I Just Watched...

[Cinemaspeak59]

FULL METAL JACKET (1987) I haven't seen it in many years. Still powerful.

Definitely. It packs a wallop.

[Allhallowsday]

FULL METAL JACKET (1987) I haven't seen it in many years. Still powerful.

Definitely. It packs a wallop.

I wasn't watching it, but turned it on at just the right moment; then, the to Vietnam Segway... "Me love you long time!" and I was hooked. I hadn't remembered the very end, gorgeous, eerie, "Micky Mouse! Mickey Mouse!..." Wow.

[laffite]

I can't find the What Coming Up on TCM thread, but try and see Girlfriends this evening at 6:45 pm Eastern. I think I reviewed this not long ago. If I'm not confusing this with another film, it a curiously low-budget film made by amateurs but is well acted and rather a satisfying film.

[Detective Jim McLeod]

Say Goodbye Maggie Cole (1972) Youtube 6/10

A research physician (Susan Hayward) is suddenly widowed and she decides to leave LA and work in an inner city doctor's office in Chicago.

This was a pretty good TV movie, first time viewing for me. It is worth seeing for the cast. This was Susan Hayward's final role, a shame since she is excellent, she probably could have done many more fine performances had she not passed away 3 years later. Darren McGavin plays the gruff Chicago doctor she works with, he was doing some of the best TV movies of this time like Tribes and The Night Stalker. Michael Constantine (at the time was the principal on Room 222) plays a neurosurgeon here. Jeannette Nolan has a touching scene as the grandmother of a leukemia patient. Maidie Normand is a friendly nurse. There is a tear jerking moment at the end. And Dusty Springfield sings a good song "Learn To Say Goodbye" over the credits at the beginning, it is reprised again near the end.

[HoldenIsHere]

FULL METAL JACKET (1987) I haven't seen it in many years. Still powerful.

Definitely. It packs a wallop.

I wasn't watching it, but turned it on at just the right moment; then, the to Vietnam Segway... "Me love you long time!" and I was hooked. I hadn't remembered the very end, gorgeous, eerie, "Micky Mouse! Mickey Mouse!..." Wow.

"Me love you long time" was a line in the "Shanghai Lil" number from FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933) with James Cagney and Ruby Keeler.

[Allhallowsday]

Definitely. It packs a wallop.

I wasn't watching it, but turned it on at just the right moment; then, the to Vietnam Segway... "Me love you long time!" and I was hooked. I hadn't remembered the very end, gorgeous, eerie, "Micky Mouse! Mickey Mouse!..." Wow.

"Me love you long time" was a line in the "Shanghai Lil" number from FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933) with James Cagney and Ruby Keeler.

Yup. I just watched FOOTLIGHT PARADE in recent weeks... However, in FULL METAL JACKET it's to NANCY SINATRA "These boots..."

[HoldenIsHere]

I saw the last half of Running on Empty yesterday. Didn't know it was on, just turned on TCM and then watched till the end. I always like to see the scene with Steven Hill, just as I always like to see Jo Van Fleet's scene in Cool Hand Luke. Two generally good films rise to greatness in those moments. This time I noticed how Lumet had been using long shots for most of the preceding scenes, then we get the extended close-ups of Steven Hill as he sees his daughter (Christine Lahti) for the first time in years.

Steven Hill does very little with his face, not even much eye movement. Everything is internalized, yet everything is intense. This is a man who is used to controlling his emotions, but the emotions are powerful, overwhelming, yet he isn't visibly overwhelmed. Christine Lahti, a rather pretty woman, is willing to look unattractive at certain moments in this scene. The scene is very well written, both the structure and the dialogue, and Sidney Lumet, whose films vary in quality to an unusual extent, does not drop the ball here.

Thanks, kingrat, for mentioning this movie!

Sidney Lumet is one of my favorite movie directors although admittedly I’ve only seen 11 of his movies, a third of his entire filmography. RUNNING ON EMPTY is my favorite of his movies (with DOG DAY AFTERNOON, THE FUGITIVE KIND and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS also ones I’ve enjoyed multiple times). I’ve probably watched RUNNING ON EMPTY at least four times in its entirety and watched certain sequences many more times. In this movie, as with his other work, Lumet is interested in pulling the audience into the story, eschewing high art techniques that acknowledge the camera.* The story he and his collaborators tell in RUNNING ON EMPTY is compelling and emotionally engaging. And, yes, River Phoenix is gorgeous in this movie, and he’s beautifully photographed by cinematographer Gerry Fisher.

