I was having trouble finding this. It’s actually called: The Coolest Guy Movie Ever. It’s on Hulu.
Well, I got “guy” and “ever” right. 
Watched Cadillac Records, about the careers of music industry entrepreneur Leonard Chess (Adrian Brody, stumbling through the script) and some of the blues musicians on his label; Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, etc. The real standout performance was that of Beyonce as Etta James.
More Steve McQueen. His last film, The Hunter (1980), a psuedo-biopic of bounty hunter Ralph “Papa” Thorson. It’s not a particularly great movie. Steve is good - still tough and cool at 50, the ultimate bad guy does a pretty good job as a psyco - other than that it kind of watches like an episode of Magnum PI, with more swearing. However, there are some fantastic stunts. The cornfield Trans Am v combine chase, the subway/El chase, the car off the 17th floor of a parking structure.
A funny bit about it is that the character that amazing race car driver Steve McQueen plays can’t drive for shit.
You can watch it for free, with ads, on Crackle if you’re interested.
A movie that I haven’t seen recently:
Last night we were watching a documentary on Monty Python, and it began with the members’ background and influences, and they got to the comedy troupe Beyond the Fringe, featuring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. And it made me realize that I haven’t seen Bedazzled (1967) in ages, and I always thought it was one of the funniest films ever made.
It turns out that it’s not available for streaming on any platform. Dammit.
My husband and I just saw Knives Off, and we thought it was excellent.
You know something i was going to mention that while not the greatest film ever…U-571 is a fun guy movie.
Then i remembered it got caught up in a lot of “HEYYYY it didn’t happen that way!!” controversy (Well no shit, no one said it was a historical film. The Bedford Incident didn’t happen either)
And i wondered, did a lot of people shit their pants saying the same thing about The Great Escape? “Bloody Americans wern’t even there anymore!! They got shipped off!”
Here’s a list of movies I haven’t seen that I should.
These I even own:
Part way through Django Unchained
Wayne’s The Alamo
Once Upon a Time in the West
My Pal Joey
A Bridge Too Far
Ones I dont:
Both True Grits
Robocop
Commando
The Big Lebowski
Bullitt
I think you mean Noises Out. Or possibly Spoons Up.
*Knives Out
The Death of Stalin is on Netflix now. I saw it when it was in theaters, but the sound quality in our local theater isn’t the best, and I felt I missed some of the rapid-fire dialog. So we watched it again last night and laughed as hard as the first time around. Top actors having a great time in a brilliant farce.
*Stuber *(2019) - better than I thought it would be. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but it’s a fun little comedy-crime-buddy flick. I’ve been a fan of Kumail Nanjiani since they used to run Meltdown on Comedy Central unedited at midnight several years ago, so it’s cool to see him become a big-headed star now.
Burning. South Korean thriller, with the one called Glen out of the Walking Dead. I do feel as if this movie is a 1 hour movie, which could be stretch to an hour and a half, but it was reallly stretched to 2 hours and 20.
Paradise Hills. A shot in the dark choice. Very stylish movie about a futuristic luxury reeducation resort, where young ladies are sent to get better. Turns on a nice twist and well executed. Enjoyed it more than expected.
The Final Girls The daughter of a dead splatter horror movie queen gets stuck in her mothers own horror movie, with her friends. Quite good, really, if you like your meta.
Watched it last night. Thriller set in Ireland. Excellent film.
Pepper Mill and I finally finished watching the last of the all-Emma-Peel set of The Avengers that we got for Christmas over a year ago. I don’t recall several of the ep[isodes, and I’m pretty certain that I never saw the last one before.
On my own, I’ve been watching a lot of silent movies (nobody else here really cares about them).
I re-watched the Giogio Moroder cut of Metropolis (I’m i the minority of those that like the music in it).
