What classics did you see last week, Nov 20 to Nov 26?

First viewings:

Wildlife (2018):
A teenage boy must deal with his mother's complicated response after his father temporarily abandons them to take a menial and dangerous job. Actor Paul Dano, in his stunningly beautiful directorial debut, creates a complex portrait of the collapse of a marriage. And he elicits remarkable performances from all the cast. Mulligan, especially, is stunning, but Ed Oxenbould and Jake Gyllenhaal are also exceptional. Dano’s work with the actors is reminiscent of the kind of work director Elia Kazan did with his actors, which is saying a lot. And Kazan’s granddaughter, actress Zoe Kazan, Dano’s life partner, co-wrote the outstanding script with him. A remarkably impressive film with so much to offer, I do not understand why it didn’t get more recognition when it was first released. A true work of film art. Available on AMC Prime and Tubi TV. Highly recommended.



Re-watches:

Christmas in Connecticut (1945):
A newspaper food writer has to pretend to be all that she isn’t when she’s forced to host her boss and a returning soldier to her home for Christmas. One of my all-time favorites — a Barbara Stanwyck comedic treasure. Highly recommended.



In the Good Old Summertime (1949):
The musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner is another of my all-time favorites. Love all the cast, the songs, the story. Highly recommended.



Girl Crazy (1943)
A thoroughly enjoyable Rooney/Garland musical — their best I think, with a great George and Ira Gershwin score. Very well directed by Norman Taurog (with the musical/dance sequences by Busby Berkeley). It’s hard not to you appreciate the talent in this endeavor, including Tommy Dorsey and his band. Highly recommended.



The King and I (1956):
A little too theatrical for me (early wide screen flat screen), it’s not a favorite, but I do love the Rogers and Hammerstein music and the cast. Nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture; won 5. Yul Brynner won for Best Actor and Deborah Kerr was nominated as best actress, one of her 6 nominations. Rita Moreno is good in her supporting role. Recommended for fans of the cast and of Rogers and Hammerstein.



Easy Living (1937):
When a wealthy banker throws his wife's expensive fur coat off a roof and it lands on the head of a stenographer, everyone assumes she is his mistress and has access to his millions. A delightful screwball comedy, written by Preston Sturges, with a wonderful cast and terrific direction by Mitchell Leisen. Highly recommended.



I’ll See you in My Dreams (1951):
The story of the success and decline of songwriter Gus Kahn, with his wife, Grace Kahn who sticks by him the whole time. Enjoyable biopic directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Danny Thomas and Doris Day. Worth a watch for the music alone (though I’m actually a fan of the Day/Thomas team, too). And the Curtiz touch contributes a lot. Oh, and there’s Mary Wickes, too!



Little Women (1949):
Not my favorite version of this classic story (that would be the 1994 version with Winona Ryder), but it’s an enjoyable one, has some good performances (especially Margaret O’Brien) and is well directed by Mervyn LeRoy. June Allyson was way too old for the part, and the screenplay isn’t good enough, but I think it’s worth a view for those who love the cast, the story, and the period.

We had our first snow in Sweden and then it melted away. Strange how it always surprises those who has to plow. 

This is what it supposed to look like, not me and GF and her fantastic hot air oven soggy mess we made, with recipes that suddenly says "before you do that you must do". It's a noel de buche.


Over to the movies:


Gunpowder Milkshake 2021 directed by Navot Papushado.
I liked the idea of women kicking A-xx in a male dominated world.
A young woman has to survive in a violent world, and her dead mother wasn't dead at all.
Interesting but not my cup of tea, too violent.


Breakaway aka Speedy Singhs 2011 directed by Robert Lieberman.
About a Sikh guy who rather play Ice-hockey than follow in fathers footsteps, in Canada.
Shades of Bend it Like Beckham 2002, but where that movie got everything right, this movie fails, to have the heart that is needed for this kind of movies.
Not too bad and worth a look on a slow day.


