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Post by kijii on Mar 15, 2019 15:41:29 GMT
The Pawnbroker (1964) / Sidney Lumet Viewed on Amazon PrimeThis is my second viewing and I am still not sure how to interpret this movie about a Jewish holocaust surviver currently living in New York and running a pawn shop in Spanish Harlem. Did he have a chance to DO something here and fail? Marilyn Birchfield (Geraldine Fitzgerald): What happened?
Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger): 'Happened'?
Marilyn Birchfield: Yes.
Sol Nazerman: I didn't die. Everything that I loved... was taken away from me, and... I did not die.
Marilyn Birchfield: Mr. Nazerman!
Sol Nazerman: There was... nothing I could do. Nothing. Strange, I could do nothing. No, there was nothing I could do.
Was he trapped behind that cage in the pawnbroker's shop and fail to DO anything again?
People did look up to him for help NOW. He does get a second change to do something.
Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger): I do not believe in God, or art, or science, or newspapers, or politics, or philosophy.
Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sánchez) Then, Mr. Teacher, ain't there nothing you do believe in?
Sol Nazerman: Money.Jesus Ortiz : That's all life is about?
Sol Nazerman : That's *all* life is about!
Jesus Ortiz : You mean... money is the whole thing?
Sol Nazerman : Money is the whole thing!  Wikipeda Plot Summary,with SPOILERS: With the rise of Adolf Hitler, Sol Nazerman (Steiger), a German-Jewish university professor, was dragged to a concentration camp along with his family. He saw his two children die (one while riding in a cattle car) and his wife raped by Nazi officers in the camp. Now he operates a pawnshop in East Harlem, while living in an anonymous Long Island apartment. Numbed by his experiences, he has worked hard not to experience emotions.[6] Nazerman is bitter and alienated, viewing the people around him as "rejects, scum."[7] He is shown interacting cynically as he bargains with the many desperate characters pawning their goods.
Nazerman is idolized by a young Puerto Rican, Jesus Ortiz (Sánchez), who works for Nazerman as his shop assistant, but the youth's friendship is rebuffed, as are the overtures of Marilyn Birchfield (Fitzgerald), a neighborhood social worker.[6]
Nazerman learns that Rodriguez (Peters), a racketeer who uses the pawnshop as a front, makes his money through prostitution. Nazerman recalls his wife's degradation and wants no part of it. This results in a clash with Rodriguez, who threatens to kill Nazerman. Meanwhile, Ortiz, his feelings hurt when Nazerman says that Ortiz means nothing to him, spitefully arranges for the pawnshop to be robbed by a neighborhood gang. During the robbery, Nazerman refuses to hand over his money. Ortiz takes the gang member's bullet intended for Nazerman and dies in Nazerman's arms in the street.
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Post by teleadm on Mar 15, 2019 23:30:40 GMT
Kiss Them for Me 1957, directed by Stanley Donen, based in a play by Luther Favis and a novel by Frederic Wakeman, starring Cary Grant, Jayne Mansfield, Leif Erickson, (Introducing) Suzy Parker, Ray Walston (movie debut), Larry Blyden, Werener Klemperer and others. "Three decorated Navy pilots finagle a four day leave in San Francisco. They procure a posh suite at the hotel and Commander Crewson (Grant), a master of procurement, arranges to populate it with party people. Lieutenant Wallace (Klemperer) is trying to get the pilots to make speeches to rally the homefront at shipyard magnate Eddie Turnbill's (Erickson) plants, but they're tired of the war and just want to have fun. While Crewson begins falling in love with Turnbill's fiancée Gwinneth Livingston (Parker), he tries to ignore the distant call of war" One of the least known of Cary Grant's movies from of his later career, and it's not a forgotten gem, in fact it's one of his biggest messes of a movie, but still gives a credible performance. While Mansfield is the second big name on posters she's not Gran't's love interest. The original play that this is based on premiered on Broadway in 1945 and only went for 110 performances, with a young Richard Widmark in the Cary Grant role. 110 perfomrances doesn't sound like success and the problems might be obvious in the movie. The core of the story isn't too bad, "The Heroes are Tired" and most of all they are tired of retelling how heroic they are, since they only wanted a four days leave from WWII. The just don't wan't to be poster boys. The movie weavers between real war stories (and those are good) that journalists and industrialists that want to sell war bonds don't want to hear about, like that people dies, sentimentality of those back home, and suddenly male barrack humour. Since the producer (Jerry Wald) decided it was a comedy, the serious parts sadly don't work. Jayne Mansfield, she's in this movie too, as a sort of feather brained floozie who kisses many men, she utters this movies title, and suddenly her partition makes some sense.    Donen and Grant would do better movies later!
