The Mule 2019. A film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood in the lead role. After watching this I read reviews and discovered the film was based on the real life story of Leo Sharp a 80 plus drug mule for the Sinaloa cartel. There is some artistic license but many of the key points and moments in Leo's real life are in the film.
What was the last movie you watched?
- Thread starter jamesblakefan#1
- Start date
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
The Talk of the Town (1942) - Ronald Colman, Jean Arthur, Cary Grant.
Nice comedy. Cary is falsely implicated in arson and murder, locks horns with a law professor (Ronald) and Jean (just love her) is smitten by them both.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994) - nice family movie.
Young Fiona lives with her grandparents in a small fishing village where she takes an active role to unravel the mysterious secrets of an island.
The Secret of Roan Inish - Wikipedia
Rafaisdabest
Hall of Fame
JoJo Rabbit, it was a great film, also watched Last Christmas recently, also a fantastic film.
MichaelNadal
Bionic Poster
Edward Scissorhands just came on at work, I'll bite 
so classic
so classic
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
The Catered Affair - Wikipedia
Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds, Barry Fitzgerald.
Interesting movie about a girl who doesn't want a wedding, but the very poor parents want to give her a grand wedding. Haven't completed it. Reminds me a bit of Father of the Bride, lol.
D
Deleted member 770618
Guest
Greyhound - stars and screenplay by Tom Hanks. He's a captain on a WWII battleship protecting some cargo ships. It's his first command., things get hairy.
D
Deleted member 748597
Guest
Barton Fink is one of my favorite movies. And I don't even know why.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
Without Love (film) - Wikipedia
Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball.
Okay.
NonP
Legend
Been a while but before I get to the housekeeping, I know @acintya got slammed a while back when he (rightly) said this year's Oscar winner Parasite ain't all that. I wonder how many of you are familiar with the rest of Bong's output because if it's his genre hopping you were most impressed by I say The Host (2006) and perhaps Okja (2017) did it better, while you can turn to Snowpiercer (2013 - heard the TV reboot falls well short of the original) for more biting class politics. And that's not to mention superior critiques of class conflict from other filmmakers of yore including Chabrol's La Cérémonie, Naruse's criminally neglected melodramas - among the available Criterion titles I recommend, in chronological order, Every-Night Dreams, Late Chrysanthemums, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and Yearning - and of course Chaplin's immortal weepies. For all the inconveniences and hardships that have been imposed by the current pandemic there has never been a better time to get acquainted with these masterworks, and I hope you will use this opportunity to explore beyond the latest talk of the town especially when there's not much talk to begin with.
Speaking of which I discovered the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) app about 2-3 months ago, and I can say without exaggeration that I've seen more good/great movies since than in any previous stretch in my life (yes, even when I was getting started with the Criterion Collection, though I wasn't admittedly a big cinephile then). Just an unfathomable trove of treasures both famous and obscure and everything in between from classic Hollywood, which brings to mind - with all due respect to the more famous Cahiers du cinéma stalwarts - Luc Moullet's bon mot: "The American cinema. How redundant." Those of you in the US with a cable subscription are strongly advised to check out the app, and even some of you outside may wanna look into the VPN workaround or at least the good old-fashioned TV offerings.
Will try to share some thoughts on a few lesser-known (yet choice!) titles later this week. In the meantime I'll direct your attention to TCM's monthlong showcase of Chaplin's finest shorts and features which will be available till 9/7 (8 pm EST, at least in my hood), including all of his celebrated United Artists features (1923-52) and most of his work for First National (1918-23). And not gonna lie, once I saw City Lights on the VOD list I clicked and fast-forwarded to the sublime ending:
That's despite moi owning the Criterion Blu-ray, LOL. Arguably the greatest of all endings in cinema.
One more thing (or four):
This might have been my very first encounter with Lang, or if I did see it before M or Metropolis, it wasn't long after. One of the very best melodramas/noirs ever made, one that understands the illicit passions of obsessive love better than almost any other but refuses to patronize the transgressors. I haven't seen Renoir's La Chienne but I doubt even the French master wrung more out of Georges de La Fouchardière's eponymous novel than Lang in his remake.
