I Just Watched...

Discussion of programming on TCM.
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CinemaInternational
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by CinemaInternational »

My return to films after a month of TV episodes isn't going particularly well. Part of it is maybe due to the time period I'm dealing with currently (late 70s/early 80s), but another part is maybe a bit of desperation, because I feel like I'm running out of films to watch, although there are many classic era B movies out there that could be fun. But as it stands now, it's one decidedly mixed affair and two clinkers that I have just dealt with.

Willie and Phil (1980) is an American remake of Truffaut's Jules and Jim, directed by Paul Mazursky. The film, at the beginning, is frustratingly shapeless and never seems to add up to much, but as it goes along, it does capture its footing to become a flawed but intriguing film.

Which is more that can be said for the next two.

I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by my generally positive reception toward Bloodline a few days ago, so I checked out the other theatrical Sidney Sheldon film, The Other Side of Midnight (1977). This was a mistake. This film serves as an illustration that a film with copious amounts of nudity can be as dry as dirt. It looks like a handsome production (replete with a Michel Legrand musical score and Oscar nominated costumes from Irene Sharaff), but the leads, Marie-France Pisier and John Beck, register zero on the charisma scale. It is hard to care about anything related to them. And the lamentable thing drags on for 166 minutes. The one saving grace is Susan Sarandon, who, even in a bad film in a sadly supporting role, still has that certain zest and spark of a true star about her, even though her palmy days would not completely arrive for another decade. But the rest of the film is apathetic, although while it completely bored me, I didn't feel the burning hatred that I felt after seeing 1941 on Sunday....

Not all directors have even careers. Stanley Donen directed many wonderful films from 1949 through the 1960s. But his career became very scattershot after the production code fell, and his big screen career came to a lamentable end with Blame It on Rio (1984). [He later directed a nice little TV movie for ABC in 1999]. The film is billed as a comedy, but its grim. Michael Caine stars as a man in the midst of a midlife crisis who, perhaps under the spell of a trip to sultry Rio, embarks on a brief affair with the nymphet daughter (Michelle Johnson) of his best friend (Joseph Bologna). The actors look embarrassed and stricken (this extends to Valerie Harper and Demi Moore as well), the script isn't funny (no laughs in this film, only one gag that produced a tiny smirk), the photography is flat, and the end result is very dour and unappealing. But the worst mistake of all in the film is including a luscious black-and-white clips of the wing walking "Rio by the Sea-o" production number from 1933's Flying Down to Rio. The brief scene shows the studio system at its height, with true wonder and fascination. It leaves one lamenting the film around the clip all the more.
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Detective Jim McLeod
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Detective Jim McLeod »

CinemaInternational wrote: February 6th, 2023, 3:05 pm
bedazzled (19670 is crisp and funny half of the time (when Dudley Moore and Peter Cook are interacting), but it goes a bit flat during the fantasy sequences with Eleanor Bron. Still worth a look. And Raquel Welsh's cameo are the personification of lust is extremely funny.

I saw this one again. I agree the early fantasy scenes are a bit slow, but it gets funnier and wackier as it goes on. I loved the "Pop Star" wish sequence where Moore does a spot on parody of 1960s music, then Cook has a hilarious version of psychedelia. I also liked the animated "fly on the wall" scene. And the nuns jumping on trampolines was hysterical!
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TikiSoo
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by TikiSoo »

I agree Detective Jim, I absolutely love BEDAZZLED -it's episodic nature saves the so-so scenes with hilarious ones. Since viewing it a zillion times it was fun hearing CI's first time viewing impressions.
CinemaInternational wrote: February 7th, 2023, 6:18 amBut the rest of the film is apathetic, although while it completely bored me, I didn't feel the burning hatred that I felt after seeing 1941 on Sunday....
Haha a more extreme reaction to how I felt after watching BYE BYE BRAVERMAN '68 last week.

And like you, I am running out of great movies to discover...I've held out not watching a few well loved titles, purposely for that reason. It must be awful to have "seen them all", especially when new movies offer slim pickings. I find myself losing patience watching an unengaging movie and just going to something else, like TV shows.
MissWonderly
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by MissWonderly »

Swithin wrote: February 6th, 2023, 10:16 pm
CinemaInternational wrote: February 6th, 2023, 3:05 pm just quick notes....