Night Train 1998 directed by John Lynch.
This turned out to be nearly a little gem with great parts for John Hurt and Brenda Blethyn.
Hurt plays a con-man whose never had a home and Blethyn a spinster that lived too long with a domineering mother, who have a room for hire. Hurt who is rootless is fascinated about model trains movies ,but he also hunted by the mob he embezzled. They both meet and feels a mutual attraction for each other, as he builds Orient Express on model trains and dreams away that they actually do such a trip, eventually they actually do such a trip. With some scenes in Venice Italy.
This one I liked! Love can come late in life!


All I Want for Christmas 1991 directed by Robert Lieberman (again!)
A nearly forgotten seasonal movie, that is pretty ordinary, but has a special spice, Lauren Bacall in the cast.
Divorced parents, kids not too obnoxious, want their parents to be a couple again, at least one more time.
Daughter asks Santa (Leslie Nielsen, not credited until end titles) to fix it, her Brother with a few tricks might fix it. 
Nothing to write home about, but OK for a viewing some day.


The Weekend Murders aka Concerto per pistola solista 1970 directed by Michele Lupo,
Italian murder mystery comedy made in England.
Relatives are gathering at a British estate to hear the will of a recently deceased secluded relative. Tension rises when things doesn't go as plan, for some of them, and people begins to die, by shooting. Scotland Yard detective tries to solve the case, but a dumb-looking local Bobby turns out to be smarter than the detective. A mix of Agatha Christie and Italian Giallo that sadly doesn't work at all. Lot's of Red Herrings, but it's made in a sort of hyper way that didn't appeal to me at all. Pity since the story isn't too bad. A mix of British and Italian actors though the lead is played by American soprano Anna Moffo in a rare dramatic role.
Nah


Summertime aka Summer Madness 1955 directed by David Lean and based Arthur Laurents play "The Time of the Cuckoo".
A revisit to movie I've always loved, since I also experienced being lost and feeling lust, my experience was in Lisbon though.
American spinster travels to Venice to usurp it's grandness, and maybe find love too, but once it comes she becomes insecure.
That the one she fall for is married, but separated, might reflect her (Katherine Hepburn) own life with Spencer Tracy. Catholics coudn't divorce, at least back then.
Venice never looked so beautiful.
Like many others my mother fell for the Italian charmer Rossano Brazzi and even bought a 78s with him.


The Bowery 1933 directed by Raoul Walsh and based on a novel by Bessie Ruth and Michael L Simmons, and in itself based on the rivalry between Chuck Connors and Steve Brodie in New York's Bowery area in 1890's.
Chuck Connors (Wallace Beery) and Steve Brodie (George Raft) were saloon owners and had their private fire brigades, in the days when fire brigades didn't necessarily put out fires but rather fist brawl.
A rollicking romp one shouldn't take serious and is very pre-code and not PC, once the lost 7 minutes was restored. The version I watched.
Didn't know about Steve Brodie and his jump from Brooklyn Bridge, and the debate if he jumped or used a dummy that apparently still goes on.
Beery is his old self, Raft was a surprise dancing and versatile, Jackie Cooper seems like an afterthought and is rather obnoxious, Fay Wray charms both but get's Raft, Pert Kelton of Broadway do a few joyous numbers.



Well that was my week, a bit so so I agree.

