Re: Good (or bad) Movies PART 2

[jimv]

Somehow, I just got into "President" movies.  Last night I watched "American President" and I just finished "Dave."  Both are enjoyable movies. 

Speaking of the Great Bette Davis, I consider her absolute best movie to be "All About Eve."  There's another one I really like; from 1940, "The Bride Came C.O.D., a comedy with Jimmy Cagney.

[jimv]

I just finished watching "1917."  I agree completely with your review Lenny.

[LennG]

I just finished watching "1917."  I agree completely with your review Lenny.

Kind of knew you would like that one.

[LennG]

Saturday has come and gone with us watching a few more movies. As One might guess, I love movies. If something interests me, I'll give it a shot. Many movies, when I read the synopsis, don't do a darn thing for me, or have actors or actresses that don't appeal to me, so I'll pass. I will indulge a few hours a day to movies and hope I find those gems amid all the mediocre stuff out there. As like Jim, knowing I can watch an 'older' movie, or even a recent movie that I have already seen, and spend a few hours enjoying it once again, is a boon in these dire times.
Saturday is our Sabbath and we usually don't do much that day except relax and catch up on things, so an a rainy Saturday it is especially a good time to watch Hollywood in action with some movies--some new and some old.

The Caine Mutiny   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046816/

Since I am just a huge Bogart fan and he is my favorite all time actor, rewatching this movie just made my day. A completely different type of role for Bogart, playing a sort of meek type of character instead of him usually being the 'big' guy on campus, if you know what I mean. That said, with just a tremendous supporting cast, Bogart was great in the role of Capt. Queeg, the Captain of the USS Caine during WWII. If you've never seen this movie, now is the time to do it. Most know the story of a sort of mentally ill captain who takes over, and makes bad decisions, which make the others force him to step down as captain in a mutiny aboard a naval ship during WWII, and it's aftermath and trial. It all works to perfection, Bogie and the strawberries, almost as good as some of his lines in Casablanca.
Just a great movie all around and really not that dated for an 'older' movie.

The Blob   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094761/

I never knew they made a remake of this classic movie, but there it was on my TV schedule, so why not take a shot at it. I can't imagine anyone not knowing the original movie, The Blob, which was maybe the first, in a long line of these so called 'horror' movies from the 50's, that were more laughable than scary. They were really more of drive in specials, but when we were younger, these WERE the movies to see.
Anyway, they did make a remake of it, and I can't say one way or another if it was better than the original. It was done sort of tongue in cheek, not looking to redo what John Carpenter did with The Thing. Overall, the original The Blob was a low budget movie that just started a craze. I really wasn't a good movie and neither was this remake. That said, it was fun to watch and relive some memories from 'back in the day' when we were young and carefree. If you liked the original, this one will entertain you also. If you've seen enough of the Blob to last you a lifetime, then skip it.

My last watch of yesterday was a new one  Midway    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6924650/

This is the latest in a series of remakes about battles from WWII.  It tells the story of our WWII experiences, from pre Pearl Harbor, thru the attack on Pearl Harbor, getting into our response and Doolittle's raid on Japan, and then onto Midway, which was basically the real turning point for our Navy in WWII. If one doesn't know about the battle of Midway, watch the movie and you will learn snippets of it as it does touch on most of the main points, but some really too briefly. Historically I would say it was accurate, but since it isn't a documentary and meant to entertain rather than inform, take it for what it is, Hollywood.
So, my take on this movie. When I first saw the previews for the movie, I really thought it could be more of a video game than a war movie. The CGI effects are dramatic, almost trying to put you in the seat of one of the fighters or bombers during the battles. Many times, I just sensed it was all faked as times it just didn't look real. Maybe in the movies theaters it might have looked different, but on TV, on a small screen, well it did look too many times as it was all computer generated. I know it was, but in other great special effects movies, like Star Wars, you never really feel you are watching computer generated effects, here you do. They tried to make you feel you were part of the action, and IMVHO it just didn't work. You can see it was made for a younger audience, as I said, it dwelled on the highlights of the battle, but went more for the special effects than story line.
So, I did enjoy watching this movie, as I am a complete sucker for anything WWII related. The original movie version of the battle of Midway was also a so so movie, a bit too long and too much time spent of other things and not the battle itself. If I didn't know many of the key points of this historic battle, like how they broke the code and knew Midway was the target, I wouldn't have know from this movie. They did mention things, but more in passing than detail.
The cast was OK, even some veteran performers like Woody Harrelson looked out of sorts in this movie.
The actions scenes were good and there was enough action to satisfy most watchers. This will never win any awards for acting, for writing,  screenplay, maybe only for sound and special effects, I felt that the way they portrayed several of the main characters, being very cocky, bold, insubordinate and reckless as a bit over the top, maybe how we would want these guys to be, facing our enemy in a war, but I just don't see guy's from that time frame, acting this way. Could very well be, but I felt it was more to appeal to our new generation than it's older 'greatest generation'. They also portrayed the Japanese as always yelling at everyone, always yelling whenever they had anything to say. Just typical stereotype of what we thought the Japanese were like back in WWII. They did try and show how and why the Japanese did what they did, but I just never got into 'their' side.
So wrapping this thing up. I did enjoy the movie overall, as any story of a huge American victory is a good story. I would recommend this movie to one and all as even though this is a war movie and people die, there isn't much blood and no gore. It could be a very good history lesson for parent to their children.
If I had to rate it, 2 1/2 star and if you enjoy war movies add a 1/2 a star. .