Wise Blood (1979) is a flavorful Deep South Dark Comedy from the work of Flannery O'Conner involving Brad Dourif as an angry young men who tries to stat a church build around nothing. It's quite scathing and it captures a feeling for the land very well. A good late career offering from director John Huston....
I think Wise Blood is one of Huston's best films. Late in his career, he seemed to emulate John Ford. The opening of Wise Blood is quite similar to the opening of The Grapes of Wrath, and the "feeling for the land" which you mention is certainly more characteristic of Ford's work than it ever was with Huston's earlier work. I think Huston's greatest film is his last: The Dead, in which he emulates Ford even more.
Interesting. ( I guess people tend to say that when they disagree, but want to be polite...) I saw Wise Blood on TCM a few years ago, and absolutely hated it. A real visceral reaction, I loathed it. ( hope no one's worried I'm holding back here.)
I should say first, I 've been to Georgia, specifically Savanah, and have a true affection for the place. While there, I bought a copy of "A Good Man is Hard to Find", a collection of stories by Georgia novelist Flannery O'Connor. But I've never read it. I think after seeing "Wise Blood", which is based on a Flannery O'Connor novel, I was completely put off reading anything by her.
I don't want to be impolite to CinemaInternational and Swithin, both of whom I respect. So I guess I should say that I do acknowledge that "Wise Blood" is in its own way a "good" film, well-acted, well-directed, etc. After all, it's directed by John Huston, one of the greats.I just hated the premise, the characters, and the story. It struck me as exceedingly negative and nasty. ( and I don't always mind negative, it just depends on how it's done, I suppose.)
I cannot stand Brad Dourif's character. He is so messed up about sex and religion. I do understand that lots of people are, but the way it's depicted in "Wise Blood", is particularly repellant to me. He's all about death and sin and nihilism, and he seems to conflate these concepts with sex - again, not unheard of with psychologically disturbed characters.

I just found the whole experience of watching "Wise Blood" to be profoundly distasteful. Or to use a childish word that comes to mind, "yucky".

...I do agree with Swithin that Huston's last work, "The Dead", is a great film.
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LawrenceA
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by LawrenceA »

I adore Wise Blood and thought The Dead was a total bore.
Watching until the end.
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Swithin
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Swithin »

MissWonderly wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:08 pm
I don't want to be impolite to CinemaInternational and Swithin, both of whom I respect. So I guess I should say that I do acknowledge that "Wise Blood" is in its own way a "good" film, well-acted, well-directed, etc. After all, it's directed by John Huston, one of the greats.I just hated the premise, the characters, and the story. It struck me as exceedingly negative and nasty. ( and I don't always mind negative, it just depends on how it's done, I suppose.)
I cannot stand Brad Dourif's character. He is so messed up about sex and religion. I do understand that lots of people are, but the way it's depicted in "Wise Blood", is particularly repellant to me. He's all about death and sin and nihilism, and he seems to conflate these concepts with sex - again, not unheard of with psychologically disturbed characters.

I just found the whole experience of watching "Wise Blood" to be profoundly distasteful. Or to use a childish word that comes to mind, "yucky".

...I do agree with Swithin that Huston's last work, "The Dead", is a great film.
Miss W., it certainly isn't impolite to disagree, it's what can enliven a conversation and help us to understand other posters views. (Imagine how boring boards would be, if we all agreed. For example, her worshippers should be very happy about my negative opinion regarding a certain one-note BS actress!)

Here's a quote from an excellent New York Times article (2007). I think this article sheds some light on where Flannery O'Connor is coming from. This sensibility is reflected in Wise Blood.

"O'Connor's short stories and novels are set in a rural South where people know their places, mind their manners and do horrible things to one another. It's a place that somehow hovers outside of time, where both the New Deal and the New Testament feel like recent history. It's soaked in violence and humor, in sin and in God. He may have fled the modern world, but in O'Connor's he sticks around, in the sun hanging over the tree line, in the trees and farm beasts, and in the characters who roost in the memory like gargoyles. It's a land haunted by Christ — not your friendly hug-me Jesus, but a ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling."
MissWonderly
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by MissWonderly »

LawrenceA wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:16 pm I adore Wise Blood and thought The Dead was a total bore.
The complete opposite of my feelings about those two films. Oh well, as Swithin says above, it's ok to agree to disagree.
MissWonderly
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by MissWonderly »

