Our new doggie who has much to learn. Harley is a handful but just loveable. I had a lovely birthday with many phone calls and...I got gnomes! I love them and hubby surprised me with them..love them. So I'm getting right into the films I watched in May. I have nothing to add for TV because I am watching the same thing like before. Here's to the movies I saw in May.
1. ONE-EYED JACKS-1961
This came on TV so I watched it even though I am not enamoured with Brando. He, Karl Maldon and one other dude rob a bank but Maldon double crosses Brando takes the money and Brando ends up in a really bad prison. 5 yrs later, Brando escapes bent on revenge. He finds Maldon who is now married, a sheriff and has a beautiful step daughter. Brando is attracted to the young lass, of course and is not sure what to do. It's not a bad movie at all and I enjoyed it.
2 THE BIGAMIST-1953
I finally saw this film directed and co- starring Ida Lupino. A man, feeling left out by his wife, falls for and marries this young gal, Ida, all while having wife #1, Joan Fontaine, at home wanting to have a kid. He has one with Ida...ahh the tangled web he finds himself in. Edmund Gwenn finds out about the guy's double life. I love how Ida had fun with Edmund comparing him to Santa and, when Ida and Edmond O'Brian take a tour of Hollywood homes, they point out Edmund Gwenn's house. I thought that was so funny since Edmund was Santa in Miracle on 34th Street. This is a pretty good film and directed by a woman!
3. CLOAK AND DAGGER-1946
Gary Cooper plays a scientist hired by the OSS to get the scientist away from the Nazis. He gets help from the Italian resistance especially the lovely Lili Palmer, as they try to bring the older scientist to freedom. This feels very real and, not sure if the story is real, but the OSS is real(Christopher Lee was part of this secret service). I thought this was quite excellent.
4. KNIVES OUT-2019
This is a funny film even though it's about murder, back stabbing and a family you hope you are never related to. Christopher Plummer is the head of a household who all are beholden to the old man. You meet each one and learn why they are being cut off from daddy's purse strings. The only one who is true and blue is his health care nurse who can't tell a lie or she throws up. Trying to figure out who the killer is is Daniel Craig as a southern detective who reminds you of Sherlock Holmes. This is dark, but I love it.
5. BANDOLERO-1968
This is a fun movie that stars Jimmy Stewart as the good brother who saves the bad brother, Dean Martin, from the noose along with his mangy band of thieves. They end up taking Raquel Welch hostage as they travel to Mexico right into bandit territory. Hot on their trail is the sheriff who has the hots for Raquel..that's a lot of hots. They must band together to fight the bandits. I saw this many years ago and loved it especially Jimmy Stewart. It's what I would call a quirky western.
6. IN HARM'S WAY - 1965
This was a good movie starting with Pearl Harbour and then going to the islands where the U. S. must fight and win all they can. It stars John Wayne who has a great friend in Kirk Douglas but both end up reprimanded until the Navy realizes they need Wayne. In this film, Wayne must find a way to win these islands and find time to woo Patricia Neal. There is a disturbing scene with Douglas and a younger nurse on a beach because Douglas is, allegedly, the actor who raped Natalie Wood when she was 18. It was known she was sexually assaulted but she never told anyone who the perpetrator was. Her sister, Lana, came out with this news recently. Back to the film, this is a bit long but I did enjoy it and found it realistic from the romance themes to the battles.
Hi, Birgit!
ReplyDeleteHooray for Harleywood, dear friend! I wish I were up there to hug and smooch your pooch. Thanks for posting a picture of him.
Karl Malden was one of my favorite actors. I enjoyed his intensity. I see that he lived to the ripe old age of 97. As the story goes, Malden didn't leave this world without his American Express travelers' cheques. I also like Marlon Brando, but the problem with One-Eyed Jacks is that it is a Western, not my favorite genre.
I have not seen "Hollywood's shockingly adult picture, The Bigamist," but I enjoy film noir and love that announcer's excited voice on the trailers. I always thought a bigamist is a very thick fog in Italy.
I also admire Gary Cooper, and your favorable review has convinced me to watch Cloak And Dagger when the opportunity presents.
Knives Out definitely looks like my kind of movie. I enjoy dark comedy mysteries, and Jamie Lee Curtis as Linda Drysdale-Thrombey looks like a hoot.
I would watch practically anything that stars Jimmy Stewart but, here again, Bandolero is a Western, albeit a quirky one. I am one of the few men on earth who don't think Raquel Welch was all that hot.
In Harm's Way is probably another movie that I will skip because, as a rule, I don't like to watch war movies. Gettysburg - YES!, but WWII films, mostly no. This is the first I am learning that Kirk Douglas allegedly raped Natalie Wood. I just checked the Wiki article and it indicated that Natalie was violently assaulted in the summer of 1955 when she was age 16, not 18, and Kirk Douglas was 38. It's a disturbing allegation.