[LennG]

So you thought I was off those 'golden oldies', well you were wrong.

Thanks to TCM and other assorted things my kids gave me access to , today I watched one of my favorite all time comedy groups, the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business.
I just have to say, I have been a huge fan of the Marx Brothers for as long as I can remember. Way before the VCR was even a dream in some one's mind, I used to stay up till all hours if one of their movies was on the Late Show, The Late, Late Show, or even the Late, Late, Late Show. The VCR was a boom to my sleep as I never had to stay up all night to watch my favorite comediennes again.  Really doesn't make much difference which movie we are talking about, they are all basically the same. Yes, some are better than others, but if you enjoy this type of comedy, then you will love any movie that they made. When we were first married, my wife bought me a book to add to my collection of books about movies, 'Why A Duck' which ahs a frame by frame account of their first movie, The Coconuts' where Groucho is trying to sell Chico some land which can be reached by viaduct, (Why A Duck). Just hilarious stuff. Funny though I don't think I have seen this movie in maybe 30 years, as I didn't remember several parts, so as to enjoy it much more. The Marx Brothers, either you love them or you hate them. I happen to love them.


My other movie is another oldie with another of my all time favorite comediennes, WC Fields in 'You Can't Cheat An Honest Man'. Once again, you either hate this type of movie and do not like the comedy supplied by WC Fields or you just love it and cling to every aside uttered by this genius. I fall into the latter and it is just too bad, many of his movies just aren't shown on TV these days. Forget the plot, forget anything about the movie itself, it's just the joy of watching Mr. Fields in action and trying to stay with his ad libs which are never in the script. Anyone, watching these movies really brings back so many memories of past years, childhood memories.
Just a great day watching these classic comediennes in action.

[jimv]

I'm another fan of the Marx Bros.  I have a number of their movies.  Their movies really fall into two sections:  the Paramount years & the MGM years.  The main ingredient in the MGM series is music & the lack of Zeppo who really added little to the.  Did you know there was a fifth Marx; Gummo?  He left the group before they entered the movies.

I never became a fan of Fields.  IMO, he was good but I never went out of my way to watch him.

[jimv]

Since I'm stuck in the house, I've been picking out movies that I haven't watched in a while.  Last night it was "The Man Who Never Was."  GREAT movioe!

Last night I dreamed a deadly dream
Beyond the Isle of Skye
I saw a dead man win a fight
And I think that man was I.

[philo43]

My wife is working from home and on a Carey Grant kick - her least favorites are my most liked.  So I listen to her's while on the my computer and watch the ones I like (North by North West,To Catch a Thief, Father Goose and Operation Petticoat).

This morning was wide awake at 1 AM, came down stairs, and watched Bridge over River Kwai, that my brother gave to me a few months ago. Must be 30 years since I have seen it. Had forgotten most of it.

If you get bored, Start with Marion Morrison's  first movie,  The Big Trail, and go in sequence from there.  It would probably get most people through June, at least. 

