What Classics did you see last week? (July 30-August 5)

First viewings:

Skippy (1931):
Skippy (Jackie Cooper), the mischievous son of a wealthy doctor, meets Sooky (Robert Coogan, Jackie Coogan’s brother) in poverty-ridden Shantytown, and together they try to save Sooky's pet from a cruel dogcatcher. Nominated for 4 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Norman Taurog, winner), Best Adapted Screenplay (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), and Best Actor (Jackie Cooper!). To this day, Cooper is the youngest actor to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. He was barely nine years old. An entertaining kids movie about childhood friendship, a little dated, but very charming and compassionate, with wonderful performances by Cooper and Coogan. Strongly recommended for those interested in the story and the film’s historical significance (Cooper’s Oscar nod).




Re-watches:

The Champ (1931):
Director King Vidor’s sentimental melodrama about an alcoholic ex-boxer who struggles to provide a good living for his son (Jackie Cooper). Nominated for 4 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actor (Wallace Beery, who won, sharing with Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Best Director (King Vidor), Best Original Screenplay (Frances Marion, winner). A bit dated, but it’s a good film, worth a look for the performances alone.




Easy to Wed (1946):
A remake of Libeled Lady (1936), not at all as good, but still enjoyable.

TWO MOVIE REVISITS

Blue Ruin / Jeremy Saulnier (2013). For anybody getting tired of revenge movies, here is a take on the genre that you have never seen before. You will NOT come away thinking, "Yeah, I’ve seen this same damn movie dozens of times just with different titles." It is centered on a protagonist who, as far as I can remember, is unique in this kind of film. I hesitate to say much at all about the story for fear of spoilers (although many national reviewers give away quite a bit). I will say that it opens with a homeless man (Macon Blair - he also plays Garrison, Oppenheimer's lawyer at the closed hearing, in the new movie) living on the northeast Atlantic coast. When we first see him he has broken into a house to take a bath. We quickly learn that he lives and sleeps in a rusted out car on the beach. One morning a friendly female cop wakes him up and takes him to the police station. There, she shows him a newspaper (which we don’t see). She merely says, “He is being released.” This begins one of the many twists and turns as this man’s struggles to regain purpose in his life. This film is the feature sophomore effort by director/writer Saulnier and both parts are exemplary, but the real auteur is Macon Blair in the lead performance. About a week after seeing “Blue Ruin” I found that I was still thinking about it and the effect it had. It is pretty amazing for a genre film of this sort. Be on the lookout for Eve Plumb who played Jan Brady on the 1970s sit-com “The Brady Bunch.” 55-years-old at the time of the movie, she is the woman who pulls the automatic weapon which has been duck taped to the bottom of the kitchen table.




Ixcanul (Volcano) / Jayro Bustamante (2015). My first film from Guatemala and my first in the Mayan language, or to be specific, the Kaqchikel language of the Mayan family. The film focuses on a family who lives something of a feudal existence in the modern world. They live in company housing on a large coffee plantation on the side of a volcano where the father works. Their existence is pretty much day-to-day. The only child, a teenage daughter named Maria, dreams of going to the United States but her parents are arranging a marriage for her with a middle-aged widower, a manager of the plantation who lives in a higher social status and can even speak Spanish. Maria is attracted to a young seasonal worker named Pepe who is there for the coffee harvest. She asks him, “What is on the other side of the volcano.” He says, “The United States,” but quickly adds that Mexico is in the way. (When Maria asks her mother the same question, Mama answers, “Cold Weather.”) Pepe says he will take her when he goes if she is “nice” to him, but he disappears without even learning that Maria is pregnant. This is a remarkable film that shows how families like Maria’s are trapped and exploited in ways that keep them impoverished and under the thumb of “the boss.” Yet, between the family members there is a lot of love and laughing and hope for the future while at the same time accepting their helplessness. This is not a feel-good film but in its own way is a testimony to endurance as well as a social document. “Ixcanul” was Guatemala’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards (the films of 2015) but was not nominated. It also won a prize at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival as a film that "opens new perspectives on cinematic art".




FIRST TIME VIEWING

Oppenheimer / Christopher Nolan (2023). There is so much content in this film, so many ideas, such complex characters that it is difficult for an amateur plodder like me to know where to begin. So I’ll begin at the beginning. The start is a jumble of short, time shifting scenes that made me think that for a three-hour movie it sure seemed rushed. But it does settle down we take a deep dive into the life of Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the “father of the atomic bomb”. Although he never embraced 1930s communism in the U.S., he knew many communist party members, including his lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and Haakon and Barbara Chevalier to whom, after his marriage, he entrusted his infant daughter. This made him a potential security risk but because of his reputation as a scientist he was recruited by General Leslie Gross (Matt Damon) to head the super-secret Trinity Project.
    Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer, his, at first, alcoholic wife, later a strong advocate against his persecutors during the Red Scare. A fourth great performance is by Robert Downey, Jr., so changed and submerged in his character that I didn’t even recognize him.
    The Movie, Nolan, Murphy, Blunt, Downey Jr. and maybe Damon, have, to my mind, locked in Oscar nominations. I would vote for them. Tom Conti’s is now my favorite Einstein portrayal. Most highly recommended.