Now let's play a little bit of Six Degrees of XXX. Edward G. Robinson may not be known for his comedic chops, but he could give the likes of Cary Grant, James Stewart and Jack Lemmon a run for their funny bones, as you can see in his masterful doppelganger performance in Ford's The Whole Town's Talking (good clips from which are hard to come by, alas):
I especially dug his subtle change of facial expression in his gangster persona's first on-screen encounter with the police, which helped me make sense of a plot thread I'd lost. What else? Jean Arthur's Wilhelmina Clark is a funnier wisecracker than most of her more famous roles, and Ford's breezy direction keeps things moving seamlessly. I'm rather embarrassed to have dismissed him in my youthful brashness as something of a redneck that helmed a few classic westerns, and even minor masterpieces like this one make you realize that Ford may well be the greatest of all American masters.
Despite her playing a lead Arthur's Alice Sycamore in You Can't Take It with You can't quite keep up with Wilhelmina Clark, and Capra's third Oscar winner for Best Director is no It Happened One Night or even Platinum Blonde, but I'm still giving it a thumbs-up for its hysterical sequence that begins with this typical evening at the eccentric Sycamore household and ends with them and the Kirbys getting arrested after their utter fiasco of a first meeting:
Too bad I can't seem to find a clip of the aftermath because Edward Arnold as the stodgy, ruthless banker Anthony P. Kirby - much more effective here than in his more serious roles in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe - steals every scene in this movie. Suffice it to say this gem nearly rivals the Marx Brothers in its sheer anarchy, if without the latter's trenchant satire.
I should add that I still don't care much for the rest of the picture. Like most viewers I started off on the wrong foot with Capra's oeuvre - which is to say his later work, including the aforementioned Mr. Smith and John Doe and of course the Christmas chestnut It's a Wonderful Life - and You Can't Take is more or less in the same populist mold. But it's not quite as preachy, and while you miss the almost delirious sense of desperation that informs Capra's best work that riotous set piece and a first-rate cast elevate it above the pleasant-diversion category.
And before I close let me give a shout-out to Jacques Tourneur, another old Hollywood auteur I've discovered on TCM. Here's a characteristically ambiguous appetizer from 1942, the moving 10-minute short The Incredible Stranger which could be described as a chamber gothic with a quiet punch to the gut:
And his 1955 feature Wichita is one of the very best westerns (no clip readily available, sorry). As with the rest of his crème de la crème you think he's toeing the line as a supposed genre director, but he keeps throwing curveballs at you. Several of his other genre classics including Cat People and The Leopard Man are available till 8/29, so check 'em out if/while you can.
Speaking of which I discovered the TCM (Turner Classic Movies) app about 2-3 months ago, and I can say without exaggeration that I've seen more good/great movies since than in any previous stretch in my life (yes, even when I was getting started with the Criterion Collection, though I wasn't admittedly a big cinephile then). Just an unfathomable trove of treasures both famous and obscure and everything in between from classic Hollywood, which brings to mind - with all due respect to the more famous Cahiers du cinéma stalwarts - Luc Moullet's bon mot: "The American cinema. How redundant." Those of you in the US with a cable subscription are strongly advised to check out the app, and even some of you outside may wanna look into the VPN workaround or at least the good old-fashioned TV offerings.
Will try to share some thoughts on a few lesser-known (yet choice!) titles later this week. In the meantime I'll direct your attention to TCM's monthlong showcase of Chaplin's finest shorts and features which will be available till 9/7 (8 pm EST, at least in my hood), including all of his celebrated United Artists features (1923-52) and most of his work for First National (1918-23). And not gonna lie, once I saw City Lights on the VOD list I clicked and fast-forwarded to the sublime ending:
That's despite moi owning the Criterion Blu-ray, LOL. Arguably the greatest of all endings in cinema.