[jimv]

I've got "The Big Trail" & most of Wayne's short westerns before he made "Stagecoach."  Did you notice how sets repeated themselves in those westerns?

[philo43]

I've got "The Big Trail" & most of Wayne's short westerns before he made "Stagecoach."  Did you notice how sets repeated themselves in those westerns?

Yes I did, his early one were definitely serial movies, a staple of the time.  I knew the "old timers" would get the Marion Morris reference.  I was reminded of that from reading on a different board on this site about Gabes influencing Wayne's career.

[LennG]

Since we are talking John Wayne, here are some interesting facts about Wayne and some of his missed movies

Director Robert Rossen offered the starring role in All the King's Men (1949) to Wayne. Wayne refused, believing the script to be un-American in many ways. Broderick Crawford, who was eventually cast in the role, won the 1949 Oscar for best male actor, ironically beating out Wayne, who had been nominated for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)
.
He lost the leading role of Jimmy Ringo in The Gunfighter (1950) to Gregory Peck due to his refusal to work for Columbia Pictures because its chief, Harry Cohn, had mistreated him years before when he was a young contract player. Cohn had bought the project for Wayne, but Wayne's grudge was too deep, and Cohn sold the script to Twentieth Century Fox, which cast Peck in the role Wayne badly wanted but for which he refused to bend.

Wayne rebuffed the lead role in the 1952 film High Noon because he felt the film's story was an allegory against blacklisting, which he actively supported. In a 1971 interview, Wayne said he considered High Noon "the most un-American thing I've ever seen in my whole life", and that he would "never regret having helped run screenwriter Carl Foreman, [who was later blacklisted] out of the country".


An urban legend has it that in 1955, Wayne turned down the role of Matt Dillon in the long-running television series Gunsmoke and recommended James Arness instead. While he did suggest Arness for the part and introduced him in a prologue to the first episode, no film star of Wayne's stature would have considered a television role at the time.

Terry Southern's biographer Lee Hill wrote that the role of Major T. J. "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove (1964) was originally written with Wayne in mind, and that Stanley Kubrick offered him the part after Peter Sellers injured his ankle during filming; he immediately turned it down,

In 1966, Wayne accepted the role of Major Reisman in The Dirty Dozen (1967), and asked Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for some script changes, but eventually withdrew from the project to make The Green Berets. He was replaced by Lee Marvin.

Though Wayne actively campaigned for the title role in Dirty Harry (1971), Warner Bros. decided that at 63 he was too old, and cast the 41-year-old Clint Eastwood.

Director Peter Bogdanovich and screenwriter Larry McMurtry pitched a film in 1971 called Streets of Laredo that would co-star Wayne along with James Stewart and Henry Fonda. They conceived it as a Western that would bring the final curtain down on Hollywood Westerns. Stewart and Fonda both agreed to appear in it, but after long consideration, Wayne turned it down, citing his feeling that his character was more underdeveloped and uninteresting than those of his co-stars, which was largely based on John Ford's recommendation after perusing the script. The project was shelved for some twenty years, until McMurtry rewrote and expanded the original screenplay co-written with Bogdanovich to make the novel and subsequent TV miniseries Lonesome Dove, with Tommy Lee Jones in Wayne's role and Robert Duvall playing the part originally written for Stewart in the extremely popular miniseries.

Holds the record for the actor with the most leading parts - 142. In all but 11 films he played the leading part.

Of his many film roles, his personal favorite was that of Ethan Edwards from The Searchers (1956). Wayne even went so far as to name his son Ethan after that character.

The inscription on the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him in 1979 reads, simply, "John Wayne, American."

Wore a toupee in every film from Wake of the Red Witch (1948) for the rest of his illustrious career. Wayne's hairpiece can be seen to fall off during a fight scene in North to Alaska (1960).

