WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[charliechaplinfan]

The Major and The Minor is on my list of films I must see one day.

I loved the scene with the trousers in The More the Merrier, it's just a perfect piece of movie making and the coffee pot scene is also hilarious.

Chris I'm with you I think that would go down as my love scene too although it surpasses Ingrid and Cary in Notorious and that is quite an achivement.

Talking of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, yesterday the kid were wanting to watch one of their DVDs on and as I switched on the TV Monkey Business was on TV it was up to the point when both Cary and Ginger had taken the serum and were acting juvenile. Cary talking to a chimpanzee under the table with Charles Coburn pursuing him. Ginger writing on the blackboard she loved Barnaby (Cary's character). Then they go out into the street and start painting one another. I can't do it justice but it's just a marvellous piece of acting, they must have had so much fun. Anyhow the kids forgot about their DVD and watched it through to the end. Pity they didn't get to see the ice skating scene. No one can do physical comedy like Cary who is ably assisted by Marilyn Monroe.

My kids are showing good taste

[feaito]

Today in the morning I re-watched for the nth time "Midnight" (1939). You can't get better than this: scripted by Charles Brackett-Billy Wilder, directed by elegant Mitchell Leisen; Paramount at ist most glorious. Such witty, sophisticated dialogue. Such nuanced, deft performances... Everyone's top of the tops here. What an ensemble cast. Each scene is a gem. Claudette Colbert, John Barrymore, Don Ameche, Mary Astor, Hedda Hopper, Francis Lederer, Elaine Barrie, Rex O'Malley et al. Too wonderful to be true!!! 11 out of ten!!!

[MikeBSG]

I took my son to see "Iron Man," which is as good as they say. I've never been a big fan of the character, but the film was a winner. It had an intelligent updating of his origin story, and while the main plot may have borrowed a bit from "RoboCop," the plot held together, and the scenes were splendidly realized.


I also watched the recent film "The New World" on DVD. A deep disappointment. The film isn't sure if it is going to be the history of Jamestown or a relationship film about Pocahontas and John Smith. The direction keeps cutting away from a scene to something utterly irrelevant, and then cutting back to the scene. The main battle scene in the film became incomprehensible because of this. (Maybe it was actually two battles, I don't know.) David Thewlis seemed utterly wasted by the filmmaker. The actress who played Pocahontas did a good job, and once the movie settled down to show her life with John Rolfe, it did get better. But on the whole, "The New World" struck me as cold and lifeless.

I know some people like Terence Malick a lot, but generally his films don't work for me, with the exception of "The Thin Red Line."

[charliechaplinfan]

I've had chance to watch The Light That Failed a 1939 film starring Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino and Walter Huston, such a good cast, a good script breathing life into Kipling's words. Ronald Colman gives a great performance as a war correspondent who finally finds fame as a painter. He is in love with a woman who will not accept him and using another girl (Ida Lupino) as a model but who hates him because of his meddling in her relationship with his pal Torpenhow (Walter Huston). Ronald Colman starts to go blind from a war wound. He realises he has little time left and that his sight is better if he drinks. He paints a wonderful last portrait of Bessie (Ida) but is rude and uncouth with her. When he has finished his blindness overtakes him. Bessie knows nothing of his affliction and destroys his portrait thinking he will paint another. Ronald never sees again but his friends including the girl he loves don't tell him of the destruction to the portrait. Only Bessie who he meets again once he's blind tells him what she did. She helps him to go back to the war and reporting. He is killed riding into battle. It's a sad film especially for someone like me who adores animals, when Ronald gives up his dog that has been his faithful companion before going to war, I was nearly crying.

Ida Lupino and Walter Huston give great perfromances in support of Ronald Colman.

[Ann Harding]

The film is very faithful to Kipling's novel. Perhaps a little too much IMO. Wellman didn't articulate the scenes as well as he could have....That said, it's a good picture with a great cast.

[Ollie]

What a great cast. There must be a Colman curse among the DVD gods - it may be worse than Raft's!

I thought Iron Man's CGI efforts were helped because everything was mechanical - every action-object was some machine, and there was no need to draw fit, sinewy bodies flying, jumping, rolling, etc, keeping them in proper perspective (unlike Spidey, DD, FF, X-Ms, Batman, SuperM).