One more thing (or four):
This might have been my very first encounter with Lang, or if I did see it before M or Metropolis, it wasn't long after. One of the very best melodramas/noirs ever made, one that understands the illicit passions of obsessive love better than almost any other but refuses to patronize the transgressors. I haven't seen Renoir's La Chienne but I doubt even the French master wrung more out of Georges de La Fouchardière's eponymous novel than Lang in his remake.
Now let's play a little bit of Six Degrees of XXX. Edward G. Robinson may not be known for his comedic chops, but he could give the likes of Cary Grant, James Stewart and Jack Lemmon a run for their funny bones, as you can see in his masterful doppelganger performance in Ford's The Whole Town's Talking (good clips from which are hard to come by, alas):
I especially dug his subtle change of facial expression in his gangster persona's first on-screen encounter with the police, which helped me make sense of a plot thread I'd lost. What else? Jean Arthur's Wilhelmina Clark is a funnier wisecracker than most of her more famous roles, and Ford's breezy direction keeps things moving seamlessly. I'm rather embarrassed to have dismissed him in my youthful brashness as something of a redneck that helmed a few classic westerns, and even minor masterpieces like this one make you realize that Ford may well be the greatest of all American masters.
Despite her playing a lead Arthur's Alice Sycamore in You Can't Take It with You can't quite keep up with Wilhelmina Clark, and Capra's third Oscar winner for Best Director is no It Happened One Night or even Platinum Blonde, but I'm still giving it a thumbs-up for its hysterical sequence that begins with this typical evening at the eccentric Sycamore household and ends with them and the Kirbys getting arrested after their utter fiasco of a first meeting:
Too bad I can't seem to find a clip of the aftermath because Edward Arnold as the stodgy, ruthless banker Anthony P. Kirby - much more effective here than in his more serious roles in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe - steals every scene in this movie. Suffice it to say this gem nearly rivals the Marx Brothers in its sheer anarchy, if without the latter's trenchant satire.
I should add that I still don't care much for the rest of the picture. Like most viewers I started off on the wrong foot with Capra's oeuvre - which is to say his later work, including the aforementioned Mr. Smith and John Doe and of course the Christmas chestnut It's a Wonderful Life - and You Can't Take is more or less in the same populist mold. But it's not quite as preachy, and while you miss the almost delirious sense of desperation that informs Capra's best work that riotous set piece and a first-rate cast elevate it above the pleasant-diversion category.
And before I close let me give a shout-out to Jacques Tourneur, another old Hollywood auteur I've discovered on TCM. Here's a characteristically ambiguous appetizer from 1942, the moving 10-minute short The Incredible Stranger which could be described as a chamber gothic with a quiet punch to the gut:
And his 1955 feature Wichita is one of the very best westerns (no clip readily available, sorry). As with the rest of his crème de la crème you think he's toeing the line as a supposed genre director, but he keeps throwing curveballs at you. Several of his other genre classics including Cat People and The Leopard Man are available till 8/29, so check 'em out if/while you can.
acintya
Legend
You are my favorite poster in this thread. Always a quality read. I will check out some of the mentioned stuff. Thanks!
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
An Inspector Calls (2015 TV film) - Wikipedia
Interesting detective movie about an investigation into a girl's suicide. Rather enigmatic end.
DSH
Talk Tennis Guru
Azure
G.O.A.T.
You truly love cinema, don't you?
Mongolmike
Hall of Fame
I watched "Days of Thunder" the NASCAR movie with Tom Cruise.... I'm just gonna say that they took a lot of liberties with much of the in-race scenes. If you don't watch racing, specifically NASCAR much, it was probably ok. If you do...smh.... yeah, it's meant to be entertainment so take it with a large grain of salt.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
Picnic (1955 film) - Wikipedia
Picnic (1955) with Kim Novak and William Holden (of Sunset Blvd).
Poor girl in small town (almost engaged to a rich guy) falls for a drifter who is the rich guys old buddy.
Love triangle etc etc.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
I've always love this old chap. IIRC, Woman in the Window has a similar cast to Scarlet Street.
We had TCM as a TV channel about 15 years ago. By the time I started watching movies around 2012, they took it off -- obviously no takers. Good to know there's an app.