The Christine Lahti and Steven Hill scene that you mention is one of my favorite movie scenes of all-time. It’s one of the great examples where brilliant directing, acting, writing (Naomi Foner’s screenplay was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe), cinematography and editing seamlessly blend to create the illusion of something real and spontaneous happening on the screen --- the essence of “movie magic.”

As you’ve said, the intensity of the quiet, internalized emotion of the Steven Hill character is wonderfully presented in close-up. Christine Lahti commits to presenting the genuine reactions of her character without any apparent concern for vanity. At the beginning of this first meeting between the father and daughter in almost fifteen years, their blunt responses bely the deep affection they share. She flatly tells him “You can call the cops if you want to.” He reminds her that when they last saw each other fourteen years ago she called him “an imperialist pig” and tells her curtly that he heard she had a second son “on the news.” But the love breaking through their masks is wonderfully displayed cinematically. Before the end of the meeting, she tearfully confesses that she has called out to her parents often since they’ve been estranged. The last thing she says to him at this meeting is “I love you, Dad.” When she leaves, her father sobs audibly. Steven Hill’s visible crying dissolves into a shot of Christine Lahti on her bed, lost in thought after seeing her father.















* A notable exception is a powerful “arty” shot of Anna Magnani near the end of THE FUGTIVE KIND.

[CinemaInternational]

Some more things seen recently....
The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) is a thriller that is not bad, but it could have been more deep and meaningful than it actually is. Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine play two men forced to be on the run after they fought back against some brutal policemen in South Africa, helped only by Caine's married lover. There are some other plotlines involving an ill-fated Indian dentist and a powerful black anti-apartaid activist, but the film more or less stays on a simple action level. The two stars carry it, but I wish there was a little more here.
The Killing (1956) is early Stanley Kubrick and an extremely lean and mean noir. It's only 84 minutes, but not a single minute is wasted and it makes a pretty big impact. Marie Windsor especially makes a sizable impression.

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964) is a very oddball film. Its a kids film about a man who turns into a talking fish who then proceeds to help the US to kill Nazis in WWII. It sounds nearly certifiable on paper, but on screen, its a tall tale that is actually pretty likable, helped by some charming animation and by a cast that plays it with a tounge firmly in cheek.

Over the Edge (1979) made me recoil. It is not billed as such, but it really feels and plays like a horror movie. Its one of those studies of juvenile delinquency, but the teens here make the ones in Rebel without a Cause feel like Sesame Street by comparison. It is set in a suburban community in California, and its teens, some as young as 14, have, in the absence of any real supervision, created a nihilistic world of frequent drug using and dealing, guns, property destruction, alcohol abuse,and rampant sexuality. As the film continues, the decay gets to an even more alarming point: laying siege to others and taking hostages. Matt Dillon, in his film debut, plays the most sadistic teen; it seems that the film only received a token theatrical release in 1979, and was only released more widely after he became a teen heartthrob in the early '80s. It's really creepy and disturbing, and while the late 70s clothes and decor have dated a lot, this still feels alarmingly relevant in today's crazy world.

Knute Rockne All American (1940) is a pretty good, old-fashioned uplifting biopic, although it does have one moment that gives a real jolt: when the audience realizes that burly Pat O'Brien, who looks decidedly middle-aged, is playing the title character from about the age of 22 on. He is actually very good in the part of the famed coach, but he could never pass for being that young.... Ronald Reagan is in here playing an ailing player; although he got one of his most famed campaign slogans out of this film, the future prez's screentime is short. The film is filled with plenty of charm, and if not a major film, it is very likable.

Australia (2008) contains the paradox of almost all films directed by Baz Luhrmann; it starts in a choppy, aggressive, rather goofy style, and then removes its brittle shell to reveal something far more deep and emotional underneath. This extremely long (165 minutes) and astoundingly expensive ($130 million) film found few takers in 2008, but if you get past those early passages (which do contain a very misguided brief moment of kangaroo poaching), you end up with something that feels floridly rich, like a Golden Age Hollywood melodrama. The episodic story finds Nicole Kidman as an English woman who comes to Australia in 1939 on reports that her estranged husband, who lives there, has been stepping out on her. She arrives to find out that he has been murdered, and that she now owns his ramshackle property much coveted by her husband's powerful killer. Needing someone to tend the property, she reluctantly turns to a man she can't stand (Hugh Jackman), and she also temporarily takes in a half-Aboriginal boy left with no guardian after his grandfather was falsely imprioned. Of course, as time passes, opposites attract and Kidman and Jackman, both widowed, fall for each other. But their happiness is not only threatened by the aforementioned villain but also because of the trevails of WWII.... If you are looking for something subtle, look elsewhere. But the film is visually stunning, rather endearing, and emotionally satisfying. I enjoyed it a lot more than some much more praised titles of the era....

