Rate The Last Movie You Saw

[drinkanddestroy]

Virtue (1932) 6/10

early sound Hollywood, a bunch of sets and studio streets, pre-Code, ex-whore marries a cab driver, marriage is gonna have some problems, blah blah blah

[Groggy]

Reflections in a Golden Eye - ?/10 - Another compendium of perverted Southerners, repressed homosexuals, neurotic women and baroque style, set on a Southern military base. John Huston's direction is technically excellent, but the film's a collage of disconnected weirdness that doesn't disclose more than what's painfully evident on the surface. When Marlon Brando, enchanted by Robert Forster's buck naked buck private, starts primping himself like a country-fried Aschenbach it's painfully clear where things are headed. No comment on the acting.

[drinkanddestroy]

Pay or Die (1960) 7.5/10

Ernest Borgnine plays Lt. Joseph Petrosino, an Italian immigrant who became police lieutenant in New York City, and headed the "Italian Squad" which tried to rid Little Italy of the Black Hand. saw this on TCM, part of Ernest Borgnine Day on Summer Under the Stars.

This film kinda straddles the line between good and hilariously ludicrous; like some characters have what sound like authentic Italian accents, some have none at all, and some (like Borgnine) switch back and forth, depending on whom they talk to and when (no matter how much an "Italian" will speak in English, he'll always say "si" instead of "yes" to remind you he is Italian   )

As Robert Osborne said, this movie didn't have a very big budget. They have lotsa studio streets and painted backgrounds standing in for Little Italy, New York, and in later scenes, Palermo, Sicily. But usually the streets are appropriately filled, nice job of recreating the packed streets teeming with immigrants and pushcarts, etc. I remember feeling a similar thing when watching Angels with Dirty Faces - even when it's clearly a studio street, when they really pack it in and jam it full of people and pushcarts etc. it does have a nice authentic feel.
There are lotsa big, black-and-white widescreen closeups of grotesque faces. And when Borgnine's wife gets pregnant, and he says, in all seriousness, "But what if it's a girl and it look-a like me? That-a be terrible!" I had to laugh out loud  

[cigar joe]

Cop (1988) Director: James B. Harris, Writers: James Ellroy (novel), James B. Harris (screenplay), Stars: James Woods, Lesley Ann Warren, Charles Durning, meh 6/10

No Questions Asked (1951) Director: Harold F. Kress, Writers: Sidney Sheldon (screenplay), Berne Giler (story), Stars: Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, Jean Hagen, George Murphy, entertaining noir, 7/10

[drinkanddestroy]

No Questions Asked (1951) Director: Harold F. Kress, Writers: Sidney Sheldon (screenplay), Berne Giler (story), Stars: Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, Jean Hagen, George Murphy, entertaining noir, 7/10

yeah, I saw this too, I enjoyed this, I'd give it a half-point higher than you did.
IMO, the framing device and bit of narration at the beginning is (as in many noirs) completely unnecessary, and Jean Hagen always makes me very nervous, but I liked this movie.

I just think it felt more like a small-town movie, I don't know why they felt a need to make it New York.
When Barry Sullivan goes to the theater, he says it is a Broadway premiere, and the theater supposedly on 47th Street, so that means it is New York - but that is the only implication in the whole movie of it being set in New York, aside from the opening and closing shot of the movie being a shot of the Manhattan skyline. If they would have simply said that when Sullivan goes to the theater, it was opening night of the show any local theater, then the movie would have been set in Anytown, USA. And IMO, it has much more of an Anytown feel .... it's has lots of studio streets, and some location footage that certainly doesn't feel like New York; the cops don't feel like NYPD; considering that Sullivan has control of the town's mobsters, it would feel much more realistic if it was a smaller town, rather than one dude getting so powerful in New York. Somehow, it just had more of a small-town feel and if you ignore the mention of a Broadway premiere, it really is a small-town movie.

But these are small criticisms, this is a pretty good movie ...

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... on Arlene Dahl Day on Summer Under the Stars.

yeah, DJ, there are good movies even on days dedicated to lesser-known supporting actors  

[drinkanddestroy]

An Act of Murder (1948) 7.5/10

Fredric March plays a strict, by-the-book judge, who believes the law is the law, period (by today's standards, you might call it conservative). Edmond O'Brien is a lawyer who is arguing a case in his court (and also dating March's daughter - as if that could ever happen; no conflict of interest  ) and he wants March to try to understand circumstances, spirit of the law, feelings, etc., what you might call a liberal view of the law

Then, March learns that his wife has been diagnosed with a deadly, and terrible painful disease..... and he starts to wonder about "mercy killing." It is illegal, but is it immoral?

SPOILER ALERT TILL END OF POST

I probably would have preferred if the movie had stuck to the issue of mercy killing; when it tries to use that issue to explore the more broad issue of legal interpretation in general, I wasn't interested in that. Especially cuz it mostly comes in a big speech at the end, when March gives a big speech explaining that he has realized his view on the role of judges/law was wrong; that he shouldn't have looked at law as final, but he should have broadly looked at all circumstances, situations, understanding, humamn complexity, blah blah blah.

