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What DVD / Video did you watch last night? (pt3)

I’ve watched a bunch of films lately while being off work poorly

Sorry, Wrong Number. Barbara Stanwyck is a wealthy invalid who overhears a murder being planned when she’s connected to a phone call. Burt Lancaster is her husband who is mysteriously absent.

The Asphalt Jungle. A bank robbery is planned in detail by an aging criminal mastermind and then executed by a small hand-picked gang. It all goes well until the double-crossing begins and the dragnet is out. Early appearance of Marilyn Monroe.

Casablanca. I must have watched this first as a teenager but on rewatching as a more mature adult I appreciate how good it is. Surprisingly funny as well, especially the scenes with Claude Rains in. Very strong cast, and a hugely quotable script. Plus Bogart and Bergman. And Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.

The Lost Weekend. Alcoholic writer Ray Milland is on a mission to get and stay drunk. Dodging a weekend trip with his brother to the country he lies, steals and pawns his way through the next few days all in the name of getting sloshed. It’s an honest look at addiction, rather than playing it for laughs, ably directed by Billy Wilder.

The Killers. Burt Lancaster aka The Swede is shot in his room by two mysterious killers, and the insurance investigator tracks down the policy beneficiary which then unravels the Swede’s story. Ava Gardner is the femme fatale of the piece. I liked the initial scene at the Diner the most I think.

The Garment Jungle. More jungle, this time in the garment district when the factory owners son, back from military service, wants to bring the Union into the factory. Tension emerges between father and son as the owner is paying gangsters to keep the Union out.
 
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Beneath the Planet of the Apes

1970 sequel to the Charlton Heston classic. Follows straight on from the events of the first film, but gets increasingly strange to the rather unsatisfying conclusion.
 
Enjoying season 3 of Umbrella Academy but there's a couple of things that really bother
they never talk to each other and barely listen and as a result so many opportunities are missed and things that could be avoided/sorted... aren't. Guess that's part of the team dynamics, the built in failings but damn, it's annoying. On the plus side, loved how Vanya becoming Victor was handled. So loving. So easily accepted and welcomed.
 
Just finished watching Hellraiser with the boy. Pleased to report that it still stands up as a quality film, and really interesting to watch it with the perspective of middle age.

Contrasted with last night, when he and I stayed up till midnight watching The Color Purple :D <3 He loved it! A surprise hit.
 
Sapphire and Steel.

Their second assignment and arguably the best. Watching it again, after all this time, wonder if the denouement has bearing on the outcome of their final assignment?

McCallum and Lumley are just perfect. The former's character has a ruthless cold logic, but also a playful side. Reminds a bit of Paul Darrow's Avon, who was on a competing sci-fi classic around the same time. JL is just brilliant with the seance scene, and her reactions to the ghosts are at the heart of the tale.

Often think this show could be rebooted with a bit of tlc.
 
Poker Face. A new comedy crime series by Rian Johnson, starring the wonderful Natasha Lyonne in her best role yet.

Very, very good :)
 
The Best Years Of Our Lives - epic film - in length anyway - directed by William Wyler about the return from WW2 of three men to a generic midwestern town and the lives and loves they left behind and their struggles to reintegrate back into society. The story flows along at a gentle pace, quite a good study of friendship.

Out Of The Past - Robert Mitchum is a former PI, now a garage owner out in the California mountains, when someone comes along from his past and he’s drawn back into a web of lies involving double-crossing dames, a tax-avoiding gambler etc.

Murder My Sweet - whoops - I only watched the 70s Mitchum remake, Farewell My Lovely two months ago so the plot was somewhat ruined for me. Didn’t realise until I’d started watching it. Anyway it didn’t stop me enjoying the film fortunately.

The Big Heat - Glen Ford investigates the death of a cop on the take and uncovers links to a mob boss who runs the city. After the fight gets personal he takes on the battle against crime. Lee Marvin plays a brutal bastard of an enforcer. Good climax to the film.

Detour - just over an hour this B movie was brilliant. A hitchhiker is picked up but after the driver suddenly dies he changes identity with the corpse as he fears he could be liable for murder. Then he offers a ride to a young woman, and things start to escalate for him.

Dead Reckoning - Humphrey Bogart is a demobbed soldier about to receive a medal in Washington when his fellow soldier jumps the train. He tracks him down to a coastal town in the south, and tries to understand who his comrade was and what he was running from. A Bacall-style femme fatale is encountered. This film was both quite a lot of fun but equally it felt a bit lazy and cliched. Like the studio said “make me another To Have and to Have Not”.

The Hitchhiker - directed by Ida Lupino (the first woman to direct a film noir apparently, and I’d have thought a female director in the 50s was quite rare full stop) this B movie is about a murderer who gets picked up by two ordinary men away from their wives for a fishing trip. He soon pulls a gun on them and uses them as cover to make his escape. It’s just them and the desert, the harsh barren landscapes mirror their treatment.
 
Elpenor said:
The Best Years Of Our Lives - epic film - in length anyway - directed by William Wyler about the return from WW2 of three men to a generic midwestern town and the lives and loves they left behind and their struggles to reintegrate back into society. The story flows along at a gentle pace, quite a good study of friendship.

Out Of The Past - Robert Mitchum is a former PI, now a garage owner out in the California mountains, when someone comes along from his past and he’s drawn back into a web of lies involving double-crossing dames, a tax-avoiding gambler etc.

Murder My Sweet - whoops - I only watched the 70s Mitchum remake, Farewell My Lovely two months ago so the plot was somewhat ruined for me. Didn’t realise until I’d started watching it. Anyway it didn’t stop me enjoying the film fortunately.

The Big Heat - Glen Ford investigates the death of a cop on the take and uncovers links to a mob boss who runs the city. After the fight gets personal he takes on the battle against crime. Lee Marvin plays a brutal bastard of an enforcer. Good climax to the film.