Which brings me to a case of that point, 2000's Cast Away, a sort of millennium take-off of Robinson Crusoe. It still remains popular with audiences, its obviously made with technical precision (the airplane crash scene is truly disturbing), and Tom Hanks really did give himself a physical challenge here in having to make it through a film with very little diologue and no co-stars at all for over half the film. But at the same time, the film is so high and mighty that it feels like several elements need to be zinged to bring it back down to earth. First, in the later sections of the island scenes, Hanks is stuck with a straggly beard and disheveled long hair that looks like Christopher Atkins in The Blue Lagoon long past his prime or an over-the-hill member of an 80s hair band, second, aside from some unnecessary profanity, what little dialogue there is is so rudimentary that it makes "See Spot run" sound like high literature, and thirdly, the film is astonishingly strident in its fierce and constant (even on a deserted island!) product placement for FedEx, which makes the whole thing feel like a 143 minute commercial rather than a film. I guess I'm sounding harsh. It's really OK, and there is a late scene that is very moving, but it just does not live up to the popular acclaim.

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) marked the end of an era as it was the final Western helmed by John Ford, although this film takes a bit of a different tack than many of his others. Its the saga about the painful travails of the Cheyenne forced to abandon their own land and to cross over a thousand miles to a new home. The film is a bit heavy handed, but it does have a noble theme. One problem though is that there is a lengthy sequence around halfway through set in Dodge City that seems meant to highlight the venality of some in the Old West, but the sequence is formless and stops the film dead cold. Still, much of the rest is quite powerful, and Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker and Dolores Del Rio stand out in the ensemble cast. Its not perfect, but it is worth a look.

[CinemaInternational]

Just a little note or two on a recent post or two in this thread:

Tank you, kingrat and Diane, for noting some intriguing new network series. I have been somewhat hesitant to watch new shows after ABC killed off the very promising Rebel (with Katey Segal and Andy Garcia) after only ten episodes a few years ago, but I might have to give these shows a look. It seems appropriate that True Lies is a CBS series; when the film it was based on was released in 1994, some called it an R-rated version of CBS's Scarecrow and Mrs. King, which was a charming show in the 80s.

I do have to second Diane's opinion on sitcoms. I far prefer TV dramas and comedy-dramas as the sitcom form is inherently claustrophobic and it takes a lot of charm (like some of the classic ones of the 50s/60s like Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Donna Reed, That Girl, Carol Burnett etc.), superior wit (like the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Newhart, Cheers, Taxi, The Golden Girls, or Frasier, Brooklyn Bridge), or a really strong cast (Designing Women, Murphy Brown) to put it over for me. I think the last great network sitcom was Cybill and that was in the 90s; The Middle in the 2010s was kind of awkwardly sweet and charming though.

My favorite TV shows tend to be primetime soaps (Knots Landing, Peyton Place, Family, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Dallas, thirtysomething, Homefront, Sisters, Providence, Desperate Housewives), legal shows (LA Law, The Practice, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal, I'll Fly Away), medical ones (St. Elsewhere, ER, Northern Exposure), mystery shows (Moonlighting, Murder She Wrote, Remington Steele, Columbo, Pushing Daisies, Poirot), family shows (The Waltons, Gilmore Girls) or dramas period (China Beach [my all-time favorite show, although Knots Landing is hot on its heels], Lou Grant, Midnight Caller, NYPD Blue, Picket Fences, Twin Peaks, Mission Impossible).


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Full Metal Jacket has a great, disturbing first act, but I couldn't warm to the rest. Maybe I should give it another shot. There were plenty of fascinating films and TV shows about Vietnam around that time though.
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Running on Empty is an exceptional film that moved me to tears multiple times. I know its on TCM in the middle of the night in a few days. It's well worth a look if you haven't seen it before, as are three other choice 80s titles also on TCM this weekend: Crossing Delancey, Local Hero, and A Cry in the Dark. As for Sidney Lumet, I've seen quite a few of his films; his career is very erratic , but when he did something good, he did a great job .

[dianedebuda]

I do have to second Diane's opinion on sitcoms. ... it takes a lot of charm ..., superior wit ..., or a really strong cast ... to put it over for me.

I didn't like them even way back when and haven't watched more than a handful of episodes total from all the ones you listed. Yeah, I didn't even like Lucy.

