Last Seen Movie - The Latest Movie You Have Seen; ratings

[Sabin]

I could throw Starting Over on one of the Oscar threads but it wouldn't greatly impact my vote. So, despite everything that I liked about it, I'll just say that I found the casting of Burt Reynolds to be just about ruinous to this film's tone. He's far too laid-back for James L. Brooks' dialogue nor can he match Jill Clayburgh's energy. I'm not sure if Starting Over had greatness in it but with someone else in the Phil Potter role it might've gone down better. His smug face started to wear on me as the film went on. Like, you've gotta find somebody very charming to pull of dunking poor Jill Clayburgh into a dunk tank again and again and making it work. Reynolds can't pull it off. I don't know what Jack Nicholson was doing at the time but we know that he can handle Brooks' dialogue.

I know that James L. Brooks isn't the director of this one but it still feels like his movie. It has this sitcom on a high-wire quality to it, and when his movies aren't cast right it's hard to know who to identify with. I definitely found Reynolds' casting to be problematic in identifying with Phil Potter but I also wondered if Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen should've flipped roles. Clayburgh is perfectly adorable but I never quite felt that Bergen brought the manic, narcissistic energy needed for Jessica.

It's a gorgeous-looking film. Pakula doesn't quite have a light energy touch but he directs a handsome film. He's all wrong for moments like when Phil has a panic attack in the furniture store. I generally liked it in spite of what I perceive as glaring flaws.

[Reza]

Operation Mincemeat (John Madden, 2022) 8/10

During WWII in 1943 Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) planned for the Allies to invade Sicily but since it was an obvious target it became imperative to delude the German High Command. So a highly classified ruse was developed whereby a corpse carrying "secret" documents (mentioning an Allied attack in Greece) was dumped off the coast of Spain to be discovered by the Nazis. A team of five was put in place to work out the plan's details - Naval Commander Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn) - of later "James Bond" fame - a British intelligence officer (Matthew Macfadyen), a jewish lawyer (Colin Firth), his loyal secretary (Penelope Wilton), and a young widowed typist (Kelly MacDonald). Highly atmospheric espionage yarn is based on a true story with a screenplay that is talky, very dry but not without flashes of great wit. The romantic subplot - a love triangle between Firth, Macdonald and Macfadyen - is carefully intertwined into the suspense-filled main plot which is entirely played out in board rooms, offices, homes and inside nightclubs. Strongly acted film has topnotch production values.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Tom Gormican, 2022) 7/10

Hollywood actor Nick Cage (Nicolas Cage) is going through a career lull - he has been working constantly mainly making junk - has an angry ex-wife and a neglected and very disappointed teenage daughter. When he decides to retire after losing a couple of important roles his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) gets him a gig at a huge salary to go attend the birthday party of a super-fan - a billionaire (Pedro Pascal) in Majorca who may be an arms dealer the CIA is after. Cage milks this bat-shit crazy scenario for all its worth with his past screen roles emerging a mile a minute which is a Cage fanboy's dream come true. It moves predictably into action-comedy mode when the daughter is kidnapped and Cage and his fan-buddy team up to confront the real arms dealer. And let's not forget that delicious piece of audition dialogue the actor gets to use at a very tense moment which does not bring on a standing audition but certainly is an excellent accompaniment to flying bullets. The film's most shocking moment comes at the end with a brief appearance by Demi Moore. Wtf has she done to her face? Why don't these stupid actresses in Hollywood - and other regular women - "get" that putting their face under a knife or injected with fillers and other chemicals make them look grotesque. Cage seems to have also proved that if you keep churning out dreck your career will one day return to its former peak. This and a couple of recent films seem to be taking the actor in the right direction.

