What "Grandpa Movie" did you just watch?

I am watching Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra. I’m only half way, got as far as intermission last night but will contiune tonight. Spoiler alert: Ceasar died in a hail of stab wounds!!! This is unexpectedly watchable, probably because Liz Taylor was like super doper sexualized. I didn’t know they can get this saucy in 60s cinema.

The beauty of that film is that the principle character scenes seem to have been shot more or less in sequence, while Burton and Taylor in real life were bent on destroying themselves and each other, so that no aging makeup or prosthetics were required at all to make them convincingly older as the story progressed.

(I confess to liking that film too. It’s a bloated mess, but the very definition of a classic Hollywood big-star epic.)

A few days ago a saw a thread on Twitter where people were naming the best movie scene kisses. Someone suggested Mel Gibson / Sigourney Weaver in The Year of Living Dangerously. I saw it in the theaters when it came out, and have watched it many times since.

I guess that stuck in my head because I woke up at 4 this morning dreaming about the movie. Of course I had to watch it.

Man, what a great film. Weaver is magnetic, and despite the limitations of her co-star manages to produce unbelievable on-screen chemistry. The little things, like the way she caresses Gibson, are thoroughly believable and add up to genius. Linda Hunt as Billy Kwan is flawless — it is really her movie — and the supporting cast are all good to great.

On balance, I think it’s Peter Weir’s best film. Is it a grandpa movie? Gibson looks like he’s about 12 years old, so I guess.

One of my favorite films.

Me, too, though I haven’t watched it in years. Fortunately I have it on dvd. Was so glad to see that it stands up; so many things don’t.

Just watched again one of the great political thrillers – and it’s free on YouTube – Seven Days in May. Burt Lancaster is brilliant as Gen. James Mattoon Scott, the leader of a military plot to take over the government.

That’s a very good movie, great performances by everyone involved, and with Frankenheimer at the helm you know it will be tight and flawless.

And the rat-a-tat-tat martial score was, I think, one of Jerry Goldsmith’s earliest movies. Screenplay by Rod Serling. Special permission from JFK himself to film in front of the White House. And that confrontation scene between the President and General Scott is so taut, I was hoping that someone would start firing a gun just to relieve the tension.

That’s how I feel about The Ten Commandments. I still watch it every time it’s on.

Which is the bloated mess, The Ten Commandments, or Charlton Heston?

The Ten Commandments always felt liked it weighed about a ton for each commandment.

Which reminds me of the joke about The Ten Commandments that Spielberg put in Close Encounters:

“Roy, that movie is four hours long.”

“I told them they’d watch only five commandments.”

Speaking of Seven Days in May, I’m wondering if at some point that was an official re-edit. I say that because in the version available for free on YouTube at about the 1:28:30 mark there is a shot of an American Airlines DC-10 landing. This is noteworthy because the film was originally released in 1964 and the DC-10 did not make its first flight until 1970. So, unless Rod Serling somehow managed to get real time travel into his script, somebody changed something.

Yes.


It’s the best time of year: Summer Under the Stars on TCM.

Fans of grandpa movies rejoice for there a ton of awesome Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando joints up on the streaming page right now, and Jimmy Stewart and Ava Gardner coming later in the week. Humphrey Bogart next Sunday!

Two this last week as I was off sick

Westworld (1973): Great scifi premise. The first 1/2 was cool. The 2nd 1/2 was off, and I only stayed for the end because of Yul Brynner

Enemy Below (1957): Watched because of the tie in to one of my favorite TOS episodes. The tension and set up were excellent. The U-boat captain and crew were good. However how the movie (and Robert Mitchum) played the US captain as nearly omnipotent was just bad.

Now I am in the middle of The Searchers…

The Searchers! My god that movie.

Rewatched Bringing Up Baby after they did it on Unspooled. How I love that movie, probably second only to His Girl Friday in screwball comedies. Katharine Hepburn giggling! Cary Grant stammering! “Don’t you find it a bit chilly without a… gun?” A leopard playing with a dog!

SO GOOD!

“You told them my name was ‘Bone,’ and you didn’t tell me!

I just finished off a really good old gothic ghost story with Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey: The Uninvited. Obvious Hitchcock/Rebecca influence, with lots of walking around a creepy old seaside manor lit by candles and ghostly crying in the darkness. This was clearly pretty influential on later haunted house movies and has some really well-done visual effects for the period (1944) used sparingly enough that they’re not silly. Even had a jump scare that made me jump a little.

This was a solid A- (the minus is mostly for some ropey dialogue in places and the “Londoners” not even really trying for an accent.).

I forget to keep popping over here in this thread but recently posted The Falcon and the Snowman over in the 20:20 thread since I rewatched it.

It was only my second watch but I was much younger the first time I saw it. I remember things differently then, especially along the terms of, “spying,” and, “traitor,” and whatnot. A lot has happened since. And I had also forgotten how well it told the story of two young people getting ever deeper into a mess of lies, money and a caper spiraling into failure.

One key here, the main lead gets into this mess by reading messages he shouldn’t have been regarding the US interfering in another country’s elections. How’s that for a headline of today? And he wants people to know about it because it’s fucked up (hello Manning and Snowden!) But as with things like that, it gets complicated, and his friend pushes him to do it more for the money.

It’s a tense tale, and director John Schlesinger, of Midnight Cowboy fame, does well with it. I was surprised how well played the characters were by a very young Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn.

The movie, though aged, still plays well. It’s a great play of characters from the leads. And it seems shockingly surreal in that it was originally based on a true story, and yet we have similar situations and people now.