I had some hope for the med series New Amsterdam the first year or so when seemingly new, sometimes drastic (fire the billing over care oriented physicians, provide a bus pickup for staff with transportation issues, healthy cafeteria food), approaches to existing problems were presented, but it soon devolved into a soap and I lost interest. True, not realistic, but I enjoyed the shake-ups and out-of-the-box initial viewpoints.

I like that your movie views are quite eclectic like mine.

[Sepiatone]

I do have to second Diane's opinion on sitcoms. I far prefer TV dramas and comedy-dramas as the sitcom form is inherently claustrophobic and it takes a lot of charm (like some of the classic ones of the 50s/60s like Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Donna Reed, That Girl, Carol Burnett etc.), superior wit (like the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Newhart, Cheers, Taxi, The Golden Girls, or Frasier, Brooklyn Bridge), or a really strong cast (Designing Women, Murphy Brown) to put it over for me. I think the last great network sitcom was Cybill and that was in the 90s; The Middle in the 2010s was kind of awkwardly sweet and charming though.
-----
Running on Empty is an exceptional film that moved me to tears multiple times. I know its on TCM in the middle of the night in a few days. It's well worth a look if you haven't seen it before, as are three other choice 80s titles also on TCM this weekend: Crossing Delancey, Local Hero, and A Cry in the Dark. As for Sidney Lumet, I've seen quite a few of his films; his career is very erratic , but when he did something good, he did a great job .

I don't recall Carol Burnett ever doing a sitcom. She was a guest on a few over the years, but.....

You mentioned THE MIDDLE. I loved that show. My wife was especially fond of young Atticus Shaffer. Refused to believe he was really a little kid, but was really a middle aged actor of very short physical stature his acting was so good. I liked it because the children were more or less the antithesis of typical sitcom children, who were often much smarter, more well behaved and more socially successful than most kids in reality ever were.

RUNNING ON EMPTY? Never moved me to tears, but do agree on it being a fine film. And provided a more historically accurate depiction of the late '60's the parents went though. In the hands of other people the parents might have still been wearing bell bottoms and listening to sitar music.

And Christine Lahti certainly made us Michiganders proud.

Sepiatone

[txfilmfan]

I do have to second Diane's opinion on sitcoms. I far prefer TV dramas and comedy-dramas as the sitcom form is inherently claustrophobic and it takes a lot of charm (like some of the classic ones of the 50s/60s like Lucy, Dick Van Dyke, Donna Reed, That Girl, Carol Burnett etc.), superior wit (like the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Newhart, Cheers, Taxi, The Golden Girls, or Frasier, Brooklyn Bridge), or a really strong cast (Designing Women, Murphy Brown) to put it over for me. I think the last great network sitcom was Cybill and that was in the 90s; The Middle in the 2010s was kind of awkwardly sweet and charming though.
-----
Running on Empty is an exceptional film that moved me to tears multiple times. I know its on TCM in the middle of the night in a few days. It's well worth a look if you haven't seen it before, as are three other choice 80s titles also on TCM this weekend: Crossing Delancey, Local Hero, and A Cry in the Dark. As for Sidney Lumet, I've seen quite a few of his films; his career is very erratic , but when he did something good, he did a great job .

I don't recall Carol Burnett ever doing a sitcom. She was a guest on a few over the years, but.....

You have to go way back in Burnett's career to find a sitcom. She was on the Buddy Hackett vehicle "Stanley." It only lasted a year, done from NY on NBC in 1956. It also featured the voice of Paul Lynde. It was one of the last sitcoms that was done live, so only kinescopes survive.

I learned about it because Burnett was a mystery guest on What's My Line, and Buddy Hackett was on the panel, and their sitcom was mentioned after they guessed who she was.

[TikiSoo]

Some more things seen recently....

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)
2000's Cast Away, a sort of millennium take-off of Robinson Crusoe.

Over the Edge (1979) made me recoil. It's really creepy and disturbing, and while the late 70s clothes and decor have dated a lot, this still feels alarmingly relevant in today's crazy world.

Wow CI, your posts are a tasty buffet!

I have never seen Mr Limpet, or maybe did as a kid. Glad it's worth revisiting, any time spent with Don Knotts adds to my life.

And of course I've never seen Castaway, (my dislike of Hanks is well known) so it's great to hear an "honest" opinion of it's merits/shortcomings.

And I too just saw Over The Edge a couple of weeks ago, prompted by the mention in Quentin Tarentino's book. I found the movie distasteful too but mostly completely implausible, although marketed as based on a "true story". I'd call it an HOA nightmare.