The Last Flight of Noah's Ark (Charles Jarrott, 1980) 6/10

Walt Disney, two precocious stowaway kids (one of them the insufferable Ricky Schroder), a prim missionary (Geneviève Bujold), a jaded pilot (Elliott Gould) being chased by creditors, a WWII Boeing B-29 Superfortress, a plane load of farm animals. Mix it all up and add on a crash landing on an uncharted island inhabited by two Japanese soldiers who think the war is still going strong. The pilot and the lady start off icy but are soon canoodling, Shroder is cocky and sheds tears like a tap, the group befriend the two soldiers and turn the crashed plane into a boat in order to return to civilization. Utterly predictable but charming little action-adventure also throws in a shark attack and a storm at sea. Old fashioned fun.

[Sabin]

Damien wrote
As memorable a portrayal of someone standing on the cusp of adulthood as there's been on screen, she enthusiastically gets my vote for a great performance in Woody Allen's greatest film -- and the best movie of 1979, edging out Blake Edwards's 10.

Well, now I have my answer.

[Big Magilla]

Yes, Damien had a soft spot for Blake Edwards whom he had interviewed at some point. He could no wrong in Damien's book. He even defended his atrocious casting of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which even Edwards admitted in later years was a mistake.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
Here's Damien's reference to 10 for which Blake Edwards was voted Best Director of 1979 by his group. Billy Wilder's Fedora was named Best Picture.

Okay, well then he's some kind of fan. His top 100 list didn't feature it and he certainly liked Blake Edwards films.

[Big Magilla]

Here's Damien's reference to 10 for which Blake Edwards was voted Best Director of 1979 by his group. Billy Wilder's Fedora was named Best Picture.

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=5290&hilit=blake+edwards

[Sabin]

No other place to really put this but my journey through 70's comedies continues with Blake Edwards' 10.

I think I mistakenly thought this was one of Damien's favorites but I found his old Top 100 list and I think it wasn't. He was more a fan of Skin Deep (which I still haven't seen). I checked this one out and I instantly latched onto it because George Weber is celebrating his 42nd birthday which is (checks watch) a mere six months away from me. He has a mansion, he's married to a woman who is a mother, and he's beyond famous. Despite the fact that we are both greying in the temples, I am lightyears behind this man with one exception: I've largely given up drinking. The hangovers are just too much for me and I have to be able to function and force a smile every day. I expect that my experience of watching George Weber was similar to a moment growing up when my family sat around the television watching The Simpsons (our Sunday tradition) and an episode revealed that Homer is astonishingly supposed to be just 37. My father just shouted "37???" and my response was "So what? That's old." Anyway, I couldn't remotely relate to George Weber's 42nd year mid-life crisis because nobody I know experiences anything resembling that sort of mid-life crisis in Los Angeles today. Sad-sacks have Sideways adventures, but for everyone else, it's getting difficult to find a couple not in a quasi-open relationship. That being said, I don't see any male-centered mid-life crisis films that dare to tackle this kind of horndog obsession so I found that varietal sort of refreshing, although I find very little redemptive in George Weber.

Anyway, I found it to be a pretty interesting balance of tones. It's a mix of philosophizing, fantasy, and scenes that find their comedy in random wacky characters or explosions of physical comedy. The story itself is resolutely low-key, almost episodic at times. My favorite thing about it is that it feels like the kind of movie that shouldn't work and yet it does in spite of itself, almost like a James L. Brooks film. This is due to the casting of Dudley Moore. He's very good at the spastic explosions required of him as well as the moments of calm and the calm hiding his torment. I've only seen Moore in this film and Arthur, and he's more credible in this human performance. I was a little put off by the way Moore treated Julie Andrews. I mean, there's no way around it. He's a cheater. I don't know if it's a 70's thing to say he didn't cheat because he couldn't get it up or because he stopped with Bo Derek. He's a straight up cheater. The film is at its strongest when it views him as pathetic and I think probably could've stood to take him to task a little bit more. I have to be a little charitable with this film because what Bo Derek tells Moore at the end of the film doesn't quite land a punch these days, but it's also worth noting that Moore's idealization of Bo Derek never quite transcends surface level horndog. If he thinks she's something more, it doesn't quite come across.

