Last Seen Movie - The Latest Movie You Have Seen; ratings

[Reza]

Watch on the Rhine (Herman Shumlin, 1943) 7/10

A prestige production based on the hit play by Lillian Hellman with a screenplay by her lover Dashiel Hammett. Filmed at the height of WWII the story is set during early 1940 before the United States entered the War. It is a plea against fascism and a strong nudge to awaken America to the plight of Europe under the growing influence of Nazi menace even though the country was initially adamant at keeping out of the war despite knowledge of what was going on. A german engineer (Paul Lukas), who is in fact working for the anti-fascist underground, arrives with his wife (Bette Davis) and three children into America via Mexico. She is returning home to her mother (Lucille Watson) and brother (Donald Woods) after 18 years. Also staying at their house in Washington, DC is a dissolute Romanian count (George Coulouris) and his wife (Geraldine Fitzgerald). The man discovers cash and a gun in the engineer's briefcase and blackmails him threatening to reveal his presence to the German Attaché (Henry Daniell). The theatrical origin of the story results in a very talky screenplay with the cast standing center stage delivering monologues which are played to the gallery - both Lukas and Watson created their parts on Broadway while Davis, who was the reigning star at Warner Brothers, was given top billing for box office clout. This propaganda film has a subtle and very dignified performance by Lukas and all his scenes opposite Davis are beautifully played with a natural comfort in their depiction of a long married couple still in love and who know that major sacrifices will have to be made by them all for a greater cause in order to make the world a better place again. The film comes off too preachy with the children given the worst and most unnatural dialogue making them appear too stiff as they mouth off Hellman's dialogue. Watson, as the outspoken matriarch, Coulouris as the slimy blackmailer and Fitzgerald as his lovely wife are all very good. The film went down in history as the one which won for Lukas a Best Actor Oscar - a very popular win at the time helped no doubt by the nature of the role set during the War. In hindsight it was an inexplicable win considering he defeated the iconic performance of Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca". The film, Watson and the screenplay were also nominated.

[Reza]

Typhoon (Louis King, 1940) 3/10

The famous sarong gets yet another workout courtesy Dorothy Lamour in this rather silly but colorful adventure film. A young girl is shipwrecked on an island with a chimp for company, grows up to be Miss Lamour wearing Edith Head's sarong, saves a sailor (Robert Preston) and his companion (Lynne Overman), they battle with crooked sailors headed by J. Carroll Naish, watch a submarine sink and survive a huge forest fire, a typhoon and three tidal waves. The special effects, circa 1940, were nominated for an Oscar. Great technicolor cinematography. Lousy film.

[Reza]

Something to Live For (George Stevens, 1952) 3/10

Extremely dreary film about an alcoholic actress (Joan Fontaine) who is helped by a recovering alcoholic (Ray Milland). Their affair is a dull talkathon with his wife (Teresa Wright) acting noble at home. The great George Stevens went from the high of "A Place in the Sun" to the absolute bottom in just a year with this boring soap opera - he would luckily recover the following year with "Shane". Fontaine is totally out of her depth playing a drunk while Milland gets to dip into his old Oscar winning territory albeit this time around looks dazed throughout. Skip this film.

[Precious Doll]

Los Silencios (2018) Beatriz Seigner 5/10
Donbass (2018) Sergey Loznitsa 6/10
Outrage Coda (2017) Takeshi Kitano 4/10
Shock Waves - Diary of My Mind (2018) Ursula Meier 4/10
Grass (2018) Sang-soo Hong 4/10
Happy as Lazzaro (2018) Alice Rohrwacher 9/10
Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017) Issa Lopez 2/10
Knife + Heart (2018) Yann Gonzalez 4/10
The Green Fog (2018) Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson & Guy Maddin 6/10
The Dead Nation (2017) Radu Jude 6/10
Victory Day (2018) Sergey Loznitsa 4/10

[Precious Doll]