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on Mar 17, 2019 17:05:40 GMT
The magnum opus western that is Johnny Guitar (1954) starring Joan Crawford!   |
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on Mar 17, 2019 17:07:43 GMT
kijii I've always wanted to see The Pawnbroker, word is Steiger gives an amazing performance.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on Mar 17, 2019 17:10:13 GMT
teleadm I want to see Kiss Them For Me too. Not just for Cary Grant but for Jayne Mansfield too. Now, there's someone that needs a thread of their own, I know very little about her and have not seen much of her work. I know her mainly from a TV movie where Loni Anderson plays her!
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 17, 2019 18:36:14 GMT
DYING ROOM ONLY 1973 - Richard Matheson tv movie in which weary vacationers Dabney Coleman and Cloris Leachman stop at a secluded Arizona cafe and have a tense encounter with owner Ross Martin about their order of beer and sandwiches. Ned Beatty is a seemingly harmless good ol boy patron. When she leaves the room momentarily, she returns to find her husband missing and begins a frantic search for him amid growing paranoia about a conspiracy, eventually turning to the local police (Dana Elcar).
I really liked the 1997 film BREAKDOWN, which I had thought was an original movie-it was compared to DUEL and RACE WITH THE DEVIL-I now see it is in fact a bigger budget remake of this obscure tv movie with a gender reversal.
FRAMED 1975 - Joe Don Baker vs local corruption in Tennessee--some brutal fight scenes including one where the stunt man leaps from a car seconds before it is hit by a train. The gas tank explodes and he is covered in flames.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 17, 2019 22:39:11 GMT
Fun viewing this one every year ….  Nepotism ran rampant on this film but not in a bad way !Having a list for the finding of all the relatives of the cast adds to the interest. |
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on Mar 19, 2019 18:00:30 GMT
Super Mario Bros. (1993) Found this at a garage sale eons ago, just now getting around to it. Can you believe this masterpiece has eluded me all this time? Never really played video games past the mid-80's so I was never under the thrall of Nintendo, I was Atari all the way, baby! Super Mario Bros. seemed like a fun game, still never played it so I don't know how closely this movie follows it. It's not too terrible, in an early 90's kids movie kinda way. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo hated making it so much they would get drunk in between takes.  Poor Dennis Hopper! 
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Post by vegalyra on Mar 19, 2019 18:05:18 GMT
Super Mario Bros. (1993) Found this at a garage sale eons ago, just now getting around to it. Can you believe this masterpiece has eluded me all this time? Never really played video games past the mid-80's so I was never under the thrall of Nintendo, I was Atari all the way, baby! Super Mario Bros. seemed like a fun game, still never played it so I don't know how closely this movie follows it. It's not too terrible, in an early 90's kids movie kinda way. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo hated making it so much they would get drunk in between takes. Poor Dennis Hopper! Never saw this either.... I was an Atari kid too, even when Nintendo was at the forefront of videogaming. Toys R Us and Kay Bee Toys still sold 2600 games well into the early '90s! Hilarious about getting drunk in between takes... 
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Post by teleadm on Mar 19, 2019 18:45:23 GMT
Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2008, directed by Raja Gosnell, starring Piper Perabo, Manolo Cardona, Jamie Lee Curtis, voices by: Drew Barrymore, Andy Garcia, George Lopez, Cheech Marin, Placido Domingo, Edward James Olmos and others. Family film "While on vacation in Mexico, Chloe, a ritzy Beverly Hills chihuahua, finds herself lost and in need of assistance in order to get back home". To put it mildly, this movie was awful. I it only had some little edge of satire I think it could have been better. It goes for being cute and dumb instead. There is also a serious sloppiness in continuity, as if they thought "it's good enough for those seeing it". Are there no quarantine rules between U.S.A. and Mexico concerning bringing pet's over the borders? The only positive thing I can say about this movie is that the CGI animals was good. 