Swithin wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:29 pm
MissWonderly wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:08 pm
I don't want to be impolite to CinemaInternational and Swithin, both of whom I respect. So I guess I should say that I do acknowledge that "Wise Blood" is in its own way a "good" film, well-acted, well-directed, etc. After all, it's directed by John Huston, one of the greats.I just hated the premise, the characters, and the story. It struck me as exceedingly negative and nasty. ( and I don't always mind negative, it just depends on how it's done, I suppose.)
I cannot stand Brad Dourif's character. He is so messed up about sex and religion. I do understand that lots of people are, but the way it's depicted in "Wise Blood", is particularly repellant to me. He's all about death and sin and nihilism, and he seems to conflate these concepts with sex - again, not unheard of with psychologically disturbed characters.

I just found the whole experience of watching "Wise Blood" to be profoundly distasteful. Or to use a childish word that comes to mind, "yucky".

...I do agree with Swithin that Huston's last work, "The Dead", is a great film.
Miss W., it certainly isn't impolite to disagree, it's what can enliven a conversation and help us to understand other posters views. (Imagine how boring boards would be, if we all agreed. For example, her worshippers should be very happy about my negative opinion regarding a certain one-note BS actress!)

Here's a quote from an excellent New York Times article (2007). I think this article sheds some light on where Flannery O'Connor is coming from. This sensibility is reflected in Wise Blood.

"O'Connor's short stories and novels are set in a rural South where people know their places, mind their manners and do horrible things to one another. It's a place that somehow hovers outside of time, where both the New Deal and the New Testament feel like recent history. It's soaked in violence and humor, in sin and in God. He may have fled the modern world, but in O'Connor's he sticks around, in the sun hanging over the tree line, in the trees and farm beasts, and in the characters who roost in the memory like gargoyles. It's a land haunted by Christ — not your friendly hug-me Jesus, but a ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of the mind, pursuing the unwilling."
What beautiful writing. Who wrote that article? They can really write - I wonder if Flannery O'Connor herself could have put those thoughts any better.

Maybe I should revisit my feelings about that Flannery O'Connor book and give her stories a shot.

ps: My husband shares your indifference to Barbara Stanwyck. He has the same complaint about her - he thinks she's "one note". I don't agree, but as you so amiably put it, that's all right.
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laffite
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Re: I Just Watched...

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Sabine Azema in Sunday in the Country
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Swithin
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Swithin »

MissWonderly wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:54 pm
Swithin wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:29 pm
MissWonderly wrote: February 7th, 2023, 1:08 pm
Here's a link to The Times article (it was a sort of travel article, not a film review). It's behind a paywall, but maybe you get a few free articles. I've added another excerpt, but probably shouldn't excerpt the whole article.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/trav ... nnery.html

O'Connor's characters shimmer between heaven and hell, acting out allegorical dramas of sin and redemption. There's Hazel Motes, the sunken-eyed Army veteran who tries to reject God by preaching “the Church of Christ Without Christ, where the blind don't see, the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.” Hulga Hopewell, the deluded intellectual who loses her wooden leg to a thieving Bible salesman she had assumed was as dumb as a stump. The pious Mrs. Turpin, whose heart pours out thank-yous to Jesus for not having made her black or white trash or ugly. Mrs. Freeman, the universal busybody: “Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.”

People like these can't be real, and yet they breathe on the page. And there is nothing allegorical about the earthly stage they strut on: It's the red clay of central Georgia, in and around Milledgeville, where O'Connor spent most of her short life. She lived with her widowed mother on the family farm, called Andalusia, just outside Milledgeville, writing and raising peacocks and chickens from 1951 until her death in 1964 at age 39, of lupus.

O'Connor was a misfit herself, as a Roman Catholic in the Bible Belt, a religiously devout ironist writing for nonbelievers. She liked to gently mock the redneckedness of her surroundings. “When in Rome,” she once wrote, “do as you done in Milledgeville.”
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norfious
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by norfious »

I just watched "Cohen and Tate" (1988). It's not something I'd normally watch, but I have been appreciating Roy Scheider a lot recently and watched it just because he was in it and the plot, and more so the characters, sounded vaguely interesting.