NonP
Legend
You might recall I named Ed one of my classic Hollywood faves back in May. And that was before my got more acquainted with his comedic roles! One of the true ATGs.
And yes, The Woman in the Window was another Robinson-Bennett paring, in fact just a year before the 1945 masterpiece. It's one of the few Lang features I still need to check out, though it's hard to see it approximating the visceral power of its successor. (Lang, of course, is another true ATG, probably one of the 10 greatest filmmakers ever.)
That's a shame, though I suspect the economics worked both ways. (That is, India's middle class was likely still growing fast.) BTW maybe you can still take advantage of the VPN but I forgot to mention that you still need a cable subscription to log in. Not sure how that can be bypassed outside the US.
The cinemas here are slowly reopening - Cinemark has already opened some of its theaters (including one in my Northern Virginia hood) and AMC and Regal will kick it off starting next week - and if the Hollywood bigwigs had a brain they'd use this opportunity to introduce us to some of the lesser-known Hollywood treasures rather than rehash (mostly) not-so-old blockbusters to lure people in. The last 2-3 months have really driven home for me just how infantalized Hollywood has become over the years and I refuse to buy that the studio heads are simply responding to the changing tastes of the audience. The growing cultural cachet of prestige TV strongly suggests that there's still plenty of demand/money to be met/made outside the superhero/SF/fantasy franchises, and there won't be new record breakers at the box office anytime soon while theater capacity remains capped at 30% or so. Why then not try new things by returning to what worked in the good old days? And if people like what they see you stick with it and maybe end up launching another golden era of Hollywood!
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
Mr. North - Wikipedia
Lauren Bacall, Robert Mitchum, Harry Dean Stanton
Azure
G.O.A.T.
Light, time pass.Mr. North - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Lauren Bacall, Robert Mitchum, Harry Dean Stanton
MichaelNadal
Bionic Poster
E.T- (1982) had actually never seen more than a few minutes of it, caught it from the beginning at work last night and watched
Harry_Wild
G.O.A.T.
Watch the 208? minutes version of Das Boots! Totally one of the greatest movies ever, even with German audio!
Makes Tom Hank’s Greyhound look like a “B” movie or made for TV movie in comparison.
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Sudacafan
Bionic Poster
The Passenger (1975)
Interesting Michelangelo Antonioni movie with a younger than usually seen Jack Nicholson, and obviously even younger Maria Schneider starring after her breakout performance in Last Tango in Paris (I really could not recognize her who she was until I saw the credits).
Amazing how classic movies have a notably slower tempo than modern ones.
en.wikipedia.org
Interesting Michelangelo Antonioni movie with a younger than usually seen Jack Nicholson, and obviously even younger Maria Schneider starring after her breakout performance in Last Tango in Paris (I really could not recognize her who she was until I saw the credits).
Amazing how classic movies have a notably slower tempo than modern ones.
The Passenger (1975 film) - Wikipedia
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3loudboys
G.O.A.T.
Coach Carter - haven't watched this in a long time and forgot what an inspiring movie this really is. A chance for people written off to challenge all those preconceptions and prejudice based on background. SLJ produces another masterful performance.
Sent from my SM-A705FN using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-A705FN using Tapatalk
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Sentinel
Bionic Poster
Yes, I did.
The girl in this romance flick was a chocolatier so I could not resist.
Nostradamus
Bionic Poster
Sputnik | Rotten Tomatoes
Summoned to a secluded research facility, a controversial young doctor examines a cosmonaut who returned to Earth with an alien parasite inside of him.
www.rottentomatoes.com
Sputnik is the BEST scifi movie of the decade
Moose Malloy
G.O.A.T.
The Woman in the Window is great, hope you check it out. Its on YouTube. You can also find "All My Sons" there, I think it's one of Robinson's best performances.
I saw an Edward G Robinson film noir in 3D last year called The Glass Web. Its not great, but they had a Q&A after with one of its surviving stars - 91 year old Kathleen Hughes. She was asked what it was like to work with Robinson. She replied "well, he was a great kisser." The moderator said, "But there weren't any kissing scenes in this film?" She just laughed in response.
