Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

The Spirit of St. Louis. Charles Lindbergh is rightly a controversial figure, but there’s no denying that his transatlantic flight was a bold, impressive undertaking that captured the attention of the world. The film focuses tightly on the flight, with flashbacks throughout as Lindbergh’s thoughts wander, mostly covering the process of coming up with the project and getting to the flight, and a few covering his time as an airmail pilot and barnstormer. This makes for an agreeably focused film that capably dramatizes an event that consists mostly of a man alone with his thoughts, struggling to stay awake, know where he is, and keep his plane in the air. The construction especially is fascinating, as you realize how relatively primitive the manufacturing processes were at the time. James Stewart, over twenty years older than Lindbergh at the time, is awkward casting; he’s a talented actor, experienced aviator, and enthusiastic about the story, and his performance is perfectly fine, but he’s just too old, and his persona perhaps enabled Billy Wilder to go a touch overboard with aw-shucks touches in the flashbacks. The end result works, though, a largely nuts-and-bolts account of a fascinating episode of daring and achievement.

 

Resolution, Spring, The Endless, Synchronic

The wacky cinematic universe of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. The Endless got the most attention, but Spring is my personal favorite. A romantic comedy about falling in love with the Ogdru Jahad.

 

After that, Wolverine says to Cyclops, "It's me."
Cyclops: "Prove it."
Wolverine: "You're a ****."
Cyclops: "Okay."

 

I watch all three endings, but clearly the one where Mr. Green is an FBI plant is the best.

 

"I'm going home to sleep with my wife." -Mr. Green

 

"But if you want to know who killed Mr. Boddy, I did, in the hall with the revolver."

 

Still one of my favorite comedies.

 

"To make a long story short..."
"Too late."

 

Mildred Pierce. Given Code standards, this is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book, capably telling the story of a working mother who lives to give her daughter an upwardly mobile lifestyle, but succeeds only in creating a narcissistic, stuck-up monster who thinks she is too good for her mother. The resulting film, with good performances and excellent noir direction from the ever-capable Michael Curtiz, might not be as great as James M. Cain’s outstanding novel, but it’s pretty darn good.

 

Mildred Pierce is on my top 10 favorite movie list, partially due to this quote:

Those kids come first in this house.

Before either one of us.

Maybe that's right and maybe

it's wrong. But that's the way it is.

l'll do the best l can for them. lf l

can't do it with you, l'll do it alone.

 

The Sound of Music

 

The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Jack Lemmon is one of my favorite actors, and he’s reliably excellent here as a stressed-out businessman driven to a nervous breakdown by a barrage of bad luck. Lemmon is absolutely hilarious as he froths over every irritation, spouting Neil Simon’s great dialogue with zest. Anne Bancroft is great accompaniment as the wife who has to figure out what to do with him. The result is a zippy, darkly funny film anchored by a great performance from a great actor.

 

500 Days of Summer. 2009
Very good romance/drama starring Joseph Gorden Levitt and Zoe Deshanel who date for 500 days. A bit bittersweet but some very creative scenes. I didn't like Zoe's character in this; she seems very selfishly clueless in how cruel she is, and her doe eyed acting style can be grating. Still recommended.

 

Invasion of the Astro Monster (1965)

These dudes....

 

Dear Heart. A romance from 1964, this straddles an interesting divide. It’s too early for the post-Code explosion of sexuality, but it’s far franker and more complicated than anything you would have seen in the fifties, despite its black-and-white fifties feel. It follows a postmistress in New York for a convention who meets a salesman planning his wedding to a woman he barely knows. He’s a womanizer who’s decided to settle down, but of course it’s a romance so he’s done it with the wrong woman. She’s a rather silly, desperately lonely woman who is tired of the annual convention hookups and wants something real. They click, and she immediately is interested in him, while he has to slowly realize that here is the woman for him. In the hands of Delbert Mann, it’s a capable, very sharp-looking, adult romance. It could, however, do without the very stupid subplot around the beatnik stepson-to-be who shows up with a very stupid set of problems and proceeds to act like some old codger’s very stupid caricature of a beatnik. He strikes me as very unnecessary, and what’s more, stupid. Geraldine Page and Glenn Ford are both excellent as the leads, while Angela Lansbury swoops in at the end to play the fiancee with a sort of understated awfulness.

 

Angela's performance or the fiancée's character as written?

 

The character is awful, and Lansbury plays it without going over the top.

 

The Photograph. This Indonesian film follows an escort struggling to provide for her daughter and ill grandmother in the country who rents a room from an old, ill photographer and slowly develops a relationship with him. It is a slow-paced, quiet film, with a few odd bursts of comedy. It’s a fairly standard type of story, with little in the way of surprise, but it’s well executed and, in its quiet rhythms, rather entrancing.

 

A while back, I saw this at the Mahoning Drive-In. It was part of a double-feature with "Destroy All Monsters". Great stuff.

 

*Extremely trustworthy voice* Ah, I see you don't yet have a cure for cancer. We will need to borrow everything that could theoretically halt an invasion from outer space in exchange for it, though. Weird coincidence, I know.

 

What wonderful planet do you live on to be able to see such an awesome double feature?

 

A Night to Remember on one of the movie channels.

 

I live in a separate, odd part of the Universe called Central New Jersey. And it's about two hours away from three drive-ins in PA.
Oh, and last year, Becky's Drive-In ran "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" on screen 1. Even when Hollywood is pushing back new stuff, there's an upside.

 

First Blood. 1982
Very entertaining first entry in the Rambo franchise before it became a cartoon. Vietnam vet pushed out of sleepy Oregon town (was filmed in BC) and then pushes back. Brian Dennehy is excellent as always as the police chief and Richard Crenna is terrific as Troutman. An amazing musical score by Jerry Goldsmith of Alien fame.