The Fugue (2018) Agnieszka Smoczynska 4/10
The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) Desiree Akhavan 6/10
Chris the Swiss (2018) Anja Kofmel 6/10
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) Terry Gilliam 3/10
Our House (2018) You Kiyohara 4/10
Sofia (2018) Meryem Benm'Barek-Aloisi 5/10
The Children Act (2018) Richard Eyre 4/10
The Guilty (2018) Gustav Moller 5/10
A Woman Captured (2017) Bernadett Tuza-Ritter 6/10
The Harvesters (2018) Etienne Kallos 4/10
Capharnaum (2018) Nadine Lakaki 1/10
Tower. A Bright Day (2018) Jogoda Szelic 4/10

[Precious Doll]

Crowhurst (2018) Simon Rumley 6/10
That Summer (2018) Goran Olsson 6/10
At War (2018) Stephane Brize 7/10
Yomeddine (2018) A.B. Shawky 4/10
Asako 1 + 2 (2018) Ryusuke Hamaguchi 5/10
Nico, 1988 (2017) Susanna Nicchiarelli 6/10
Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975) Mohammaed Lakhdar-Hamina 6/10
Birds of Passage (2018) Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra 7/10
Everybody Knows (2018) Asghar Farhadi 2/10
The World is Yours (2018) Romain Gavras 5/10
Diamantino (2018) Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt 8/10
Infinite Football (2018) Corneliu Porumboiv 4/10
Dogman (2018) Matteo Garrone 7/10
Ash Is Purest White (2018) Zhangke Jia 7/10

Repeat viewings

Captain Blood (1935) Michael Curtiz 9/10
Summer and Smoke (1961) Peter Glenville 6/10
The Knack ...and Hot to Get It (1965) Richard Lester 7/10

[Precious Doll]

You Were Never Really Here (2017) Lynne Ramsey 6/10
The Third Murder (2017) Hirokazu Koreeda 6/10

Repeat viewings

Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks 9/10
The Mean Season (1985) Phillip Borsos 6/10
Ride the Pink Horse (1947) Robert Montgomery 5/10
The Bridge (1959) Bernhard Wicki 7/10
The Great Lie (1941) Edmund Goulding 7/10
Son of Saul (2015) Laszlo Nemes 7/10
Girl with Green Eyes (1964) Desmond Davis 7/10
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) Tony Richardson 6/10

[Precious Doll]

Méditerranée (1963) Jean-Daniel Pollet & Volker Schlondorff 5/10
No Date, No Signature (2018) Vahid Jalilvand 6/10
Where is Kyra? (2018) Andrew Dosunmu 4/10
Wet Woman in the Wind (2016) Akihiko Shiota 4/10
Under the Tree (2017) Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson 6/10
Ted - Show Me Love (2018) Hannes Holm 4/10
Ramparts of Clay (1970) Jean-Louis Bertuccelli 4/10
The Go Masters (1982) Ji-shin Duan, Jun'ya Sato & Shu'an Liu 4/10
Why Girls Leave Home (1945) William Berke 4/10

Repeat viewings

Gentleman Jim (1942) Raoul Walsh 7/10
Come Back, Africa (1959) Lionel Rogosin 6/10
Look Back in Anger (1959) Tony Richardson 6/10

[Greg]

The Apartment - Billy Wilder - 1960

This is another time I used TCM as an opportunity to catch up on a celebrated film I had still yet to see.

From the beginning with Jack Lemmon's voice over, it became apparent that rapid-fire repartee would punctuate the film from beginning to end. What impressed me even more was how seamlessly this moved back and forth from comedy to pathos. Lemmon as the everyman and Shirley MacLaine as the "kept woman" are in top form playing the role types for which they were, at least initially, most known. The only thing that distracts for me, is the life-goes-on ending where the at-least-potentially desperate situations Lemmon and MacLaine's characters placed themselves in was just glossed over.

An additional interesting point is that this movie serves as somewhat of a time capsule for a time when middle-income-working people were actually able to live thoughout much of Manhattan.