So are theaters near you saying they will have Tenet? Its kind of surreal that it won't be playing in NY/LA(the 2 biggest markets in the US). I guess no new releases will be coming here anytime soon.
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Rafaisdabest
Hall of Fame
Currently watching Wonder Woman. One of the best films I’ve seen. Remember giving it a solid 10 first time I saw it, hasn’t changed this time around.
Rafaisdabest
Hall of Fame
Yes I saw it and thought it was good. Sounds like you didn’t like it much though. Am I right?!
Zara
G.O.A.T.
No, I am saying the opposite that I was able to finish it in one take meaning I was engaged enough; otherwise, I put off movies and finish those later etc. In other words, yes, I really liked the creative side of it (telling it through digital media etc.) and the story was quite good too though it might have a couple of flaws. Or let's say it didn't detail on it enough and I needed to see it to be entirely convinced.
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Zara
G.O.A.T.
Zara
G.O.A.T.
Last night, I watched Anti Matter (2016) - a low budget Indie film and I believe it was both written and directed by the same person. As someone said, these low budget films really offer the best intruging stories. I mean who cares for those big budget ones where the latest CGI is the main attraction while the plots take a back seat and the big names tend to overact etc.
Sentinel
Bionic Poster
The Return of the Soldier (film) - Wikipedia
Alan Bates, Julie Christie.
Yesterday, started Topsy Turvy 1999, about the relationship of Gilbert and Sullivan, a playwright and a composer. Liked it but could not complete.
3loudboys
G.O.A.T.
Im(moral) Winner
G.O.A.T.
Watch the 208? minutes version of Das Boots! Totally one of the greatest movies ever, even with German audio!
Makes Tom Hank’s Greyhound look like a “B” movie or made for TV movie in comparison.
Im(moral) Winner
G.O.A.T.
Kino
Harry_Wild
G.O.A.T.
I think that the German TV mini series here! I watched the Director’s Cut that was release before the creation of the mini series that came into a full TV series.
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=4646023
https://www.goretro.com/2017/06/movie-review-das-boot-directors-cut.html
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NonP
Legend
First off a major announcement: TCM is offering Cukor's unheralded masterpiece (and one of my all-time favorite comedies - yes City Lights is another!) Sylvia Scarlett till 9/14. Time to revisit this brief Cukor overview from last year:
And we certainly have yet to catch up with this marvelous picture as it continues to defy genres and identities. Forget gender-bending, to call it gender-hopping would still be inadequate as Hepburn's title character keeps shifting between her various personas even while she remains in drag. Here's a typically dizzying example, where "Sylvester" grabs a mirror to admire his fake mustache penciled by Maudie (Dennie Moore playing a delirious valley girl avant la lettre) before he rebuffs her forced kiss and hug and escapes a surefire faux pas with Jimmy Monkley (a devilish Cary Grant in one of his best performances):
Let's just say it doesn't get any easier after a tragedy strikes and you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. SS may not be Cukor's very best work, but it's almost certainly his most daring and inventive which presaged the French New Wave by at least two decades. And if there's a more freewheeling, capricious comedy in all of cinema - off the top of my head only Part II of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible arguably conjures and shatters as many expectations and categorizations - I've yet to see it. An absolute classic waiting to be discovered.
Cukor's next feature Romeo and Juliet, however, isn't remotely in the same class. I skipped the kickoff of the DNC to catch this sumptuous adaptation of the world's most famous love story (TCM titles expire at 8 pm but you can still watch the whole thing as long as you start it before then), and with perhaps undue hopes to boot as Cukor is fast becoming one of my all-time fave auteurs, but even he couldn't rescue this curious mismatch of ambition, money and glamor.
Some necessary backstory: the Shakespeare chestnut was reportedly the MGM producer Irving Thalberg's favorite play* and he moved heaven and earth to bring his brainchild to the big screen - enlisting the feathery touch of the woman's director nonpareil, painstaking in-house research as well as rigorous review by two academics (one of them William Strunk Jr., yes he of The Elements of Style infamy), and the seemingly unimpeachable talent of, shall we say, a star-crossed cast with an inauspicious origin. As Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer was a shoo-in for the lead role despite being in her thirties, while on the male front Fredric March, MGM's first choice, felt he was too old at 38 and so did Brian Aherne who was in the 1934 Broadway revival which gave the final impetus to the film version. So the role of Romeo went to... Leslie Howard, who was 42 at the time.