Firstly, I have to say that Scheider was excellent in the film and I really liked his character, Cohen. Even though he was an intimidating hitman, with years of experience and an icy, no-nonsense demeanor to match, he was still quite human. It was fascinating seeing him
become what one could loosely call the "good guy" ever so briefly as he became the lesser of the two evils for the kidnapped child to rely upon
. I also liked the inclusion of his character needing a hearing aid, as it gave him a physical vulnerability that matched well with his emotional insecurities that initiated plot points in the film.

The other main hitman character, Tate, I felt was far overdone and was not very believable -- almost like a caricature. Still, the chemistry between him and Cohen was the main appeal of the film and I enjoyed how they played off one another.

I was pleased to see that the film was more serious in tone and did not take on the same goofy quality as the Home Alone series, with the kid outwitting the criminals in silly ways. The criminals weren't bumbling idiots either. The kid did outwit them, but did so in a much more believable manner. I enjoyed the fact that the downfall of both criminals was the doubt and fear that the kid planted in their minds. As adults, I think people are much more susceptible to doubts and tricks of the mind from experiences in life.

There was what I thought to be excessive graphic violence in the film, which made it difficult to watch for me. Thankfully, I was watching it on YouTube and could just preview what was coming by hovering in the progress bar and scroll down when I thought something graphic was going to happen. The film could have done without the gore, as it really didn't add anything at all. But I get it, it was a late 80's movie and that kind of shock value seemed to be popular.

Yes, there were a lot of things in the film that were not very believable, but I wasn't expecting super high quality or a flawless plot. It was enjoyable for what it was. I came in with really low expectations, and the film surpassed them.
_Broadway_ from the TCM forums.
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TikiSoo
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Re: I Just Watched...

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I just watched JULIA MISBEHAVES '48 mostly to see Greer Garson starring in a comedy. I had read the synopsis and was intrigued that many move-goers of the day could not accept Garson as a "loose" type of lady. Heh, anyone working on "the stage" back then was considered a wild, loose person.

The movie was pretty intriguing with the Lady For A Day kind of mixed with Stella Dallas theme of 'mother gives up daughter to be raised by the Father, then comes back for daughter's wedding' with gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor as the daughter.
Walter Pidgeon plays the Father and I still can't warm up to him-he's kind of bland, although he has a few lighthearted lines that help his character-he should have had more.

The real stand out in this movie is poor Cesar Romaro who plays an acrobat who performs with his brothers on the same sort of circuit as Garson's charactor. Someone thought it would be a good idea to have his charactor speak in a thick Cockney type accent!
Romero spoke his lines flawlessly (what a trouper!) but the accent was wholly unnecessary and distracting. He's a sexy Latin hunk, why didn't they allow him to speak in his own voice?

All others in the movie support the story with usual aplumb- Mary Boland & Lucile Watson as Mothers of Pidgeon & Romero respectively, Liz Taylor and Peter Lawford as the "kids", Nigel Bruce & Reginald Owen as friends of showgirl Garson. Never underestimate those "supporting charactor" roles for holding a movie together.

I did like this trifle of a movie a lot, it was fun to see Greer Garson as a more lighthearted charactor & she looked great. I was however, not enamored by the over-the-top ending scene and thought it ruined the last impression of the movie.

Run Greer, RUN (who would EVER choose Pidgeon over Romero?)
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Feinberg
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Feinberg »

I just watched a really great interview with John Le Carre on youtube talking about The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. It is from a dvd extra in the Criterion release. Not only does he go into the world of spooks but he talks a lot about Burton, Ritt, Bloom and much more. Highly recommended.
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Detective Jim McLeod
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Re: I Just Watched...

Post by Detective Jim McLeod »

The Constant Nymph (1943) TCM 6/10

A teenage girl (Joan Fontaine) pines for a composer (Charles Boyer) even after he marries her socialite cousin (Alexis Smith).

First time viewing for me, I wanted to see it for Peter Lorre. His role is very small but it is one of his most normal characters, a rich man who marries one of Fontaine's sisters. I thought the film as a whole was pretty good. It was fun seeing Joan Fontaine playing a naïve young schoolgirl since I was used to seeing her in more mature roles. Charles Coburn (the same year as his Oscar winning The More The Merrier) has some funny moments as a blustering English uncle. The film dragged a bit in places but the ending caught me by surprise.

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