However, the question about mercy killing is an interesting one, (years before Million Dollar Baby, though MDB doesn't address moral right vs. wrong, the killing simply happens with no moral debate, whereas An Act of Murder – though ultimately taking no firm stand on whether or not mercy killing is moral – does present it as a moral dilemma. One major difference between the issues in AAOM and MDB is that in AAOM, the question is whether or not it is okay for the healthy spouse to kill the living spouse without the living spouse ever knowing it; it's not like the wife askd to be killed - she didn't even know she was terminally ill. Considering that she was an adult in full control of her mind (and for the time being, her body) there is no moral way in a million years that it should be ok to kill her without her knowing -- he never told her she was sick cuz he wanted to spare her the agony.

anyway, Fredric March is a terrific actor, this movie is generally acted very well, so whether or not I agreed with all the moral stuff, I did enjoy watching it. BTW, Edmond O'Brien is another one of those guys, somehow I laugh whenever he speaks. He cracks me up even when he isn't trying to  And sometimes when he speaks, he sounds just like he is reading off a script. Anyway, his facial expressions, his way of speaking, etc. crax me the hell up every time ...

[Groggy]

Advise and Consent - 8/10 - Nice political drama with lots of backstabbing and posturing. Great ensemble cast, especially Charles Laughton and Burgess Meredith.

[drinkanddestroy]

Advise and Consent - 8/10 - Nice political drama with lots of backstabbing and posturing. Great ensemble cast, especially Charles Laughton and Burgess Meredith.

yup, I gave this an 8.5/10. Laughton was absolutely incredible.

Billy Wilder (in Cameron Crowe's terrific book "Conversations with Wilder") says Laugton was the greatest actor ever - Wilder, of course, had directed Laughton in another terrific role, Witness for the Prosecution.

[drinkanddestroy]

A Child Is Born (1939)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032333/

This movie takes place in the maternity ward of a hospital, following a bunch of women's stories:

Geraldine Fitzgerald plays a woman who was in prison for (a  questionable) murder and let out just to go to the hospital and have the baby, but who is in poor health and is questionable whether she and/or the baby can survive. (It's a black-and-white movie, Geraldine –  a famous redhead – seems to have darker hair than usual. I think they must have dyed her hair black for this movie, thinking that made her look more tough as a murderess.)
Gladys George - yes, it was Gladys George Day on Summer Under the Stars – is an actress pregnant with twins who never wanted to get pregnant, who snuck liquor into the hospital, whose husband and co-performer is gonna find another co-performer if her labor takes too long, and who wants to get the whole thing over with, give the baby up for adoption and get the hell outta there.
Another lady is hoping desperately that she will have a healthy baby, cuz she'd been told she never could. Another lady is waiting for her firstborn, after a previous pregnancy had end in stillbirth.
Another lady is a mental patient who keeps sneaking down into the maternity ward from the mental floors upstairs, always hallucinating that she is having a baby; (one wonders if perhaps an earlier pregnancy ended in tragedy and that's what made her crazy?) Etc. Etc. Etc.
Another is a plump, middle-aged lady is about to have her eighth kid.

And the story also follows several of their husbands in the lobby waiting nervously, anxiously, excitedly, etc.

None of the women, except the last one mentioned, looks to have a belly big enough to even be in the first trimester. The only women I've seen previously are Geraldine and Gladys, and neither looks a pound bigger than i any other movie.   

This isn't as bad as it sounds, but it isn't good, either. 6/10

[dave jenkins]

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... on Arlene Dahl Day on Summer Under the Stars.

yeah, DJ, there are good movies even on days dedicated to lesser-known supporting actors  

The movies aren't very good, but I enjoy seeing Ms. Dahl gracing the screen. Saw a terrible one where she's a bad girl sleeping her way to the top until she gets arrested and tried for murdering her husband. I kept telling myself to turn it off, but I just had to keep my eyes on Arlene's mesmerizing beauty mark.

[noodles_leone]

American Nightmare 2/10
Not sure why I saw the whole thing.

[Dust Devil]

Gone Baby Gone (2007) - 5/10

The complexities and dilemmas of the story come at the point when you don't care about the movie anymore.

[noodles_leone]

Not to mention the main point of the book is the characters, and here they changed them completely.

Anyway, back from the dead? How was it?

[Dust Devil]

Anyway, back from the dead? How was it?

I came back half alive, half... Something else.

[cigar joe]

Rear Window (1954) Director: Alfred Hitchcock, Writers: John Michael Hayes (screenplay), Cornell Woolrich (based on the short story by) Stars: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, re-watch a studio set NYC, fun story, would/could have been a great Noir if it had used those stylistics. Anybody ever read the original story Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"? http://www.miettecast.com/woolrich.pdf 8/10