The movie was completely geared towards a teen POV enduring impossible rules reminding me of Footloose '84. I hated it, but glad I saw it. It was put together well and I did see the similarities with today's events. It was my first time seeing Matt Dillon who obviously has star quality-was amazed to read he was randomly "found" on set & was cast in the lead? Really, wiki?

[CinemaInternational]

Tiki, there is more of Knotts' voice than actual footage of him in Limpet, since he transforms from a bespectacled nebbish to an animated fish quickly, but his personality still looms large over the film, so it would still be recommended for his fans.

Yes, Cast Away wasn't all it was cracked up to be although it was technically proficient, and Hanks did push himself more than usual. It is hard to completely avoid Hanks when dealing with films from the 80s onward since he was in so many hits and/or Oscar films, but he is so self-contained, and truthfully he gives the same "performance" much of the time (He's not bad though as a womanizing bachelor senator in 2007's Charlie Wilson's War, a wild satire from Mike Nichols). 1990's The Bonfire of the Vanities was a famous disaster, largely because the ruthless, amoral character he played was greatly softened after he was cast in the part, and yet there was one brief moment in that film when he has a malevolent smirk on his face (when he plays an audiotape in a courtroom revealing that his ex-mistress Melanie Griffith has committed perjury) which is actually far more intriguing than his entire performance in other films.

Distasteful is the right word for Over the Edge, but I agree that it is well put together by director Jonathan Kaplan. In fact, its impeccably directed, just unfortunately in the service of a disturbing and pulpy script; it made me wish I was watching an episode of Knots Landing (also set in a California suburb) instead.

The film's director Jonathan Kaplan seemingly was drawn though to extreme films: he started his career with some pulpy B-films and later directed one of the nastiest scenes of the 1980s (Jodie Foster's sexual assault scene in The Accused), not to mention the extremely unpleasant 1992 film Unlawful Entry. Despite directing Foster to an Oscar, and getting Michelle Pfeiffer to a nomination for Love Field (a very good film), he hasn't directed any film at all since 1999.

One other thing that you said about it being shown completely through a teenage eye reminds me of Hollywood using teenagers time and again in films from 1978 though the mid 1980s (it finally began to taper off in late 1986), in which audiences were bombarded with scores of teen comedies, horror films, sex films, and the occasional drama. It was all too much acne-riddled overkill, but likely put in place because these films typically had low budgets and could pretty much make pure profit in theaters at a time when many studios were reeling financially from several big-budget duds in the period. That said, there were a handful of interesting teen films that were a cut above the rest: A Little Romance (1979; Diane Lane's film debut at age 13, also with a charming supporting role for Laurence Olivier as an elderly rascal who helps the lovestruck teens), Ordinary People (1980), My Bodyguard (1980), Tex (1982;with Matt Dillon again in a much more sympathetic part than he had in this one or My Bodyguard), Back to the Future (1985), and Lucas (1986). Then there was I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), a very noisy slapstick comedy that is extremely goofy and silly, but if you're in the mood for such a thing, it works, and it is an accurate depiction of the sheer overwrought hysteria of Beatlemania in 1964.

One other passing note, Over the Edge was one of the first films to come from Orion Pictures, founded that very year. Orion would be a force for films in the 80s before going under due to financial issues in the 90s (MGM has recently brought the name back again replete with a garish new logo to focus on films made by women, black filmmakers, and gay filmmakers; one of their 2022 release, Women Talking, was Orion's first Oscar winning film since 1994). But back to an original point: Orion was started by well-respected former executives from United Artists, and for the first three years of the new company's existence, their films were distributed via Warners, but Orion struck out on their own because they felt like Warners was often giving them subpar films to make (and it is true that 1981's Under the Rainbow is one of the worst films it has ever been my misfortune to see). What's curious is that so many of Orion's original slate had to do with teens: Over the Edge, A Little Romance, The Wanderers (about tough Italian -American teens in the 60s), The Great Santini (with a teen terrorized by his father) and Promises in the Dark (with a terminally ill teen who has doctor Marsha Mason promise her that she would pull the plug if there was no viable way she could go on living). Admittedly, Orion also did 10 and Time After Time that year, but shouldn't a new studio have a little more variety in films when they are starting out?

[Cinemaspeak59]

In Caliente (1935) Dolores del Rio is an acclaimed dancer. Pat O’Brien is a critic who gave her a bad review. Dolores plans to get even. Glenda Farrell will not take no for an answer when it comes to Pat marrying her. Along for the fun are Edward Everett Horton and Leo Carrillo. There are some nice musical numbers and a fair share of witty dialogue.