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🎄😷🎄 on Mar 19, 2019 18:51:55 GMT
Super Mario Bros. (1993) Found this at a garage sale eons ago, just now getting around to it. Can you believe this masterpiece has eluded me all this time? Never really played video games past the mid-80's so I was never under the thrall of Nintendo, I was Atari all the way, baby! Super Mario Bros. seemed like a fun game, still never played it so I don't know how closely this movie follows it. It's not too terrible, in an early 90's kids movie kinda way. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo hated making it so much they would get drunk in between takes. Poor Dennis Hopper! Never saw this either.... I was an Atari kid too, even when Nintendo was at the forefront of videogaming. Toys R Us and Kay Bee Toys still sold 2600 games well into the early '90s! Hilarious about getting drunk in between takes... The IMDB trivia is even more funny than the actual film:  Dennis Hopper explained why he did the film - "I made a picture called Super Mario Bros., and my six-year-old son at the time - he's now 18 - he said, 'Dad, I think you're probably a pretty good actor, but why did you play that terrible guy King Koopa in Super Mario Bros.?' and I said, 'Well Henry, I did that so you could have shoes,' and he said, 'Dad, I don't need shoes that badly.'"
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Post by kijii on Mar 20, 2019 4:56:00 GMT
The Hill (1965) / Sidney Lumet
Viewed from DVD
Monty Bartlett (Roy Kinnear): You've got it downstaris, mate, but we've got it upstairs. Live up trees, you blokes do. I seen a film about his tribe once. It was called 'Tarazn and the Ape Man.' When Charlie Blogs found you lot, you was walking around starkers, living on monkey nuts.
Jacko King (Ossie Davis): So this is a member of the great white race. And there's plenty more like Monty. We just call them "white trash."
Jock McGrath (Jack Watson): Now look, I don't go for that expression "white trash."
Jacko King : What's Staff Williams?
Jock McGrath : Belt up! I don't want to hear about Williams.
Jacko King : That, I can believe.
Sometimes the best reviews are found rather than written. Below is a very good review of this little-known movie in the USA. The dialogue is sometimes hard to understand since the officers and men speak in sharp tones to overemphasis British military discipline at the time. I might replay this movie again with subtitles.
Full TCM Synopsis with SPOILERS: During World War II, R.S.M. Wilson runs a British military stockade in North Africa with an iron hand. To break down the spirit of 5 new prisoners, Wilson directs Sergeant Williams, a sadistic new guard, to walk the men up and down a large man-made hill of rocks and sand with full packs on their backs until they drop from exhaustion. Jacko King, a Jamaican Negro arrested for stealing 3 quarts of Scotch from the officers' mess, receives especially harsh treatment because of the prejudice of the guards. He supports prisoner Joe Roberts, a warrant officer broken of his rank for striking a superior officer and refusing to lead his forces into battle when their ammunition was low, in his revolt against the cruel actions of the guards. When the weakest prisoner, George Stevens, guilty of going AWOL to return to his wife, dies, the prisoners threaten to revolt. At first, Stevens' death is officially recorded as an accident, but Roberts persuades the medical officer to testify to the inhumane conditions in the stockade in hopes that conditions for future military prisoners will improve. The rest of the group only want revenge against Williams; and in killing the guard they lose their opportunity to put an end to the brutal system.
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Post by them1ghtyhumph on Mar 20, 2019 5:32:18 GMT
The Thin Man Returns.
Just a really good movie.
But having watched all the movies at least 10x, I find the only parts of the movies that I watch every second of are the parts where Myrna Loy is on screen.
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Post by teleadm on Mar 20, 2019 18:42:16 GMT
The Blues Brothers 1980, directed by John Landis, starring John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Carrie Fisher, Henry Gibson, John Candy, Kathleen Freeman, Steve Lawrence, Twiggy, Frank Oz and many others. Comedy Musical "Jake Blues, just out from prison, puts together his old band to save the Catholic home where he and brother Elwood were raised". Insane movie with crazy characters, with great music. The only way I can label it as a musical, as it moves around in a parallel universe that is very similiar to ours, and somehow it works, if one takes it for what it is. With sudden song and dance numbers, and an enormous amount of crashing cars. A funny and interesting cast too. When I first viewed this movie in the early 1980s, I didn't like it at all, but it has over the years won me over. The total craziness and insanity, with all the great music, is what makes it entertaining.    
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 21, 2019 3:28:45 GMT
Finally watched THE SHOOTIST and liked it.  Very readable Trivia Page <--- Some really nice scenes with Lauren Bacall and Scatman Crothers. Particularly clever touch was showing the "legend of the hero" via clips from John Wayne movies. |
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 21, 2019 5:03:33 GMT
KNIVES OF THE AVENGER 1966 I inadvertently watched the Italian with subtitles because the English dub didn't work. It is a moody atmospheric film with painterly images as you would expect from Mario Bava--the story is intriguing too. On the wedding day for the royal couple in the village (looked rather viking) a rebellious warrior returns with the heads of the wife and son from a rival village--unaware that the king had made a peace truce with them. The renegade is banished, but the king who was betrayed by the deaths of his family attacks the village and massacres everyone, then seemingly rapes the bride. He spares the life of the groom who vows to kill him.