I'm struggling to find more to say about it. Generally, I was impressed in the balance of tones and enjoyed it on that level. Also, very interesting that it was released the same year as Manhattan. They feel like twin souls a bit, although obviously I enjoyed the latter quite a bit more. So odd that Manhattan received one Golden Globe (Drama) while this got six (Comedy). None of that is right.

[Reza]

The Last Flight (William Dieterle, 1931) 4/10

Broadway Serenade (Robert Z. Leonard, 1939) 4/10

Fantasic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (David Yates, 2022) 4/10

Memory (Martin Campbell, 2022) 5/10

Futures vedettes / School For Love (Marc Allégret, 1955) 4/10

Silly film set in a Vienna conservatory where the teenage girls fall for their vocal teacher (Jean Marais) who is going through a turbulent marriage. The crisis involves his relationship with a nubile teen (Brigitte Bardot) which causes another student (Isabelle Pia) to throw a jealous fit. Marais - looking very old (at 42), stiff and bored also has the creep factor. Why is this old man preying on teenage girl students? Lila Kedrova has a small bit as one of the mothers but its Bardot, a year away from international stardom, who stands out as the vivacious young girl very willing to get seduced. Based on the novel by Vicki Baum with screenplay by Allégret and Roger Vadim who was then married to Bardot.

Lili Marleen (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981) 8/10

Fassbinder, who was inspired by Hollywood melodramas, for the longest while could never make a movie that did justice to his dream because of his films' low budgets - until his series of films during the 1980s where he chose to make elaborate female centric films. Here Hanna Schygulla is presented like a goddess harking back to early Hollywood and the days of Garbo and Dietrich. Taking a cue from the latter the plot here revolves around the famous German love song that became popular during World War II throughout Europe and the Mediterranean among both Axis and Allied troops. Written in 1915 as a poem, the song which became a desperate cry of hope for people during WWII, was first sung by Lale Andersen who in this fictionalized version of her life is played by Schygulla. An aspiring German singer called Willie (Hanna Schygulla) is in love with a Swiss jewish trainee composer-conductor (Giancarlo Giannini) who, unbeknownst to her, works for the underground using money of his rich father (Mel Ferrer) to smuggle jews and their assets to neutral Switzerland. Since she is German his father thinks she could be dangerous to their cause and has her deported. While the lovers are apart she, using the influence of a high Nazi official, becomes rich and famous for singing the song "Lili Marleen" written by her lover. As her fame spreads far and wide he secretly returns to Berlin to see her but the gestapo are suspicious and have her followed. Highly melodramatic film is exactly how Fassbinder - a fan of Douglas Sirk films - envisioned his story with Schygulla a true vision of beauty as the singer.

Persuasion (Adrian Shergold, 2007) 8/10

Exquisite adaptation of Jane Austen's last novel with her protagonist, twenty-seven year old Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins), on the verge of spinsterhood as the story begins. Eight years before she had been persuaded by her father and a family friend (Alice Krige) to break her engagement to Captain Wentworth (Rupert Penny-Jones), a naval captain with not much future prospect. When her family is forced to move from their estate due to financial difficulties the house is rented to an Admiral whose wife happens to be her former fiancé's sister who now happens to be a very wealthy man and an eligible bachelor. Will Anne manage to change the Captain's resentful mind about her or will she instead accept a proposal from a distant cousin (Tobias Menzies)? Hawkins brings a tremulous vulnerability to her character - believed to be Austen herself - with the screenplay playing a form of dreadful hide and seek in keeping her apart from the man she once lost but has reappeared in her life. When that kiss finally comes, after various misunderstandings and heartaches, it is hilariously staged to linger endlessly before their lips finally connect. Handsome Penny-Jones makes a dashing lover for the gauche and rather plain Hawkins.