TELEVISION SERIES

Midsomer Murders
“Strangler’s Wood” Season 2, Episode 2 (February 3, 1999)

Mission: Impossible
“Zubrovnik's Ghost” Season 1, Episode 11 (November 26, 1966)
“Fakeout” Season 1, Episode 12 (December 3, 1966)
“Elena” Season 1, Episode 13 (December 10, 1966)

Tony Award winner Beatrice Straight (most famous for winning an Oscar with a 5m 2sec performance) guest stars in “Zubrovinik’s Ghost.” This episode also features some actual supernatural events. All through the first season, the show was coalescing, finding its own true nature. This never happened again. In the future, all mysterious happenings would be IMF trickery.

Sister Boniface
“Scoop!” Season 1, Episode 5 (February 22, 2022)

Peter Gunn
“The Portrait” Season 1, Episode 35 (June 15, 1959)

“Peter Gunn” is one of those classic TV series with only three seasons (1958-1961), but is very well remembered by those who saw it on its first run. Noir TV at its darkest, at times, as in “The Portrait.” Gunn (Craig Stevens) is a cool snappily dressed P.I. who works out of a jazz club called “Mother’s.” Lola Albright plays his chanteuse girlfriend who performs at Mother’s. Herschel Bernardi is Gunn’s police inspector friend. Created by Blake Edwards.

Thanks for taking care of this thread spiderwort !

Here are the movies Tele have seen lately...


The Wolfman 2010 directed by Joe Johnston and based on the screenplay once written by Curt Siodmak for the Lon Chaney Jr 1941 movie.
Actor Lawrence Talbot returns to his old homestead in Blackmoor after his brother is killed by some kind of beast, trying to investigate himself about that beast he is bitten by the beast and becomes a wolfman at full moon. Scotland Yard also sends a detective to investigate who doesn't believe in mythical beasts, little did they know.
When it was new I was actually rather enthusiastic about it, second viewing the enthusiasm had cooled down, and now nearly 10 years later I'm rather positive again. It's not a classic like the 1941 movie.
This was a so-called Director's cut, and I've never seen the other version.


The Goonies 1985 directed by Richard Donner and based on a story by Steven Spielberg.
I didn't wan't to re-watch this but I was voted down. I know many loves this movie but I don't.
Annoying kids always screaming and yelling and acting irregular somehow manages to find an old map that might lead to an old pirate's treasure.
I did buy the soundtrack album though, because i liked Cyndi Lauper and The Bangles in the eighties.


The House of the Seven Hawks 1959 directed by Richard Thorpe and based on a novel by Victor Canning.
A tired looking Robert Taylor plays a charter sailboat owner in England who unwittingly gets involved in a Dutch mystery about hidden WWII loot. He get's involved with the Dutch Secret Police and private financiers desperately wanting to know where in the Netherlands the loot can be found. His last passenger died en route to the Netherlands, murdered by too strong insulin, but could have the clue where the loot could be found hidden somewhere among his belongings.
Didn't expect much but it was a rather decent mystery movie, good for a lazy day.
Made on locations in the Netherlands.


Der 20 Juli aka The Plot to Assassinate Hitler 1955 directed by Falk Harnack and based on facts that was known at the time this movie was made.
About Wehrmacht officer Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944.
Unlike the later Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie 2008, this movie had a much slimmer budget and uses a lot of news-reel footage.
It's interesting to say the least and worth a glance.
While based on facts, they eye-patched the wrong eye on von Stauffenberg.


None Shall Escape 1944 directed by Andre De Toth.
Made in 1944 but takes place sometime in the future when WWII is over and those responsible for war crimes has to be put on trial. Through three witnesses we follow the rise of a Nazi officer in Poland and the cruelty he was responsible for.
This is a riveting hard-hitting movie hidden away as a B-movie by Columbia Pictures and because of that probably got away with the honesty of what the Nazi's did before it was officially known, like deporting Jews to camps, sending young women to Officers' Clubs and so on.
Nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay.
Be in the right mood if you watch this movie.


Four Men and a Prayer 1938 directed by John Ford and based on a novel by David Garth.
A dishonourably discharged British Officer of the British India Army who caused 90 soldiers lives summons his four sons to reveal the facts that he was dumped on false accusations, but before he reveals what he has found out he is murdered and vital documents stolen. His sons goes globetrotting to find the truth and to restore their fathers name.
This must be one of the weaker movies of director Ford, maybe he had to do it to keep his paycheck, since at it's core it's a good story, but lapses into a lot of "comic" situations ever so often. I wish they had treated the story more seriously.
Still it has some entertainment value with some great actors.

Well that was the week that was for me.