But it's really not the advanced age of the lead stars that doomed this venture, but rather their nearly complete lack of chemistry. While Shearer's cred as a screen actor is unassailable (pace her bitter rival Joan Crawford who openly accused her of mooching off her husband) and she was instructed by the renowned drama coach Frances Robinson-Duff for the picture the crash course was in the end unable to compensate for her inexperience in theater. It's no accident that her best performance comes when she's required to be loud and declamatory, while her quieter moments especially of amorous tenderness bring to mind Shaw's accusation against Shakespeare of churning out "romantic nonsense" to please an unsophisticated audience of "blockheads" whom "the perfectly unambiguous and penetratingly simple" title As You Like It was intended for. And while Howard might have been a fine Shakespearean actor himself, from the evidence of this effort it does seem that he was more at home in comedy and his Hamlet on Broadway in '36 rightly lost out to Gielgud's at the same time (also in NYC!).
OTOH it's the acting of the supporting cast that saves this historical oddity from obsolescence. Best of all is Basil Rathbone, who probably should have reprised his role in said 1934 Broadway production as Romeo but whose Tybalt enunciates his lines with all the sneering contempt and vengeful obsession you could ask for in this often thankless role. Hardly less noteworthy are Edna May Oliver and John Barrymore, who seem to be having the time of their lives hamming it up as the Nurse and Mercutio for the big screen (afraid that brief appearance at the end of the 2nd clip is the only thing I was able to dig up for Oliver):
*Alas 37-year-old Thalberg succumbed to pneumonia exacerbated by his congenital heart disease on the night of the film's LA premiere, where, per Wiki, "[t]he stars in attendance were so grief-stricken that publicist Frank Whitbeck, standing in front of the theater, abandoned his usual policy of interviewing them for a radio broadcast as they entered and simply announced each one as he or she arrived."
It's a shame none of this opulent production was captured in Technicolor, as Cukor is one of the few directors who could match if not surpass Franco Zeffirelli's extravagant pageantry - the only other name I can think of is Visconti (Zeffirelli's one-time lover and boss, go figure), and it's no coincidence that all three of these men were gay/bisexual with a certain if not necessary detachment to women which paradoxically allowed them to shine in the trio's pictures - and it would've made a fascinating comparison to see both of their R&J adaptations in color. I actually saw the more famous Zeffirelli film way back in a high school English class and retain fond memories of it (ditto my younger bro, who gave it a thumbs-up a couple years later), and while I haven't revisited it since and Cukor was no doubt the greater artist with infinitely better taste I do think his flamboyant, often vulgar successor won this particular round (especially in the ending which Cukor treats almost as an afterthought while Zeffirelli does it justice):
Before I close this chapter I'd be remiss not to quote these two howlers from the 2nd vid's comment section:
"Zac Efron looks a bit different here"
"that freakin balcony is like 20 meters tall yet he can still hear her."
And speaking of MGM....
FYI "Antoniennui" used to be something of an inside joke among philistines posing as serious cineastes (exceptions with temporary lapses like Andrew Sarris notwithstanding), but Antonioni is really no more "languorous" than, say, Céline Sciamma (her last feature at any rate) or Jia Zhangke. You just have to let go of your expectations from a typical Hollywood blockbuster which isn't even typical of most movies in English.
And I really need to check this one off my list, one of Antonioni's three English-language outings for MGM. (Though, in my defense, Nicholson retained the rights to the film and it used to be omitted from Antonioni retrospectives outside Italy.) I'm guessing not quite on par with Blowup or Zabriskie Point, but probably still more worthwhile than almost every current offering.