Mirage (Edward Dmytryk, 1965) 8/10

Clever, twisty thriller, with noir overtones, has Gregory Peck suddenly discovering after two years that he has amnesia and cannot recall his past life. The catalyst is a mysterious woman (Diane Baker) who claims to know him although he has never met her before. When he is accosted by a slimy man (Jack Weston) aiming a pistol at him, is threatened by another heavy (George Kennedy) who ends up in a tub for his troubles, and a psychiatrist who does not believe him, he decides to hire a private detective (Walter Matthau) in order to resolve the mystery surrounding his life. Slick Hitchcock-like film has the appealing but wooden Peck team up with brunette Baker who resembles none of the Master's heroines. Accompanied by a jazzy Quincy Jones score, stark black and white cinematography by Joseph MacDonald, a suspenseful screenplay by Peter Stone (who also wrote the thriller "Charade") and rapid fire editing with flashbacks, flash forwards and time shifts. The New York location filming adds to the realism in contrast to many films then still being shot in the studio. Peck's wooden countenance - Robert Mitchum famously (if rather unkindly) referred to Peck as "the dullest actor in motion pictures" - actually helps him here as the confused character who feels persecuted. Matthau, on the verge of big screen stardom, shines in a small part along with the other supporting actors all playing vividly eccentric characters.

Johnny Concho (Don McGuire, 1956) 7/10

Sinatra is cast against type in his first Western - as a coward who terrorizes a town because everyone fears his brother who is a notorious gunfighter. A stranger (William Conrad in full-on sleazy mode) arrives in town, announces he has killed the gunfighter and starts treating the townfolk like dirt. It is up to the coward to prove he's in fighting mode in order to save his town from the intruder but instead he is run out of town. B-film has atmosphere, is crisply shot in black and white by William C. Mellor and has a good score by Nelson Riddle. The film has a static pace - it feels like a talky stage play - but Sinatra's interesting performance keeps it moving along. Striking bits by Keenan Wynn as a gun-toting priest and Phyllis Kirk as the girl who loves the coward.

[gunnar]

Portrait of Chieko (1967) - 9/10 - Kotaro Takamura is a Japanese sculptor and poet. In 1911, he meets Chieko, a fellow artist, and takes her on as an apprentice, though the two fall in love and marry. The two have a nice supportive marriage, but problems eventually arise after Chieko starts showing signs of mental illness. It's an excellent picture with very nice performances from Shima Iwashita as Chieko and Tetsuro Tanba as her husband, Kotaro. The cinematography and use of music are also very well done. Decades pass during the course of the film and it isn't always obvious at first when a time jump has occurred, though you can figure it out. I'd been looking for this film for a long time and am glad that I finally found a copy with English subtitles. I would have voted for Chieko over Closely Watched Trains in the Foreign Film category that year, though that is also a good film.

[Big Magilla]

That kind of patter still exists between couples, married or otherwise.

I'd say Sandy's character wasn't very sophisticated. She wouldn't have known what it would have meant to be liberated. It wasn't something that anyone thought about at the time.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
Neil Simon originally intended it as part of California Suite which would suggest that it was originally supposed to have been a skit about an out-of-town couple having problems visiting L.A. rather than NYC. He rewrote it as a screenplay after it was rejected as part of the earlier play.

I think a smaller dose might have been more successful.

Big Magilla wrote
I don't remember Sandy Dennis asking her husband for permission to have a cup of coffee. Maybe she was asking him if there was time for that. It would have had nothing to do with it being before women's liberation which began in 1971. Women were free to have a cup of coffee on their own long before then!

It's near the end of the film. They're in the airplane. Sandy Dennis orders a cup of coffee. Jack Lemmon politely shoos away the waitress, saying they won't have dinner or coffee because there's dinner waiting. Sandy Dennis then responds a moment later by saying something along the lines of "Don't we have time for a cup of coffee" and (I believe) saying something along the lines of how it won't ruin her dinner. Then Jack Lemmon acquiesces. Maybe it wasn't asking permission per se, but it's awfully deferential to his authority. More so, she is clearly not a liberated figure.

[Big Magilla]

Don't remember much about The Out-of-Towners except that I didn't like it.