[LennG]

Just watched an old movie, shown on TCM because there is no baseball. The Winning Team, story of pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, starring a good looking pre president, Ronald Reagan and the always charming Doris Day. I had never seen this movie before and thought it wasn't too bad. To be honest, Mr. Reagan wasn't a really good actor, but he did an adequate job here and, of course, they had to find a way for Ms. Day to sing a silly song, but overall, it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. What bothered me the most was the terrible way they edited this movie. In the scenes with the Yankees in the World Series, in one scene the players had no numbers on their uniforms, then in the next couple they did, and then no numbers once again. Same for the St Louis team. Also, the edited clips of the 'real action' were so different than the movie, it was almost comical. In the last scene, when Alexander strikes out the batter to win the WS, you see the catcher just start to trot off to the dugout and in the next scene, they are mobbing Alexander for winning.
Oh well, it was the only baseball we will see for a while.

[LennG]

Been trying to watch some of the series that have been mentioned, like on Netflix, but still have tile to watch another 'oldie' last night.

The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield. Another movie that I had high hopes for, but it was sort of just OK. I would say my main reason for watching was to see Mr. Garfield in action. He is one of my favorite actors from that generation and I just love the way he talks and his sort of macho image. This one didn't disappoint either. Story wise, it was the usual Hollywood stuff, with a bunch of uninteresting characters along the way. If not for Mr. Garfield, it would have been just a middling Hollywood movie, but he adds that extra oomph that makes it a worthwhile watch.

[LennG]

So a fine Saturday has passed and having to stay inside, was the perfect opportunity for me to watch another couple of movies that I really haven't paid a lot of attention to in the last 25 years or so but just loved them anyway.
So my darling wife and I decided Saturday would be Hitchcock day, but not just thr regular Hitchcock that most people know and have seen and loved, but more early Hitchcock from his British days.

'The 39 Steps'  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026029/

With Robert Donat and Madelline Carroll, it is just a great watch. If you are a Hitchcock fan you will love this movie. granted it was 1935, so many of the later 'touches' that made Hitchcock, Hitchcock aren't there, but the suspense is as well as a wonderful story. Watching it again, took me away from today's world and back into a world that Hitchcock wanted us to live in, even for only a couple of hours.


Second movie was The Lady Vanishes   https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030341/ with Margaret  Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Just another fascinating movie by the master of suspense, in his earlier years. Briefly, and this story ahs been told so many times since) people on a train. Me. Lockwood meets another lady, who then seems to have vanished from the train and all who are there either are in cahoots or just don't know. It is a wonderful story with all the Hitchcock touches to keep you on the edge of your seat. The 'aster' was still learning his craft, but you can plainly see he has it down pat. Just another great watch of a movie that is always out there but people seem to go to the more well know Hitchcock movies.

I can heartily recommend both these films as great entertainment and be taken to a world of Alfred Hitchcock and his films.

[LennG]

So I took a short break from watching movies to watch some of the TV series that I like. I am starting the 3rd season of Ozark and will be ready to join the discussion on that very soon. Also, I finally started watching Better Call Saul, probably the best TV show on the tube these days. I saved up a bunch of the episodes from this new season but just wanted to rewatch much of the last season before endeavoring into this new season. I am almost caught up on that also, and will join that discussion hopefully tomorrow.

So where did I find time to watch a movie or two, I always have time for a movie.

Since it should have been the beginning of baseball season, I decided to rewatch a couple of my favorite baseball movies

Major League    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097815/

One of my all time favorite comedies and I just love this silly portrayal of a baseball team that is supposed to lose yet doesn't. It does for baseball what Slapshot did for hockey (another fantastic movie, that I need to rewatch). So in Major League, it has such a great cast of then unknown people or people who were sort of starting out and became household names, but of course, Charley Sheen steal the entire movie as Ricky 'Wild Thing' Vaughn'. I still laugh at Bob Ueckers announcing skills and use his now famous line, even when I umpire,--when a pitch is so bad, so far out of the strike zone--'Just a bit outside'.  Funny, funny, funny stuff.

My second baseball watch was 'A League of Their Own     https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104694/

Just another just terrific movie about Tom Hanks trying to assemble and then manage a woman's baseball team when all the men are away at war. Just another movie with a wonderful cast and Hanks at his best. I still smile to myself when I think back on this movie. Also, with another classic movie line--'There's no crying in baseball', which, like the other line from Major League, I use in games when I do umpire. (to spread a little humor into the game.

No need to do synopsis's of these two movies. They both have been around for a long time and both are just great watches for an afternoon when you might need some cheering up.