And we certainly have yet to catch up with this marvelous picture as it continues to defy genres and identities. Forget gender-bending, to call it gender-hopping would still be inadequate as Hepburn's title character keeps shifting between her various personas even while she remains in drag. Here's a typically dizzying example, where "Sylvester" grabs a mirror to admire his fake mustache penciled by Maudie (Dennie Moore playing a delirious valley girl avant la lettre) before he rebuffs her forced kiss and hug and escapes a surefire faux pas with Jimmy Monkley (a devilish Cary Grant in one of his best performances):
Let's just say it doesn't get any easier after a tragedy strikes and you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. SS may not be Cukor's very best work, but it's almost certainly his most daring and inventive which presaged the French New Wave by at least two decades. And if there's a more freewheeling, capricious comedy in all of cinema - off the top of my head only Part II of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible arguably conjures and shatters as many expectations and categorizations - I've yet to see it. An absolute classic waiting to be discovered.
Cukor's next feature Romeo and Juliet, however, isn't remotely in the same class. I skipped the kickoff of the DNC to catch this sumptuous adaptation of the world's most famous love story (TCM titles expire at 8 pm but you can still watch the whole thing as long as you start it before then), and with perhaps undue hopes to boot as Cukor is fast becoming one of my all-time fave auteurs, but even he couldn't rescue this curious mismatch of ambition, money and glamor.
Some necessary backstory: the Shakespeare chestnut was reportedly the MGM producer Irving Thalberg's favorite play* and he moved heaven and earth to bring his brainchild to the big screen - enlisting the feathery touch of the woman's director nonpareil, painstaking in-house research as well as rigorous review by two academics (one of them William Strunk Jr., yes he of The Elements of Style infamy), and the seemingly unimpeachable talent of, shall we say, a star-crossed cast with an inauspicious origin. As Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer was a shoo-in for the lead role despite being in her thirties, while on the male front Fredric March, MGM's first choice, felt he was too old at 38 and so did Brian Aherne who was in the 1934 Broadway revival which gave the final impetus to the film version. So the role of Romeo went to... Leslie Howard, who was 42 at the time.
But it's really not the advanced age of the lead stars that doomed this venture, but rather their nearly complete lack of chemistry. While Shearer's cred as a screen actor is unassailable (pace her bitter rival Joan Crawford who openly accused her of mooching off her husband) and she was instructed by the renowned drama coach Frances Robinson-Duff for the picture the crash course was in the end unable to compensate for her inexperience in theater. It's no accident that her best performance comes when she's required to be loud and declamatory, while her quieter moments especially of amorous tenderness bring to mind Shaw's accusation against Shakespeare of churning out "romantic nonsense" to please an unsophisticated audience of "blockheads" whom "the perfectly unambiguous and penetratingly simple" title As You Like It was intended for. And while Howard might have been a fine Shakespearean actor himself, from the evidence of this effort it does seem that he was more at home in comedy and his Hamlet on Broadway in '36 rightly lost out to Gielgud's at the same time (also in NYC!).
OTOH it's the acting of the supporting cast that saves this historical oddity from obsolescence. Best of all is Basil Rathbone, who probably should have reprised his role in said 1934 Broadway production as Romeo but whose Tybalt enunciates his lines with all the sneering contempt and vengeful obsession you could ask for in this often thankless role. Hardly less noteworthy are Edna May Oliver and John Barrymore, who seem to be having the time of their lives hamming it up as the Nurse and Mercutio for the big screen (afraid that brief appearance at the end of the 2nd clip is the only thing I was able to dig up for Oliver):
*Alas 37-year-old Thalberg succumbed to pneumonia exacerbated by his congenital heart disease on the night of the film's LA premiere, where, per Wiki, "[t]he stars in attendance were so grief-stricken that publicist Frank Whitbeck, standing in front of the theater, abandoned his usual policy of interviewing them for a radio broadcast as they entered and simply announced each one as he or she arrived."