Years later, the married woman and her son must be whisked away in hiding to protect them from the banished warrior who seeks to marry her so he can take the throne (since her husband has vanished at sea). A mysterious warrior shows up to help her--CM--(not Captain Marvel but Cameron Mitchell!). I must say he makes an odd choice for a wandering warrior (with died blonde curly hair) however you get over it since his voice is dubbed (in both versions). Ultimately the story takes some twists and turns and ends with a sense of redemption. Probably not going to make the top list of any Bava fan but worth a look.
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Post by teleadm on Mar 21, 2019 18:34:01 GMT
La Linea/The Line 2009, directed by James Cotten, starring Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Esai Morales, Armand Assante, Valerie Cruz, Jordi Vilasuro, Bruce Davison, Danny Trejo and others.
Crime drama "The unstable new kingpin of a Tijuana drug cartel is targeted by an assassin for elimination".
"A cast full of cool actors (Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Armand Assante, Danny Trejo and Kevin Gage) does not make a cool movie" a reviewer wrote, and I absolutely agree. A confusing storyline with shaky cameras doesn't bring any kind of nerve, just a headache. When the conclusion came I had totally stopped caring
It's a typical movie that goes from a film festival direct to DVD, and then further down to the very cheap DVD bins.
If one looks at the old crime movies of the 1940's and 1950s also made on low budgets, they were able to accomplish much better movies with un-shaky camera angles and lightning effects.
I can't recommend this movie, unless you like weapons, weapons there are a-plenty here.
This movie was dedicated to the good people of Tijuana!! Hell, they only showed them as thieves and gangsters!!
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Post by teleadm on Mar 22, 2019 18:55:51 GMT
You Only Live Once 1937, directed by Fritz Lang, starring Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLaine, Jean Dixon, William Gargan, Jerome Cowan, Chic Sale, Margaret Hamilton and others. Crime drama "The public defender's (MacLaine) secretary (Sidney) and an ex-convict (Fonda) get married and try to make a life together, but a series of disasters sends their lives spiraling out of control". Sylvia Sidney was listed above Fonda, since she was a bigger star at that date. Sidney was also one of the few stars that had no problems working under Fritz Lang during his Hollywood years. This is a sad and depressing story, but it's very well told, using very much of lightning, shadows and camera angles to great effect One of the few times I've seen Fonda in such an angry role, and it's very effective, He's a career criminal that has gone straight, or tries very hard to go straight, but the "world" is against him, and he's convicted for crime he didn't commit. Sidney is also very effective as Fonda's love, very sweet, but also very loyal. MacLaine, in the movies I've seen him in looks tough, but works for the right side, interesting. Small little detailed scenes are smartley put in on the way to the final doom of the couple. The movie had huge troubles with the Hays Office, cutting nearly 15 minutes.     
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Post by kijii on Mar 22, 2019 23:20:49 GMT
A Majority of One (1961) / Mervyn LeRoy
Recorded from TCM
Based on a play and screenplay by Leonard Spigelgass, this movie presents with an unlikely potential romance between a Orthodox Jewish widow from Brooklyn, Bertha Jacoby (Rosalind Russell), and a Japanese businessman (and widower), Koichi Asano (Alec Guinness). Rosalind Russell, at first, seems out of place as an old world Jew with the Yiddish accent and a personality to match. Yet, she soon wins us over when her daughter and son-in-law come to visit her in her Brooklyn apartment to tell her that they have just been offered a diplomatic post in Tokyo. As the children come to beak the news to her, they ask her to come and live with them in Tokyo. After a slight delay, she accepts the idea and takes the plane from NYC to the West Coast and then a long voyage from there to Japan.
While on the long ocean voyage, Bertha meets Koichi Asano. At first they are both inclined to hate each other since each had lost spouses and loved ones, as adversaries, during the War. Then, there were cultural and social difference to overcome after settling in Tokyo....
This was a very good role for Rosalind Russell after her strong performance in Auntie Mame (1958) and before her pushy role in Gypsy (1962). In the present movie she is not as outwardly pushy but quietly shows her children what prejudice is NOT.
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Post by them1ghtyhumph on Mar 22, 2019 23:34:40 GMT
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Loved it
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