[Lauren]

Fire Over England 1937 10/10
Mildred Pierce 1946 10/10
My Man Godfrey 10/10
Words cannot express how much I love William Powell

[MissGoddess]

Fire Over England 1937 10/10
Mildred Pierce 1946 10/10
My Man Godfrey 10/10
Words cannot express how much I love William Powell

Hi Lauren---I adore Powell, too and think he is worthy of having more of his movies released on dvd. We've had his contemporaries so honored and now I think it's time he received exposure beyone the Thin Man movies and his teamings with Myrna. Of course, I also think Myrna's movies also deserve the same!

[charliechaplinfan]

Last night I watched Le Corbeau. I wrote about it on the thread devoted to the film for anyone who is interested

http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis/view ... 9018#29018

[movieman1957]

"Suddenly" with Frank Sinatra. I saw it on On Demand and it had a little intro with Sinatra, Jr. Frank, Jr, oddly enough, referred to his father as Sinatra and seemed very business-like. Quite different than Osborne, who was talking with him.

This was my second viewing as I saw the film years ago and was impressed by Sinatra. This was his first role (per Frank, Jr.) after "From Here To Eternity." He's quite good passing himself off as an FBI agent then turning into this crazed would-be assassin. One scene where he is arguing with Sterling Hayden brings his face straight to the camera, talking to us. It is well done.

Good support from James Gleason as hostage trying to find a way out of the situation. The rest of the cast is kind of plain. It appears quite low budget especially for a Sinatra film but it is certainly worth the time. At 81 minutes it goes by in a hurry.

[jdb1]

Yes, it looks like young Frankie has given up trying to be the ring-a-ding shadow of his father, and has graduated to bombastic elder statesman in the Donald Trump mode.

But -- Poor guy. How very, very difficult it must have been to be Sinatra's son. I suspect the two daughters probably had a much easier time of it, and could be Daddy's little princesses. I don't think Little Frank was cut much of a break.

[movieman1957]

"The Queen" with Helen Mirren. She is grand and probably the only one who could play Elizabeth. Going from her stoic unwavering manner to a woman who indeed has been shaken she was very good. Michael Sheen is quite good as Blair also. He does a great job of walking the fine line of suggesting what the Queen should do without over stepping his bounds. In the end being won over by her willingness to moderate her position.

Two really nice subtle moments caught me off guard. One is where while driving across the river she breaks the drive train in her Land Rover. The car is dead yet she pulls the parking brake. The other is when she goes to see her mother, The Queen Mother. She affectionately calls her Mummy. It's a lovely moment of personal warmth from a monarch.

[MikeBSG]

Yesterday, my son and I watched the Abbott and Costello movie "In the Navy" on DVD. We enjoyed the film, particularly the "find the submarine" game, the "Sons of Neptune" initiation, and the "dream sequence" in which Costello takes over the battleship. It was a pleasant movie, but nowhere near as good as "Buck Privates" or some of the other Abbott and Costello movies. "In the Navy" was something of a rush job, and it shows because the material isn't as well connected as in "Buck Privates."

What interested me was the Dick Powell subplot, in which he is a crooner who joins to navy to flee paparazzi. This just struck me as a surprisingly "relevant" idea to encounter in a 1941 movie.

[Gaucho]

The last few films I've seen:

The Thief (1951)
Lubitsch in Berlin
New Babylon (1929)

[Bogie]

BOO!

I'm still alive just haven't had the time to post here and while i've been watching movies I haven't really watched as much as i'd like. I'll be re-dedicating myself to the movies in June as the AIF theme this month has me very intrigued.

Anywho the last movie I watched was Public Hero #1 (1935) which was a very strange gangster type movie. The whole middle section of the movie came across as goofy comedy what with Lionel Barrymore's drunk doctor character and his penchant for hard liquor. Nonetheless when the story was serious it worked.

I have to say the more I see Chester Morris the more I appreciate his work. The guy may not be known today and he may have spent a bulk of his career in B type movies but he always seemed to give a very good and genuine performance. Jean Arthur was bearable in this one (I used to like her but her voice and bearing really turned me off the more I saw her) Lionel Barrymore was well...Lionel barrymore

I thoroughly enjoyed this mixed bag of a film.