Neil Simon originally intended it as part of California Suite which would suggest that it was originally supposed to have been a skit about an out-of-town couple having problems visiting L.A. rather than NYC. He rewrote it as a screenplay after it was rejected as part of the earlier play.

I don't remember Sandy Dennis asking her husband for permission to have a cup of coffee. Maybe she was asking him if there was time for that. It would have had nothing to do with it being before women's liberation which began in 1971. Women were free to have a cup of coffee on their own long before then!

[Sabin]

No other place to put this but I watched the original The Out-of-Towners last night. This is pretty funny! I don't know if I'd call its construction daring, but staging an entire feature over the course of a rushed, real-time-ish trip is an good idea. The pace is frantic which gives Jack Lemmon a good outlet for all of his energy as well as a good assist for Neil Simon's dialogue. The biggest problem with the film is it really is just a series of random occurrence sketches and as it goes on it can't help but become a bit exhausting, especially because the series of random occurrences are only surface deep rather than a personal nightmare. I suppose the other big issue is that we're supposed to see Jack Lemmon as a resident of Twin Falls, but he seems like he was born high-strung not someone who is propelled into this state by circumstance. New York isn't a big contrast for him. I honestly wonder if they chose the wrong Odd Couple. I also found myself thinking quite a bit about George and Gwen's relationship. They don't really make sense as a married couple to me. It's hard to imagine Gwen falling for this guy, but then we kept seeing little moments here and there like Gwen asking George for permission to have a cup of coffee and I was reminded that we were in a very different time in 1970. This must have been a pre-women's liberation film.

Anyway, it's mostly a funny film. Something interesting about watching these films years after the fact is that I have no idea how it or Lemmon's performance was received at the time coming after The Odd Couple and The April Fools and before The War Between Men and Women and Avanti!. Was it greeted as a tonic or more of the same? I think it's schtick but at least it's energetic schtick. Sandy Dennis' presence in the film was baffling to me at first because I just couldn't quite make out what she was doing, but her dingbat line readings got more enjoyable as the film went along.

[gunnar]

Ikiru (1952) - 8.5/10 - A civil servant has lived a very dull life in the 20 or so years since his wife died. When he learns that he has stomach cancer and will die soon, he tries to find out how to live and to leave something worthwhile behind, but the bureaucracy that he has long been a part of stands in the way. It takes a while for the film to really get going, but it gets better as it goes along. Miki Odagiri really livened things up when she was in the film as one of his employees.

Ordet (1955) - 8.5/10 - An aging widower on a Danish farm in 1925 has his three sons living with him. The oldest is an agnostic with a pregnant wife and two daughters. The middle son thinks he is Jesus Christ. The youngest son is in love with the tailor's daughter, but faith may separate them. In some ways, it is a fairly simple tale of faith and belief, but it is crafted very well and there are good performances throughout.

Sansho the Bailiff (1954) - 9/10 - A provincial governor during the Heian Period is separated from his family and exiled. Years later, his wife and two children travel to rejoin him only to run afoul of people who want to sell the mother into prostitution and the children into slavery. It's very well done.

[Mister Tee]

I haven't seen Next Stop, Greenwich Village since Spring of 1976, and I'd be interested in looking at it again, if only because someone who's been a friend since I met my wife is in it, and I'd love to see what she did in it (also, what she looked like all those years ago).

I remember at the time going to it because Pauline Kael was enthusiastic over it (as she often was about Mazursky films), but finding it kind of middling -- lots of interesting color, but a pretty wobbly super-structure.

Lenny Baker might have been part of that -- he had a kind of fuzzy presence. He did, as Magilla notes, win a Tony a year later, but never had a shot at a wider career, because he was one of the earliest AIDS casualties.

1976 supporting actress was pretty much a wasteland, once Talia Shire was promoted to lead. Straight and Alexander had miniscule roles and were carriedin by their films. Many at the time thought Foster would win, since she had by far the most substantial/critically-praised role, but the culturally-conservative Academy found Taxi Driver (and her character) way too over-the-edge; Straight's win was a product of extremely lucky timing.