I also watched the 1929 part-sound Mysterious Island – a very weird film. They started making it, then killed it for three years, then started again, in Technicolor and with some redesign. then sound came along so they added a couple of scenes with dialog. Unfortunately, the color version was then lost . One reel of it turned up not long ago, and was shown – once-- at a silent film festival in Italy in 2014. (You can find a few scenes, tests, and color stills online, if you look). The film is an utter mess. It’s like they wanted to make Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the SEa, but decided they didn’t really like his plot, so they wrote something completely new. They did take the submarine (although they don’t call it the “Nautilus” ) and Nemo’s island lair (the titular “Mysterious Island”). Lionel Barrymore plays the CAptain, but he’s never called “Nemo”. Instead he’s Count Dakker, apparently a Slavic sdcientist/engineer (near the country of “Helvia”) who’s invented the sub, which an evil Baron Falon wants to steal. It’s as if they cobble togerther bits from Nemo’s supposed backstory – Verne originally wanted him to be Polish, but changed him to the Indian Prince Dakkar at the insistence of his publisherr. He also got a daughhter, Sonia. They add a Giant Octopus (every screen version of the film features a Giant Sea Beast, usually a squid or octopus) and an entire underwater ciity populated by amphibian people who look like kind of like Carl Barks’ Donald Duck. It’s a weird and wonderful mess.
I also watched the 1916 silent 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which is more faithful to the book, but not completely. It’s the only version I know of (except for Alan Mloore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the film based on it) to show Nemo as Indian. But he wears a fur-trimmed suit with a broad black belt, and has a white beard, so he looks like Santa Claus. The film realy does make the Nautilus look as Verne described it, like a spinning spindle, a nice hydrodynamic shape unlike the Victorian Steampunk version Harper Goff made for the Disney film. BUt he gave the Nautilus two things that Verne didn’t – a periscope and torpedoes (The 1929 film gives the submarine these, too). They also add elements from Verne’s novel “The Mysterious Island”, as well as a lengthy backstory for Prince Daaker (Nobody spells his name correctly in the silent films) inspired by what Verne wrote, but going far beyond it. There are numerous underwater scenes, actually filmed underwater with state-of-the-art cameras (the inventors of it get a cameo at the start of the film. According to Cinefantastique, when Disney later remade the film, they went to the same underwater site because the water was so clear there). There’s also a Giant Octopus, but it’s the smallest Giant Octopus in any film version I’ve seen – about man-sized, which is consistent with what Verne actually wrote. An interesting, overlay ambitious film that’s a bit too long.
Continuing my line of Captain Nemo adaptations, I watched Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea again last night. This film’s an underappreciated gem. Verne purists complain about how they changed the story, but after watching the previous films, I’m impressed with how close the the original novel this film sticks, not only in the story, but in its very tone. Disney and Verne are a perfect match – they both had that “gee-whiz” sense about science and engineering that has mostly evaporated these days.*
It’s also an incredibly dark-tinged film. If you thought Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka taking the kids on a dark boat ride was a creepy interlude in a kids; film, then take a closer look at James Mason’s Nemo taking three adults on a dark submarine ride. He’s a cultured scientific genius fanatic who sinks ships full of people as part of his crusade against warmakers. And he doesn’t get “redeemed” at the end. How many Disney quasi-heroes are mass murderers? Nemo is very much like Erik in Phantom of the Opera – a genius , a fascinating character, though not the viewpoint one, who also kills unrepentantly.
Earl Felton’s screenplay takes Verne’s ambling travelogue and turns it into a more directed story, with Nemo pursuing his goals, Arronax trying to learn as much as he can (while being beguiled, despoitre himself, by Nemo), and Kirk Douglas’ Ned Land being the real Plot Driver, trying to escape with almost as fanatical devotion. Peter Lorre’s Conseil is a significant part, too – he is trying to mediate between Ned and the Professor, and to save the Professor in spite of himself (The part should really go to a much younger actor, although Lorre does a great job with it. And they completely ignored the characterization and dramatic turn that Verne wrote for Consell, but the “standard” translation by Louis Mercier already screwed that up. Felton might not have even been aware of it.)
But losing the “travelogue” aspect robbed the film of a couple of great images – Captain Nemo looking over the sunken city of Atlantis, and his journey beneath the pole.** But it would’ve taken away from the narrative, and the film’s long enough.
The episode with the Giant Squid is interesting, but when I was a kid I didn’t realize that the squid was swimming backwards. It looks impressive, though. The fight with the squid is impressively dramatic, but it didn’t look that way until they re-filmed it. Originally it was set in a calm sea, and the deficiencies of the mechanical squid were appallingly obvious.
The encounter with the natives is troubling for several reasons, not the least of which is that they appear to not be Polynesian, but black (like the equally troubling natives in the 1933 King Kong). The treatment of them is dismissive and condescending (and it doesn’t help that Verne did the same. Verne was pretty broadminded about nationalities, having heroes from most countries, but he regarded American Indians, African natives, and others as “savages” in his books), but at least Nemo gives them their due for having a reason for their behavior (“You invaded their country, Mr. Land. They have every right to invade ours.”)