Detour - just over an hour this B movie was brilliant. A hitchhiker is picked up but after the driver suddenly dies he changes identity with the corpse as he fears he could be liable for murder. Then he offers a ride to a young woman, and things start to escalate for him.

Dead Reckoning - Humphrey Bogart is a demobbed soldier about to receive a medal in Washington when his fellow soldier jumps the train. He tracks him down to a coastal town in the south, and tries to understand who his comrade was and what he was running from. A Bacall-style femme fatale is encountered. This film was both quite a lot of fun but equally it felt a bit lazy and cliched. Like the studio said “make me another To Have and to Have Not”.

The Hitchhiker - directed by Ida Lupino (the first woman to direct a film noir apparently, and I’d have thought a female director in the 50s was quite rare full stop) this B movie is about a murderer who gets picked up by two ordinary men away from their wives for a fishing trip. He soon pulls a gun on them and uses them as cover to make his escape. It’s just them and the desert, the harsh barren landscapes mirror their treatment.
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Is this from a boxset? Streaming? I’m envious!
 
The Long Goodbye.

Wherein Marlowe loses both his cat and his shit. Updated to the seventies, Marlowe is old and out of touch, he can no longer go to those places and get the answers the cops can't and he isn't happy about it. Everyone around him is a bit of a shit (apart from the girls next door) and it's all kinda depressing, a satire on melancholy even.

Gould (he hadn't been allowed a major role for two years) is brilliant, as is Nina van Pallant and (a drunk and stoned) Sterling Hayden. And (baseball player) Jim Boulton is very effective as Terry. Fucking great.
 
krtek a houby said:
The Forty First

Another Mosfilm, this time from 1956 dealing with Red Army survivors who capture a White Army officer. Takes place in the deserts of Kazakhstan and the Aral Sea (which is no more, apparently). A sniper with the Red Army and the officer are thrown together in adverse circumstances and a journey of discovery ensues.
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Grigory Chukhrai, one of the greats of the 'thaw' period of relative artistic freedom post-Stalin. His films are visually gorgeous but content-wise they're very melodramatic with stilted characterisation.

My favourite of his is the romance Clear Skies (Chistoe Nebo) from the early 60s. One of the first Soviet films to deal with the injustices of the Stalin era (of course in a limited way) while still adhering to Socialist Realism.
 
seventh bullet said:
Grigory Chukhrai, one of the greats of the 'thaw' period of relative artistic freedom post-Stalin. His films are visually gorgeous but content-wise they're very melodramatic with stilted characterisation.

My favourite of his is the romance Clear Skies (Chistoe Nebo) from the early 60s. One of the first Soviet films to deal with the injustices of the Stalin era (of course in a limited way) while still adhering to Socialist Realism.
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Admittedly it was somewhat melodramatic, but yes gorgeous visually. Will try and see your recommendation, hopefully it's on the channel.
 
krtek a houby said:
Admittedly it was somewhat melodramatic, but yes gorgeous visually. Will try and see your recommendation, hopefully it's on the channel.
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I think it's up there on the Mosfilm YT channel with English subs. It's on the nose and can be cheesy with the Good Communist Treated Badly by the Stalin Government, but go along with it.

Like I said, it's interesting for the context in which it was made, its minor importance in showing the limited criticism of Stalin that was allowed officially and done so within the boundaries of Socialist Realism. Given the story, it was a little bit personal for Chukhrai in the treatment of one of the main characters, as he was a veteran himself, of Stalingrad and a former paratrooper. It looks lush, too.
 
Happy Valley.

"You don't look very happy."

Brilliantly done. . . but something has gone seriously wrong in a society that can produce something like this.

And as I said to Mrs Idris after one particularly harrowing episode, "could you really call it entertainment?"
 
seventh bullet said:
I think it's up there on the Mosfilm YT channel with English subs. It's on the nose and can be cheesy with the Good Communist Treated Badly by the Stalin Government, but go along with it.

Like I said, it's interesting for the context in which it was made, its minor importance in showing the limited criticism of Stalin that was allowed officially and done so within the boundaries of Socialist Realism. Given the story, it was a little bit personal for Chukhrai in the treatment of one of the main characters, as he was a veteran himself, of Stalingrad and a former paratrooper. It looks lush, too.
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It does look lush, although it would be even better if it's restored. Preferred the second half of the film and was a bit distracted by the subtitles which didn't seem to always coincide with the dialogue. The Mosfilm channel is normally (from what have watched) good with that.

Minor quibbles aside, a good watch. And some great moody scenes with a brooding Urbansky who reminded a bit of Brando.

Thanks for the recommendation.
 
krtek a houby said:
It does look lush, although it would be even better if it's restored. Preferred the second half of the film and was a bit distracted by the subtitles which didn't seem to always coincide with the dialogue. The Mosfilm channel is normally (from what have watched) good with that.

Minor quibbles aside, a good watch. And some great moody scenes with a brooding Urbansky who reminded a bit of Brando.

Thanks for the recommendation.
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I first saw it on DVD. I used to order Soviet-era films from the Russian Cinema Council back in the mid-noughties. The picture was crackly then. I'm glad you liked it. It's nothing major but still an interesting slice of Thaw cinema. Both Urbansky and Drobysheva are good in it.
 
seventh bullet said:
I first saw it on DVD. I used to order Soviet-era films from the Russian Cinema Council back in the mid-noughties. The picture was crackly then. I'm glad you liked it. It's nothing major but still an interesting slice of Thaw cinema. Both Urbansky and Drobysheva are good in it.
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Ah, was wondering about the lingering shots of ice flows. Was it a metaphor for life, post Stalin, etc.
 
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