9/10

[Precious Doll]

Mary Shelley (2018) Haifaa Al-Mansour 4/10
G.I. Honeymoon (1945) Phil Karlson 2/10
Silver Queen (1942) Lloyd Bacon 4/10
Navajo (1952) Norman Foster 6/10
Los Tarantos (1963) Francisco Rovira Beleta 8/10
U - July 22 (2018) Erik Poppe 8/10
Tlayucan (1962) Luis Alcoriza 7/10
Border (2018) Ali Abbasi 5/10
Twin Sisters of Kyoto (1963) Noboru Nakamura 5/10
The Important Man (1961) Ismael Rodriguez 4/10
A Very English Scandal (2018) Stephen Frears 6/10
The Ninth Circle (1960) France Stiglic 5/10
Dark River (2018) Clio Barnard 4/10

Repeat viewings

The Fountainhead (1950) King Vidor 8/10
In a Lonely Place (1950) Nicholas Ray 7/10
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) Mark Robson 6/10

[Precious Doll]

I've only ever seen the original cut of Tom Jones and have never seen Richardson 1989 cut. The first time I saw it was on home video in 1992 and the tape was produced in the very early 1980s. I'm not even going to bother with the 1989 version as the original cut is near perfect.

I feel In the Mood for Love is really little more than style over substance to a large extent. I was curious to revisit the film given that it stature has grown go much in recent years but I feel exactly the same way I felt about the film back in 2001.

[Big Magilla]

The drubbing of Tom Jones is largely based on the wrong-headed 1989 "director's cut" of the film which was the only version available from then until now. The Criterion and BFI DVD and Blu-ray releases contain both versions.

Richardson's 1989 re-cut of the film removed several scenes which are essential to the plot of the film. Without them the ending is too abrupt. Be sure to watch the original theatrical release version of the film and not the dumbed-down version foisted upon the world by Richardson two years before his death.

[Reza]

Tom Jones (1963) Tony Richardson 9/10
In the Mood for Love (2000) Kar-Wai Wong 7/10

Interesting to see you gave the Wong a 7 - which many think is a masterpiece. While Richardson's film has gone down in many people's estimation which got a 10 from you.

I agree with your rating for the former. Haven't seen the latter in almost 40 years. Need to watch it again to see if it holds up.

[Precious Doll]

Adrift (2018) Baltasar Kormakur 4/10
Drums of Love (1928) D. W. Griffith 5/10
Music in Manhattan (1944) John H. Auer 4/10
Day Dreams (1928) Ivor Montagu 6/10
Skyscraper (1928) Howard Higgins 5/10
The Mysterious Island (1929) Lucien Hubbaud 3/10
Hunters of the Deep (1954) Ben Chapman 5/10
Sunbonnet Sue (1945) Ralph Murphy 4/10

Repeat viewings

The Sea Hawk (1940) Michael Curtiz 8/10
The Entertainer (1960) Tony Richardson 8/10
Tom Jones (1963) Tony Richardson 9/10
In the Mood for Love (2000) Kar-Wai Wong 7/10
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) Karel Reisz 7/10
A Taste of Honey (1961) Tony Richardson 7/10
Frances (1982) Graeme Clifford 4/10

[Precious Doll]

Ideal Home (2018) Andrew Fleming 4/10
Foxtrot (2017) Samuel Maoz 4/10
Upgrade (2018) Leigh Whannell 5/10
Incredibles 2 (2018) Brad Bird 5/10
Moon Child (1989) Augusti Villaronga 4/10
Marguerite and Julien (2015) Valerie Donzelli 4/10
Tehran Taboo (2017) Ali Soozandeb 7/10

Repeat viewings

There Was a Crooked Man (1970) Joseph L. Mankiewicz 7/10
The Men (1950) Fred Zinnemann 7/10
Marborosi (1995) Hirokazu Koreeda 5/10
Threads (1984) Mick Jackson 7/10