It's a shame none of this opulent production was captured in Technicolor, as Cukor is one of the few directors who could match if not surpass Franco Zeffirelli's extravagant pageantry - the only other name I can think of is Visconti (Zeffirelli's one-time lover and boss, go figure), and it's no coincidence that all three of these men were gay/bisexual with a certain if not necessary detachment to women which paradoxically allowed them to shine in the trio's pictures - and it would've made a fascinating comparison to see both of their R&J adaptations in color. I actually saw the more famous Zeffirelli film way back in a high school English class and retain fond memories of it (ditto my younger bro, who gave it a thumbs-up a couple years later), and while I haven't revisited it since and Cukor was no doubt the greater artist with infinitely better taste I do think his flamboyant, often vulgar successor won this particular round (especially in the ending which Cukor treats almost as an afterthought while Zeffirelli does it justice):
Before I close this chapter I'd be remiss not to quote these two howlers from the 2nd vid's comment section:
"Zac Efron looks a bit different here"
"that freakin balcony is like 20 meters tall yet he can still hear her."
And speaking of MGM....
The Passenger (1975)
Interesting Michelangelo Antonioni movie with a younger than usually seen Jack Nicholson, and obviously even younger Maria Schneider starring after her breakout performance in Last Tango in Paris (I really could not recognize her who she was until I saw the credits).
Amazing how classic movies have a notably slower tempo than modern ones.
The Passenger (1975 film) - Wikipedia
FYI "Antoniennui" used to be something of an inside joke among philistines posing as serious cineastes (exceptions with temporary lapses like Andrew Sarris notwithstanding), but Antonioni is really no more "languorous" than, say, Céline Sciamma (her last feature at any rate) or Jia Zhangke. You just have to let go of your expectations from a typical Hollywood blockbuster which isn't even typical of most movies in English.
And I really need to check this one off my list, one of Antonioni's three English-language outings for MGM. (Though, in my defense, Nicholson retained the rights to the film and it used to be omitted from Antonioni retrospectives outside Italy.) I'm guessing not quite on par with Blowup or Zabriskie Point, but probably still more worthwhile than almost every current offering.
Sudacafan
Bionic Poster
I watched Blowup like 30 years ago, and last year for the second time. I found it very interesting and unique then and again.
Quite the contrary, I watched The Passenger without any expectation of a Hollywood blockbuster, which I am not very fond of.
I have to complete the “series” with Zabriskie Point when I get the chance.
NonP
Legend
Hey just keeping up with TCM is hard enough! I try to limit myself to just 1 movie per day so I don't neglect my reading, but sometimes even 2 feels inadequate at the rate TCM throws new titles at you (about a dozen features a day, as you may recall). I knew classic Hollywood was the biggest hole in my film ed but I didn't realize just how big till 2-3 months ago.
Touché!
The AMC/Regal emails/push notifications I get haven't said anything about Tenet and the other biggies not coming to my area, but then I wasn't expecting Disney to go rogue with Mulan so you really can't be sure about anything anymore. But I'm pretty sure Nolan will do everything he can to get his new flick in theaters cuz he's one of those old-schoolers (good for him!), and I'm guessing 30% capacity will expand as soon as the local government gives the OK.
My local AMC is still reopening tomorrow with three "classics" (the live-action Beauty and the Beast, Black Panther and The Goonies) and two leftovers (Bloodshot and Sonic the Hedgehog). I thought about doing my part and finally checking off Goonies tomorrow (it's on HBO Max but I watch my stuff on Roku and they've yet to get their shi-ite sorted out with HBO), but last I checked almost all showtimes were sold out except for Sonic so I'll probably wait till Friday/this weekend when they come out with new releases including Unhinged, Words on Bathroom Walls, Cut Throat City and Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula (will be catching that last one for sure).
Apart from its coda with the no-tennis-ball nonsense Blow is at worst a must-see. And I know Zabriskie is still something of a cult film but its final, well, blowup may well be the best Antonioni ending except maybe for L'eclisse/The Eclipse:
So yeah you should check it out when you can. I've never put together a serious list of GOAT filmmakers but if I did Antonioni would almost certainly make my top 20-30. One of the indisputable ATGs that changed cinema from the ground up.
Rafaisdabest
Hall of Fame
sorry for the misunderstanding. Agree with some of your critiques. Overall it was a good film.