It's sad to learn that the last of your video stores is closing its doors, the end of an era. The only TV series I'd like to plug today is Ozark on Netflix. It stands as the greatest series I've ever watched.
Please give Harley lots of lubbins and have a safe and happy weekend, dear friend BB! (I sent you an email.)
Knives Out was good. Interesting ending.
ReplyDeleteI have not seen any of your others. I have not been watching any old movies since we cut the cable cord and no longer have TCM. Although, one of my streaming services does have a link to TCM, so perhaps I should get on that, eh?
Harley is a handsome pooch.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAww! Harley looks super ready to dash and explore :)
ReplyDeleteHappy belated birthday!
ReplyDeleteI hope you had a great birthday. I hope Harley is behaving. Needless to say, I've not even heard of any of these, but I would LOVE to see Knives Out.
ReplyDeleteBelated Happy Birthday, Birgit. Glad it was a good one. Birthday wishes on the blog.
ReplyDeleteHi Birgit,
ReplyDeleteCute pup!! You had a good month….no lemons! I’ve seen all of these and agree that while all of them aren’t classics they are at least enjoyably decent films.
Ida Lupino was such a talent. The Bigamist is one of her strongest films as a director. It helps that she was able to corral high quality talent like Edmond O’Brien (who was also in her best film-The Hitch-Hiker) and Joan Fontaine (who was the present wife at the time of Ida’s ex-husband Collier Young who was a partner in her production company!).
I love Knives Out! I saw it when it came out originally, in an actual movie theatre which is rare for me nowadays. It didn’t use all the talent at hand as effectively (there were an awful lot of them to spotlight) as it could have but overall the director had a firm hand on things. Fantastic production design.
I have not seen Cloak and Dagger in years even though I think it’s a good film. It’s one of those that was a staple of the Movie of the Week series when I was a kid which means that it played twice a day for a week on one of the UHF channels and I got a bit burnt out on it, but I should really give it a look to see how it held up.
Bandolero is hardly a definitive film for any of its stars, but they work well together (the set was harmonious, not something that always happened on Raquel’s sets-she could be something of a pill apparently) and it has that old studio feel while still being a bit gritty.
In Harm’s Way is another I have not seen in years but remember as a well put together big studio picture with big movie star performances. It was Patricia Neal’s completed film before her multiple strokes and if you compare her here with The Subject Was Roses which was her return three years hence, she is still as capable as ever but she’s aged about ten years.
I’m not the biggest Brando fan either but One-Eyed Jacks turned out pretty well considering the backstage turmoil-both Rod Serling and Sam Peckinpah did adaptations that proved unsatisfactory and Kubrick was the original director until delays and disagreements led him to exit leaving it to Brando to assume the reins. All the performances are good with the always fabulous Katy Jurado being the standout. Sadly Pilar Pellicer, who plays Brando’s love interest committed suicide at 30.
I did better this month than last and ended up seeing three films I really liked and a few that were interesting for one reason or another.
ReplyDeleteThe first was the new Downton Abbey movie which as a devout fan of the show I adore even if the premise was hardly revolutionary. For non-fans their mileage will vary.
I finally caught up with the documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts and it was terrific but then I’m a huge fan and admirer of hers. I knew a lot of what was told but it was Jane herself that was the fascinating part and her clear-eyed and unapologetic surety of who she is that made it a standout.
I also saw a lovely small film titled “The Man with the Answers.” It’s about guy on a short road trip who becomes acquainted with a free-spirited hitchhiker and a spark that develops between them. It was a bit ambling but ultimately quite charming.
Queen Bees is a bittersweet comedy about a woman forced to temporarily move into a retirement home when there is a fire in her house and the adjustments she must make and friends she makes. It wasn’t anything extraordinary but what a cast-Ellen Burstyn, Ann-Margret, Jane Curtin, Loretta Devine and James Caan!
The other two were older films that I have been searching for forever. The first was Romance in the Dark a late 30’s Paramount musical with opera star Gladys Swarthout when they were trying make her a film star to rival Jeannette MacDonald. It didn’t work but it was a nicely produced film with a funny comic supporting performance by John Barrymore just before he became a parody of himself.
The other was a cornball exercise called The Family Doctor that was designed to exploit the Dionne quintuplets. The weird thing was that they did not make an appearance until about the last quarter of the movie and up until then it was about how Jean Hersholt was this kindly but put-upon doc in a remote Canadian town. It had a good cast but now that I finally tracked it down, I’ll never watch it again.