie you watched

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Last night, I saw Pendulum, a police drama starring George Peppard from the late 1960s which I thought was OK, but lacked any form of twist or unexpected turn to really make it must-watch viewing.

Tonight, I saw the 1973 musical version of Tom Sawyer - made by Readers Digest, of all things. The music is by the Sherman Brothers (Mary Poppins, Jungle Book), but it's fair to say the songs are not up to the standards of their best known songs, and none stay with you after the film has ended. That said, I thought the film was unexpectedly enjoyable. It's a solid adaptation, even if it skips over some of the darker elements of the book somewhat, but Johnny Whittaker and Jeff East are good as Tom and Huck respectively, and Celeste Holm does well as a rather kindly version of Aunt Polly. A very young Jodie Foster also shines as Becky. The Twilight Time blu ray has the follow-up film, Huckleberry Finn, too, so quite a good bargain.


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Re: last movie you watched

#1898012

Post by MikeFromHolland »

.

Watched Pastor Hall (1940) by Roy Boulting (director) and his twin brother John Boulting (producer) as released by Indicator earlier this year. It was written by the German Jewish dramatist Ernst Toller (1893-1939) who was made ‘public enemy number one’ by Joseph Goebbels and his works were amongst those destroyed in the book burnings of 1933. He went into exile that same year and settled in the US. It’s there where he wrote the play Pastor Hall in 1938, just one year before his death by suicide (or was it set up that way?). It was one of the few anti-Nazi dramas to be translated into English before the war.

The film is losely based on the experiences of pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) and (not mentioned but definitely the case) Toller’s own experiences. A very interesting movie considering the time it was filmed.

Martin Niemöller may still be known for this poem he wrote:

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me






.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Post by MikeFromHolland »

.

Went to the cinema this morning to watch the one time screening, in my neighborhood, of The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021), and it was time well spend. Actors acting out on recorded interviews worked very well. 1 hour and 55 minutes were too short. Too much was left out in my opinion.

Seeing outtakes of City Lights with the flower girl scene over and over again was a real treat. Seeing some scenes of The Kid on the big screen was very touching as well.

They are showing some restored Chaplin movies at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam this summer. This docu has convinced me to go and watch a few. Chaplin on the big screen is magic.



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Re: last movie you watched

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MikeFromHolland wrote:
Sat Jul 23, 2022 5:47 pm
.

Went to the cinema this morning to watch the one time screening, in my neighborhood, of The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021), and it was time well spend. Actors acting out on recorded interviews worked very well. 1 hour and 55 minutes were too short. Too much was left out in my opinion.

Seeing outtakes of City Lights with the flower girl scene over and over again was a real treat. Seeing some scenes of The Kid on the big screen was very touching as well.

They are showing some restored Chaplin movies at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam this summer. This docu has convinced me to go and watch a few. Chaplin on the big screen is magic.



.
The Kid is such a wonderful movie (especially in the later re-edit that Chaplin did). It still works well on the big screen, too. I know there's a Chaplin coming on re-release soon, but I don't remember what it is.

Last night, I followed up the 1973 version of Tom sawyer with the 1974 Huckleberry Finn. What a comedown. Despite having much of the same cast and the same songwriters, this is really quite awful - so awful that I began fast-forwarding through bits. I give it some credit for coming up with a better final section than the book (which isn't difficult, the ending of the book is a mess), but the pacing is all over the place here, and it's a very dull two hours.

Tonight, I watched The Black Sleep, a horror movie from 1956, featuring the final performance of Bela Lugosi in a small role, mute butler-type character. Also featured very briefly is John Carradine, and Lon Chaney Jr is also included in a wordless role. The film has a terrible reputation, but actually I rather enjoyed it. Straight horror movies were not all that common in the 1950s, having mostly given way to sci-fi variations on the theme. The real star of The Black Sleep is Basil Rathbone as a scientist who doesn't care about maiming and killing the people he operates on in his brain surgery experiments - shown in surprisingly graphic detail for a 1956 film. For me, this fits in rather well as a kind of link between the Universal and Val Lewton films of the 1940s and the Corman Poe films of the 1960s - occupying a similar position as House of Wax and The Mad Magician. I thought it was a solid movie, and far better than its reputation.


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Re: last movie you watched

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Tonight's movie was Duel at Silver Creek, a decent western starring Audie Murphy from 1952. This was Don Siegel's first western, and it's pretty straightforward in all regards, but works well nonetheless, and was clearly a kind of training exercise for Siegel given what was to follow.


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