The Unfaithful / Vincent Sherman (1947). Like another Ann Sheridan film noir from the same year, “Nora Prentiss,” “The Unfaithful” was marketed as a “women’s picture,” thus robbing the movie of its definite noir heritage and leaving it mostly forgotten. Chris Hunter (Sheridan) is happily married to Bob (Zachary Scott) and is expecting him home from a business trip early the next morning. That night, she is attacked in her home by a man who forces her inside. Form the outside, we hear a struggle. The next morning the police are at the house. The man is dead, stabbed by Chris. She swears she has never seen him before. A clear case of self-defense as her lawyer and family friend Larry Hannaford (Lew Ayres, now back in movie goers’ good graces after serving as a combat medic with conscientious objector status during WWII) tells the cops. Then, people who knew the dead man, starting with his wife, begin to cast doubt on her story and shady antiques dealer Martin Barrow (Steven Geray) is asking an enormous amount of money to suppress some possibly incriminating evidence.
    Warner Bros. would sometimes take one of their successes, change it about a little, and then recycle it as a “B.” “The Unfaithful” began life as a redo of the 1941 Bette Davis classic “The Letter,” but the new movie is so radically changed that barely a trace of the earlier film can be seen and then only if you are looking for it – also, Warner could leave original author Somerset Maugham out of the credits and not have to pay him anything.
    The entire cast give sincere performances and I would be remit without mentioning Bob’s cousin Paula (Eve Arden, who makes any movie better) first seen as a loudmouth (but witty and funny) gossip but who turns out to be sensitive and caring. Arden is always Best Supporting in any film where she has been cast.





Cowboy Cavalier / Derwin Abrahams (1948). This is the kind of kid’s western that filled TV airtime, especially Saturday mornings in 1950s television. They usually ran about an hour and came from a Poverty Row studio (stats on “Cowboy Cavalier”: 57 minutes, Monogram). Plots are negligible, very predictable, but like potato chips to a pre-teen Baby Boomer. You can’t devour just one.
    Country and Western singer Jimmy Wakely stars. He is not a major memory for me, but I am familiar with the name, probably because he showed up in some of Monogram’s Cowboy Trio series The Range Busters. The movie gets underway as the Bad Guy arrives in town. You can pick out the villain in these western quickies, not because he wears a black hat, but because he is tall, dark, and has a pencil thin mustache. Anyway, the baddie always reveals himself in the early going. Here, Lance Regan blackmails his way into a job at the wagon transport company so he can get inside info on valuable shipments. Wakely tumbles to him and investigates to find out who he really is. Fistfights, gun fights, and horse chases ensue. Dub Taylor is the sidekick/comic relief, Jan Bryant as the ingenue, and Clair Whitney, the only real actor in the piece, as the transport company boss. It is all pretty simple stuff, but I enjoyed it quite a bit as an exercise in nostalgia.





Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home / Leonard Nimoy (1986). The lightest, funniest, and most fun of the movies with the original cast. Right from the start, Star Trek was interested in social issues. “The Voyage Home” is a Save The Whales movie. I’m not making this up.
A probe from deep space sending an odd signal of noises, causes any machine that come withing its range lose all power. At first threatening Star Fleet headquarters and then all of Earth. Our Heroes, coming back to turn themselves in for the events of “Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock,” recognize the sounds as that of the extinct Humpback Whale. By sling shotting around the sun, they can time travel (don’t ask questions) back to 1986 to try to return with a Humpback Whale. That is when the fun starts with our strangers in a strange land trying to fit in. I hadn’t seen this since its first theatrical run but remembered most of it and how much I enjoyed it.
    In one of the film’s most memorable lines, skeptical marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) says to Kirk, “Don’t tell me. You’re from outer space.” “No,” says Kirk. “I’m from Iowa. I only work in outer space.” Well, the clever and tourist minded city fathers of Riverside, Iowa quickly erected a monument in its town park memorializing the Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk on March 2, 2228.
Love this movie.






Midsomer Murders
“The Incident At Cooper Hill” Season 18, Episode 2 (January 13, 2016)
“Breaking The Chain” Season 18, Episode 3 (January 27, 2016)

Mission: Impossible
“Break!” Season 7, Episode 1 (September 16, 1972)
“Two Thousand” Season 7, Episode 2 (September 23, 1972)

Miss Scarlet And The Duke
“Quarter To Midnight” Season 2, Episode 5 (November 13, 2022)

My movie-watching week consisted of three very different films.

Ammonite (2020).



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).



Cemetery Junction (2010).