Overall, a worthwhile film. Some of the effects are dated or odd-looking (the obvious ship model work, the animated fish swimming by the Nautilus’ giant porthole), but some still stand up. The scene of the Nautilus lying in wait to attack the nitrate ship at sunrise is absolutely gorgeous.
*You’d think there would be more Verne adaptations, but the only other one they did was In Search of the Castaways (the Verne novel was also known as The Children of Captain Grant), which was disappointing, although Disney did dip into the “steampunk” vibe even before the word “steampunk” came around – The Island at the Top of the World, Atlantis, the Lost Empire. I’ve argued elsewhere that Harper Goff’s redesign of the Nautilus effectively invented “steampunk” – it was AFAIK the first “retro” use of showy 19th century design for dramatic effect, and was copied by lots of modelmakers before the costume people got hold of the notion.
**The Visit to Atlantis, though, showed up in two other Verne adaptations years later. A Journey to the Center of the Earth (which also starred Mason, so he DID get to see the Lost Continent) and Harryhausen’s The Mysterious Island.
Verne had the Nautilus visit the SOUTH Pole in his novel (that there was land under parts of Antarctica was known long before Verne wrote, but evidently he hypothesized that it didn’t go all the way to the South Pole. It does, of course, but the dream of getting to the un-continented NORTH Pole by ship fueled two submarine expeditions – The USS O-12, which was given the name Nautilus in a 1930 attempt to reach the North Pole, clearly invoking the spirit of Nemo. – USS O-12 (SS-73) - Wikipedia It was a diesel sub, so it was pretty ambitious. It got as far as 82 degrees north, but it suffered damage and couldn’t continue. It wasn’t until 1958 that the SSN-571, also named Nautilus, finally did make the trip. The ship was authorized and named before the Disney film, and the Disney crew was surely aware of its construction. They strongly hint that their Captain Nemo had discovered nuclear power and was using it to drive his own submarine. Disney even designed the real Nautilus’ logo patch.
Ucho - 8.5/10
It’s a fine movie, and very well executed. I’ll paste the IMDB description, since I don’t want to spoil it, but if there are some who have seen it, we can always use the Spoiler tool on here to get more in-depth.
“After coming home from a Party gathering one night, a Czechoslovakian official becomes convinced that he is about to be the subject of a political purge and tries to do damage control, while also dealing with his turbulent marriage.”
A good way I’d describe it is “The Lives of Others” meets “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
I’m going to look into this movie more, but very eager to throw this out there “before its too late!”
WARNING: “Spoiler” spoilers below
I loved how the protagonist had the camera right on him, speaking to him, which also gives the viewer the paranoia they are experiencing (mostly him, but also his wife). The flashbacks are used in a great way, because in real life, someone who has a feeling of being purged will look back and think “Maybe it was THIS, or maybe it was THAT”…
Peanut Butter Falcon - The wife and I wanted something light last night. This was perfect, we really enjoyed it.
Knives Out - Repeatedly told to watch it by family and friends, did not see what all the fuss was about.
It really is. Incredibly underappreciated.
When I visited the USS Nautilus in Groton in the late Eighties, a large model of the Disney movie’s sub was displayed in the visitor’s center.
My latest five films:
Vice
Christian Bale undergoes a remarkable transformation to look uncannily like Dick Cheney, and plays him very convincingly, too. The movie lurches a bit between drama, polemic, satire and near-slapstick, but is worth a look for any political junkie.
The Sound of Music
Hadn’t seen it in a long time - a classic movie musical, as silly and schmaltzy and fun as ever. Julie Andrews, beautiful, talented and a great singer, really carries the movie.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
A favorite comedy in my family, about a British smooth operator (Michael Caine) and an American boor (Steve Martin) conning wealthy women on the French Riviera. Brilliant, sly and very, very funny. If you don’t laugh during the Prince Ruprecht scenes then you clearly have no sense of humor.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
An eccentric inventor (Dick Van Dyke) creates a magical car and, with his sweetheart and two adorable children, has several adventures in this favorite movie of my childhood. A bit dated now but still good.
You’ve Got Mail
Heartwarming romance from the dawn of the Internet Age, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as mismatched bookstore-business foes who fall in love almost despite themselves.